by Damien Lewis
As I doled out the beers and cakes I kept going on about fitness and diet and nutrition, and warning how bad all of that sugar was going to be for us.
Scotty just grabbed the nearest Ramadan cake and started munching. “Yeah, yeah, I agree—diet, it’s crucial, blah, blah, blah . . . But these cakes—man, they taste good . . .”
“You look like you’re gonna scoff the bloody lot,” I told him. “Better get munching, guys, or they’ll all be in fat Scotty’s gut . . .”
“Indeed, old chap, but you see—I’m Hank Marvin,” Scotty retorted, trying to put on a posh English accent.
“You are what?”
“Hank marvin. It’s Cockney rhyming slang for ‘starving.’ You know: apples and pears—stairs; Scooby Doo—clue; Hank Marvin—starving.”
I just stared at him. “Where do you guys find all this crap?”
Scotty laughed. “Google. I googled ‘Cockney rhyming slang.’ Hell, man, this is the way you guys speak, so why don’t you know this stuff?”
“Do you have any idea where Cockneys are from? They’re from the East End of London. That’s about as far from the Welsh mountains as Texas is to New York. And like I told you before—I’m Welsh, not English.”
“Yeah, okay, but you gotta know some of this stuff,” Scotty insisted. “Come on, tell us some.”
It was happy times all around.
As the evening wore on, Dave got to reminiscing about his family back home. He showed me the photos of him with his wife and baby, and he sure looked like one very happy and contented dad. I reciprocated, showing the guys the snaps of Laura and Lewis, plus me posing as proud pappy. We live up the end of a long dirt track on top of a Welsh mountain—so absolutely in the middle of nowhere. The guys loved the wild look of the place, and I told them—not for the first time—that they were more than welcome to come pay a visit.
Scotty likewise had a young family. It was clear that he and Dave missed their lady partners and their kids just as much as I missed mine. Time away on overseas missions was time away from our families, and especially with young kids you could never get those days back again. Kids grow up so quickly, and as part-absent dads we missed out on so much of the early days and the magic.
I really liked and respected these guys, and the very idea of the risks they were being forced to take here, including getting wasted by a load of Benghazi militiamen, made my blood boil. They clearly felt something similar with regards to me. Dave, Scotty, and Jeff were in their early thirties and I was pushing ten years their senior, so I was something of the old hand. In spite of my grouchy, mouthy, rude ways, I guess there was a part of them that looked up to me a little.
When it came time for me to leave—I couldn’t keep Massoud waiting the entire night—Jeff voiced the thought that I guessed was on each of their minds.
“Morgan—you know we’ve got your back, right? Just ’cause you’re down there on your own, don’t think we haven’t.”
“After all those cakes and beers—man, you gotta know that we’re there for you,” added Scotty.
“No, guys, I’m all right,” I told them. “It’s not your job to come and help me, plus you’ll get into a shit storm if you do. You look after what you got to look after, which is here.”
Jeff fixed me with this look. “No. Understand: You live out there in Benghazi on your own with no support. So, understand—if anything happens to you we will be en route to help immediately.”
“Jeff’s right,” Dave added. “If the shit goes down at your villa you only have to call and we’ll be there. We got your back, buddy.”
I didn’t doubt for one moment that they had. These kind of guys would fight through hell and back for one of their own, and that was how I reckoned they saw me now—as one of their own. I found their words and their brotherhood both uplifting and hugely humbling.
Scotty brought over the last of the beers. “Here you go, man, break a leg. And say, listen, if you ever manage to get to the States, you know you gotta come visit.”
“Sure thing, buddy, come visit,” Dave added. “You’re always welcome in the Ubben family household. I’ll even take you to my church,” he joked. “That’d be awesome.”
In a strange way Dave’s invite was the one that really touched me. I was forever kidding Dave about his beliefs, and he’d never once let it get to him or taken it badly, though he’d have had every right to do so. One lunch I’d listened to him reciting his prayers over his meal—just the sound of it giving me this odd sense of peace—and when he’d finished I’d fired one of my regular digs at him.
