Mercenary Mum: My Journey from Young Mother to Baghdad Bodyguard (11 page)

ONE NIGHT
, as the team was sitting in the lounge room receiving orders for the next day, a huge
boom
tore through the night air. The windows shook and the sound reverberated around the room. I braced myself for the onslaught of more mortar rounds, and, sure enough, they fell. There had been several mortar attacks over the past week, with shells falling close to the commissioners’ workplace – so close, in fact, that standing outside the Convention Center, I could see the wisps of smoke rising from where they’d landed.

I didn’t know if it was the still of the night that made this one seem so near, or if it had indeed landed just outside our house. Our new project manager, Cat, ordered us to check on our clients living in the Green Zone. A team of us armed ourselves to the hilt and donned helmets and body armour before getting into two of our vehicles. There’s nothing like leaving the relative safety of bricks and mortar and stepping into a soft-skinned vehicle during a mortar attack to get the blood going.

We turned into the street where three of our clients lived, and were met immediately by US military forces. A mortar had landed right in the middle of the street, causing massive destruction. Smokey got out of the car, lit up a cigarette and began taking photos of the area. The rest of us provided perimeter protection. I crouched down next to a fence and awaited further orders, but none ever came. Smokey was busy talking to the clients and taking snapshots.

A female client, Number Three, had been visiting her house to check on how renovations were progressing, as she was hoping to move into it soon. Her timing had been bad. As soon as the mortar hit she fled back to the Red Zone. Our Number Two client, who lived a few doors down, had taken off in his car to God knows where, presumably somewhere safer than his house. Our Number One client wasn’t too fazed by what had happened. He didn’t want to be moved from his home to a safer building, and insisted on staying.

It was incredible that we were in charge of the commissioners’ safety, yet had only limited influence over their movements. Two commissioners had taken off into the unknown, and the third wouldn’t budge from his own home, despite the danger. They did their own thing, and only fell under our protection when it suited them. I really struggled with this part of the work, but Baghdad was the clients’ home, and they knew it better than us. They trusted us and I supposed we had to trust them too.

Ghost came to check on me and said that the mortar had landed right near Number One’s house. A guard had been hit in the neck by some shrapnel from the blast and a child who had been playing outside had also been hurt. I felt a mother’s pity for that innocent little boy.

While I waited for Smokey to finish sucking on his cancer stick, I noted a man running towards a small group of people who had gathered in the street. He was dressed in a long white robe splattered with mud. I looked closer to see that it wasn’t mud, but blood. I heard a great scream, followed by wailing. Several women, covered from head to toe in black, huddled together and began keening. The sound vibrated throughout the cold night air. Something bad had happened.

The sorrowful howl didn’t stop. It grew louder and louder, and steadily more hysterical. A US military interpreter went over to the women, but they were in no condition to talk. The blood-soaked man told him that the little boy who had been playing outside when the mortar hit had died on the way to hospital.

I could only imagine how those women felt. The pain must have been unbearable. I could feel it digging into my heart. If anything like that ever happened to Kane, I wouldn’t have hesitated to exact my revenge.

The wailing continued, and eventually Smokey signalled for everyone to head back to the team house. We hadn’t been home more than ten minutes when another three mortars hit. Straightaway we were in the vehicles again, driving to the commissioners’ street. This time, one of the mortars had landed on Number Two’s house.

At least we knew that Number Two, who was still at large, hadn’t been blown to smithereens. Number One still refused to leave his home and no amount of convincing by Smokey would make him budge. There was nothing more we could do. Not wanting to stick around a mortar drop zone in our soft-skinned vehicles, we returned to the house. There were no more mortar attacks that night, and all the commissioners lived to tell the tale.

From then onwards, each night before we went to bed we had to physically check on all the commissioners living in the Green Zone. I am sure this annoyed the commissioners. I know I would have been irritated if I had a security team interrupting my family dinner each night to see if I was still breathing.

One night, Spitfire and I were tasked to perform the check. By this stage, we were no longer knocking on the commissioners’ doors and disturbing their family time. We basically just did a drive-by to see that things looked okay. After completing the check, we turned onto the main road and drove towards our team house. It was 9 p.m. and there were not many cars or people about. The US military had imposed a curfew, and if you travelled at night you risked being shot at or arrested. An American civilian had been shot at the previous night. He wasn’t killed, but it proved that the military was serious about enforcing the curfew.

