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

I sat on the hood of the car and watched Hendriks studying the desert like a hunter waiting for something to shoot. There was nothing. Nothing moved. Just the spirals of dust dancing over the plain.

The philosopher Cicero said as Rome’s legions marched across Europe that in times of war the law falls silent. We didn’t appear to have learned much in the last 2,000 years. From the first $87 billion awarded by Congress for the reconstruction of Iraq, millions were already unaccounted for. Along with thousands of crooked Iraqi subcontractors, the FPS was one of the black holes that had consumed an abundant share of those millions.

When the Coalition chiefs set up the FPS, they went back to Saddam’s old cronies with great bundles of dollar bills. The cronies duly re-employed all the people who had worked for them before: their brothers and cousins, sons and son-in-laws. There is a sense of Iraqi pride. Sunnis and Shias fought side by side in the war with Iran. But their first loyalty is to their family and the tribe.

Saddam’s old security guards had been given new jackets with navy blue brassards embroidered with the white FPS insignia and the Iraqi flag. They were armed, equipped and paid by the Americans and continued doing exactly the same job they had always been doing, but with more money to buy packs of Marlboro so they could smoke themselves into an early grave.

Seamus got his pictures. We piled back into the cars and had only been motoring along for ten minutes when we ran into a storm of machine gun and small-arms fire. An IED on the side of the road exploded, probably a buried mortar or artillery shell, not that hefty but with sufficient calibre to shred one of the front tyres on the Peugeot. Les wrestled with the steering like he was fighting a wild bear and we careened off the road. I pushed Michel down into the foot well and disengaged the safety on my rifle as the car shuddered to a halt. The South Africans swerved straight into a protective position.

As for Sammy, our grinning guide, he put his foot down on the gas and the Toyota disappeared in a cloud of dust. I thought if I ever saw the little shit again I’d rip his head off.

Whether the gunmen had been smart enough to know that the principal would be in the centre vehicle of our convoy, or whether this was just a lucky hit, we had no way of knowing, but it warned us that they were more likely to be fedayeen than looters.

How they had come to be lying in wait in the middle of nowhere would give us plenty of scope for debate, although the most likely option to me was that it was Delacroix’s alleged contacts manning the assault. And if they knew we were on this road, at this time, Sammy might have tipped them off for a $20 backhander. He had insisted on taking the desert road. He had been one of Saddam’s officers. It made sense.

Of course the FPS guards could have been playing both sides of the fence, but they would hardly have had time to set up an ambush.

Les in those two seconds leapt from the car and was popping shots along the enemy firing position about 200 metres from us. The South Africans de-bussed and were quickly laying down withering fire. The explosion from the IED was still ringing in my ears although, even as I scrambled out of the car, I realised how lucky we had been. The bomb had been buried deep enough for us not to see it, but too deep to do any real damage. Most of the blast had gone vertically into the air, otherwise we would all have been shredded by shrapnel.

Seamus and I stoop-crawled to the front of the Peugeot. It had dug itself into the dusty grey sand. Enemy fire was getting closer. A line of bullets skittered along about a yard to my left. Seamus took a quick look around. There was no shelter as far as the eye could see. I calculated there were between twelve and twenty men out there. Seamus must have done the same arithmetic. He shouted to me to get Delacroix out of the car.

‘We’re going to bug out in the Nissan,’ he said.

He shouted instructions to the South Africans. They nodded and carried on emptying their belts at the enemy position in measured bursts. Les started to slide backwards like a crab towards the 4 × 4. The rebel fire wasn’t that accurate, but one of them at least was hitting the Peugeot and the rest were finding their range. As always happens, the explosion had deafened me at first, but I could now hear bullets snapping by my ears. Iraqis are a volatile lot and gunmen get very excited when they have a Western target. I knew if they ever calmed down and started aiming properly we were going to be in serious trouble.

As the designated bodyguard, I climbed back in the car to get Michel.

‘Let’s. Go. Let’s go.’

He totally refused to move.

‘Michel, allez! allez! Let’s go, man.’

He had wedged himself like a foetus half under the front seats and was clinging on for all he was worth. I started screaming every Anglo-Saxon curse that came into my head, but threats and punches would not budge the man. I even chopped him across the back of the neck to try and stun him enough to drag him out bodily. It didn’t work. Paralysed by fear, he was a tight little ball weeping and gibbering, but he was putting everybody’s lives at risk.

‘Get that cunt out of the car,’ Seamus screamed.

‘I can’t move him,’ I screamed back.

Seamus gave me a scornful NCO scowl as he came to take charge.

‘Get out, you fucker,’ he said, and ripped the sleeve off Delacroix’s Armani jacket as he tried to haul him to his feet.

We both worked on him but the Frenchman had some animal sense of survival and for him survival was staying inside that Peugeot even while the gunmen were finding their range and scoring some fresh hits on the car bodywork.

I watched as Seamus, with scant regard for his safety, raced across to the South Africans and told them that we were going to have to tow the damaged vehicle out. Good soldiers that they were, they hawked up phlegm for a good spit and got on with it.

Etienne was quickly behind the wheel and edged across the firing zone in front of the Peugeot. Cobus climbed in the back and started unrolling the loose end of the tow strap. Hendriks carried on doing what he did best, spraying the enemy position with concentrated bursts so deadly accurate the ambushers could only fire back blindly without taking aim. Cordite fumes hung in the still air and I thought momentarily of the languorous calm of the wading birds back at the lake.

Cobus passed me the loose end of the tow strap and I looped it around the eye-ring on the undamaged side of the Peugeot.

‘That’s two fucking cars we’ve trashed in two days,’ Seamus said, as if he was worried about the book-keeping all of a sudden.

He climbed into the driver’s seat and gunned the engine. He tooted Etienne, who eased forward to tauten the tow straps, and both drivers put their foot down. The Peugeot had dug itself into the dust at high speed and edged out laboriously a grain at a time. Les and I put our weight behind the vehicle, while Cobus and Hendriks went through another couple of cartridge belts.

The damaged vehicle was still trying to shake itself free of the dust when to my complete and utter amazement Sammy’s old Toyota appeared on the left flank like the cavalry in a cowboy film.

He must have made a circle through the desert and now raced into the killing zone with guns blazing at the enemy’s unprotected left side. Sammy’s men were firing ancient AKs and their accuracy was awful, but the shock on the enemy coming under fire from two sides was such that the gunmen started backing off. They retreated in good order, eight or nine guys laying down fire while eight or nine ran back. They were trained soldiers, almost certainly Saddam loyalists.

Sammy had parked up and his gang kept firing at the enemy until they retreated from view. Then they jumped back in their car and drove down to join us. Sammy was grinning from ear to ear.