“Say, Dave, tell me—just how did Noah manage to cram all those animals into that one ark? It must have been some kind of massive boat.”
Dave had stared at me for a long second, shaking his head in disbelief. Then he’d cracked up laughing. “Come on, man, they dug it up. They dug it up for Chrissakes.”
Around that poolside the four of us agreed on an informal protocol via which we would provide mutual support to one another. If the bad guys hit the Embassy, one of the first things they were to do was call me on my cell phone, so I could head on over. Likewise, I would get their help at the villa if I called for it. And unbeknownst to the four of us, one of us was just about to make such a call.
Massoud had a Libyan Army VHF radio bolted to the dash of his car, which was a crappy old Nissan sedan. The radio sat above the gear lever, and he used to keep it on so he could monitor the radio traffic. A day or so after our poolside party we were driving along and I heard some shouting and screaming over the radio. I asked him what was going on.
“A bomb has just gone off at the Tibesti,” he told me.
Apparently, a car bomb had exploded right outside the hotel, and the roadside scene was chaos right now. As I listened in I heard the sound of a second explosion blasting over the radio. A second car bomb had just gone off, again right outside the Tibesti. I felt sick at the sound of it, for I knew that Scotty and Dave were out on a job with Silvio somewhere near that very location.
I dialed Scotty’s cell phone. I wasn’t surprised when he didn’t answer. It would be against their protocol to take a private call from my number when out on a close protection job, but little did they know I was trying to phone through a warning. I tried Dave.
He answered. “Can’t speak. On a job . . .”
“I know, mate, but listen: two car bombs have just gone off at the Tibesti. Unless you’re in a secure location pull your mission and return to base.”
“Are you sure?” Dave queried.
“I am listening to a live feed on VHF as it’s happening.”
“Thanks.” Dave cut the line.
An hour or so later I got a call from Dave at my beachside villa. “Thanks for the heads-up, buddy. We had no idea. We weren’t far away and we were heading right through that route.”
I told him it was no problem. That’s what brother warriors were for.
I went and sat on my veranda. As I gazed out over the moonlit ocean I could hear the Ramadan partying going on either side of me. Jeff, Scotty, and Dave: they were an awesome bunch of guys. More was the pity I couldn’t invite them down to my place for a good old-fashioned barbecue and beers on the sand, plus maybe some beach volleyball. Lord knows they could do with the downtime.
The following day I was having lunch in the canteen when Silvio came to see me. “I wanted to say thanks for the warning yesterday. You gotta know it’s great having you out there in Benghazi keeping the info coming through, ’cause we’re pretty much going out on those streets blind.”
I shrugged. “It’s the least I can do for you guys. Anyhow, I need to know about this kind of stuff. They’re the kind of dangers I have to avoid as well.”
“I just want you to know from me that sharing that kind of stuff with us—it’s appreciated.”
“Like I said, no problem. A lot of people believe in guarding their intel. Keeping it close. I’m not one of them. Intelligence has to be disseminated if it’s to protect and in
form the good guys. That way we can try to avoid the kind of thing that happened yesterday—those bombings—hurting our people.”
Silvio nodded. “Couldn’t agree with you more. Yesterday’s call—it was one hell of a timely warning, so thanks.”
I smiled. “You earned it. After all, I get to eat in your canteen—and especially when there’s fish on the menu!”
Silvio burst out laughing. “With the goddamn heads on ’n’ all!”
It was later that day when Jeff came up to me at the guardroom. I could tell immediately that something was wrong. The poor bastard looked as if someone had died. He proceeded to tell me the response he’d got to his urgent email to Washington. The reply he’d received was that we were to “keep working with what we’d got.” Come December the security situation would be reassessed, with a view to whether they’d continue with the Mission. Basically, in spite of all the warnings Jeff—and Silvio—had raised, we’d been told to carry on as usual.
Jeff shook his head, despairingly. “It’s no change, buddy. No fucking change at all.” He spat out those last words. He was furious. He was entombed within a dark cloud of anger and I could tell he was at his wits’ end.
