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

Along some sections of the highway the undergrowth was dense enough to conceal rebel bands who opened up on the traffic with RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) and machine guns. Another danger was the have-a-go Johnny who had grown fed up with the occupation and was taking pot shots with an old Kalashnikov normally used for weddings, although the traditional wedding day gun salute was dying out in Baghdad after a number of patrols had mistaken the festivities for attacks and returned fire, killing brides and guests alike.

Then they wonder why the insurgency was growing rather than flagging.

In close-quarter attacks on the road, it is awkward getting the long barrel of a rifle up to the window; you lose a second and you can lose your life. With the stock folded, our AKs were only just short enough to be usable as car weapons. To save time, Seamus had the safety selector set to fire and his rifle muzzle rested on the crack between dashboard and door, ready for him to flip it up to either windscreen or the side with a flick of the wrist.

To prepare the team for any eventuality, Seamus, as convoy commander, was giving a running commentary on the radio to the Yaapie wagon with positions and approximate ranges when appropriate.

‘ Abandoned vehicle left. Bodies in the fields, right 100 metres. Two piles of rubbish right. Dead dog right. Bridge 200 metres. Bridge is clear. Two kamikazes left …’

Lori started, ‘Jeez, what the hell?’ Two cars were on the wrong side of the road speeding directly towards us.

I angled sharply into another lane and looped back into the middle as they passed. Etienne at the wheel of the 4 × 4 did the same, like a shadow always exactly two metres from my back bumper.

Les explained in his sardonic way that a kamikaze was a local driver who had chosen to drive on the part of the road that appealed to him at that particular moment. It made journeys more interesting. If a driver had missed his turn, he’d just turn round and drive back against the flow of traffic; if someone had a flat tyre, they didn’t pull over, they stopped in the middle of the highway and calmly changed the wheel ignoring the consequent chaos around them.

I could see the two speeders in the rearview mirror and thought it might be interesting to witness what would happen when they reached the trigger-happy Americans at the CF checkpoint travelling at high speed from the wrong direction.

Once Saddam fell from power, Iraqis became very touchy and literal over what freedom actually meant and concluded that they were free finally to do whatever they chose, whenever they chose, in any way they chose. If they felt like driving on the wrong side of the road like the Brits, who was going to stop them? Fights would break out in shops where people were now refusing to pay for groceries because they were ‘free’.

Like the military, the police had been disbanded by the Americans, so reckless driving was the least of it. Petty crime, organised crime, profiteering, racketeering, extortion, arms and people trafficking, rape, pillage and kidnap for cash were all new career options. So was politics, but more dangerous.

As we passed under the bridge I swerved violently into another lane, eliciting a squeal from Lori. I had done this so that I would go under the flyover in one lane but emerge in another. The Yaapies performed the same manoeuvre with the addition of hanging out of the windows with rifles pointed up and back as they emerged, ready to gun down any enemy lurking on the bridge. Although we were driving with a covert profile, i.e. with mixed vehicles, not with two or three identical 4 × 4s in an obvious PSD packet, we had only just left the airport road and it would be obvious to anyone that we were connected to Coalition Forces.

Seamus was keeping up the commentary:

‘ Merging traffic right, 100 metres. Group of kids right. Big plastic bag left. Two women carrying gas cylinders, right …’

Gas cylinders are heavy, even when empty, but the local women carried them miles for refills. You saw women working in the fields in the blazing sun, women carrying prodigious loads of firewood on their backs; stocky, thick-bodied women who managed to remain graceful carrying urns of water on their heads, their young daughters with mini-urns, learning from the age of three that if there was work to be done or something to be carried, the women do it. The men grow fat and spend their time chatting, smoking and drinking sickly sweet chai .

As we passed the two women with gas cylinders, one of them put hers down and started rolling it, kicking it with her sandalled feet.

Seamus continued scripting the way ahead, keywords warning the rear driver what to expect in about five seconds. He described everything as left and right. As the rear gunner was facing backwards, watching our backs, it is natural to get mixed up, so pasted on each side of his rear window frame there were big signs with LEFT and RIGHT reversed to remind him to look in the direction of the sign.

Like sex and comedy, as Les liked to say, PSD driving required a keen sense of timing. The lead driver would only take openings when there was space for both vehicles, or all three vehicles in a three-car packet. The rear driver would stay on your tail through hell if that was en route and would not allow queue-jumpers to squeeze in the gap.

The Opel and Nissan were dusty white vehicles indistinguishable from the stream of Iraqi cars on both sides of the road and we soon blended into the flow. We had chosen not to have an overt signature as Westerners, in contrast to some PSDs that imitated the military patrols and barged through the traffic with horns blaring and ears deaf to the Arabic blasphemy that followed in their wake. An ambush group would spot these miles away and be ready to engage by the time they passed.

With the threat of suicide bombers months in the future, our main danger was from an IED or the fedayeen armed with RPGs. We were more than happy to use the local traffic as cover if need be and by the time any locals realised we were Westerners we would be right next to them. And Jacky the Iraqi doesn’t like close-quarter shootouts, not if he’s looking into the cold grey eyes of Hendriks ready to gun him down like a tribe of Vambus.

There is an odd contradiction inside your head when you are on the job. You are concentrating fully, instincts buzzing, but at the same time, you can find yourself daydreaming about the past and future. With the constant threat of danger, the fact that there are men out there who want to kill you, there is a need for normality and a part of your mind would be running through silly, personal things like the pink smears on Krista’s cheeks that day when she painted Natalie’s bedroom.

I was musing, too, on my prospects with Spartan. I was content to start at the bottom as a hired gun. With my kind of background: public school, Oxford and Sandhurst, ex-officers often expected to walk into jobs and instantly be the boss. That’s the way it had always been. But the War on Terror was a new kind of war and the operatives who rose to management prominence on the Circuit were going to be men who had not merely proved themselves in the field, men with soldiering skills and training, but those who also possessed the business acumen to gouge profitable contracts from the project managers of their client companies or governments.

Did I have these two different and vital talents?

There was no way of knowing, but if I was going to pursue this life as a career, I would want to move speedily from the guns and jeeps sector to project management, risk assessment, due diligence and◦– the crème de la crème of the security game◦– fraud investigation.

I was maintaining a steady speed, watching for kamikazes, IEDs, escape routes, boys on lookout; ‘dickers’ as we Brits called them. Cellphones would come online in the coming months. The mobile was the modern equivalent of smoke signals; crucial to the new generation of terrorists and a key tool in the Madrid train bombings six months later. They had said Al Qaeda was a spent force, but it had done what it had set out to do and its influence was growing as far as I could see, not diminishing.