Whether you live or die in Iraq is often about personal friendships and not so much about whose side you represent. Iraq is full of people from different religious, ethnic, and tribal origins. Simply being on the same side of the war is insignificant to many Iraqis. They strongly resent anything that smells of U.S. arrogance. If you’re smart, you’ll go out of your way to befriend everyone you can along your route. You will pass this way again and again, and this won’t be the last you see of these people. There’s a good chance the day will come that your effort at being a “friend” may well save your life.
The Haji shop vendor, the border guards, the police, the Iraqi soldiers, the shepherds, and the kids are all important to your success. Periodically, along this route, stop and talk with them. You need to get to know them. They may not be inclined to help Americans, but they will often help a friend. Friendship in Muslim countries is a powerful cultural phenomenon that, on a comparative scale, is not found in Western society. A token gesture, a smile, a wave, a pause to ask them about their day promotes invaluable relationships. Your Iraqi friends will tell you things about the enemy and help you through complicated negotiations that would otherwise be a nightmare.
In the Middle East, most Arabs believe and practice an ancient tribal code of honor known as dakhil. That means: if you seek the help of another and he commits to protecting you, regardless of your transgressions, under the traditions of dakhil, your protector must, even at risk to his own life, provide you security. He cannot allow any harm to befall you. You need only ask for dakhil. If you have been extended protection under dakhil and are betrayed, the betrayer will be forever disgraced by his family and his tribe.
In the cities, look to see if people are congregating on one side of the street and not the other. They know what you don’t. If you are in a traffic circle, and the vehicle in front of you stops for no apparent reason, all your senses go on edge. One of your greatest fears is getting stuck in a traffic jam. A stopped vehicle is a target. Hundreds of insurgents drive the roads looking for “targets of opportunity.” This is especially true of stopped vehicles with Americans in them. Perhaps the insurgents believe that their heavenly rewards will be greater if they terminate the life of Americans. It doesn’t take long to become exhausted from the intensity of the situation and the adrenaline drain. You cannot allow yourself to become complacent. Complacency is a death knell. There are no naps on this road trip.
At night you will see fires burning throughout the desert. Some are burn-offs from oil wells. Others are the result of oil pipeline attacks, and some are the remnants of blown-up vehicles that may be a dozen or so miles ahead of you. Some fires are from tires placed on the road to soften the highway for a later emplacement of an IED. The insurgents are busy throughout the night. At times they will bury as many as twenty-seven explosive devices in a row. The coalition forces are busy too. The war never sleeps.
A mile or two ahead you see a burst of light followed by a dull thump sound. You see a few streaks of light crisscrossing the horizon. You know the flash and thump was either an artillery, mortar, or possibly an IED. You know the streaks of light are bullet tracers. Someone is shooting at someone. Your fear factor skyrockets. You begin to slow down. This is not good. Slowing down exposes your vehicle to well-aimed enemy fire. You speed up. Stopping is not an option. You reason that stopping at night on an Iraqi highway is more dangerous than driving into the potential maelstrom ahead. Your eyes are as big as saucers as you peer into the black desert landscape and scan the fireworks on the horizon. It’s an eerie feeling to know that a few miles ahead, someone may be dying and others are engaged in fighting for their life, and you are headed in their direction.
Ahead you see orange-and-green sticks being waved in circles. As you get closer, you realize this is a checkpoint, and the Iraqi police are waving chemical lights in their hands. At least you hope these are Iraqi police. You slow down and talk with the police. They give you a heads up on the enemy activity ahead and ask if you can spare a few extra chemlights. You give them a dozen from your stash and a few bottles of cold water. They smile. They thank you. They wave you on through the checkpoint. For them, this is as routine as some cop in the States advising you of ice on the bridges ahead. Everything is relative. And after all, this is a war zone.
A couple miles farther, you see a cluster of military humvees along the road. In the darkness you make out the silhouettes of some Bradley fighting vehicles in the desert. Overhead you hear the whop-whop-whop sound of helicopters, circling in the night sky. They may be gunships, but at least one may be a medical evacuation chopper. Several soldiers standing on the road wave you through and motion for you to proceed slowly.
