Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by James Ashcroft
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Glossary
Maps
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Afterword
Index
Copyright
About the Book
THE MISSION: Get in. Rescue an entire family from death on the streets of Baghdad. Get everyone out alive.
THE PAY: Saving the life of a friend.
Gun-for-hire James ‘Ash’ Ashcroft thought he’d left Iraq behind. Last time he only got out alive thanks to the bravery of his interpreter and friend Sammy. But now a call for help means Ash must once again face the chaos of war-torn Baghdad – and this time there’s no pay cheque. Abandoned by the occupying Coalition Forces, Sammy and his family face certain death at the hands of the Shia-dominated Iraqi Police and the death squads that roam the streets unless Ash and his team can get in and get them to safety over the border. This is the action-packed story of their audacious escape from Baghdad. It is a gripping account of the chaos of war, where the only thing that can be relied upon is the bond between former brothers-in-arms.
About the Author
James Ashcroft is a former British Infantry Captain who served in West Belfast and Yugoslavia, and trained with various elite US Army and Marine Units. Since leaving the army James has spent twelve years as a security and risk consultant to multi-national clients and high net worth individuals around the world. He worked as a private security contractor in Iraq from September 2003 to May 2005. He published Making a Killing in 2006. This is his second book.
Also by James Ashcroft
Making a Killing
Escape from Baghdad
James Ashcroft
with Clifford Thurlow
IN MEMORIAM
Philip
Jason
James
Hendriks
Johannes
Mohanned
Hayder
Riyadh
Ziadh
Khaled
Sean
Oleg
Vance
Susie
When unable to wear the lion’s skin, clothe yourself in the fox’s . . . either the highway of courage, or the byway of cunning . . . and the wise have won much oftener than the valorous.
Baltasar Gracian, The Art of Worldly Wisdom
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done . . .
Alfred Lord Tennyson, ‘Ulysses’
The shifts of Fortune test the reliability of friends.
Cicero, On Friendship
If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow human being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.
William Penn
The Babylonians, in order to reduce the consumption of food, herded together and strangled all the women in the city – each man exempting only his mother and one other woman whom he chose out of his household to bake his bread for him.
Herodotus, The Histories
The sand of the desert is sodden red –
Red with the wreck of a square that broke;
The Gatling’s jammed and the Colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks
And England’s far, and Honour a name . . .
Sir Henry John Newbolt, ‘Vitaï Lampada’
They’ve got us surrounded again, the poor bastards.
Creighton W. Abrams, Jr.
GLOSSARY
.50 cal 12.7mm-calibre anti-matériel round, also a term used to refer to the Browning machine-gun firing that calibre
5.565.56 x 45mm-calibre rounds, standard NATO calibre since 1979
7.62 NATO7.62 x 51mm round used in the GPMG and rifles such as the G3 and FAL
7.62 short 7.62 x 39mm round used in the AK47, RPD and SKS
9-milly British Army slang for 9mm pistol
AAFES Welfare shopping organization establishing shops for US forces around the world on US bases. Commonly known as the PX
Abrams US main battletank M1A2, probably the best in the world, 120mm main armament, .50 cal machine-gun and two 7.62mm GPMGs
ACOG American 4x magnification optical rifle sight
Actions on Term used to describe standard operating procedures for any given scenario
AK47 Soviet assault rifle firing 7.62 short, available folding or fixed stock with 30- and 40-round magazines or 75-round drum. Later models also known as AKM.
AIF Anti-Iraqi Forces, official nomenclature for insurgents.