We weren’t too far from home when large number of cars pulled out from a side street. They sped up until they were right behind us, and started driving in an erratic fashion – fishtailing all over the road with their horns honking. I looked behind us: Iraqis were hanging out of the car windows, yelling, screaming and throwing their arms around in the air. There were about ten vehicles in total, and they took up the whole road. I pulled my AK-47 close to me, but there wasn’t much I could do with it while I was driving.

Spitfire grabbed his weapon and released the safety catch, although he kept it low and out of sight of the other drivers. I kept the vehicle steady and continued on our route back to the team house – any sign that we were panicking could have bad consequences. We couldn’t identify any weapons in their vehicles so we didn’t want to fire any warning shots.

I was feeling tense by now. It was dark, we were alone and being trailed by wild Iraqis. As the cars caught up to us, they began to surround our vehicle. I looked out my window and an Iraqi man called out to me. He spoke in Arabic and I didn’t understand a word but he looked excited and happy. The honking increased and more cars overtook us.

These people were not insurgents; they were wedding guests. It was Eid, the end of Ramadan, and they were celebrating someone’s marriage. The wedding party took off, still honking, and disappeared into the night. Spitfire and I both breathed a sigh of relief.

AS TIME WENT ON
, I began to settle into a routine. Often I’d be rostered on to do the security picquets at the Convention Center. On my days off, I’d hit the gym, write long emails to Kane and watch old
Star Trek
episodes on DVD. It was strange how quickly living in a war zone became ordinary.

There were some differences between how my life had been and how it was now. Ghost was openly flirting with me, which I wasn’t completely averse to. It was nice to have some male attention – it had been years since I’d been in that situation. I didn’t turn many heads back home, but, all of a sudden, it was like I was the most desirable person in the country. As one of the very few Western women around, I had the sense I could have had a face like a shoe and yet still found someone interested in me. The attention by Ghost was flattering and overwhelming. I didn’t really know how to handle it so I kept things light between us and just focused on my job.

There was plenty to keep me occupied. Number Two was flying out of the country and needed to be taken to the airport: it was time for a BIAP run. I tied my headscarf around my neck, ensuring it was tightly secured. I felt a little limited in terms of head movement but, once I got used to it, I was fine. I hopped in the back seat of the advance vehicle with Spitfire, and we arranged our kit so we could access it easily. As we were wearing our body armour and chest webbing, and carrying an assortment of weapons, it was an extremely squashy fit. After piling the medical kit and spare ammunition onto the seat between us, our movement became even more restricted.

We made ourselves as comfortable as we could, and then Merlin and Swamp jumped in the front. Swamp was an ex–British forces guy in his early twenties. He was extremely smart and planned on studying medicine once he finished his contract in Iraq. He was a terrific team member: incredibly switched on, understood orders, and could be relied on to make good judgment calls. Swamp was the soldier that every commander wanted on their team.

With Swamp behind the wheel, we drove to Number Two’s house to pick him up. As the advance vehicle in our team, we were the first of the three cars in the convoy to pass through the last checkpoint before we left the Green Zone. We drove slowly for the first few hundred metres, making sure the other two cars had made it through okay. Once they had cleared the checkpoint, Swamp stepped on the accelerator and we were off.

I was holding my weapon left-handed. It was one of those awkward things you had to do when sitting on the car’s right-hand side. As a rightie, this took a little time to get used to, but there was no way around it: if we were attacked from the right, it was essential that I return fire as quickly as possible.

It wasn’t so bad firing left-handed, except for the ejected brass rounds. When you fire a weapon, the brass casing from the ammunition gets ejected out the side of the weapon. If you’re right-handed and firing a right-handed weapon, the casing shoots away from you. Fire that same weapon in your left hand, however, and the hot brass casing can hit you right in the face. A face full of hot brass would be the least of my problems, though, if we were attacked.

“RV one,” Merlin said, as we hit Route Irish. “RV two,” he continued. ‘RV’ meant ‘rendezvous’ in military lingo. In the army, it was typical to identify several landmarks as rendezvous points. Then, in the instance you were attacked and your vehicle disabled, you would return to the last RV point and wait for help to arrive. If after a certain period no one came, you would return to the previous RV. This would continue until either help arrived or you were back in a safe area.

I spoke to Merlin a little later, saying I thought that someone had mixed up their military jargon. The RV points that he called over the radio were landmark checkpoints, not RVs. We were not expected to return to these landmarks if our vehicles were disabled and we were running for our lives. In fact, if we got into trouble, our orders were to commandeer a vehicle and drive away from danger. These landmarks were just checkpoints so that everyone knew where we were located along Route Irish.