About a hundred yards off to your right flank, a .50-caliber machine gun lets off a burst of fire at some distant target. The unintelligible sound of radios crackling can be heard everywhere. You see a group of personnel carrying a stretcher bolting through the darkness. You have no idea what just happened. You only know it involved good guys and bad guys. If this were a highway in New Jersey, you’d be a gawker. Not here! You have only one thought: I want to get through this area. You clear the area and put the pedal to the metal.
It’s about midnight now and you are entering Baghdad. Curfew began at 9 p.m. and the streets are deserted. Every now and then you see the figure of a person dart through the shadows. You suspect they are insurgents. You watch the overpasses more carefully than ever. The streets are void of the thousands of people, kids, cars, and bicycles that clog the roadways during the day. You pass ornate palaces and mosques and wonder who’s inside. You wonder who’s watching you. You wonder if some street ahead will be blocked by insurgents.
Some buildings are decimated shells and others look like they were built last week. The city is a contrast of poverty and wealth, destruction and construction. Military combat vehicles scurry about the deserted streets as if they were late for an appointment. Every one of them takes notice of you. Some point their weapons in your direction. At times you fear they are going to open fire. You are stopped frequently. You don’t dare move without their direction. Nerves are on edge and fingers are on triggers.
North of Baghdad you enter the city of Baqubah. A local power plant was blown up yesterday and there are no streetlights. Without power, the homes are pitch black. This elevates your fear level again. You ponder that perhaps the blackout was just phase one of an enemy plan. You start wondering whether or not you are driving into hell’s kitchen. For a short time, you decide to turn off your headlights. Tense and exhausted you drive as quietly as possible through the town. You feel like you’re creeping through a pit of sleeping snakes hoping not to wake any of them. Finally, you arrive at Camp Anaconda, a large military base just south of Tikrit. Just the sight of it causes you to take a deep breath. Until this moment, you hadn’t realized how tired you were. Now you can hardly wait for a simple pleasure like a cot to sleep on.
As you approach the main gate, the guards go into full-scale alert. A half-dozen automatic rifles and machine guns are ready to fire on you. You move very slowly through the zigzag maze that is the entry check point (ECP). You listen for, and follow, every direction from the soldiers at the gate. Finally, you open your vehicle glove compartment and center console, then slowly step out of the vehicle leaving all doors open and your hands visible. The guards approach cautiously. They check identification and inspect your vehicle with mirrors and dogs. When you are cleared to proceed, you feel as if the guards are looking at you like you are some poor crazy fool. And maybe you are.
The expression on the faces of the gate guards suggests that they are asking, “Who in their right mind would be driving through Iraq in the middle of the night?” By now, you’re probably asking yourself the same question. You’ll catch six hours of sleep, and at “0 Dark Thirty” in the morning you’ll be headed south for Kuwait or maybe the Jordanian border. It’ll be just another day driving through the war zone. Perhaps you’ll stop for the night at Cedar II (Tallil
Air Base) just north of Basra. There you can grab a meal and another couple hours of rest. As one MPRI contractor put it, “Driving the roads through Iraq is like placing your life in a crapshoot. You just never know which day your luck will run out.” As you close your eyes, you think to yourself, Well, at least Cedar II has a great mess hall.
Chapter 5
Trucking Contractors
I. An Overview
Participants in war have been historically defined in one of two ways: those who are assigned to direct combat units and those who are in logistics support roles. In past conflicts, support roles were considered to be relatively safe. In Iraq, this distinction has disappeared. Support soldiers and the civilians who work with them are frequently under attack. In fact, they are often the primary targets of insurgent battle plans. There are thousands of incidents where support units have been attacked. However, in this war, those who operate outside the wire, versus those who largely remain inside the wire, define the real differences. Truck drivers operate outside the wire every day in Iraq.
