Contracting firms do not normally get into issues of wills or power of attorney documents. Families are often reticent to discuss funeral preferences. Pretending that the worst won’t happen isn’t the answer. The avoidance of these unpleasant discussions will place an inordinate burden on family members if fate deals a bad card. These are important tasks that should be taken care of before a job applicant departs for orientation. Also, facing these possibilities beforehand will help develop a sense of seriousness that can be a catalyst for surfacing objections sooner rather than later.
Very few contractors will have their own personal Internet connections. Contracting firms often provide employees access to their corporate computers to send e-mails to family and friends. Of course, there’s always a waiting line. To complicate matters, the contractor has to be very cautious of what he or she says on the Internet or phone. Internet and phone communications are monitored by Department of Defense intelligence units. Contractors can be in serious trouble if they reveal information on the Web or phone that is considered classified. A simple and seemingly innocent remark like, “We’ll be picking up supplies in Jordan tomorrow,” would be a clear violation of secrecy regulations.
Many contractors have satellite or cell phones issued by their employer. Often these companies will permit outgoing international phone calls to be made on their equipment, and the calls are routed through their home base—such as KBR in Houston. Cell phones are a primary means of communicating within the country, and consequently, many contractors run around Iraq with two mobile phones, one cell and one satellite. If the contracting firm doesn’t provide you with a phone, there are several inexpensive ways to get a satellite or cell phone from a local supplier.
It isn’t a good idea for families to call contractors operating in the war zone. Unless there’s a family emergency, the individual contractor is in a much better position to determine when he or she is in a secure area and can safely place a call to the States. Also many military convoy escort units operate jamming equipment that is designed to screw up your phone conversation. The reason for jamming cell phone frequencies is because the enemy frequently uses cell phones to detonate explosive devices.
Soldiers get some modicum of support from Americans. Contractors get next to none. Quite the opposite, civilian contractors are frequently denigrated for their decision to work in a hostile country. It is critical that contractors know that at least their family is behind them and can handle the day-to-day challenges during their absence. Finding contractor family-support groups on the Internet can be a great help and a source of comfort during a spouse’s absence.
If a contractor’s family is incapable of genuine support and dealing with issues at home without burdening her spouse, she will be placing the person she loves in great danger. A contractor in Iraq cannot allow himself or herself to be distracted with worries and concerns about domestic problems while at the same time remaining focused on staying alive in the war zone. Staying safe in a combat environment requires incredible focus and attention that will sap the energy out of the most prepared human being. Don’t add to the problem.
Chapter 4
A Drive through the War Zone
It’s hot in Iraq. Not hot like Arizona. Not hot like Death Valley. Furnace Creek, California, is a poor cousin to the scorching heat of Iraq. Your eye-socket fluid dries up. Your lips crack and parch. Your mouth feels like you’ve been eating cotton. Sand blows across the roads and piles up on everything. Many times the sky is filled with blowing sand and forms a brown haze that obliterates the sun. On windy, cloudless days, the sun looks more like the moon in a daylight sky, a faint orb.
The air chokes newcomers’ lungs. Desert temperatures routinely exceed 130 degrees Fahrenheit. You drink water by the gallon, 130-degree water. It evaporates off your body as fast as you pour it down. Except for the drenching wetness beneath your thirty-pound flak vest, your sweat evaporates instantly. When you remove the vest, you are almost embarrassed by the soaking wet dishrag that your shirt has become. Not to worry; you will be dry in minutes.
Want to know what it’s like in Iraq? Fill your oven with sand, put a fan inside, turn on the heat full blast, and stick your head in. Every breath is superheated, sand-filled air. You can’t imagine how anyone survives this hellish climate.
