A Bloody Business

by Gerry Schumacher

  Each morning, Blackwater teams roll out of the IZ and head to the airport. At BIAP, they will meet and greet their usually “nervous” principal and his staff. The officials will be loaded into armored Chevy Suburbans. The CAT will position its heavily armored humvees with huge “pushers” mounted on the front bumpers, and the team will head out to the first destination of the day. As they traverse the streets of Baghdad, they will see insurgents with movie cameras filming them. They will see men on rooftops releasing pigeons or waving flags signaling to insurgents farther up the road that the U.S. diplomatic convoy is coming. The Blackwater contractors will make decisions as circumstances unfold. The best-case scenario, plan A, is that they will outfox the insurgents in this shell game of what roads they will travel on and at which intersections they will turn.

  Insurgents proliferate the area with vehicle car bombs that may approach the convoy at any moment from any direction. If a vehicle approaches the convoy, the contractors will immediately go through a quick warning sequence. If it keeps coming, they will open fire, first to disable and then—if necessary—to kill the driver. If a man is standing on an overpass seemingly waiting, they will first attempt to avoid him, but if that’s not possible, they will fire warning shots in his direction. If a vehicle turns suddenly into their lane, they will plow it out of their way without so much as slowing down.

  Getting stuck in a traffic jam is more than a nuisance—it is life-threatening. Some traffic backups are artificially created by insurgents for the sole purpose of attacking U.S. diplomatic convoys. In September 2005, Stephen Sullivan, a U.S. State Department employee, and three Blackwater contractors were killed when a suicide car bomber simply drove up alongside their SUV in the left lane. The insurgent slowed down, and when he was parallel to them, he detonated his bomb. The explosion was so large that, in addition to killing the occupants in the adjacent vehicle, several contractors in a following vehicle were severely injured.

  At times the suicide bombers will drive cars marked covertly with a swatch of duct tape on the roof or a brightly colored stuffed animal on the front dashboard. The markings are constantly changing, so security contractors have to be especially observant. Any unusual marker might indicate a VBIED.

  The insurgents know that their bomber may not successfully make it to his intended target or that he might even lose his nerve to carry out the detonation. They will often position a lookout on a rooftop or nearby street corner with a remote-control detonator to blow up the marked car if the driver is unable or unwilling to do so.

  When encountering a suspicious vehicle, contractors follow a warning sequence dictated by the rules of engagement. First, they issue a warning hand signal. If the intruding person or vehicle continues to approach, they will point their weapons at them. This is followed by engaging the vehicle to disable it, and then engaging the occupants if required. Some security contractors, after initiating the hand signal with a verbal warning, have developed the unofficial practice of tossing a plastic water bottle in front of an approaching vehicle as an additional step in getting the driver’s attention.

  Contractors view visiting diplomats and U.S. government employees in two ways: those who are scared speechless and those who second-guess everything they say or do. On a recent trip, a high-level USAID worker, visiting Baghdad, couldn’t resist commenting on everything the Blackwater contractors did or failed to do. The visitor’s negative opinion had evidently been formed by a slanted article or two he’d read about private contractors. The principal suggested that the water-bottle toss was inconsiderate and terribly offensive to the Iraqi people. The critique continued for some time. Rather than arguing with a principal, the contractors shrugged, skipped that step, and simply aimed their weapons and opened fire on the approaching vehicles sooner. That settled that—at least for now they appeased their passenger.

  If left to their own devices, many security contractors would try to incorporate even more warning measures, time permitting. Several have commented that they would like to use (and some have) “flash bangs,” a relatively harmless large firecracker to ward off intruders. This is strictly prohibited by the State Department rules of engagement.

  II. The Fog of War

  In the dark early morning hours, a Crescent Security team of five U.S. citizens, one Gurkha, and two Iraqis loaded up their three SUVs and departed their home base in Kuwait for the 450-mile drive to Camp Anaconda in northern Iraq. The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) had directed them to pick up an army officer named Major Van Elkin and a second passenger and transport them one hundred miles south to Baghdad International Airport. Everyone knew that the last stretch between Anaconda and Baghdad would be especially hairy. It would be well into the next night before this mission was complete, and they were well aware that insurgents ran that area of the country after sunset. Even though this wouldn’t be a walk in the park, the team felt like they had their act together.