There is a certain glamour attached to the big-rig driver in the United States. As the rebel hero of 1970s music and movies, he has become part of the country’s popular folklore, and at the same time, a target for controversy. In many ways, truckers are modern U.S. cowboys; they herd their trucks from town to town, drop one load and pick up another, then hit the trail for some distant city. They leave their wives and families behind and crisscross the open roads for weeks at a stretch. They wrangle with each other, but when an interloper butts in, they unite as if they never had a quarrel among themselves. By and large, they are red, white, and blue U.S. patriots. And this is the real reason many of them have gone to Iraq.
Most of these drivers make no more money than they would in the same job back home. Granted, they work a lot more overtime in Iraq, and consequently accumulate quite a bit of money, and they have some tax benefits. But as one driver put it, “If I had worked these hours back in the States, I would have made close to the same paycheck and I wouldn’t have been shot at nearly every day.” He’s not complaining; he’s just stating the facts.
What would be called trucking terminals in the United States are called staging bases in Kuwait and Iraq. The sheer number of trucks and the volume of cargo that is being moved into and through Iraq on a daily basis would defy the imagination of most people. Convoy after convoy rolls out of Kuwaiti ports every hour. They stage at a military base on the Iraq-Kuwait border called NAVISTAR. Every day, ten, twenty, or thirty convoys, each with dozens, sometime hundreds, of trucks wait to roll north into Iraq. The coalition forces would starve without this vital cargo. The reconstruction of Iraq would screech to a halt. Soldiers wouldn’t get mail. Repaired vehicle and aircraft engines would rust. Desperately needed ammunition wouldn’t make it to U.S. fighting forces. In short, without these truckers, the war would be lost in a week.
Officially, U.S. truck drivers are prohibited from carrying personal firearms. That is the “official” line. As to whether or not U.S. trucking contractors are armed, don’t creep up on one in the middle of the night to find out. The soldiers who escort them often have a version of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” philosophy. And when the shit hits the fan, every shooter on your side is your new best friend.
For whatever reasons these individuals choose to place themselves in harm’s way, they will be quick to tell you that their reasons for staying in Iraq were all about the team. Combat has a way of bonding people that exceeds by light years any other lifetime experience. The job quickly becomes all about those who risk their lives with you. The team becomes family—more than family. The ideologies of governments clearly take second place to their deep-rooted sense of obligation and commitment to one another.
Mark Taylor (a.k.a. Ugly Puppy), Ken McDonald, and Glenn Collins share the same occupation, driving big rigs in and out of military bases, day-in and day-out, in the Iraqi war zone. Besides their skill at handling big rigs, they shared a common reason for entering the fray. Each of them being successful in their own right before 9/11, it wasn’t money that compelled them, but the need to do something for their country.
Once in Iraq, they were assigned to transport U.S. mail over Iraq’s treacherous back roads, streets, and highways. In the ultimate dedication to the post office motto, “Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night [nor flying bullets, nor roadside bombs, nor enemy ambush] would stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” They vowed to never allow two things to happen: first, they would never leave one of their own behind on the battlefield, and second, they would never let a soldier’s personal mail fall into enemy hands.
Mark Taylor and his wife, Renee, owned a thriving trucking operation. Home base was Warren, Arkansas. Mark is in his early forties, six feet tall, and reasonably fit at about 230 pounds. He has short black hair, is unassuming and low-key with a soft-spoken southern drawl. He is introspective, well read, and articulate. As an independent long-haul owner-operator, Mark frequently writes articles on trucking issues for Landline, a trucking industry magazine for members of the Owner Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA). Since becoming a trucker in the mid-1980s, he has been active in working through print, radio, Internet, and television media to improve the public image of truck drivers. His own small company consisted of five tractors and five trailers. His wife, partner, and best friend, Renee, is an activist, founder, and leader in several U.S. contractor family support groups. She is a feisty, outspoken, uninhibited hundred-pound ball of fire.
