by Damien Lewis
I went inside and explained things to Dan and Robert. Robert gave me a look, like he couldn’t believe how screwed up this whole place was.
“Is it often like this?” he asked.
“Pretty much, yeah,” I said.
“And we’re paying this guy good money . . .”
“We are, and the worst of it is we don’t have any proper weapons.”
“Listen, guys, let’s not mess around,” Robert told us. “If it gets any worse, relocate to a hotel downtown. First time you really don’t feel safe, get out, end of story.”
After an uneasy night we took Robert to the airport to catch an early flight. It didn’t escape my notice that had I not been persuaded to stay, I would have been catching my own flight out in a couple of days’ time. Still, I’d made my bed. I was going to have to lie in it.
Dan and I headed for the Mission, and it was straight into an early meeting with Rosie. We got chatting over a coffee and she revealed that she was scheduled to be here only for a month, as were Adam and Jim. After that, she was off to work at the U.S.Mission in Nigeria on a yearlong contract.
“You seem to have worked in just about every bad place the world has to offer,” Rosie remarked to me. “Any experience of Nigeria? Any idea what it’s like?”
“Honestly, it’s a shitehole, and especially if you’re going to be stationed in Lagos. It’s a dangerous old place, particularly for a woman.”
“When were you there?”
“On and off several times over the past few years, and mostly working antipiracy. They’ve got a problem with piracy off the coast, just like they have in Somalia.”
“So Benghazi versus Lagos: which would you go for—not that I’ve got a choice?”
“On balance, Benghazi. By rights, as we helped topple Gaddafi the Libyans should be our friends.”
Rosie nodded. “I guess so.”
I didn’t want to start moaning on about all the problems here—the 17th February Militia being the worst. I figured I needed to show willingness first, and once Rosie was fully up to speed I could give voice to some of my worst concerns.
“Okay, so the guard force,” Rosie began. “So, I’m gonna drill them to death until they’re exactly as we want them. I want to hit them with drills when they least expect it, so at all different times of the day. If I ask you, can you come at say ten at night or three in the morning, so we can really shake ’em up?”
“No problem. Tell me what time you need me and I’ll get Tom to drop me over.”
“I’m gonna hammer and hammer them to get them exactly right.”
I smiled. “Great. Perfect. Let’s do it.”
“No time like the present, then, eh?” Rosie checked her watch. “Say we start the first drill at ten hundred hours, so an hour-thirty from now? I’ll take the front gate, Jim can take the side gate, and I’ll have Adam in the TOC.”
“You got it.”
At ten o’clock sharp Rosie rushed up to the guard supervisor, who happened to be Nasir, and yelled that the compound was under attack. For a long moment Nasir just stood there with his mouth hanging open. The guards carried walkie-talkie-type radios for communications between themselves and the TOC, but since most couldn’t speak any English the alarm had to be raised in a way that all understood. Hence the drill that I’d banged into them: hit the duck-and-cover alarm.
For a moment I feared the guard force was going to fail dismally. But then Drizzi, one of the original guards who’d helped us recruit the new guys, hit the duck-and-cover alarm using the mobile fob that he carried on patrol.
A disembodied metallic voice started blaring out from the loudspeakers set all around the compound. “WHAAAH! WHAAAH! WHAAAH! DUCK-AND-COVER! DUCK-AND-COVER! DUCK-AND-COVER!”
The next part of the drill was for the guards to hit the deck, while they checked out the level of attack they were facing. If it was a serious force of armed men they were to run for it. Otherwise they were to muster at the canteen and wait for further instructions.
It was all a bit of a mess but eventually they made it to the muster point. Nasir radioed Adam in the TOC, telling him that the guard force was awaiting further instructions. It had been a bit slow and disorganized, but they’d got there in the end. I’d have given them a six out of ten, but this was Rosie’s show and she was going to do the debrief.
Once we were stood down from the drill Rosie gathered the guards around her. I could hear them sniping at each other in Arabic, each trying to blame the other for why it hadn’t been one hundred percent.
