A Bloody Business

by Gerry Schumacher

  “Jeff tries to contact Abu Hyder again but with no success. So Jeff figured that a little time and some sleep might be a good idea. Hyder probably doesn’t even know what happened yet. Jeff assigns watch duty, and a few minutes later most of the guys are snoring, including our prisoner. I couldn’t sleep. I’m still pumped with adrenaline. I was proud of the team and reflecting on how well we had executed the raid. Besides, I was still on edge about what might happen next. Shit, this is the kind of stuff I had only dreamed about, and I wasn’t going to miss any of it. Jeff and I stayed awake. Around 8 a.m., Jeff made phone contact with Hyder.

  “We woke up Mohammed and he translated on the phone for Jeff. As the conversation developed, everyone was beginning to stir and collect together. Jeff shouted his threats. Mohammed translated the ‘smack’ into Arabic and shouted it to Abu. Abu shouted into the phone in Arabic. Mohammed shouted the translation of Abu’s terse and heated remarks back to us. This went on for ten minutes. It would have made quite a show for Saturday Night Live.

  “Jeff said we would turn over the guard and all the documents to the U.S. Army. The shouting continued. He said the army would rip Hyder’s corrupt business apart. Jeff continued with threats like Hyder and his family would be broke and in jail. Hyder didn’t take kindly to the verbal assault. Arabs can be quite prideful, especially if they are men of stature. Abu Hyder hung up on us. We all looked at each other. Well, shit, now what? That wasn’t supposed to happen!

  “On the one side of things, we had underestimated Abu Hyder. On the other side, Abu had underestimated Jeff Katz. This standoff was now ratcheted up to the next level. Jeff dialed the phone again. Abu Hyder had been steaming and still was. Hyder’s anger had developed into a rage. This time Abu just laid into him. It was now Jeff who was taking the brunt of the verbal abuse. Finally, Jeff says in a relatively calm voice, ‘Here’s the deal: We were wrong in threatening to turn over your man and all the documents to the army. We won’t do that.’ Of course, all of us are watching Jeff apologetically make these remarks. We’re like, huh? That’s when Jeff really blew into Hyder.

  “We’re going to kill your man!” Jeff shouts, and it sounds believable.

  “Now Mohammed is getting better and better at communicating Jeff’s level of anger,” Brad said. “Except for the fact that he was speaking to Abu in Arabic, he even sounded like Jeff! You really gotta hand it to these Iraqis on our team. I mean, hell, they live in the community. They’ll still be there long after we’re gone. I mean, talk about loyalty to us. It takes some real balls to be helping us like this!

  “Jeff doesn’t stop there; he’s really on a roll now. He’s yelling at the top of his lungs: ‘I’m not only going to kill this guy, but before I do, he will tell me where you live. Then I’ll rocket your fucking office and level it to the ground. Next, I’m coming to your house. When I’m done, there will be nothing left of your home, and I don’t give a shit who’s inside when I do it! I’ll blow up your neighbors’ homes, too, and I’ll tell them this was done because Abu Hyder has stolen from Americans and you are a thief. We’ll tell them that Abu Hyder is responsible for this.’ Jeff suddenly spins around and jerks the prisoner to his feet. The prisoner’s hands are still tied and the hood is still over his face. Jeff yells at Mohammed, who still has Hyder on the phone, ‘Tell this guy that I’m not fucking around. If we don’t get the trucks back, I will kill him!’ Mohammed is in mid-sentence with the translation when Jeff pulls out his Glock 21, levels it on the guard’s head, and pops off two rounds.

  “Whoa, that got everyone’s attention. I was stunned. The team was stunned. Abu Hyder’s ranting on the phone stopped. Mohammed’s mouth was wide open. Everyone was just frozen. That is, everyone except for the Iraqi prisoner. Jeff had fired the two rounds a few inches off to the side of his head. Our Iraqi prisoner was fine, but it was clear that he had the shit scared out of him. The guy started babbling in Arabic. His voice was cracking. He began uncontrollably shuffling his feet. To tell you the truth, I felt bad for him. This guy wasn’t a terrorist. He was just some unlucky bastard [who] happened to work for the wrong person. I wasn’t happy about watching someone stripped of their dignity. It was humbling. Don’t get me wrong, if he had been a terrorist, I could’ve worked on him for days and not missed a wink of sleep. But this was different.

