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

‘What the fuck is this?’ said Seamus. I could see a tic vibrating in his neck.

Sammy put a hand on his pistol butt. He shouted at the spectators and they reluctantly shuffled out to watch from the doorway.

Steve Campbell was on the operating table at the centre of the room. Both his arms were bandaged stumps just below his shoulders and one of his legs was missing.

The female surgeon spoke good English. She told Seamus that Steve’s genitals had been traumatically amputated by the blast. He would make a good recovery but would be incontinent. It was an odd thing to think, I know, but I wondered how he was going to wipe himself with no arms and only one foot. He didn’t have a loving wife waiting for him at home. And it wasn’t as if he was going to be attracting anyone soon. His nose was a mess and his face was pockmarked with shrapnel.

I was suddenly aware of the smell of shit. When someone is killed they always shit themselves. Always. It is an aroma I will forever associate with violent death. If someone dies next to you, you smell the shit as well as the thick, metallic scent of blood. If you are unlucky enough to see them dying slowly, the other telltale sign is that just before they go off they get goose bumps and all the hairs stand up on their skin. Steve’s skin had no goose bumps. He was breathing.

The smell of shit was obviously coming from the corner of the room where a child-sized shape wrapped in a plastic sheet lay on a trolley.

I had the MCI to my ear. No one was answering. Mad Dog McQueen was probably running around clearing up after Colonel Hind. I stuck the phone in my chest pouch.

‘Is that the other Englishman?’ I asked the surgeon, pointing at the plastic sheet.

‘Yes. He died in the ambulance. We brought him here in case some of the people in the hospital became angry and mistreated the body.’

‘Thank you.’

The woman smiled. It was nice to see that smile in that room.

Seamus looked at me. I was standing closest to the body.

‘Shall I check him?’

The South Africans had probably already done so but the professional thing to do was to get his operational kit and personal effects.

‘Yes, if you would, mate,’ said Seamus.

I gave Sammy my rifle and gingerly pulled back the plastic.

Jacko was dead all right. No legs, no arms and no face; the lower jaw had been ripped away and the rest of the face and scalp was flayed off. His torso lay in a thick pool of blood and shit. I surmised that the ambulance crew must have slung him straight on to the plastic sheet at the scene of the explosion to avoid messing up the interior of the ambulance.

There were no personal effects to recover. The blast had ripped off his clothes as well as all the ammo pouches from the front of his body armour. They were gone too, along with his radio, ID cards and his arms and legs. I waved the flies away and put the sheet back over him. I knew that I would never be able to smell shit again without thinking of Piers Jackson. He’d been a good-looking bloke, but when we sent him back I’d recommend adding fifty pounds of sand to the body bag and telling the family to keep a closed casket.

‘Anything worth keeping?’ Seamus asked.

‘No, mate. It’s all been blown away.’ I retrieved my rifle from Sammy.

‘What about his body armour?’

‘It’s the only thing holding him together.’ I tapped the plastic shrouded form in the area of Jacko’s chest. Soft. No hard plates in the Kevlar vest. Pity, they might have been useful.

The female surgeon confirmed that Steve was stable enough to be transported. ‘He should be moved to the CPA hospital,’ she advised.

The other doctor had melted away and now a richly dressed man in a Western-style suit appeared and drew us to one side. The woman watched with a sour expression, then shrugged and went over to wash the blood from her hands and arms.

‘I am the Surgical Director. Come. I must show you our intensive care unit.’ The Director grabbed Seamus by the arm and led him into the corridor. I shoved through the crowd of spectators and followed.

‘It does not matter to me what religion your friend is, Muslim, Christian, even Jewish,’ he confided, his free hand clicking through a little loop of prayer beads. ‘I am a doctor and I treat all patients.’

His clothes were immaculate and he smelled of aftershave. He didn’t look like he had treated any patients that day.

‘But I must warn you that this woman, she is a liar woman,’ he hissed, his face twisting in fury as he glanced back at the doctor. ‘And,’ he added meaningfully, ‘she is a Christian .’ He raised his eyebrows and waggled his prayer beads at us.

Seamus made appropriate noises of commiseration.

We were led into a room full of beds and rusty oxygen tanks. Green metal machines with dials and blinking light bulbs that looked like Soviet military surplus were piled around the walls. Like everywhere in the hospital the walls were bare concrete under peeling paint. Unlike the other wards we had passed there was a couple of nurses and a man at the door who served the dual function of keeping out random spectators and waving a newspaper at the flies. I realised that this must be intensive care. Those patients who were conscious were moaning in pain, and I thought to myself that there was probably not a lot in the way of analgesic medical supplies in the hospital.

‘Here you see,’ the Surgical Director declared jubilantly, ‘we have bed for him right here. Your man, he must stay in my ICU.’

He indicated the only free bed. It had filthy crumpled sheets stained with unidentifiable fluids from its previous occupant. I wondered if it had been the woman I had seen being wheeled through the hospital. The only reason that I had thought that she might have still been alive was that they had not been wheeling her in the direction of the car park out back where the rest of the dead had been dumped.

Seamus took a deep breath as he looked round the ICU. ‘That’s very kind of you, but we really do want to move him to the CPA,’ he said.

‘Why is that?’ Our host suddenly turned belligerent and started shouting angrily. ‘Iraqi hospitals are the best in the world. He will get better care here than any hospital in England or America.’

Seamus stared at him. He was diplomatically controlling his anger, but the tic on his neck was dancing.

I stepped between them. ‘It is not that at all,’ I said. ‘It is just that you may have many Iraqi people here needing this specialist care and we do not want to take one of your valuable beds.’

‘This woman, she is a liar woman. He cannot be moved. He is too sick.’

I was still shocked by the gory spectacle of Jacko’s corpse and really could not think of a single reason why this man would want a Westerner in his hospital.

The female surgeon turned up and a massive argument ensued between the two of them.

I moved Seamus to one side. ‘It’s hard to tell whether Steve’s stable enough to travel,’ I said. ‘I don’t know if they are giving us their professional opinions or using him to argue with each other. Personally I trust the woman, and she says he can go.’

‘Too right, mate. Quite apart from the security, I wouldn’t leave an Iraqi in that bed, let alone Steve.’

We slipped out and made our way to the front again. Seamus briefed the others on the situation.

Finally the phone started ringing. I retrieved the MCI from my pouch. It was Les reporting to say that they had arrived at the Cash. I handed it over to Seamus.

‘Vot’s it like in there?’ Cobus asked.

‘Almost as primitive as the witch doctors you lot use in South Africa,’ I said.

Hendriks smiled. It was rare to get a smile out of Hendriks.