“You don’t tell me what to do—that’s my job!”
“If it’s your job then do it properly, or don’t bother.”
“We had this foreign woman watching us and you messed things up . . .”
“Since when do we work under a woman anyway . . .”
Libyan men tend to treat their own women pretty abysmally. Working under a female boss was going to be very alien to them. Rosie was standing there ready to speak, but they were ignoring her. This promised to be very interesting.
“Right, stop right there!” Rosie ordered. “Shut it! This is when you get to hear from me.”
The guards had gone completely and utterly silent. It wasn’t so much what Rosie had said as how she’d said it. Rosie was totally fluent in Arabic, yet she’d not let on to a soul. Even I hadn’t known. The faces of the guards were a picture. They were in shock. They now knew that Rosie had understood just about every word they’d been saying, and some of it had been pretty sexist stuff. Not only could Rosie speak fluent Arabic, she could write it as well, which blew me away.
Rosie’s debrief was merciless, but that was only the start of it. Debrief done, she made them do the same drill all over. After that was done, she just yelled at them: “Again! Again! Again!” She made them do it eight times that first day, running like crazy and getting hammered through the boiling heat of the day. The guards were dropping by the end of it, but Rosie hardly seemed to have broken a sweat.
The next shift got hammered just as intensively, and the next after that—and so the guards learned the hard way to have the highest respect for their new, female boss. At the end of a forty-eight-hour period of such full-on drilling there wasn’t a man among them who didn’t think that Rosie was the business.
Rosie gathered Jim and Adam and we had a collective heads-up. “They’re improving,” she told me, happily. “But they still got some way to go.”
“I totally agree. A lot of them are pretty much brand-new, fresh out of training, but at least we’ve got rid of the shit.”
“I’d say they’re eighty-five percent there. We’re getting there.”
The main issue was what the guards were to do if attacked by an armed force. All three RSOs were of a similar mind. Once they’d hit the duck-and-cover alarm, they were to make themselves scarce if it was safe to do so.
“They’re to run, get out of here, and blend in with the crowd,” Rosie concluded. “And from there they’re to make their way to safety.”
Rosie said she had an extra reason for wanting the guards gone if we hit trouble. It would be hard enough for three RSOs to secure the clients—the diplomatic staff—let alone having to look after a bunch of unarmed Libyan males.
The guards grew to love Rosie, just as much as they respected her. The fact that she spoke fluent Arabic got her halfway to winning their hearts and minds, but it was her iron control coupled with her kindly attentiveness that won them over. She was forever taking them chilled bottles of water, and checking if they were okay and that they understood what they were there for. She even started a daily English lesson for them, which was a big hit.
And no doubt about it, under Rosie’s instruction the guards were getting good. If we’d been able to train them to use weapons and arm them properly, they’d have been a force to be reckoned with.
More was the pity then that all they carried were those flip-out metal batons.
CHAPTER SEVEN
From the get-go Rosie
, Adam, and Jim worked insanely hard. They were up at 5:00 A.M. checking on the overnight security. They had to plan routes to get the clients—the diplomats—to meetings, plotting their A-to-Bs based on intelligence, known danger—“red”—areas, and prior reconnaissance of the meeting location. They would be working until close to midnight. Three RSOs were certainly better than one, but more were needed to handle the workload, and they needed to be stationed here for longer.
The turnover was a major issue, for as soon as an RSO got to know the ropes, they—like Lee—were burned-out and gone. That formed part of Rosie’s earliest feedback that she sent to Washington, but I got the sense that Washington was proving to be something of a black hole: it sucked in every bit of information that she gave them, but nothing came back in return.
Thankfully, my local intel network was proving somewhat more responsive. I’d put out the word that I wanted maximum vigilance, and my guards were to report to me any information they might pick up on the streets. I wanted anything on the Shariah Brigade, plus other assorted bad guys. Snippets of intel started filtering in, and word was that people were getting “disappeared” almost daily.
