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

‘Now what about these two guys in the back?’ I asked him.

‘Nothing. They are rubbish.’

They were sitting there nursing their AKs and I glanced back with a smile. ‘Do they speak English?’

‘No. The agency wanted two guards so I asked these men. They are from my village, my wife’s relatives. They are no use to you.’

At Spartan we would be building up a guard force if we got the elusive water contract and although the two young guys didn’t have particularly good table manners, they had done their job: they had risked their lives that day with Sammy and shot at their own countrymen. I told Sammy this and he said that if we needed guards, he could find them. Wine. Weapons. Ice cream. Even girls. Sammy had his plump fingers on all the buttons.

One of the problems private security firms had was being overcharged by the locals. We were pumping more money into Iraq than the country had ever seen in its history: Sammy was getting $2 a month pension; doctors, lawyers and teachers probably earned no more than that; $300 was a fortune and I got him to agree to report to me when our Iraqi fixers at Spartan were ripping us off. We expected to pay over the top. We just didn’t want to be made to look complete idiots. We shook hands again. I had my own mole.

We stopped just short of the CPA to drop Sammy and his guards off where we had picked them up. Sammy took me in an embrace and planted a slobbery wet kiss on both cheeks. He went to do the same to Les, who fought him off, ducking and weaving to avoid Sammy’s attempts to kiss him.

‘Not while I’ve still got strength in my body,’ he said.

‘You English, you are too reserved.’

Sammy glanced at Seamus and shrugged. They shook hands and Sammy touched his own hand to his heart. We told him to be back there at nine a.m. the next day when Seamus would have sorted out a temporary ID card for him. Then we drove back into the Green Zone and made our way to Spartan HQ.

Michel Delacroix was still shaky. He went to the office to complain to Adam Pascoe that not only had he not been able to reach Fallujah to conduct his interviews, but we had ruined his Armani jacket. He stuck his hairy wrist under Adam’s nose and pointed at his Rolex. It was broken.

After a brief quarrel between Les and Delacroix, the Afrikaners escorted Delacroix out of the office and drove him back to the CPA car park.

Adam took it in his stride that I had employed Assam Mashooen; Sammy’s heroics would be in the report, but now it was his turn to lose it when Seamus told him we had abandoned the Peugeot in the desert.

‘How many cars are you going to get through?’

‘As long as you send us out to shit holes in soft cars they are going to get shot up,’ Seamus said. ‘When are these B6s coming in? It’s in my contract that we’re supposed to have armoured vehicles.’

‘They’re in Kuwait…’

‘In the Golden Container?’

‘Waiting to be driven up,’ Adam explained. He had the grace to look embarrassed.

‘We’ll fucking go and get them if you want,’ Les added.

We headed off to the palace canteen for a pineapple pizza. For the first time I thought how unfair it was that Iraqis were barred from entering the CPA building itself. We may not have made it out of that contact without Sammy.

We remained as Michel Delacroix’s PSD team during the following three weeks and it was the best job I had during eighteen months in Iraq. We did bugger all. I spent the days swimming in the Al Hamra pool. Then Seamus and I would train in the gym while Shagmeister Les Trevellick spent long afternoons pursuing Anglo-American relations.

While Lori Wyatt was with Les, her PSD team would be killing time like us at the CPA and we’d run into the guys regularly at lunch.

Jacko Jackson, the team leader of Lori’s new PSD team, was an Irish charmer, a Colin Farrell lookalike, dark and handsome and at 5ft 7in a bit on the short side. He’d been an Irish Guards sergeant and was unusually well spoken. He had considered being an officer ‘but had too much self-respect’, he said over the Cajun chicken wings one lunchtime.

‘That’s what I’m going to do, give up this shit and go to Sandhurst to train as an officer,’ he added.

First he had too much respect. Now he was going to Sandhurst! Seamus was shaking his head. ‘You what?’ he said. ‘You don’t have what it takes.’

This was a back-handed compliment and Seamus’s mouth clamped shut when he noticed my satisfied smile. You don’t compliment officers. I guess everyone forgot that I was just about the only British officer working the roads in Iraq. I know I certainly did.

Jacko’s mate was Steve Campbell, a pale, skinny guy who wore glasses and had been in the Royal Logistics Corps (RLC), the biggest corps in the British Army and better known as the Really Large Corps.

Jacko, and Steve to a lesser extent, both thought they had a chance with Lori and we would sit listening as Jacko boasted how Lori made it ‘so bloody obvious’ that she fancied him.

‘So when are you going to score one for the team, then?’ asked Seamus.

‘Tonight’s the night. I just know she’s gagging for it.’

We never let on that Les had got there before him.

The other Brit on their team was Rafael Fernandez, half Spanish and with the broadest Glasgow accent in the world. He was known as Badger; ex-Royal Military Police (RMP), he had done the Close Protection course conducted by the SAS, one of the best courses of its kind. RMP men with this course under their belt were among the most highly sought-after operatives in the security game. Badger was like Del Boy, a wheeler dealer who traded with the Americans just for the sport. He’d buy a crate of fifty 40mm grenades we didn’t have the means to fire, then find a unit where the grenadiers were low on ammo and swap it for a box of med packs or spare Kevlar plates. If you wanted a French Brie or yesterday’s Daily Mail , Badger was your man.

In Spartan tradition, the remainder of the team consisted of three South Africans, Johannes, Pieter and Jaki, friends with our Yaapies, in fact Etienne had brought Johannes and Pieter to Iraq. Just as the Africans were a little mafia, Marines chatted with Marines, Paras with Paras, SAS with SAS, and the topic of conversation was always the same: money.

How much are you getting? What’s the leave package? How about expenses? What’s the insurance if you get slotted?

Every time you walked into the CPA building you met operatives from all the other PSCs; the CPA was a good place to discuss contracts and to be offered new jobs.

Jacko, Campbell and the South Africans had all been with another company but they jumped ship and came over to Spartan as a team, an advantage to our company because they’d already been processed at Camp Victory and had their CPA passes. Spartan had a fair-pay policy and they were all paid $15,000 a month, as well as getting leave every nine weeks instead of twelve.

We spent a lot of time discussing money, and during those three weeks when Michel Delacroix was conducting his research from the safety of the Green Zone, when I wasn’t swimming and gossiping I went off on my own to explore.

The Green Zone stood behind high walls with gates at every entrance, ten square kilometres of palaces and government buildings where the Coalition Provisional Authority had set up its administration. This is where Saddam had his palaces; there were numerous government and ministry buildings and private villas with pools. The buildings were connected by wide boulevards trimmed with tall palms and statues of Iraqi soldiers in heroic mode. It must have been peaceful and pleasant in Saddam’s day, but now the logistics of maintaining 130,000 United States GIs meant parking lots overflowing with Abram tanks, Bradleys and Humvees, and dumps with hundreds of tons of rations, gasoline and war materiel.