  The contractors in the Toyota Prada who led the way were all experienced and confident. Jake Guevarra rode shotgun. About twenty-five years old, Jake was a clean-cut, combat-experienced former infantry marine and was in top physical condition. He spent some time in the war as a scout sniper. He was a voracious reader of military history, quiet, and not prone to macho displays. You might call him the intellectual of the group. For Jake, this job was not about the money. Some unknown, elusive force drove him. Jake was very much a realist about the dangers he would face, and he had no thought of making a career out of this line of work. Experience told him that if he stayed at it too long, one day his number was bound to come up. He hoped that today was not that day.

  Dee, the trusted Iraqi member of the team, occupied the back seat. He was a counterpart to team leader Wolf Weiss and supervised the Iraqi members of the team. In addition to being a shooter on missions, he was responsible for identifying and screening Iraqi job applicants, and collecting the Iraqi team members together every morning for Crescent’s daily operations. Dee proved his courage, tenacity, street savvy, and skill in his countless contacts with the insurgents and bandits.

  Wolf Weiss drove. A former member of the Marine Corps’ elite Force Recon, Wolf was thirty-six years old, stocky, muscular, and an all-around colorful character. Whether sporting the traditional high-and-tight haircut or a ponytail, he was no cookie-cutter marine. After leaving the Corps, Wolf spent a few years in Los Angeles as a heavy metal guitarist, even recording a few CDs. He traded in his guitar for a rifle when the war erupted and headed back to the Middle East as a contractor. While still in country, Rolling Stone interviewed him for an article titled “Heavy Metal Mercenary.” “There’s only a few things in this world I can do really, really well,” he told the magazine. “War is one.”

  As the Toyota rolled north, conversation was lively and spirits were high. Jake liked riding with Wolf, who was quite the storyteller. His brazen life-and-death tales were always entertaining. “I just felt safe when I was around him,” Jake remarked. “Wolf had this air about him. You just knew the guy had it together.” Wolf’s running dialogue helped the time pass, and Jake always learned something new that he thought might save his life one day. Wolf was his friend, his boss, his mentor, and in Jake’s eyes, the consummate warrior. But as each team member in that vehicle would soon learn, combat skills will only get you so far; after that, it’s up to luck, fate, or God. By the end of the day, everyone in the vehicle would be dead or wounded.

  The second vehicle was a heavily armored Chevy Suburban, designated to transport the eventual “package” back to the airport. Kedar, a Gurkha who had been with the team from the beginning, sat in the passenger seat. The Gurkha tribesmen from Nepal, a small country sandwiched between India and China, were legendary stealth fighters who decimated the British army in the nineteenth century and later joined its ranks in the trenches of World War I. In Iraq, they got off to a rough start working as contractors. After a dozen fellow Gurkha fighters were beheaded by insurgents, Kedar was one of the few who chose to re
main.

  The team’s number two man, Scott Schneider, drove the trail vehicle, a GMC Yukon. A former army combat engineer with fourteen years of military experience, Schneider’s frame was shaped a lot like Wolf. He was in his mid-thirties, with cropped blonde hair, blue eyes, and a weather-beaten mug.

  Dustin Benson, a former marine grunt and friend of Jake’s, rode shotgun. He was about five-foot seven, mid-twenties, slim, and freckle-faced. He joined the team that very week, and this was his first mission as a security contractor. Although new to the team, he was not new to battle. As a marine during the initial stages of Operation Iraqi Freedom, he was involved in some of the most intense fighting of the war in the Ramadi region. Dustin’s platoon sergeant and platoon leader had both been killed. He had assumed command of the platoon until replacements arrived.

  In the back of the Yukon was the team’s highly skilled tail gunner, an Iraqi by the name of Alowi. One would think that the highly exposed tail gunner would be the least desirable position, but you couldn’t pay Alowi enough to give up his job. He was a good-natured guy and was always smiling about everything, especially when locking and loading his machine gun.