The city’s supposedly peaceful image was a mirage, behind which dark forces were at work. There was a growing Al Qaeda presence in the area. Partly, it was lone-wolf-type extremist individuals, and partly the ranks of the Shariah Brigade. The Shariah Brigade hailed from the eastern provinces of Libya, an area long associated with Islamic extremism. They’d supposedly joined the liberation struggle to topple Gaddafi, but in reality they were a coalition of various extremist militias that had emerged after Gad-dafi’s downfall.
Their fighters were tolerated in Benghazi but hardly welcomed. Shortly after Gaddafi had fallen the disappearances had begun. It was an “open secret,” according to my guards, that there was a long list of those who were to be “dealt with.” It included top commanders from the Libyan Army and Air Force, government officials, bureaucrats, and businessmen, plus anyone else who could be remotely linked to the former regime.
These people were getting blown away on the streets of Benghazi. There was no rule of law to stop these extrajudicial executions, and it wasn’t just the Shariah Brigade who were at it. All the militias—the 17th February included—were apparently putting bullets in people’s heads as they worked through the “to-kill” list. It was cold-blooded murder and score-settling and it was rampant.
The fact that the militia who formed our QRF were out there killing on the streets made the situation at the Embassy seem all the more insane. There were even reports that 17th February militiamen were joining the ranks of the Shariah Brigade. The more I looked around me, the more I saw Shariah fighters lurking around the city. It was deeply ominous. I kept briefing the new RSOs on what my guards were telling me, and what I was seeing with my own eyes.
Jim, Adam, and Rosie thanked me for the warnings but said they were aware that there were “Al Qaeda elements” in the city. I didn’t have a clue where they were getting their intel, for they didn’t seem to be building up much of a local network of sources.
Whenever they left the Embassy compound they were driving their armored SUVs all tooled up with weaponry. In a sense they were better protected than me, for I drove around in a thin-skinned local vehicle, keeping a low profile. But they were still only three, and that didn’t make the Embassy itself a great deal better protected. We’d had some small-scale attacks already, and I was worried that if the bad guys came in force they could seriously hurt us.
All three of the new RSOs put the obvious question to me: Did I think the bad guys could get into the Embassy compound?
“If they come at night with ten guys or more, they can take us,” was my reply. “They’ll hit the point of greatest weakness, the front gate, take that out, and kill the guards. No duck-and-cover alarm will be pressed, so you’ll have no warning. You’ll be in your beds, with no weapons or body armor. They’ll be in among you and have the compound before you even know it.”
They knew this was the truth but they hated having to hear it—for what more could they do to counter the threat? We were desperately in need of more manpower and resources, but for that they needed backing from Washington.
In my head I’d nicknamed the new lead RSO “Take-No-Shit Rosie.” Already she’d caught our first guard sleeping on duty. She told me right away and made it clear that it was unacceptable. I told her that I was in complete and utter agreement with her. I drew up a sign in Arabic and posted it in the guardroom. It warned that anyone caught sleeping on duty would face immediate dismissal. All the guards would be forced to read it before starting their shift.
A week or so into Rosie’s reign Tom was driving Dan and me to work when I spotted a familiar figure on the street. It was Alif, one of the first guards that I’d sacked and the first who’d threatened to kill me. I was getting reports that Alif was thirsting for revenge, and that he was trying to foment unrest among my guards. I figured now was as good a time as any to deal with it.
“Pull over, will you, mate,” I remarked to Tom.
Being none the wiser Tom drew to a halt at the roadside. I jumped out and walked up to Alif. “I hear you’re still looking to kill me,” I announced, in Arabic. “Here I am. Come on—you and me, man to man.”
By now Tom had realized what I was up to. He came rushing over and tried grabbing me by the shoulder to pull me back. “You can’t do this, Morgan, you can’t do this!” he hissed, in English. “You can’t just challenge him on the streets.”
I shrugged him off. “I can. Just watch me.” I repeated my challenge to Alif, in Arabic.
“I didn’t threaten to kill you,” Alif tried. “It’s Dan I wanted to kill. He was the one who disrespected me.”