  “Like I said earlier, if Jeff wanted to, he could really make his point felt, and he wasn’t through yet. He grabbed the cell phone from Mohammed and put it up to the prisoner’s mouth. All the while Jeff is yelling, ‘Tell your boss we’re not fooling around, you’re gonna be a dead man if we don’t get those trucks!’ While the prisoner is shaking, stuttering, and trying to talk to Hyder, Jeff fires a couple more shots. Now the guy is just talking a million miles an hour. The whole time, Jeff’s got the barrel of this .45-caliber gun pressed against the guard’s head and the shots are going off right next to the guy’s ear. I don’t think anyone could remain stoic under those conditions. I mean, Christ, this was some heavy-duty shit going down.

  “I think this guy finally believed us. It was clear that he no longer thinks that being taken prisoner by Americans is all a big joke. Now even Hyder is convinced that we’re ‘crazy,’ and he begs us not to kill his guard. Someone said the guy was related to Hyder, but I don’t know about that. Hyder pleads on the phone, ‘Please, please, stop this madness. Don’t kill him. I give you your trucks. Don’t kill him.’ Jeff calms down. He tells Hyder that we’ll return the documents and his guard. We’ll drop them somewhere near Safwan. Hyder says it will take a few hours to get the trucks down to the border. Jeff says, ‘I’ll take your word on it and we’ll drop off your man shortly.’ And then he adds, ‘If there are no trucks, everything I said will happen.’ Abu Hyder had no doubt that this crazy American would actually do it.

  “We loaded up and headed south the twenty or so miles back to Safwan. We fully expected that Hyder’s guys might be waiting for us with an ambush. As we approached Safwan, our three vehicles turned off the main road and we headed about seventy-five yards down a dirt road toward a farmhouse. We slowed down and stopped near a depression on the side of the road. Kids at the house saw us. As they always do, they started running toward us looking for a handout. We tossed out the documents and then rolled out the prisoner, legs and hands still tied, hood still over his head. The kids stopped in their tracks and immediately turned around. They didn’t know what was going on, but when they saw the prisoner tumble out, they knew whatever it was, it wasn’t good. We were crashing now. The up-and-down adrenaline rushes had taken everything out of us. Completely exhausted, we crossed the border into Kuwait. Four hours later, the trucks were delivered to the border, and, to our surprise, so was the money. We hadn’t even asked for the money, but I guess Hyder must have just assumed we wouldn’t be done with him until the money was back too!” Bill Schmidt’s men picked up the trucks and the cash.

  It was over. Paradigm Security still runs their convoys over those same roads every day. They drive through Safwan nearly every morning. At times they see Hyder’s men, collected near an overpass or alongside the road. They’re waiting for some unsuspecting truck to be their next catch. Not much has changed. Sometimes the Paradigm team sees the now-familiar faces of the two guards. When the two groups see one another, they wave and smile like long-lost friends, but the Paradigm convoys are never stopped. They are never harassed. SIMCO has never had another truck hijacked. The Hyder gang knows that Bill Schmidt knows a guy, and Abu Hyder never wants to meet that guy again.

  V. Bomb Dogs

  It’s another hot day and Blek, the bomb dog, has been on guard at the front gate since early morning. He’s thirsty and tired, but relaxing on the job is not in his constitution. At least a dozen times, Blek has caught insurgents trying to get in this compound. He will inspect every truck or car that attempts to enter. Lives depend on how well he does his job. He knows that sometime today an insurgent will probably try to come through this gate with a bomb-laden vehicle. At least he ho
pes so.

  A gray Nissan approaches Blek’s position and comes to a halt a few feet away. Blek studies the vehicle. The driver steps out and moves to the opposite side of the containment wall. He approaches the car. The unmistakable smell of Semtex wafts into the air. All his senses go on alert. He is clearly disturbed. His tail begins to wag furiously. Blek has hit pay dirt!

