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

Seamus pocketed the phone. He told us he’d given Les the grid for the front of the hospital and that the American casevac team was en route to collect Steve.

Someone from HQ had managed to get hold of Mad Dog. He had been waiting for Les when they arrived at the Cash. The medevac team had been standing by waiting in their wagons for a grid from us.

‘Any news on the others?’ I asked Seamus.

‘Minor injuries. They’re tough fuckers.’

Twenty minutes later a gaggle of Humvees turned up with a US military ambulance containing more medical equipment and drugs than I imagine was on the shelves inside the hospital. The paramedics leapt out and we watched open-mouthed as they took photos of each other with their guns in front of the hospital entrance. They held up their fists and pistols, then ran a trolley through the double doors like we were in an episode of ER .

The American ambulance driver stood next to his vehicle and looked us up and down as we stood there in our shades and mercenary gear. I noticed that he had picked up a Beretta SMG from somewhere. A lot of Americans in the CPA were gun fanatics and had armed themselves with fancy weapons that would look exotic to their buddies back home. I wondered where he got his 9 mil ammo from. Phil, our procurement officer, was still having problems getting hold of it.

I wandered out on to the road where the Humvee escorts were waiting and spoke to the commander and gunner in the rear vehicle. They were infantry and looked tired.

‘Morning, men.’ I smiled cheerily.

‘Morning, sir.’

‘When you lot move off we’re going to follow you back into the Green Zone. We just have the one vehicle, a white SUV. I thought I’d better just warn you off.’ I didn’t want him to shoot us by accident.

‘Roger that, sir, we’ll keep an eye out for you.’

‘Thanks.’

It always helps to keep friendly with the Coalition rear gunner.

‘What happened here, sir?’

‘IED in Karrada. Killed one of our men. And one VSI.’

‘Hurt bad?’ asked the gunner.

‘He won’t be holding a gun again, that’s for sure.’

‘That’s a real shame.’ He glanced at the crowd of Iraqis around the gate, the usual band of men smoking and stroking their moustaches, you seemed to see them on every street corner; men in mismatched suits, boys in jeans and T-shirts. There was a herder with a dozen goats and an old woman in the colourful rags I recognised from a tribe in the south of Iraq. The air was hot and dusty and smelled old and sick. ‘This whole country sucks, if you don’t mind my saying, sir,’ the gunner added.

‘Just get home safe.’

‘I intend to, sir. And I’m getting out the day I get back.’

I returned to the hospital driveway in time to see Steve being wheeled out and loaded into the back of the ambulance. There was a cluster of medics all talking at the same time; an oxygen mask covered most of his ruined face and there was a reassuring number of tubes and drips stuffed into him. A smaller, covered lump on a second stretcher was loaded into the ambulance behind him.

We piled into the 4 × 4, Seamus and Hendriks in front, me behind with Sammy, and Cobus in the boot with his RPD facing out of the rear window.

You could always move at speed through Baghdad when you were part of a military convoy. The tightly packed cars and trucks pulled over and a wall of eyes watched from every side as you barged through traffic. The gunners facing left and right stared back over the front sights of their weapons and the Iraqis stayed low in their seats in case the patrol came under attack and they got caught in the crossfire of insurgent Kalashnikovs and Mk19 grenade launchers.

Fifteen minutes later we were pulling into the Cash.

The escorts had peeled away after we entered the Assassin’s Gate. We followed the ambulance and parked up near the entrance to the ER. Seamus followed the stretcher into the Cash. The South Africans from Jacko’s team were still inside being treated. Badger was standing outside with Etienne. I was pleased to see that the stocky Jock seemed to have survived unscathed.

‘Hello mate, weren’t you in the front wagon with Steve and Jacko?’

He told me that he had been knocked unconscious by the blast, but as the rear gunner, he’d been sitting in the nest of spare bulletproof vests behind the rear seats. He was suffering from nothing more than mild concussion and ringing ears. He had been lucky, that was for sure. The South Africans, particularly Jaki, had suffered more since much of the blast had been directed out from underneath the front car. Both the Brits and the South Africans had been travelling in 4 × 4s. Our 4 × 4s carried the spare tyre winched on a chain under the vehicle, just behind the rear axle, and the Brit spare tyre had been blown out horizontally into their front bumper, totally destroying it. They had been fortunate to only receive cuts from the shattered windscreen. They had all been wearing shades so no one had been blinded.

I walked into the hospital. It was beautiful.

It was like walking into the reception lobby in a hospital in Los Angeles. A place fit for the stars. It was brightly lit, freshly painted, as clean as a new pin. Immaculately dressed administrators looked up from their computers with gleaming white American smiles. Theatre nurses and surgeons in fresh scrubs strode purposefully along the long hallways discussing medical charts. I looked around, lost, and then saw Steve ‘Mad Dog’ McQueen approaching along the corridor.

‘Ash, sorry man, it hasn’t been a good day.’

We shook hands and he led me back up the corridor into the ward where Steve Campbell was already in an adjustable bed with starched white sheets and half a dozen 21st-century monitors all pumping and dripping and beeping reassuringly. The ambulance team had been amazingly fast.

A nurse turned towards me when she finished telling Seamus and Les that Steve was stable, that the Iraqi surgeon had done a good job and that they were not going to open him up again right now, but just keep him under observation before shipping him home.

‘That’s very reassuring, thank you.’ I put on my most charming smile but she got the wrong end of the stick.

‘You’re too late,’ she said and jerked her thumb at Seamus. ‘I already agreed to meet up with your buddy here in the chow hall for dinner.’

‘I can assure you, I didn’t mean –’ I began and ran out of words.

‘Sure. Right.’ She gave me a no-nonsense look, tempered with a smile. ‘Look, pal, I’m an army nurse and I ain’t got tickets on myself but I’m one of about a dozen hot girls in the CPA and probably the only one you’ve seen in I-raq . If you weren’t going to come on to me with some line like the other ten thousand guys on this post then you’re either gay or dead.’

I thought it was no use arguing with her but curiosity got the better of me.

‘So what did he say that won you over?’ I could always do with a tip.

‘That’s for me to know and you to die wondering.’ She tapped her nose, then winked at Seamus. ‘Besides, he’s hot.’

‘Hot! You’re kidding. With that moustache?’

‘Especially with that moustache. Oh yeah, baby.’

She disappeared out of the doorway.

I turned back. The rest of the gang was smirking. Seamus carefully groomed his bandit moustache.

The nurse was right. There were about 10,000 guys for every decent-looking woman in Baghdad, and even those that you wouldn’t wave a pole at when you arrived started looking fit after three months, whether you were attached or not. Dai had once calculated that in the CPA alone there was 100 metres of cock for every available woman. Even with the odds stacked against them, Les had scored with Lori and now it looked like Seamus was going to score with the nurse.