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

We had been on the roof for five minutes now and the only shots we had been able to identify had come from the policeman who was still busy doing the Beirut unload, that is 30-round bursts into the walls of all his neighbours’ houses, one magazine after another. I wondered just how much ammo he had stored up, and also why there was still no sign of any enemy. Knowing Iraqis, I didn’t think it would be long before the neighbours got their rifles out and started firing back at the policeman’s walls and windows.

‘I think that cunt’s just shooting at shadows,’ said Les as he caught my eye.

I nodded in response as we both stood up.

BANG BANG BANG. BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG .

A volley of shots from out of the darkness slammed into the sandbags next to me. Someone was out there, and he wasn’t a bad shot.

In a nanosecond we were both kneeling with our cheeks welded to our rifle stocks and our eyes trained through spaces in the hide-from-view screen.

The policeman eventually got bored or ran out of ammunition. When he packed up and went to bed, we spent a sleepless night co-ordinating a search of the area with our Kurdish house guards but found nothing. The following day we were exhausted and went to bed early.

The policeman living next door either had enough ammo for a war or had slipped into Sadr City during the day to stock up. At any rate, at midnight he was back on his roof shooting at the stars again. We spent another sleepless night without seeing more than a few shadows zipping through the dark and taking a few incoming shots that slapped into the sandbags. I was wondering whether the tactic wasn’t to kill us, but intimidate us, to remind us that nowhere in Iraq was safe.

On the third day, to our utter amazement, the elusive Steel Dragon escort service turned up with a column of Humvees to drop off Mad Dog with his First Sergeants Gareth Evans and John Jenkins.

‘Intel says that the shit is on tonight,’ said Mad Dog. ‘Thought you could use the company.’

‘Did you bring a crate of booze?’ Seamus asked him.

‘The palace is dry. Muslim country, buddy.’

‘So you’ve come here for our fucking booze, then, is that what you’re saying?’

Mad Dog grinned and his two sergeants stood there shuffling their feet. They were never exactly sure whether we were joking or not.

Mad Dog strolled into the kitchen and I threw him a can of Stella.

‘You do know you’re stuck here,’ I said. ‘There’s no way we can get back to the CPA.’

‘Can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be,’ he said. ‘There was something I wanted to tell you guys, there hasn’t been a senior officer killed or captured by anti-Coalition forces yet. If it gets bad, you let the CF know there’s a full colonel trapped here and believe you me the goddamn cavalry will arrive pronto with shitloads of firepower.’

I pulled a couple more beers out of the fridge for John and Gareth. You could tell that these guys liked working for Mad Dog McQueen.

I was glad to see they were fully armed. It had been extraordinary for us to discover that many US officers posted to the CPA had not been issued rifles, only M9 pistols. We had solved the problem for our TF Fountain buddies by supplying them with AKs. Other soldiers at the CPA had armed themselves on the black market in the same way and the generals were royally pissed off seeing so many of their countrymen openly strolling around with Kalashnikovs. The alternative was to leave their men unarmed whenever they went outside the wire.

That night an attack came at about 9.00 p.m. after we had just polished off another excellent roasted lamb with garlic prepared by the Yaapies. I was getting a taste for it. I was on the phone telling Krista how safe it was and not to listen to the bad news on TV◦– you know how the press likes to make things look worse than they are◦– when a firefight erupted right outside the door.

Cue silent pause.

‘Can you hear that?’ I crossed my fingers.

‘Yes,’ she said in a tone of voice that suggested I was lucky not to be back in London where she could have got her hands on me.

‘I think Les dropped something in the kitchen. I’d better go and help him sort it out,’ I said breezily. ‘Call me tomorrow.’

Sammy and Faisal were still at the house and were right in front of me as we sprinted up the stairs. Up on the roof I realised I was again wearing a white T-shirt. It went the same way as the other one. Mental note: bin all white T-shirts.

Anyone seeing us on the roof would have thought it strange and enjoyed the irony: former Iraqi officers and American soldiers manning the sangars side by side when less than a year ago they had been at war with each other.

There was shouting two streets away and a crowd including many of our guards appeared to be converging on one house. Since the enemy had disappeared so quickly on the previous two nights, we suspected that the shooter lived in the neighbourhood, and we had placed pairs of guards hidden in alleyways to try and triangulate the firing point.

Hendriks, Les, Sammy, Colonel Faisal and I ran out and found the policeman from next door and half the neighbourhood surrounding the same house. Everyone was armed. Everyone was screaming at the tops of their voices. Sammy and Faisal strode into the crowd and joined in. Les was muttering oaths and Hendriks scanned faces with his icy eyes, daring anyone to go for their weapons.

I called Mad Dog with a sitrep and he informed me that the 1st Cav, the nearest CF unit, was on the way.

Sammy and Faisal eventually cleared a path through the mob and found a sheepish but angry young man and his father standing outside the open door to what turned out to be their house. The policeman was screaming at them in rage and waving his AK in their faces. I dragged Sammy away and told him to tell me what the hell was going on before the Americans turned up and slotted the lot of us.

It turned out that those three nights of shooting and chaos had nothing to do with the insurgency, Fallujah or the rise of the Mahdi. The young man had wanted to marry the policeman’s daughter and the policeman was having none of it since she was still only thirteen years old. The youth felt insulted and had shot up his house in the dark. Our house happened to be in the way.

‘And did the policeman know who he was from the beginning?’ I asked Sammy.

He indicated the crowd. ‘Of course, yes, everyone knows,’ he said.

Sammy explained that the policeman had not wanted to inform us in the Spartan compound in case we told the Amerrikee and they took the boy off to jail. His neighbours would then consider him a traitor or a collaborator, which would not be good for the policeman’s health. This was, said Sammy, ‘a private matter’ between the two families. In spite of the rage and shooting, neither side had really wanted to harm the other because that would have started a devastating family feud. Now everyone in the street was just pissed off that they weren’t getting any sleep at night.

The 1st Cavalry in a patrol of four Humvees now turned up looking for Colonel McQueen. The guys looked edgy when they stepped down from their vehicles but they calmed down when they saw our white faces and ID badges. As a result of the problems we’d had in identifying the guards that first night, our lot at least were all now wearing their baseball caps and FPS armbands.

We were standing about chatting to the sergeant in charge of the patrol and unsure what to do next, a common occurrence in these situations, when Mad Dog appeared in full uniform with his AK-47. The sergeant stared at him in amazement and his jaw literally dropped open when Mad Dog briefed him on the situation and then walked off into an alley again, in fact back to a second helping of our barbecue, but to the watching US troops in 1st Cav apparently continuing his one-man patrol of Baghdad at night.