Merlin agreed that the terminology was wrong, but told me not to worry about it: it was “just the way things were done”. He wasn’t exactly interested in taking the issue up with the other team leaders, as it was such a small issue. Well, he was right: it was a minor issue, but it still irked me. It wasn’t about using the incorrect terminology. It seemed symbolic of a ‘near enough is good enough’ approach that pervaded the way the team was run.

After passing ‘RV five’, we made it to Baghdad airport to drop off our client. We couldn’t leave the area until we received confirmation that Number Two was on board his plane. Airlines in Iraq were notorious for overbooking passengers. You may have had a ticket for a flight, but until you were in your seat, there was no guarantee you would be leaving on a jet plane. Even if you did manage to snare a seat, there was no guarantee that the plane would take off on time, if at all. It was common for planes not only to leave several hours late, but also several hours early.

The upshot was that we might have to spend a whole day at the airport. We decided to drive over to another team site, which was located in the BIAP–Camp Victory area. That team, which was also part of our company, was tasked with providing security to communications personnel. Once we arrived, I had a quick look around, and peeked inside one of the buildings. There were two rooms to each building, with a shared toilet–bathroom area. Each room had a cushy-looking double bed, a bedside table and gigantic comfy chair.
Only two people to a bathroom! Pure luxury!

I was introduced to some of the team members, two of them being a husband–wife team. Maria was a tall and slender woman and her husband, Leon, was short and muscular. Maria was a really good operator: she knew her drills backwards, and was a very good shooter – better than her husband, and most of her team for that matter. She was one of only a tiny number of female security contractors in Iraq. Maria was about to head out on a mission so I didn’t get much more than a curt “Hello” from her. It was a shame; I would have loved to talk to her about her experiences in Iraq. I was surprised that the company had hired both her and her husband. Normally these kinds of relationships were frowned on. So many issues and complications can occur when working on the same team as your partner, some of which may ultimately interfere with your ability to do your job.

We hung around for another three hours until we got the call that the client had left. On the route back, Spitfire would travel in the client vehicle, which now had a spare seat. This would allow for better security and extra firepower in the middle car.

It was also a welcome relief for me: I would now have more room to spread out my kit. I could turn and move as freely as I liked. I set myself up comfortably and prepared for the journey home. Swamp, Merlin and I were still in the advance vehicle and would head out first. Jeep, Ronin and Spitfire would go next in the client vehicle, and then Ghost, Dr Evil, Tomahawk, Wolf and Blade would follow behind in the CAT wagon.

The plan was simple: make it back alive.

WE DROVE OUT HARD
and fast. We swerved and weaved our way around the traffic, reaching speeds of up to 100 kilometres an hour. Swamp was a great driver and knew just where all the potholes were. Potholes – or, more accurately, roadside bomb holes – were scattered all along Route Irish. There was one near an overpass so huge that you could almost lose a vehicle in it.

As our car reached each bridge or overpass, I heard Merlin call over the radio that it was clear: there were no suspicious vehicles, persons or animals nearby. Traffic was banked up in front of us, and Merlin slowed down. Our convoy began to close up, ready to take a detour if necessary. We were approaching the final overpass when Swamp spotted several figures on top. We didn’t know whether they were innocent people out for a walk or insurgents ready to drop a bomb on us.

Merlin alerted the others. We were all to proceed with caution. As the advance vehicle, we had to go under the overpass first. Traffic was heavy so we could only travel very slowly. I looked up and to the rear as best I could, hoping not to see anyone dangling a grenade. We cleared the underpass without incident but only got another 50 metres before we were stopped in traffic.

Behind us, the client vehicle was being closely followed by the CAT wagon. As the vehicles began driving through the underpass, Ronin in the client vehicle and Dr Evil in the CAT wagon thought they saw a person holding something. Both drivers sped up and switched lanes – a good drill for avoiding explosive devices being dropped from above.

Unfortunately, neither of them was in a hurry to drive out of the underpass, certain a grenade would be waiting for them on the other side. I was looking out the rear of our vehicle, and saw how it went down. Ronin slammed on the brakes and there wasn’t time for Dr Evil to react. The CAT wagon rammed straight into the back of the client vehicle.