The debilitating effects of the climate shock army units arriving from the States. When they departed their home base, they were full of vim and vigor and ready to bring death to the insurgents. Everyone thinks they know what to expect. They believe they are prepared. They quickly learn that it can’t be imagined. It can’t be trained for. It can only be experienced. One army unit, freshly arrived in Kuwait, had more than fourteen heat casualties on their first day, before crossing from Kuwait into Iraq, the infamous Berm (a 1,690-mile-long system of defensive walls around which is the biggest concentration of land mines in the western Sahara). Besides “crossing the Berm,” this border crossing is also called “going through the gate.”
Regardless of what it’s called, everyone who crosses the Berm feels a chill go through them. They know that at any moment they may be under fire. They may see a brilliant flash of light in a split second as an IED detonates on a vehicle in their convoy—maybe their vehicle. The .50-caliber machine gunner standing up in the humvee knows that he risks being sliced into two pieces if he is standing up and fails to see explosives on the road ahead. Gunners now hunker down behind a steel turret until enemy contact is made. There are no safe havens in Iraq. Only a fool assumes some area of the country to be safe. Every day such assumptions are proven false.
In Iraq, there are seventy to eighty insurgent attacks a day. On any given day, you may hear about three or four of them in the news. Most of these incidents don’t make the mainstream press. Most media people are bedded down at hotels in Baghdad. If they learn of an insurgent attack at the local marketplace, they rush down, with plenty of security vehicles to file their on-the-spot report. They are not privy to the information on the dozens of attacks elsewhere in Iraq. The coalition forces are not inclined to tell them what they don’t know. Even if they were informed, few would venture the high-risk trip to the scene.
About a mile into Iraq, you come into the town of Safwan. Life is cheap here. It’s not just that insurgents lurk in the shadows; it’s also the bandits who will kill for almost anything of value. It’s a lawless region: insurgents, bandits and thieves (known locally as “Ali Babas” after the eponymous hero of “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”), and kids. The kids ride their bikes next to your vehicle trying to cut a deal for anything you may want. This town took a physical beating during both Gulf conflicts and not much has changed since. As you journey north, encountering danger is not only possible, it is probable. You had better be mentally prepared for every imaginable ruse, and some that are not imaginable. You are in Iraq. This is a war zone.
Herds of camel and sheep wander the desolate countryside. Bedouins tend to their herds without notice of the passing convoys of trucks carrying supplies to sustain the war and rebuild the country. Beetles plant their eggs in camel dung and roll them into a protective fold, not dissimilar to a taco. Baby camel spiders, which are known to grow to more than a foot in diameter charge at you, stop, and suddenly retreat as if they sized you up and determined that you are not an appropriate meal. Lizards, called dubs, scurry around the desert chasing God knows what. They are quick, but they have enough energy for only a forty-yard dash. Keep them from retreating to their hole and they will quickly exhaust themselves. After their forty-yard dash, you can then walk up to them, pick ’em up, and dine on their chicken-flavored tails.
In southern Iraq, the only water you see is the shimmering turquoise water of the aqueduct that, periodically, can be seen alongside the road. You might muse over the thought that it is a wonder the water hasn’t totally evaporated in the incredible heat. Everywhere is sand and limestone gravel. Remnants of war are ubiquitous: a burned-out Iraqi tank here, a blown-up building there, hund
reds of rusting war vehicles clumped together. These are graveyards of sorts. Thousands of Iraqi soldiers died in them during the first and second Gulf conflicts. Iraq is littered with grim reminders of war.
People are living in the skeletons of one-story buildings and some have just pitched a tent, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Nearly all have a satellite dish. A van will be pulled over to the side of the road, and you will see five or six women, dressed in their black garb, kneeling on a rug in the sand. Often they have stopped for prayer. Sometimes they are eating, a roadside picnic of sorts. Remember, it’s 130 degrees.
As you approach small towns, children appear everywhere along the road. They wave and extend their hands, looking for whatever tokens you might toss them. When you throw them a water bottle or candy bar, they will quickly put it with the rest of their stash in a hole, or behind a mound of earth, and run back to the road to continue begging. Sometimes, when you don’t give them anything, you can watch in your sideview mirror as they extend their middle finger at you. If you stop in a town, even what appears to be a deserted town, a child or two will approach you immediately begging for a handout. You’d better have a case of handouts because within seconds there will be dozens of children appearing out of thin air.