  Jordan Hind, who drove, was the only team member without a military background. A former cage fighter and martial arts expert, he was trained by the team on weapons, military tactics, and techniques. Jordan had demonstrated his abilities in a number of scrapes.

  The men had a standard uniform: a black Crescent T-shirt; a black body-armor vest with multiple pockets loaded with ammo magazines; a bayonet-length knife; a handheld radio clipped to the right vest shoulder; a collapsible-stock Russian AK-47 assault rifle; a Glock .45-caliber pistol strapped to the right thigh; and other essentials.

  As for the vehicles, antipersonnel hand grenades were stacked in the center console. A half-dozen loaded thirty-round banana clips sat over the transmission hump in a curved container. Every vehicle had at least one light antitank weapon (LAW). A Russian 7.62 PKM was mounted on a special rotating bracket modified to fit the back of the Yukon.

  On the trip north, Schneider schooled Dustin on the team’s operating procedures and quick-reaction drills. His pupil asked all the right questions and proved to be a quick study. Every 150 miles or so, the team stopped at military installations to refuel, eat, check weapons, and reload.

  Jake was particularly happy to have his old friend Dustin on the team. He thought to himself, This is a good day, a good team. We’ve got our shit together.

  The three SUVs made it through Baghdad without a problem. At Camp Cook in Taji, about twenty miles northwest of Baghdad, they stopped at their last refueling point. The next stop after that would be Camp Anaconda, where they would load up their precious cargo and return to Baghdad International Airport.

  After a bite to eat, and some smoking and joking, the team rolls out of Camp Cook. Darkness has fallen, and with the night has come a heightened sense of seriousness. A steady, increasingly intense rain begins. The road is slick as ice. Bugs pelt the windshield like a locust swarm on a Mississippi summer night. The wiper blades only smear the bug juice and make visibility worse. Wolf, Jordan, and Schneider squint through the goo hoping to see just far enough ahead to stay on the road. Wolf reluctantly reduces his speed to avoid the possibility of plowing into a military armored vehicle. The army’s Bradley fighting vehicles frequently drive this stretch of road at night with only their tiny blackout cat-eye drive lights on.

  As they round a curve, they spot two civilian vehicles blocking the road about fifty yards ahead. The three drivers can barely make out the brake lights. They have just seconds to react. Wolf Weiss shouts into his radio, “Brake hard, brake hard!” Jordan’s SUV swerves right. Wolf swerves left, and both vehicles skid to a halt on opposite flanks of the stopped cars. For a moment there is an eerie silence as Wolf tries to figure out if the two vehicles are a threat. He covers them with his AK-47. Jake, in the meantime, is scanning the surrounding area for a possible ambush. Wolf realizes they are in a choke point and this could be a trap. He begins to move the vehicle forward. Jake thinks he sees something dead ahead. He leans into the windshield trying to discern the object. “Wolf, hold up. I think I see something in front of us at about fifty meters,” Jake remarks.

  “We’re taking fire, we’re taking fire,” Jordan repeatedly shrieks into his radio.

  Schneider could also be heard shouting in response, “Back up, back up.”

  Wolf was on the radio too. He started to say, “Good job, Jor—”but was cut off mid-sentence.

  In the seconds preceding all this radio traffic, Jake recalls hearing nothing—not a sound. He remembers: “Just as I made the comment to Wolf that I thought I saw something, there were a bunch of muzzle flashes directly in front of us. I didn’t hear a sound, nothing. I just saw those flashes firing directly at us and instinctively went into my immediate action drill.

  “I swung my AK-47 around from where I had been pointing out the right-side window and leveled it at twelve o’clock just above the dashboard. I had no choice but to begin shooting right through the windshield. I was dumping my entire clip through the glass. All I could think of was pumping out enough bullets to get some kind of fire superiority and buy us some time. Out of the corner of my left eye, I could see rounds coming through the windshield and they just seemed to be walking in slow motion across the glass toward me. Only a few seconds had passed since I had seen the muzzle flashes—just the time it takes for twenty-seven rounds to leave my AK on full auto. Then I felt a burning sensation on my face and I went down. I figured I’d been shot, and I remember thinking that I hoped I would die quickly. I slumped over and began fading in and out of consciousness.”

