James Ashcroft - Making a Killing - The Explosive Story of a Hired Gun in Iraq

Anyway this did not help our ammunition problem. We squatted around the boxes of ammo, picking out the rounds that had successfully fired. They had either Cyrillic script, indicating Russian or Yugoslav origin, or had Arabic numbers with a thick red sealant on the case. We divided the Eastern Bloc ammo into one tin and the red-sealed Arabic stuff into another. Everything else, we dumped on the ground. Many of the useless rounds had been Iraqi. Next we started testing the weapons we had brought and quickly discovered that half of them were just AK-47-shaped junk. Once we’d identified the decent weapons it was time to zero.

We would fire a couple of rounds at a Coke can with a partner spotting the bullet strike in the sand bank, apply safeties, bang the sight left or right or screw it up and down as appropriate, then fire another couple of rounds.

This was not like zeroing in the army. But it was fast.

In five minutes of furious firing we were all hitting the cans from 50 metres. Seamus called a halt. I was sweaty and quite pleased with myself. Less than 48 hours ago I’d been on the road to Heathrow. Now I was in the countryside in the most dangerous place on earth firing an AK-47 at Coke cans. The sun was a washed-out blur behind the fumes and dust and, in spite of our target practice, a swarm of small bright-green birds the size of wrens were wheeling above the range. The gunfire drives the insects higher and the birds were feasting.

While the South Africans loaded the vehicles, Seamus produced a couple of phones from his daysack to show Les and me. The first was a small grey and white mobile, an MCI phone, he explained. They used American mobile numbers, which meant if someone wanted to call from the UK, it would only cost them the same as an international call to the USA. ‘And you can get some pretty cheap rates these days,’ Seamus added.

That would be good. Krista and I had wondered how I would be able to keep in touch. There was only a three-hour time difference so we would be able to talk in the evening.

‘However,’ Seamus carried on, ‘coverage is shit and limited to the city boundaries. As you can see there is no coverage out here.’ He pointed to the screen where we should have been able to see the bars indicating reception. There was nothing.

Then Seamus pulled out a Thuraya, a hand-held satellite phone. A chunkier piece of equipment, this was a lot more useful.

‘It works best if you are out in the open with a clear view of the sky, but it may just about work from vehicles and to a limited extent from within buildings if you have a big window. But it usually doesn’t, so get outside if you need to use it.’

He showed us how to switch it on, how to get the phone menu and also how to use it as a GPS. I was impressed but I supposed it was obvious that a satellite phone would have a global positioning capability.

‘That’s the good thing about it because if you come under contact and you are immobilised you can send an exact grid reference to the cavalry. But don’t get anyone to call you on this number, it’s bloody expensive. We get one of these per team and we are each allowed to make two phone calls home a week on it.’

The South Africans had finished loading and we strolled over to the vehicles.

‘I’ll ask Jacky to get some MCIs for you. They are CF issue only, or for contractors working for the CF, but we have a pet US colonel who can get them for us,’ said Seamus. ‘That’s not a friendly gesture, by the way. He has plans for us and he wants to keep us sweet.’

‘What route home?’ asked Etienne.

‘I know I said Karrada,’ Seamus replied, glancing at his watch, ‘and we finished earlier than I thought, but we need to get these weapons sorted out at the armoury and I can’t be fucked sitting in rush-hour traffic today. It will take a while to do these tonight, so let’s just go home up the highway the way we came and go shopping tomorrow.’

We mounted up and called into Sierra Zero to inform them we were leaving the range and that we were coming back along the highway.

It had been a useful exercise. Had we not tested the weapons we might have been driving around Baghdad with pieces of junk in our hands. I wondered how many security companies were as efficient, and how many guys were driving around out there with useless ammo. At least any enemy we came across were likely to be carrying weapons loaded with Iraqi rubbish and, on a brighter note, we were now carrying decent weapons with live rounds. We would sorely need them both before the month was out.

Spartan had scored one of the contracts to escort journalists and my first PSD tasking with the gang was to collect the AP journalist Lori Wyatt from Baghdad International Airport.

After surviving insurgent bullets and friendly fire to bring reporter Lori Wyatt safely into the Green Zone, our boss assigned another Spartan unit to act as her dedicated team in Iraq.

After Les and she had exchanged numbers, they would meet up at the Al Hamra hotel, where she and many other journalists were staying. The Al Hamra was an ugly concrete ten-storey building 200 metres from the CPA gate in a protected street with guards at each end, but it had that feeling of being outside the safety zone and when the Palestine Hotel was full, this was where the journalists wanted to be. In the lobby there was a sign saying: ‘Please check your weapons at the desk’, which made you think you were in the Wild West and, like gunslingers, we ignored it. The great thing about the Al Hamra was that it had a really nice pool and on Thursday evenings there was a pool party.

Adam Pascoe had developed a relationship with an ambitious US Army colonel who was after his one-star promotion to general and was working on a deal for Spartan to get the task of safeguarding the water purification infrastructure, one of the major utility contracts for the reconstruction. Adam had told all the teams to keep our eyes peeled for water facilities, make a note of the terrain, fencing, vulnerable points, the current security, and bring it back to HQ with photographs. With this material, when Spartan went for the water contract, Pascoe would support it with a dossier of intelligence.

Next day we were tasked to pick up a French reporter from the CPA building and take her out to do some interviews. Her name was Michelle Delacroix.

‘You know I speak pretty good French,’ I told Seamus.

‘That’s what they teach you up at the Factory, do they?’

‘I was just wondering –’

‘All right, Rupert, you can have this one.’

We were in the chow hall eating scrambled eggs and crispy bacon flown in from Kansas. Hendriks, bladder of steel, downed his seventh coffee and we were set for the day.

Michelle was waiting for us dressed for clubbing in an Armani jacket, blue jeans and a red bandana. Apart from the three-day stubble, he wore one of those skimpy French moustaches and it wasn’t Michelle. It was Michel. A man! If any of our team had been hoping to meet an attractive Frenchwoman they had been sorely let down.

‘Tasty,’ Les murmured, and Monsieur Delacroix couldn’t understand why the rest of the team were roaring with laughter as I introduced myself as his personal bodyguard.

We marched Monsieur Delacroix from the Presidential Palace back to the car park. Having trashed the Opel we now had a Peugeot saloon, again without armour plating. It was almost new; new, as such, didn’t appear to exist in Iraq. I thought all the vehicles probably came across the border from Kuwait when they were about ten years old and had long since had their day.

I gave Delacroix the same speech that Les had given Lori, that nothing was going to happen but if it did, he was to get down on the floor and I would protect him.