In the small towns and the cities, you occasionally spot a couple of military vehicles stopped with children gathered around the soldiers who are passing out candy or bottled water or MREs. Soldiers can’t seem to resist kids. All kids, but especially children in a war zone, seem to tug at the heartstrings. Some soldiers have lost their lives while performing these humanitarian gestures. It’s unlikely, though, that they will ever stop treating children with kindness, regardless of the threat.
You come upon the remnants of a burning fuel tanker, obviously from an earlier convoy. It was hit by an IED. You slow down and pass cautiously. There are no security forces in the area. The truck is engulfed in a ball of flame. As you cruise by and feel the searing heat, you notice a dozen Ali Babas working feverishly. They are stealing everything and anything of value on the truck. Several are removing the tires before they melt. Two or three are waiting in line, draining the fuel into five-gallon cans. A couple of others are scouring the cab. You notice the windshield and side windows are riddled with holes, broken glass everywhere. Someone was hurt here. You guess that he probably died. This is not your problem. You continue your journey.
The six-lane highway you are traveling is separated by a large sandy median. Cars and trucks, for any number of reasons, routinely cut across the median strip and drive straight at the oncoming traffic. At times, even entire convoys cut across the median and drive in the oncoming traffic lanes. They may have good reason. They may have learned of some danger ahead on their side of the highway. Every twenty or thirty miles you encounter highway checkpoints with Iraqi police (IP), Iraqi National Guard (ING), U.S. military, or some combination of these. Often the checkpoints are set up in the shade of a highway overpass.
Frequently, just past the checkpoints, will be a collection of five or ten 10-by-10-foot “Haji shops” (or, in more politically correct terms, shops run by local merchants). They are separated from each other by about twenty yards. Vehicles passing through the checkpoints will pull over and shop with the vendors for food, drinks, or other sundry items. It is a cause for some alarm when a checkpoint is hastily established and has no Haji shops nearby. Insurgents and bandits will sometimes kill the police and dress in their uniforms or simply just put on uniforms and set up a checkpoint.
Haji shops exploit the opportunities created by the traffic flow near checkpoints. If one or two shops are set up alone near an overpass where there is no checkpoint, it is yet another cause for alarm. Isolated Haji shops at the edge of the road have, on occasion, been found to contain rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) that are linked to a trip wire running under the overpass. The trip wire is rigged to fire several RPGs simultaneously. If you don’t detect the trap, you will surely be blown apart. You quickly become suspicious of everything.
Convoys of trucks are rolling down this highway constantly. Many have twenty or thirty trucks. A few have been known to run more than a hundred vehicles. Some are purely military vehicles with army escorts, and others are civilian trucks with army or private security contractor escorts. Smart convoy drivers will keep their vehicles spaced 75 to 100 meters apart. They know that when an attack occurs, this separation will reduce the possibility of losing two trucks from a single explosion. Convoys try to roll at a high rate of speed. Insurgents will have a harder time hitting them if they are moving fast.
The convoy security teams (military or civilian) often wave at one another when passing in opposite directions. Everyone is scanning the surrounding area with automatic rifles and machine guns poised to fire.
Far out in the desert you make out the faint image of a tractor trailer billowing up dust as it moves away from the main highway. You deduce that bandits culled out the vehicle from another convoy, shot the driver, and stole the truck. No one is in pursuit. There is a good chance that the driver directly behind the stolen truck was helpless to tell anyone that a truck was being taken. His convoy just rolled on. He rolled on. Even if his security elements saw the theft, there is not much they can do. They certainly can’t abandon forty trucks and go chasing across the desert after the thieves. Shit happens in Iraq.