  The black Dutch Shepherd from Indiana circles the back of the Nissan and begins to whimper and move excitedly. All the preliminary signs are rapidly developing. This is enough. David Carlton, Blek’s handler, isn’t going to wait for the dog to go down into the conclusive alert posture. He pulls on the lead and starts backing away from the car. The Iraqi guards at this entrance to the Al Sadeer complex instantly know that the driver, now standing on the other side of the containment wall, may be an insurgent. Blek is not known for false alerts.

  The soldiers scramble to the safety of the containment wall, and one of them conducts a quick search of the driver. The driver is annoyed and argues with the guards. He says he works at one of the construction projects. He’s got identification to prove it. Several Iraqi soldiers are designated to search the vehicle. First, they scan the surrounding area to determine if there may be an insurgent lurking nearby with a remote-control detonator. Several of the trucks and cars waiting in the line to enter the compound are about twenty-five yards behind at an earlier stop point. Without being directed, they begin to back up. Everyone knows what’s going on, and it doesn’t take much encouragement to get people to begin clearing the area. A couple of soldiers cautiously approach the Nissan. They study the car for trip wires. They use long-handled L-shaped mirrors to look at the underside of the vehicle. Then one of them opens the trunk.

  Inside the trunk are an assortment of blankets, stuffed animals, water bottles, and other junk. An Iraqi guard carefully peels back a corner of one of the blankets. Underneath he can see a maze of wires and explosives. The bomb is ready to blow. Both guards now bolt for the safety of the containment wall. They slam the driver against the wall and yank both his arms behind his back. The insurgent knows the game is up. He is now blabbering Arabic slurs at the Iraqi guards. Blek pegged it right. This insurgent has failed. Dozens of people might otherwise be dead or maimed were it not for a dog. The irony is that most Muslims in Iraq hate dogs.

  This isn’t the first or the last time that David Carlton and his canine companion have found the bombs before the bombs found them. Carlton is a former deputy sheriff dog handler from Charlotte, North Carolina. He served on the Charlotte police force for more than twenty-two years. His father had been a career army soldier but David had never served, and the desire to serve his country in a combat environment had lingered with him for many years. At forty-one, Carlton was too old to enlist in the army, so he took advantage of an opportunity. A friend in the New York Police Department helped him link up with a DynCorp recruiter. David took a leave of absence from the police department and accepted a position as an explosive ordnance dog handler in Iraq.

  In Iraq, David was assigned to provide security for the sprawling ten-square-block Al Sadeer military complex in Baghdad, known to those who reside there as the Pink Flamingo. The obscenely huge pink hotel, the compound’s primary structure, dominates the landscape. Adjacent to the Al Sadeer compound is the Iraqi Department Of Agriculture complex. Dave comments on life inside the complex: “We live in the typical metal boxes and eat over at the hotel. Our food catering contract is with some East Indian company. Everything is curry, curry, and more curry. Every now and then, when the curry is just coming out our ears, the American contractors take over the mess hall. We cook up some American cuisine for all six hundred contractors living here.

  “When I first got to Iraq, in early 2004, we routinely went on patrol in support of army operations. There was a time, early in my tour, where we would jump in an SUV, and myself and couple of buddies would ride downtown to the local shops. Not anymore! Now even a short trip to the airport requires at least four heavily armored cars and a bunch of shooters. It has gotten so much worse over the last year. No one goes outside the gate without being heavily armed and then only if you have to. Even a five-block drive has to be coordinated like a military operation.”

  David continues, “Blek is trained to ‘alert’ on fourteen different explosive components. As a very young puppy he was conditioned to distinguish these scents, and in training he is always rewarded with a tennis ball. Blek would die for his tennis ball. He loves that ball more than anything in the world. I swear, he would jump out the window of an eight-story building to get his tennis ball. When he begins to detect one of the correct scents, his tail begins wagging, he gets excited, and when he is certain of his discovery, he crouches down on all fours in the alert position. Once he is in that alert position, it damn near takes a bulldozer to budge him. When Blek knows he has found the right scent, he wants his reward!

  “Part of my mission in Iraq includes conducting dog-handler training classes at the Baghdad Police Academy. Given that the Muslim culture views dogs as filthy and unclean, it is very difficult to find Iraqis [who] will even work near them. Sometimes we can find a couple of Christian police cadets [who] don’t have a problem with dogs. The Iraqis treat dogs with disdain and often kick and throw rocks at them. Complicating this attitude is the fact that the sons of Saddam Hussein, Oday and Qusay, used dogs to punish errant police officers. They would chain up police officers, and then have attack dogs rip them apart. Most Iraqi people won’t even look at a dog. I think our dogs don’t much care for them either. Their hatred of dogs becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The dogs probably sense the hostility and are reacting in kind.

