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

With the onset of winter the news spread among our guards that our contract was coming to an end and that responsibility for security would pass from Spartan to the new Water Minister. The guards seemed genuinely sad that we were leaving. We had treated them fairly, trained them and they had come to see that as Brits we deserved our reputation for being men of our word. Our guard officers were anxious about their future. They were worried that they would lose their jobs and be replaced by relatives of the Minister, as had happened in other ministries.

The guards themselves were less worried about their job security than their pay prospects. They were earning $150 a month and were concerned that once we had gone, their salaries would be cut back to the meagre levels paid to other Iraqi civil servants. Or more likely the Ministry would continue to pay the going rate, but that the old system would return, where the colonel would take $20 off every man’s pay, the captains would take $10 and the shift supervisors $5.

Dai Jones and I both had leave due. Having missed Christmas at home the previous year, Seamus decided to keep us on the books but let us go back to the UK on 23 December and remain there without having to return and serve out the final few weeks of our contract. We would be leaving Seamus, Les and four South Africans in Aradisa Idah. At the end of the contract, they would hand the villa back to Shakir Ahmad, the owner, and withdraw to Spartan HQ.

Seamus and Les both had other contracts to go to in the UK. The Yaapies were staying on at Spartan. As for myself, I had the choice of either a consultancy contract in Venezuela or a PSD contract in West Africa. The latter was with a new company called Erebus UK and I liked the look of them; set up by guys who had worked in Iraq, they seemed a sharp and professional crew that had their act together.

We said our goodbyes to the Iraqis with lots of kissing and hand shakes. Although Sammy and I had spoken of it often, when the time came to say goodbye we were both blinking back tears. He had risked his life to save ours the first time we met and we had since been together virtually every day for more than a year. I honestly could not say how many times Sammy and I had sweated together out on the range, how many white-knuckle journeys we had made with weapons tightly gripped ready for use, or how many nights he had sat sipping whisky with us on the roof, popping by ‘just for a drink’ whenever there was trouble in the streets and he wanted to make sure that we were OK. I found myself remembering the day our sides were splitting with laughter when I tried to persuade him that Les and Seamus were gay.

I looked at this tubby, older man with his hair combed over his bald patch, his shoes with holes in the soles, his trousers pulled up too high over his belly button, his blue eyes, his ginger moustache and his lined face that I knew as well as my own. And now, just as things were getting really bad, I was going to cut and run with my British passport and leave him in this shithole. Sammy’s address was still tucked in my pocket. He was clutching my email address and promised to write every day . Sammy had made himself so useful that he would likely be kept on to help manage the guard force. But it would not be a happy time. The hated Shia Colonel Ibrahim was well connected with a senior aide within the Ministry and would have a senior role there.

‘Maybe you find contract in the Africa and you need my help. You call me. I am ready.’ He smiled. ‘And when the problems is finished you will come back and visit to Iraq, Mister James.’ He gripped my hand firmly. ‘You are my brother. I wait for you.’

We had to hand in our M4s but I gave Sammy all my 9mm ammunition, my scope, fifteen full magazines and my G3. It was a good weapon and if he needed to he could sell it.

The guards all had presents for us, plaster of Paris statues, ceramic vases, revolving globes, ‘crystal’ swans, and ‘gold’ watches that were artfully made of plastic. Dai took his gifts out to the range and used them for target practice. I re-wrapped mine so that Mad Dog, John, Gareth and Sergeant Harvey would have presents to open on Christmas Day.

I had been in Iraq for sixteen months and was sick to death of lamb and the kind of rice you could not chew too hard on in case you cracked a tooth on a small stone. I’d had enough of the extremes of weather, the dust in the air, the corruption, the treachery, the ali-babas, queues at the gas stations and the heartbreaking, illiterate, hand-to-mouth poverty in a land that should have been one of the wealthiest countries in the world. I had found in Iraq generous and sometimes surprising moments of kindness and goodwill and witnessed once again a depressing capacity for human cruelty that I thought I had left behind in the Balkans.

We packed a few things and left most of our gear behind. In my daysack I had a few souvenirs, some old banknotes with the head of Saddam, my maps of Baghdad, the bravery certificates awarded ceremoniously to me at the CPA◦– ‘mercenary medals’, as Mad Dog had called them.

All too soon the guys were dropping us off at Spartan HQ and we were slapping the Yaapies on the back and swearing we would come and visit them as soon as their country discovered toilet paper. We shook hands with Les and Seamus, promising we would get together for beers back in Blighty in the New Year. Then the men who had shared my life, dreams and dangers for more than a year drove off and it was just me and Dai next to our pile of bags in the dust.

‘Tell you fucking what, mate, I’m fucking not ’appy about this fucking next bit. Fuckin’ Route Irish, mate, the most dangerous road in the fucking world,’ Dai said with relish and lit up a fag. ‘Last trip out after a year in Dad’s Bag, I tell you, mate, we’re bound to get fucking walloped.’

‘Well, it’s all right for you, isn’t it? I mean you’re Welsh and butt ugly. I’m the one that’s going to get it.’

‘Fucking twat.’

‘I mean it, it’s the Hollywood ending. Good-looking hunk gets it, while his beautiful, pregnant girlfriend and small child are waiting for him on Christmas Eve. I don’t stand a chance. Ally Akbar KABOOM.’

We both laughed.

And then I became deadly serious. ‘Mate, you’re not going to smoke that in the wagon are you?’

It was Badger’s team taking us up the BIAP road. It was their regular daily run and they went high profile, no point trying to disguise who you were when you were driving the one highway between the BIAP and the Green Zone. Being Badger’s crew of thieving pirates his convoy now comprised three CAT trucks with three PKMs in each. The back seats were full of spare boxes of belted 7.62 long and the backs of the front seats were festooned with bandoliers of field dressings and grenades. There was steel plating on the doors and ceramic vest plates duct-taped behind the headrest of every seat. Our feet rested on spare AKs and pouches of AK magazines and in each rear gunner’s nest was a spare RPK in case of stoppages. In the lead car Badger had a para Minimi in his lap ready to go through the front windscreen. Dai and I sat back to back in the rear seat of the middle vehicle and manned a PKM each.

This was our final drive up the BIAP highway. We’d driven this road a thousand times and I was convinced that this time we were going to get hit. Soldiers are a superstitious lot. The last journey, the journey home, is always the most stressful. We made ready as we left the Green Zone and every second of the ten-minute journey we were scrutinising every window, every bridge, every pile of rubbish, until we pulled through the CF checkpoint and stopped to unload weapons in the unloading drums.

We felt strangely naked without our vests and rifles but were relieved when we strode into the marble halls of the airport. At least it was open again and we no longer had to cross the desert to Amman. Steely-eyed Gurkhas were manning security but we decided not to congratulate ourselves until we were eating our steak back in the Library at the Marriott.