“Well, that’s even worse,” I countered. “Dan’s older than me, and he’s old enough to be your father. You know, in the Koran it says you must respect your elders. You should be ashamed.”
“But Dan disrespected me . . .” Alif tried again.
“Well, d’you want me to go fetch him? He’s in the vehicle. You can have it out with him right here and now, if you fancy it.”
“No, no . . . As you say, we should respect the elders.”
“Look, let’s cut the crap. I’m the one who sacked you. So either we get it on now or you can shut it. Period.”
“Okay, I will shut up,” Alif conceded.
“That’s better. And don’t ever disrespect Dan. He’s seen more action in more wars than you’ve had hot dinners. Got it?”
Alif told me that he had.
“And if you keep trying to mess with my guard force, trust me, I’ll come looking for you.”
Alif assured me that he wouldn’t dream of it. As far as he was concerned, we were all good.
I made my way back to the vehicle feeling it was a job well done. But I could tell that Tom was fuming. No sooner were we under way again than he started.
“Morgan, you cannot do this! Challenging people on the streets! You do not understand Muslim culture . . .”
That was it. Tom worked for us, we paid his wages, and for days now we’d had this twenty-year-old Libyan twerp giving us death threats and messing with our guards—and here was Tom trying to defend the guy. I’d had more than enough of this.
“Listen, mate, I’ve worked in Iraq, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and the list goes on. I’ve seen more Muslim culture and more Muslim wars than you’ll ever see. Between us, Dan and I have twenty years’ experience working in the most dangerous parts of the Islamic world, so don’t ever think you can use your you-don’t-understand-Muslim-culture bullshit on us. You need to sort out where your loyalties lie. Is it to us and the guards, or to Alif and his sort?”
Tom didn’t reply. He knew he was out of order, not to mention out of his depth. I expected honorable, decent behavior from my guards, and especially from the guard force commander. If Tom’s loyalties lay with Alif—a lazy, duplicitous ex-employee—then I’d get rid of him, too, and I t
hink he more than knew that. I had challenges enough to deal with as far as the guards were concerned, without Tom’s shit on top.
It was around this time that Dan rotated back to Britain, leaving me in the hot seat. I figured I needed to get myself seriously “local” now. I would be back at the villa every night, alone, and I wouldn’t always manage to settle it so I had our shared AK-47 with me. I needed to get streetwise. I got Tom to take me into downtown Benghazi, but to drop me at different locations and to wait in the car as I moved around the streets running whatever errands needed doing.
The more time I spent alone on the streets, and the more I settled into the pace of life here, the less anyone seemed to notice me. I needed to be able to operate low-profile like this, for I had zero backup. At the best of times Tom was a drive away, and I wasn’t sure I could really count on him. As for Rosie, Adam, and Jim, if I was hit in the villa it made sense that the bad guys might be coming for them, too, in which case they’d have to prioritize their clients—the Embassy staff.
In such circumstances the only person I could depend upon was myself. I didn’t particularly like it. It hadn’t been like this on previous jobs. The smallest team I’d ever been a part of was four, and that was when shepherding a ship through pirate seas. On a ground operation such as this one you’d never normally form a team of fewer than eight, all of whom would be well-experienced and battle-hardened Brits, Aussies, Kiwis, Canadians, or Americans.
In addition, you’d have a layer of good local security around you. In Helmand Province, Afghanistan, we’d had some immensely brave Pashtuns working for us, and I’d grown close to our local operators. I’d made friends for life there, literally. One guy used to guard our villa in the midst of Lashkar Gah, the capital of the province. It could hold up to sixteen men, and it was a safe house where we could run to if we’d been badly hit.
We’d nicknamed him “Crack Head,” for he looked so wired from all the gunfights he’d been in, but he was one hundred percent reliable. He had a team of four under him, and he’d been there since day one of G4S—the security company—getting the contract. Nothing ever seemed too much for Crack Head. I’d have given anything to have a few guys like him on our security team here in Benghazi. If Crack Head and his boys had been parachuted in to replace the 17th February Militia, then we’d have had a QRF to be reckoned with.