  “While I can’t prove this, I actually think that sometimes I am a lot safer because I’m with Blek. An insurgent suicide bomber takes one look at me and Blek, and he knows that if he detonates his explosives the dog remains will be all over him. I’ve heard that they believe that if they die spattered with dog parts, they will be considered unclean and unacceptable to enter heaven. Of course, I don’t do anything to dissuade that line of thought. It works for me! I hardly go anywhere without Blek. Oh, and also my MP5 submachine gun, a 9mm Beretta, and a helluva lot of ammunition.

  “When I first got to the Pink Flamingo, our group of contractors saw a lot of problems with the compound security. We began scrounging everything we could to build up obstacles and barriers to prevent entry of vehicle-borne IEDs. We begged, borrowed, and stole whatever we could get our hands on to build a large concrete containment wall. Eventually, we felt we had made some substantial improvements that probably would make us a real challenge for the insurgents. Some people thought we were overreacting.

  “On the morning of March 9, 2005, a garbage truck with two insurgents, one driving and the other standing up and shooting, plowed into the containment wall. The wall was a major factor in the truck not getting too deep into our compound. But even at that, it was later determined that the truck was carrying over two thousand five hundred pounds of explosives—the largest vehicle bomb in Iraq that anyone had ever encountered. The blast knocked me out of bed. Seven of our guards were instantly killed, and it blew out every window in the complex. There were a lot of casualties. One of my friends lost an eye. I think we would have had a bunch more dead people if that wall hadn’t been there.

  “I check anywhere from one hundred to one hundred fifty vehicles entering our complex every day. The scariest moments for me are the few minutes leading up to an alert. When Blek begins to get excited my pucker factor goes way up. I have to quickly determine if he is going into an actual alert or if something else has simply stirred his senses. If a waiting insurgent were to see that my dog is about to alert, he is going to blow the load. I can’t let the insurgent realize by the dog’s behavior or my actions that we are on to him. The guards pretty much know that if I start backing away from the vehicle without giving it a clear, we are probably seconds away from being disintegrated. The dog handlers have a saying, ‘We either have
initial success, or we have total failure.’ There’s nothing in between.

  “As I mentioned earlier, our bomb-sniffing dogs are trained to detect a lot of different components that are used in making explosives. One of those elements is diesel fuel. The problem in Iraq is that everyone uses diesel fuel for damn near everything. We have to untrain the dogs so that they stop alerting on the smell of diesel.

  “Well, another dog handler and friend of mine, Gary Dodds from Tupelo, Mississippi, and his dog, Luke, were walking past a parked diesel tanker. Some U.S. soldiers were milling around the area, working on a couple of other trucks. Luke got excited and just locked up in the alert position. Gary couldn’t get the dog to move. He was losing patience with the dog. Gary started scolding Luke, ‘Get off it already! It’s just a damn diesel truck. There’s no tennis ball here for you! Don’t even think about it. I thought we had gotten past this diesel problem!’ Gary continued to give short tugs on the lead, but the dog wouldn’t budge. Then Gary had an afterthought and gave Luke the benefit of the doubt. He decided to investigate the truck.

  “He circled the truck and didn’t see anything unusual, but Luke kept locking up in the alert position. Gary stepped onto the running boards and took a look inside the cab. His worst nightmare was realized. It was loaded with C-4 explosives and 155mm artillery shells. In milliseconds, Gary’s brain raced with thoughts of what was about to happen. An insurgent was standing about fifty yards away with the remote triggering device. As Gary jumped off the running board, the insurgent pressed down on the garage-door opener.

  “This probably wasn’t the time that the insurgent had intended to blow up the bomb. He most likely had planned on waiting until more soldiers were around the trucks, but now, having been discovered, he had no choice. Besides, the explosion would be big enough to engulf everyone around for two hundred yards, and the secondary explosions of other tankers would surely make him an acceptable martyr.