  Wolf’s SUV wasn’t moving. Bullets glanced off the car like sparks from a welder’s torch. Jordan began to swing his armored vehicle around to try and block the bullets pouring into Wolf’s car, but the attackers pulverized Jordan’s vehicle with bullets and disabled it. Jordan and Kedar leaped from their vehicle and used it to shield them as they returned fire. Schneider and Dustin began shooting out their side windows. In the mayhem of the moment, Schneider and Dustin had completely forgotten about their tail gunner with the PKM machine gun. Now Dustin shouted at Schneider, “Get the PKM firing!” Schneider did a 180 with the Yukon so that Alowi could get a clear field of fire. Alowi’s machine gun began pumping out lead. Dustin was now facing rearward with his head out the window. He was shouting out fire adjustments: “Shift right, shift right, drop, drop, drop, lower.” Dustin was determined to get Alowi’s gun firing directly into the attackers’ center of mass.

  Bullets ricocheted off of the car door and blasted apart the side-view mirror. Dustin ducked his head back inside, probably not a second too soon. He and Schneider decided to make a break from the Yukon. Schneider would go left and Dustin right. Dustin saw a tree about ten meters away and figured it was his only chance. He jumped from the Yukon. As he stepped out of the vehicle, in the mud and muck, he immediately fell flat on his face. It was at that moment, in that quirk of a fall and twist of fate that happens in the heat of battle, that Dustin had an epiphany. He realized that there was a chance to end this horrific firefight. Lying face down in the mud, Dustin Benson lifted his head, and from his very low vantage point, with the headlights of his Yukon still beaming, he could make out the silhouettes of a humvee, and the boots of U.S. Army soldiers. His shocking observation: they were in a firefight with U.S. soldiers.

  Dustin tried to crawl on his belly across the slick road, but there were too many bullets flying within feet of him, so he got up and bolted for the tree. The hail of bullets followed him. Instinctively, and out of self-preservation, he continued to shoot back. Behind the tree, he tried to get a grip on himself. Exhausted and trembling, he sporadically returned fire. The terrifying sound of bullets thumping into the tree vibrated and resonated through his body. Bullets ricocheted off the ground beside him and tree bark flew off like wood passing through a shredder. Red-hot tracers streaked by like speeding fi
reflies, and some struck the tree. The smell of gunpowder and burning wood drifted into Dustin’s nostrils. Real or imagined, it seemed a certainty that at any moment a round would pass clear through the tree.

  Dustin’s brain raced at mach speed. He second-guessed what he had seen while he had been lying in the muck. With his heart pounding through his body armor and gasping for air, he asked himself, “What the fuck was I looking at? Were those really Americans? Or am I just seeing shit?” Once again he moved his face as low as possible to the ground and attempted to view the attackers against the dark sky. There was no error in his original observation, the black ghostly images of boots, human figures, and vehicles in front of him were unmistakably Americans. He knew that at any moment they could begin shooting far greater quantities of explosive ordnance at him and his team members, all of whom were still heavily engaged in fighting for their lives. He had to make a decision. He felt very much alone. He knew what his teammates didn’t know. There was no one to consult on the merits of what he had to do to stop the insanity. The entire burden was on him. Dustin Benson stood up.

  Covered in mud, and struggling with the overwhelming sensations of terror, Dustin laid his rifle down and found the intestinal fortitude and presence of mind to extend his arms skyward, exposing himself to the withering fire. The headlights of the three Crescent SUVs were still shining directly into the eyes of the attackers. To the U.S. soldiers, he was just a dark figure walking toward them. He shouted “Coalition, coalition.” Bullets continued to fly into the mud around him. He could feel the air slice next to his face, as rounds came within inches of ending his life.

  Dustin had committed to this action as the team’s only chance to come out alive. There was no turning back now. The soldiers were shocked to see a surrendering figure approaching them, and it was nothing short of a miracle that they suddenly stopped firing. A soldier hollered out, “Lay down your weapons.” Dustin, with his hands still in the air, was reluctant to reach for the Glock strapped to his thigh. One misinterpreted move would mean certain death. He opted instead to yell back, “I have no weapon except for the sidearm holstered on my leg. I’m an American.”