He and Silvio had been battling daily to get what we needed in terms of security, yet they’d been given nothing. In fact, they’d been point-blank denied. Jeff had kept trying and trying, and yet he’d been denied, and that rejection and failure as he saw it had broken him. He was a true professional and a perfectionist. He knew that if anything happened it was due in part to his failure to prevent it. Like Rosie before him, he was beating himself up over it.
“Listen, mate, you tried your best,” I told him. “No one could be expected to do any more than you’ve done. Every RSO before you has tried and failed. They keep getting denied. So, it’s not as if it’s a new thing.”
Jeff seemed to take little comfort from what I’d said. He wasn’t the type to take the easy road. He knew the Embassy was horribly vulnerable, and he knew he’d failed to change that. He’d tried his very best and done all he could, but he’d been denied.
The Benghazi Embassy was a disaster waiting to happen, and Washington seemed happy for it to stay that way.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was the first week of September by now and Jeff was scheduled to leave shortly, his month done. Scotty’s and Dave’s contracts had been extended for two weeks, and they were well aware that all the pressure was going to be on them now. They’d be leaving around September 15, when my present stint would also be done. Sleep deprivation was kicking in, on top of the stress, and they looked about as burned-out and finished as Lee had done at the end of his lonely month here.
A couple of days before Jeff’s departure Massoud delivered another intel bombshell. He picked me up from the villa and just as soon as we were under way he started talking.
“So, Morgan, you need to ensure no Embassy staff fly into or out of Benghazi today.”
I asked him why.
“A bad guy was caught at the airport, about to unleash a surface-to-air missile against a passenger aircraft.”
“Fuck me, a SAM? How d’you know?”
“A good friend of mine from the Army works at the airport. He is the one who caught him.”
“You sure it was a SAM? I mean, it’s a big piece of kit. It’s not as if you can stuff it in your pocket.”
“Yes, I am sure.”
“Any idea what type it was?”
“Shoulder-launched. An Igla-S we think.”
I phoned a warning through to Jeff, knowing that it would get relayed direct to the Annex. With the Annex boys being tasked to hunt for MANPADS—“SAM” being the generic acronym for surface-to-air missiles—this was sure to be of top interest to them. One of the bad guys had been caught red-handed trying to shoot down an airliner, which was just what the Americans feared would happen—hence the Annex being here, to try to stop them.
Along with the thanks I got from Jeff for the intel, the word that came back from the Annex was this: Where the HELL is that Brit getting all this stuff? If I hadn’t needed Massoud as much as I did—he was a lifeline for a lone white-eye operator like me living out in Benghazi—I would have suggested he go on the Annex’s payroll. But right now I was determined to keep Massoud real close, or at least until I was finished with my time here.
Jeff left on September 3. I really did not want that guy to go. We shook hands, then did a man-hug. He thanked me for doing a great job with the guards, and for all the int and the warnings I’d given. He told me that I was welcome to visit him in the States anytime, and I reciprocated, extending an invitation to the Welsh hills. But the goodbye was short and sweet. I couldn’t look Jeff in the eye, and he didn’t want to make eye contact with me, either.
I turned away as fast as I could, because in truth I was all choked up at his leaving. The pool parties had become a regular thing by now, and we’d grown close. More important, we knew we had the skills and the experience to sort this place out, if only we’d had backing from Washington. I didn’t doubt the capabilities of Jeff’s replacement, but I was going to be gone in a couple of weeks myself, and I didn’t think that anything would change in the interim. Jeff and I couldn’t look each other in the eye because we knew that we’d failed.
Jeff’s replacement, Alex James, was a short, wiry, and quiet kind of guy. Jeff had briefed me that Alex had been stationed at the Tripoli Embassy for almost a year, so he was sure to know his stuff. But I was tired now of the RSO rotations, and all I really wanted was to go out on a high with Scotty and with Dave. I had no desire to return to this utterly messed-up situation and I was counting down the days until my leaving.
