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

‘You took your time, what took you so long?’ I asked him.

‘Traffic,’ he replied, without missing a beat.

Hendriks and Cobus had come to join us pushing the Peugeot. We were grey with dust from the spinning rear wheels as Seamus gunned the engine. Sammy joined in and eventually the car slithered on to the road.

Seamus got out of the car and took a look at Michel Delacroix, still in a vegetative state on the floor.

‘Right, interview cancelled. Back to Baghdad,’ he said.

If he was anticipating an argument from Delacroix, he didn’t get one. He got back behind the wheel. Les and I climbed in the 4 × 4 with the Yaapies and, with Sammy leading the way again, we towed the Peugeot back towards the water plant, the rim of the damaged wheel gouging out great chunks of tarmacadam as we went.

We had only been going for about five minutes when Seamus gave the horn signal for us to stop.

‘Fuck it,’ he said.

He untied the tow straps. He then opened the rear door and gazed down at the Frenchman.

‘All right, Sonny Jim, you’re out of danger, let’s go,’ he said.

Delacroix would not budge.

‘Did you hear me, we’re abandoning the car. Get in the Nissan.’

No movement.

‘What’s wrong with this fucking bloke?’ He looked at me. ‘Get him out before I lose my temper.’

Les and I tried levering up the prostrate Frenchman with the barrels of our AKs. We dragged at his jacket and pulled off his boots. Still he clung on. Les had done the arrest and restraints course and brought those skills to bear: you take hold of the person by the thumb or little finger and bend it back. As their mouth falls open in a scream, you jab your finger like a fish hook in their mouth and haul them up. Delacroix against fifteen stone and six feet of angry Englishman. No contest.

As Les hooked Delacroix out of the car I told him if he didn’t behave we were going to leave him behind in the desert. He had been traumatised by the bullets punching through the doors and window next to him. I was surprised by this◦– he was supposed to be a war reporter who knew the dangers. He had put all our lives at risk by refusing to get out of the car while we were under fire. Les poked the snub of his AK in the Frenchman’s chest.

Sammy came back towards us.

‘You have problem?’

‘No problem.’

Delacroix was quivering but was at least trying to compose himself. Les manhandled him into the back seat of the Nissan and climbed in beside him.

‘Ash, there’s no room for you,’ Seamus said. ‘Hitch a lift with the Iraqis.’

We put the medical kit and ammo in the boot of Sammy’s car, I grabbed a radio, and Etienne pulled up close behind us. Sammy wanted to siphon the gas from the Peugeot but it was time to get the hell out of Dodge.

It was difficult to remember that Iraqis did not live in a throwaway society like our own and every dollar had a lot of homes to go to. Old car tyres are cut up for sandals; they flatten oil drums for roofs and weave palm fronds into baskets; bricks are taken from bombed buildings to build new buildings; cartridge cases are saved for the brass and electrical cables are dug up at night by the ali-babas for the copper.

‘That was quite a move, coming up behind the enemy like that,’ I said as Sammy started the car and put his foot on the gas.

He turned to me. ‘An old pilot’s trick,’ he answered. ‘It was the only thing to do.’

‘Well, it was bloody well done. I’m grateful,’ I told him.

‘Grateful! Why grateful? We are brothers.’

He had taken his eyes off the road and was still driving at top speed. I steadied the wheel.

‘Steady on. You’re not flying your Mig now.’

‘Bandits at four o’clock,’ he said and grinned as he turned to me again. ‘You are an officer?’

‘Infantry,’ I replied.

‘Sandhurst?’

‘Is this a third degree?’ I asked and he patted my leg paternally.

‘You British are too reserved for your own good.’

We had a two-hour journey back to Baghdad and as we chatted I realised that Assam Mashooen was the first Iraqi with whom I had had a proper conversation. It turned out that his father had trained as an artillery officer at Sandhurst in the 1950s. Sammy followed his father’s footsteps to England where he learned to fly with the RAF in Southampton. He had fond memories of the English and even fonder memories of English girls.

‘You know Southampton?’

‘I do a bit,’ I said, thinking not really .

‘Then you must know Joanna. Who can forget Joanna?’

‘I hope your wife doesn’t know about your sordid past,’ I said and he laughed heartily.

He had risen to the rank of wing commander and had flown hundreds of sorties in the Iran–Iraq War. Saddam had personally presented him with a gold-plated Tariq, the Iraqi-licensed version of the Beretta. He pulled the pistol out of his waistband and, when he dropped it in my lap, I was in awe of a piece of history actually touched by the dictator himself.

Sammy waxed nostalgically. ‘Sometimes we would see the Iranian jets coming over. We would ignore them and they would ignore us. We were all pilots together,’ he said. ‘They would go and drop their bombs, I would go and drop my bombs, and we would wave to each other on the way back. It was a stupid war.’

Sammy talked about the internal no-fly zones that had existed, even during the war. If a pilot strayed into the wrong space, like over one of Saddam’s palaces, a convoy of black cars would be waiting at the airport to drive him off to some subterranean cell where he would be hung on meat hooks as a punishment.

‘Saddam Hussein is very bad man. I am happy the Americans came and drove him out.’

‘If you were so unhappy before, why didn’t you just fly out and ask for exile?’

‘They will rape your wives and daughters, they will kill all your sons. They will fuck you.’

He was still driving flat out and Hendriks’s voice crackled over the radio.

‘Wait up. This is kak , man,’ he said.

‘Take it easy,’ I said.

He dropped down to 120.

I asked Sammy how he got the job translating for Michel Delacroix. He rubbed his thumb and finger together. ‘I need dollars.’

‘How much are you getting?’

‘Trade secret,’ he replied.

‘Come on, Sammy, you know you’re going to tell me.’

‘You know how much I get as a pension from the Iraqi Air Force?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Come on, guess. You English like puzzles.’

‘I’m Scots,’ I said and he laughed.

‘I get two dollars each month. Two dollars,’ he said. ‘The French man, he pay me hundred dollars each month.’

‘For?’

‘I find the guards, I get them wine and special things you can’t find in the CPA. I always charge a few dollars more.’

I thought about that for a moment and made a decision that wasn’t really mine to make.

‘Come and work for us. My outfit is paying interpreters three hundred dollars a month and some of them don’t even speak English. The last guy got a job because he’s the cook’s cousin,’ I said. ‘Your English is as good as mine.’

It wasn’t. Sammy’s English was quaint and broken, but with his pale hair combed over his bald spot and his gold Beretta, I knew he would be helpless to flattery. I told him an officer whose father had gone to Sandhurst shouldn’t have to make extra cash the way he was. Spartan was in Iraq for the duration and the job would be better paid and longer lasting.

He stuck out his hand. ‘Thank you very much, Mister James. You are a good man.’

As we shook hands, he almost skidded into the desert and did a neat pilot’s manoeuvre to swerve back on course.