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

‘I fokken bet he’s getting two sets now, man,’ said Cobus. ‘Fokken one for us and one for him.’

Dai stubbed out his fag. ‘What are you cunts cooking for dinner tonight?’ he asked.

‘We have a nice piece of lamb,’ said Cobus.

The walls around the flat roof were four feet high and above the walls we erected a four-foot black canvas cover-from-view screen so snipers couldn’t pick us off. As the infantry man, I was occupied for several days arranging great piles of sandbags into sangars.

I went up there early one morning and caught Seamus and Les standing there brooding on something. Snipers? A mortar?

‘Problem?’ I asked.

‘Big fucking problem,’ Seamus said.

‘A job for Sammy?’ Les suggested.

‘Right!’

He stormed off with Les behind him and I carried on shifting sandbags.

Next day, a weights bench, a punch bag and a rowing machine appeared. Is a home really complete without them?

Seamus and Les were like a couple of kids. Where Sammy found these objects I’ve no idea. It was hard enough to get Iraqis to work. They certainly didn’t work out.

While my mates lifted weights, I carried on lifting sandbags. Mad Dog had organised the delivery of 10,000 empty bags and a couple of tons of grey sand. A team of local farmers was filling them for ten dollars a day, carrying them up to the roof two at a time, and I was constructing six sangars, one on each corner and one at the centre of each wall at the front and the back. I ran two low walls of sandbags across the middle of the roof in case anyone got close enough to lob a grenade over the cover-from-view screen. Les built a cement battle box and stashed half a dozen AK-47s, a belt-fed PKM, a shitload of ammo, a medical pack and bottles of water. This was our covert armoury, secret from the guards. If we ever needed a last-ditch stand in the event of an emergency, we would get to the roof and fight from there until help arrived.

We didn’t want the villa to resemble the typical Coalition stronghold with their fortified sangars, gun towers, barbed wire and blast walls. On the other hand we were not suicidal. The UN and Red Cross buildings had both been blown up◦– a lack of blocking structures meant that the bombers had been able to deploy VBIEDs close enough to inflict major damage on the buildings.

Our compromise was to line all windows and doors with sandbags and to reinforce the outer walls of the complex on the inside with double-stacked Hesco blast barriers. The house was now protected against VBIEDs, mortars and direct small-arms fire. Two rolls of razor wire camouflaged by palm leaves in the alleyway to the back and another two rolls on the inside of the wall would stop any intruders creeping in from there. On the roof I attached one end of another roll of razor wire to the top of the stairs and the other end to a 10kg weight disc. If we did have to retreat to the roof the last man up could just throw the weight down the stairwell and fill it with razor wire to slow down attackers.

At the front of the house, inside the wall, we built a guard room for the administration of the Iraqi guards. From the outside the property looked the same as the rest of the street, especially since once the neighbours saw our cover-from-view screen they started erecting their own; keeping up with the bin Joneses. We placed a sentry box beside the gates where our guards could sit protected from the elements but still see up and down the street. This was the only external sign that the property was unlike the others.

We had just about finished when it was time for my first leave. I was dying to get home.

The Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu once dreamed he was a butterfly. When he awoke, he couldn’t be sure if he was a man who had dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly now dreaming he was a man.

As I wandered down Regent Street among the Christmas shoppers, that was exactly how I felt. It was early December 2003. I had been back in London for three weeks and Baghdad was a vague memory a million miles away. I could barely believe that I had spent nearly three months there.

I was holding Natalie in my arms as we pressed through the crowds, Krista behind us weighed down with bags. Those three weeks had flashed by like a shooting star. I was leaving again for Iraq in the morning and that last day in mid-December we had celebrated Christmas early with a turkey lunch followed by the entire afternoon at Hamleys, the giant toy store in the West End.

Natalie was exhausted and had fallen asleep. I looked back at Krista and blew her a kiss. She smiled. We had agreed that I would slip away next day and go to the airport by myself. Krista was the bravest woman I had ever met, but the last thing I wanted was to have my emotions put through the wringer with Krista’s tears and Natalie’s little body clutching at my legs while she begged me not to go. It was hard enough knowing that I couldn’t spend Christmas with them.

First thing I’d have to do in Baghdad was get back in the gym. The last three weeks had been a whirlwind of visiting friends and nonstop eating. After 97 plates of lamb and rice◦– yes, I counted them◦– I had been so desperate for variety we had hit a different restaurant every night.

I had been away with the army many times, but Baghdad had been so intense, so chaotic, London during the first few days of my leave had seemed dazzling and extraordinary. I was like a tourist. The streets were bustling and busy, but remained orderly and safe. I drove Krista crazy insisting that she must have had the flat painted, everything was just so clean . The first afternoon, we had gone to the supermarket and I spent an hour walking up and down the aisles goggling at the immense variety of goods on display.

Later that first evening, after an emotional family dinner and an exhibition of a very proud three-year-old’s paintings, it was as if I had never been away.

We talked about money. The good news was that my first three months’ pay from Spartan had cleared our credit cards and one of our loans; it would have taken two or three years had I remained in my last job. Another tour in Iraq would clear all our debts and buy a decent car for Krista. After that I could just pile up the money until we retired to our own private island in the Caymans.

The bad news of course was that Baghdad was hell. I told Krista about Jacko and Steve. I hadn’t meant to. It just slipped out after an extra glass of wine late one evening. Up until that moment, although there were dangers every day, we had felt invulnerable. British Army-trained soldiers. We were superior and we felt superior. The death of our mates made us take a good hard look at reality and gave us all a sense of our own mortality.

Krista knew I was never going back into a law office. This job was me. I wanted to climb the security ladder, but I was only on the first rung and Iraq was the place to set down your marker and show what you could do. Krista said that she trusted my judgement and we made an agreement which was probably typical among the married men working in Iraq. I set up an imaginary bar in my mind and if the violence and bloodshed rose above the level of the bar, I would resign and come home. There was no point earning all that money if I wasn’t going to live to spend it.

I assured her that we were taking all the necessary precautions to avoid IEDs, and that the threat of a firefight would be manageable. Bandits were content to shoot up moving convoys, or groups pinned down in the open, but only when they had the upper hand or overwhelming numbers. Our own experience and evidence from PSD teams up and down the country showed that as soon as heavy and accurate fire was put back, smaller enemy forces quickly withdrew. I never managed to tell Krista that I had already been in contact three times. The right moment just never seemed to come up.