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

Les and the Yaapies were up and running again. The access door on the office roof was locked from the inside, so they hung off the side of the building and dropped down to the pick-up on the waste ground. They entered the building from the back, grabbed the vehicle keys from where they were hanging in Les’s office and sixty seconds later Les’s voice came over the radio: ‘Truck’s running. Move now.’

The guards were back in it again, aiming shots that ripped through the black canvas screen, drilling neat holes like a pattern on a polka-dot tie. Rounds were pinging off the white painted walls of the villa and burrowing into the sandbags on each corner of the roof.

Obi, clever lad, must have twigged that we had been deliberately aiming to miss them and was taking his time aiming. He wasn’t a bad shot, either. His rounds moved in a zigzag over the screen, and the other guards must have got their bloodlust up and joined the attack. Some of them were running towards the villa while the others covered them. Then they ran while the first batch put down covering fire.

My flare of pride in their drills didn’t prevent me from putting bursts down the road in front of them as they were running. That stopped them for a bit. They may have known that we were not going to kill them but with the shitty state of medical care in Baghdad nobody wanted to catch a ricochet off the ground.

I came to the end of the belt.

‘Magazine,’ I yelled. I changed belts as Cobus and Hendriks started climbing down the back of the roof.

There was just the two of us now. I glanced at Seamus.

‘I’m already on the gun, you get going.’

He paused for a second. It made sense.

‘Don’t be long, Ash,’ Seamus said.

I let go with a long burst on the PKM as Seamus raced across the roof and through the slit in the canvas. I heard his boots clatter over the corrugated iron and ten seconds later he was down from the office roof to join the others.

Fresh holes were turning the black canvas sheeting into a sieve. The guards were coming down the back alley as well as down the main road. I swivelled rapidly between bursts, firing down the front of the house and then up the back, still trying to pin the guards down and still making bloody sure I didn’t kill any of them. My heart jumped every time an incoming round slapped into the other side of the sandbags.

The guards were now behind the compound wall at the front and I knew the second I stopped firing, they would pile in. Seamus came up on the radio. ‘Listen up, mate, we have to drive down to the end of the block so we can take cover around the corner. Make your way there through the gardens.’

‘Roger that.’

I peeked through the holes in the canvas. Bursts of light from the muzzle flash sparkled from sheltered spots and I could see Obi-Wan Kenobi yelling encouragement to his troops.

From the amount of expended link hanging from the left side of my gun I knew there was hardly any ammo left on the belt. I put down two last bursts, the first in the direction of Obi to keep him quiet, the second up the back alley. The gun was empty. In three quick moves I had stripped out the bolt-return spring from the PKM and was slinging it over the wall as far away as I could, then I remembered there was no more ammo on the roof so it didn’t matter that I was leaving a functioning gun to fall into the hands of the enemy. Enemy! I’d met the families of half these guys. They didn’t want to kill us. They didn’t know what they wanted.

I hammered across the roof, over the discarded sleeping bags where we had put our valuables. A tiny part of me was smug that I made a habit of keeping my own camera in my bug-out bag which was on my back. I slipped through the slit in the screen, over the corrugated iron cover and down on to the roof of the office, skinning my shin from ankle to knee. Rounds smacked viciously into the roof as I legged it across, totally exposed. I hung down from the roof and dropped into the policeman’s garden. The dogs went mad barking and stretching on their chains but fortunately those chains remained tethered to the wall.

‘Moving now. I’m on my way,’ I puffed over the radio.

I didn’t exactly hear everything Seamus said in response but gathered that they would not be on the corner I was heading for, but were driving one block further away. If the guards managed to surround the team and forced our hand, Hendriks alone would have turned Aradisa Idah into a blood bath.

Blood was soaking into my trousers but I didn’t feel any pain. I didn’t even think about it. I sprinted through my neighbour’s garden, vaulted the wall and ran through another garden.

I knew there would be a pause in the action. I didn’t imagine for one second that the guards were committed to an attack to the death. The moment they discovered the villa was empty, they would take out their anger and frustration by looting and trashing the place. I puffed through the next garden and vaulted the last wall. I was wearing my vest, daysack and full fighting order, total weight about 25kg, but I had so much adrenaline I was flying like a gazelle. My helmet was in my bug-out bag. If I got the chance I’d get the fucking thing out and put it on.

The pick-up truck wasn’t there. They had driven over one more block. The road was deserted. Just the mud-coloured buildings with shuttered windows and bolted doors. The smell of dust and cordite. I could hear gunshots still.

I went to the end of the street and, peeking gingerly around the corner, I could see the guards piling into the villa. I was about to go back in the opposite direction, when Sammy pulled up on the other side of the junction. He was hidden from the guards by a garden wall, but to reach him I would still have to cross the road fully exposed to the mob 50 metres away milling around the compound.

Sammy leaned out of the window and beckoned me across. I nodded and he began a three-point turn ready to hurtle off the way he’d come. I holstered my pistol, slung my rifle into position and took a deep breath. This was it. A cry went up immediately I bolted across the road. I fired off three or four rounds above the guards’ heads and they all hit the deck.

I cleared the road and was diving into the back of Sammy’s old Toyota as a flurry of wild shots crackled into the corner behind me. Sammy gunned the motor.

‘Fuck me, Sammy, I thought it was your day off today?’

He lifted a radio handset from the passenger seat. He had been listening to the babble of guard chatter. Unbelievable.

I called Seamus: ‘Get moving, mate, I’m in a car with Sammy.’

‘Fuck me. I thought it was his day off.’

‘That’s what I just said.’

‘Follow us, we’ll head for the RV with the Americans.’

‘Tell them I’m coming in with an Iraqi in a beaten-up yellow Toyota.’

‘Roger that.’

We had got away by the skin of our teeth. Through the back window I could see a plume of smoke rising over the villa. They must have set fire to the property after doing a thorough job looting it. The old pilot drove like he was at the controls of his Mig and before long I saw the pick-up in front with guns bristling at every window. I leaned over the front seat.

‘ Shukran Jazeeren , Sammy.’

‘This is no problem. You are my brother.’

22 February 2006

The Al Askari Mosque, one of the holiest Shia sites, was blown up. Despite appeals for calm from the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, in revenge attacks during the following two days, 130 Sunnis were killed and more than 200 Sunni mosques damaged or destroyed.

22 April 2006

Shia leader Jawad al Maliki was nominated prime minister of Iraq ending four months of political deadlock. He was given thirty days to form Iraq’s first full-term post-Saddam government.