In southern Iraq, the military escorts may be U.S., British, Australian, Japanese, Italian, or Iraqi. As you go farther north, the military units are almost exclusively U.S. or Iraqi. Private contractors, like Blackwater, Hart, TDL, Triple Canopy, Crescent, and dozens of others, run the whole country without regard to geography. These firms are a highly flexible resource providing expedient solutions to everchanging war zone requirements.
As you proceed farther north, you begin to encounter more nonlethal threats, such as children or adults throwing rocks. This might seem benign, but given your level of tension, a rock smashing against your vehicle can be quite unnerving. The vegetation picks up here, and the temperature drops a few degrees. At first, even a few scattered trees and bushes are a welcome site, but then you realize that the brush and trees afford the insurgents more hiding places. Your ability to see a head bob over a berm or out of ditch is diminished. You’d rather have the bland desert back. Better to be bored with the scenery, but alive.
While driving the roads, your entire body is on full-scale alert. You watch for broken-down vehicles on the side of the road. They may be filled with explosives. The trouble is that there are hundreds of broken-down vehicles on the highways. You watch for vehicles with tinted windows full of young men. Insurgents frequently travel in such groups and often execute a drive-by shooting of your vehicle. You look for trucks and cars that sag too much in the rear end; they may be loaded with explosives. You watch for vehicles that won’t leave the center lane of the road, they may be straddling the center lane because they suspect or know a bomb is just ahead. Iraqi citizens know to stay in the right or left lane. The center lane is primarily for use by convoys.
A garbage bag alongside the road, a piece of Styrofoam, a dirt mound, a patch of new pavement, a pothole, a clump of tires, or a pile of brush may all be disguises for roadside bombs. Explosives, aimed at the ground, have been found in the crook of a tree branch. Dog carcasses have been packed with explosives and propped up to appear to be alive. They are placed along the shoulder of a road and detonated with a remote triggering device.
At times even donkeys are wandering the area packed with explosives. The donkeys nibble on the vegetation in the ditches alongside the highway. When a target vehicle rolls by, the donkey, the truck, and the personnel inside blow up together. Afterward, it’s a challenge to distinguish whose parts belong to whom. The military even has a name for these devices: donkey-borne improvised explosive devices (DBIEDs). The ruses are endless.
Insurgents routinely plant explosives on the backside of guardrails. The guardrail on the outside corner at the bend of a highway exit ramp has o
ften been selected as a location to plant bombs. Trucks have blown up coming off the ramp, and as other trucks pass on the inside corner, they too have been blown up by a second set of hidden explosives. Bait devices appearing to be explosives are sometimes planted on the highway. A convoy will slow, stop, or change lanes to avoid the bait and will either run into the actual explosives or come under attack from hidden insurgents. At times the insurgents open fire from both sides of the road.
If a vehicle mixes into the middle of your convoy and doesn’t make a dash to get ahead or fall behind, you have a high potential of a developing insurgent attack. If a pickup truck approaches at high speed from a perpendicular desert road, you need to brace yourself. The Iraqi people are well informed about how to, and when not to, approach a convoy. They are supposed to stay at least 100 meters away from convoys. Many don’t. The rules of engagement permit the military and security contractors to open fire when a vehicle has been warned to stay back but continues to close in on them. It is a testimony to self-restraint on the part of both military units and U.S. civilian security contractors that more innocent people have not lost their lives for foolishly ignoring these rules.
The sight of human bodies lying on the road near a blown-up vehicle can have a disarming effect. You have to fight your natural tendency to rush forward to help in whatever manner might be possible. It is not uncommon that the bodies have been planted there by insurgents and subsequently booby-trapped. It defies human inclinations that you must first recon the area to make certain an insurgent isn’t lurking nearby with an explosive detonator in hand. Even when approaching seemingly lifeless bodies, care must be taken. This could be a suicide bomber wearing a military uniform with an explosive vest under his shirt. Finally, when moving bodies, you have to be alert for grenades, ready to explode, that may have been planted among them. Nothing is sacred in this war—nothing.
A Bloody Business Page 7