When 9/11 occurred, Mark and his wife were on the open road in Utah driving across the country on a routine freight haul. They listened on the radio to the reports of a plane striking one of the World Trade Center towers. Mark lumbered his rig off the highway and turned on his satellite TV to see the breaking news. They were just in time to watch the second plane strike the other tower of the World Trade Center. A week later, Mark tried to join the army. They wouldn’t accept him. At thirty-eight, he was too old.
Ken McDonald was hauling sensitive government cargo when the United States was rudely awakened by the al-Qaeda attacks. Ken is a rugged outdoor-looking guy in his early thirties, suntanned, muscular, with a medium build, medium height, short blond hair, and a mustache. He has a gregarious life-of-the-party personality. When he walks into a room, everyone knows he’s there and everyone is glad to see him. He’s a risk taker, but no fool. He thrives on bailing people out of trouble, a trait that he subsequently put to good use over and over again in Iraq.
Ken’s career as a trucker encompassed a lot of high-security work. At times he hauled radioactive waste, but when 9/11 occurred he had been trucking cash around the country for the U.S. Treasury Department. This type of sensitive work was clearly not in the low-wage-earner bracket.
His job took on new significance following the series of 9/11 attacks. The Treasury Department wanted sufficient cash available across the country for banks that may have a run on withdrawals from panicked customers. Additionally, the fear that major Federal Reserve Banks might be the target of a terrorist attack motivated the government to disperse its cash throughout the country. The day after the attacks, Ken jam-packed his rig with pallets of hard currency at the New York Federal Reserve Bank. As he was driving through the Washington, D.C., area, he stopped his big rig near the devastated Pentagon. Acrid smoke still filled the air. His senses were struck by the unmistakable smell of burning flesh. As the odors permeated his soul, he realized he needed to be a bigger part of the solution.
Glenn Collins was a log hauler from Arizona. His father had served in Vietnam, and Glenn had felt a calling to serve his country. He had unsuccessfully attempted to join the army several times but had been rejected for physical reasons. Glenn is in his twenties and younger than either Mark or Ken. He is fair skinned, round faced, almost Swedish looking, usually quiet: a listener type. He is slow to trust people, but when he does, he has been known to burst out with feelings, emo
tions, and stories in a most sincere and unpretentious manner. His experiences in Iraq have left him emotionally scarred. He is coping the best he can, but fear of driving at night may be an albatross on his back for many years to come. Following 9/11 he stumbled across his opportunity to serve his country without having to wait for the army’s blessing. One of Glenn’s friends had driven trucks in Kuwait and Iraq. His buddy hooked him up with a KBR recruiter. He was packing the next day.
Word was spreading fast through the CB radios of the U.S. trucking industry: KBR desperately needed drivers. The truckers went through the initial screening process with KBR in Houston, followed by several weeks of area orientations, psychological evaluations, pay processing, and filling out forms. At about the same time, across the country in the small town of Paris, Illinois, an Army National Guard unit received their orders to deploy for Iraq. The 1544th Army Transportation Unit would be assigned security responsibility for trucking convoys. Before year’s end, the drivers in Houston and the soldiers in Illinois would become family. This improbable combination of Americans would come to be known throughout Iraq as the Iron Pony Express.
II. The Mail Run
One by one, alarm clocks ring in the middle of the afternoon. It’s 4 p.m. and another hot, dusty day in Iraq. The Iron Pony drivers stretch, yawn, moan, and peer out of their metallic boxes they call their hooches. Over time, each driver has developed his or her own special nickname. Some names they chose for themselves, and others, the group just gave them with or without their consent: Jeff Dye—“Diehard,” Phil McCall—“Tumbleweed,” Paul Reed—“Romeo,” Scott Thomas—“Tex,” Tony Moreno—“Ninja Turtle,” Mark Taylor—“Ugly Puppy,” Pete Satterstrom—“Bones,” Tom Meade—“Too Tall,” Elzie Norman—“Gunsmoke.” These are the KBR drivers who make up the Iron Pony Express. They are a proud group and not a one would trade places with a trucker back in the States. They actually like what they do. They feel they are part of the solution and not part of the problem.
A Bloody Business Page 8