“CAT wagon down. CAT wagon down,” I heard Ghost squawk over the radio. “Client vehicle is still up,” said Jeep after a prolonged pause. Merlin and I leapt out of our car straightaway. I ran to the side of the road and took up a fire position facing outwards. The wagon was cactus: its front was completely crushed. Merlin and Jeep coordinated a very quick cross-load of stores and equipment from the CAT vehicle.

The client vehicle had only sustained minor damage to its rear, and it was still operable. Within minutes we had cross-loaded everything and were back on the road. We managed to squeeze the extra five people and all their equipment into the two remaining vehicles, but things were very tight. The CAT wagon was left abandoned in the middle of the road, and we took off in a hurry. Route Irish was not a place to dilly-dally.

Back at the team house we quickly offloaded our stores and equipment. Ronin and Jeep were taken to the military hospital. Dr Evil had also hurt himself, but swore he didn’t need a doctor. Ronin had injured his shoulder, and Dr Evil had banged up his knee and knocked his head on the steering wheel.

It was Jeep who I was worried about. He’d blacked out for a few seconds, which was why there had been such a long pause over the radio before he gave us a situation report. His head had hit the dashboard: his cheek was cut and there was bruising all around his eye. Jeep was fast becoming a close friend of mine. He was the second-in-command of all the team leaders and would take over missions when Stu had other things to attend to. He was a big, loud American who had me in stitches a lot. He was rude, tactless and completely obnoxious to the local staff, yet I got on famously with him. He felt sort of like a big brother to me. Later, when he arrived back from the hospital, he was cursing and ranting about having to wear an eye patch. I was happy to see that his humour (and temper) had returned to normal.

While the guys were at the hospital, Stu – our overall team leader – and Smokey busily devised a plan to recover the abandoned CAT wagon. Stu was an ex–British clearance diver and also a combat engineer. He was well educated, had managerial qualifications, and wasn’t afraid to speak his mind. Even so, the plan took them all of about five minutes to devise. Six of us were to go back out to the crash site in two vehicles. Once we got there, we’d hook the disabled wagon onto one of the vehicles, and then tow it back to the Green Zone. The second vehicle would provide security.

Dr Evil drove the first vehicle, with Stu and me as the passengers. The brothers, Wolf and Blade, and Smokey travelled in the rear vehicle. We slowly went through the US checkpoint, informing the guards that we were going to recover our disabled vehicle on Route Irish and bring it back to the Green Zone. They thought we were bonkers.

I could see the traffic chaos that the CAT wagon had created from quite a distance away. Cars were banked up as vehicles tried to merge into one lane. Panicked drivers were doing some pretty crazy stuff in order to get off the road. It was bedlam.

We pulled up in front of the wagon. I jumped out to provide observation in front, just as I had been ordered to. Dr Evil had to concentrate on positioning his car so the wagon could be attached for towing. Stu and Smokey were busy searching for bombs that might have been planted on the wagon while we were gone. The two brothers, Wolf and Blade, halted traffic to the rear and provided firepower in that direction. To say the situation was hairy is an understatement.

I spotted a man walking nearby with an AK-47. He wasn’t pointing it at us or behaving in a threatening manner, but he was packing and that was threat enough. I alerted the team that I had identified a possible hostile person and to be ready if anything happened. In the meantime, Stu completed the improvised explosive device (IED) check and hooked up the wagon to our vehicle. Once that was done, Stu and Smokey got into the wagon to steer it, stopping it from veering off the side of the road. I heaved a sigh of relief when I heard Stu call for us to withdraw.

Still keeping my eyes on the man with the AK-47, I walked backwards towards my vehicle. Dr Evil had already started the engine and was inching away from the site. He bloody well made me jump into the car while it was moving so I wouldn’t be left behind. It must have been quite a sight: this Western chick, armed and kitted up to the max, sprinting after and leaping on board a car rolling away at 5 kilometres an hour. I’m not the most graceful at the best of times, but throw body armour and webbing on me, and there are baby giraffes that move more elegantly.

Dr Evil towed Stu and Smokey in the broken CAT wagon. Wolf and Blade trailed behind us in the rear vehicle. The vehicle recovery had not been ideal. The plan was put together hastily in order to get the vehicle back quickly. There were no contingency plans for if we were attacked on the road or if the CAT wagon detonated while we were recovering it. It was very much a ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ mission. Fortunately, we arrived back at the team house safely. Dr Evil and I dropped the wagon off at the company’s headquarters, where we’d had the barbecue all those weeks ago. Back then, I’d felt so confident about my team. Now I was starting to have my doubts.