Along with Alex came a new IT guy, Sean Smith. Rosie had been the first to clear it with IT that I could eat in the canteen, but I needed to check in with Sean to make sure I was good to continue doing so. I went and sought him out in his IT room, in the rear of the TOC.
“Hi, I’m Morgan from Blue Mountain. When I’m in is it okay for me to eat at the canteen?”
Sean gave me this look, like it wasn’t a question I should even have to ask. “Fuck, one hundred percent yeah. Far as I’m concerned you work here to protect guys like me, so you’re one of us. Damn right you can eat here.”
Over lunch I noticed that Alex was wearing an Arsenal cap. Arsenal is one of the top soccer teams in Britain, but being a rugby man I’m no great fan of soccer.
I nodded at his cap. “What’s that piece of shit you’ve got on your head?”
He removed the hat and glanced at it, as Dave and Scotty dissolved into laughter. “This? It’s a gift from a British friend.”
“Well, all I can say is your friend must hate you. That’s one horrific soccer team.”
In truth, it could have been any soccer team on that hat and I’d have ripped into Alex. I just hated soccer. But more to the point I was pissed about the fact that we had lost Jeff as our chief RSO, and I guess I was taking it out on the new guy. But at least it broke the ice a bit, and Alex took it in very good spirits.
Once everyone had finished lunch, Sean the new IT guy and I got to chat for a good hour over coffee. He was a smiley, shaven-headed dude who was based at a diplomatic mission in The Hague, in Holland. He told me the Hague job was a great contract to be working, especially as he was there with his wife and kids. He’d been posted out to Benghazi for a twenty-eight-day duration only, after which he’d be straight back to The Hague.
“I’m at The Hague on a three-year contract,” he added. “It’s fantastic. I love it. What a great place to live.”
I told Sean how I’d served with the British Army for a year or so on the Dutch-German border, so not far from The Hague. We’d paid a lot of visits to Holland, and we’d loved the country and it’s people. Sean talked a bit about some of his previous postings—about being in the Baghdad Mission and getting hammered by mortars on a daily basis. He’d been in the job for a good ten years and he was more than used to having incoming.
&nbs
p; “But you know, this is gonna be my last hostile environment,” Sean remarked. “It’s just not fair on the wife and kids—this kind of shit. Anyway, I’ve done my share of hostile deployments: time for others to take the strain. I won’t be forced to do any more, that’s for sure—’cause I’ve done so many.” He paused. “So anyways, what d’you think of the security here?”
I needed to choose my words carefully. I didn’t want to scare the guy too much. “Well, my guards are good, that’s for sure. They’re shit-hot. But they can only do so much since they don’t carry weapons.”
“They sure look the part. They look really good. So what do you think of the QRF?”
I sighed. “Don’t get me started.” I didn’t want to say what I was thinking: If the bad guys attack you’re all dead. I restricted myself to this: “Let’s just hope if anything happens the QRF perform.”
“Would people be able to get in—the bad guys, I mean?”
“Yeah, as I’ve told all RSOs before—if there’s a substantial amount of the bad guys they’re gonna get in. But the RSOs will look after you. I can’t see it happening, anyway. Nothing like that has happened so far.”
“Okay, well, we should be fine then. Seems quiet enough, eh?”
Sean was used to working at embassies that were heavily fortified and with U.S. Marines as guards. We had none of that here. I was trying to be nice to him and give him some kind of reassurance. But I will regret saying those words for the rest of my days.
Things settled into a kind of a rhythm now. Ramadan was over and Dave and Scotty were out doing missions on the ground. Alex kept himself pretty much to himself, for he was busy manning communications in the TOC. I ran on the beach in the early mornings, kept on top of my guard force during the day, and every night I ticked off another day until I would be gone.
September 8 came around and Dave, Scotty, and I had less than a week to go now—but the boys seemed really on edge. They kept pacing the compound, making sure the guards were in place, and checking the barriers, the gates, and the fencing. I knew something was up, I just didn’t know what. Scotty was my linkman over the guard force and he came over to talk.