AP Armour Piercing
Barrett M82/M107 .50 cal anti-matériel semi-automatic rifle
BIAP Baghdad International Airport
Blackhawk US utility helicopter, military designation UH-60, usually armed with two machine-guns, either 7.62mm GPMGs or mini-guns
Blackwater Blackwater Security Consulting, a strategic division of Blackwater USA, a PSC operating in Iraq
Bradley Bradley M2 Infantry Fighting Vehicle, or M3 Cavalry variant tracked, armed with 25mm chain-gun and 7.62mm GPMG. Usually carries TOW missiles, although some variants carry anti-aircraft Javelin or Stinger missiles. Three crew and six passengers in the M2
Browning Browning Hi-Power pistol, or GP35, a 9mm automatic pistol with a 13- or 20-round magazine. Made by FN. Sometimes also used to refer to the Browning M2 .50 cal machine-gun
Casevac Casualty Evacuation
CF Coalition Forces
‘Commando cord’ Tightly woven, thin, green utility cord capable of taking a fully laden soldier’s weight, used by Royal Marines. Apparently just like para cord, but ‘just a little bit stronger’
CP Close Protection, bodyguarding activity
CPA Coalition Provisional Authority, the interim government installed by the US government after the invasion of Iraq. Also refers to the presidential-palace compound later known as the ‘Green Zone’, the ‘International Zone’
DF Defensive Fire
Dragunov Soviet-bloc semi-automatic sniper rifle firing 7.62 long
DynCorp DynCorp International, a PSC operating in Iraq
Egyptian PT Sleeping
FN Fabrique Nationale. Belgian firearms manufacturer that has produced some of the best weapons in the world, used by armies the world over, including the Browning pistol, the MAG, the Minimi and many others
GPMG General-Purpose Machine-Gun. See also MAG
GPS Global Positioning System, satellite navigation system that can be handheld, the size of a cellphone, or vehicle-mounted and, for no good reason anyone could ever explain to me, anything up to the size of a dustbin lid on the roof
Green Zone Or ‘GZ’. Compound surrounding the CPA and US Embassy palaces, approximately 4 sq km in the centre of Baghdad. Later known as the International Zone or IZ
Humvee Standard 4x4 utility v
ehicle of the US forces. Armed with anything from SAWs and 240s to .50 cals and Mk19s
ICDC Iraqi Civil Defence Corps, local troops recruited and trained by CF to carry out military security duties. They had a reputation for being corrupt, with a strong tendency to desert with all their kit
IDF Indirect Fire
IED Improvised Explosive Device. A bomb
ING Iraqi National Guard. Replaced the ICDC
IP Iraqi Police, also known as ‘Iraqi 5-Oh’ or ‘Baghdad’s Finest’
Jundhi Term given for local-nationality truck drivers
Jimpy See MAG
Katyusha Artillery rocket
KIA Killed In Action
Kiowa OH58D Kiowa Warrior, single-engine US attack/recce helicopter with two universal weapons pylons capable of accepting combinations of Hellfire missile, the Air-to-Air Stinger (ATAS) missile, 2.75" Folding Fin Aerial Rocket (FFAR) pods, and a .50 cal machine-gun. Tons of high-tech avionics make this an extremely versatile helicopter, but the extra weight of weapons and electronics systems has given this airframe a reputation for very difficult auto-rotations in the event of engine failure
LAV Light Armoured Vehicle, usually wheeled 8x8. Used by many countries in multiple configurations, originally based on the MOWAG Piranha Chassis
LMG Light Machine-Gun
Long Slang for rifle, i.e. a long weapon as opposed to a Short
M1 See Abrams main battletank
M16 Standard battle rifle of US forces, firing 5.56mm rounds
M2 See Bradley
M203 40mm grenade launcher fitted under barrel of M16 or M4, sometimes just referred to as the ‘203’
M240 See MAG
M249 See Minimi
M4 5.56mm carbine, compact version of M16 rifle
MAG General-purpose machine-gun manufactured by FN. An excellent and extremely reliable design used all over the world, firing 7.62mm NATO from a disintegrating belt left-hand feed, recently adopted by US forces as the M240 or M240G (Marines), used by the British Army since 1964 and simply called the ‘GPMG’ or more affectionately the ‘jimpy’
Minimi Light machine-gun manufactured by FN of Belgium, firing 5.56mm from a disintegrating belt left-hand feed, also capable of feeding from M16 magazines if no belted ammunition is available. A compact and reliable weapon when in good condition. Used by US forces under the designation M249 SAW
Mk19 40mm automatic grenade launcher, vehicle- or tripod-mounted
MNF-I Multi-National Forces Iraq, new politically correct term for Coalition Forces
MRE Meals Ready to Eat, US ration packs
ODA Operational Detachment Alpha
PKM Soviet GPMG firing 7.62 long from a non-disintegrating belt fed in from the right-hand side. Also known as ‘PKC’ or ‘BKC’ by the Iraqis
PMC Private Military Contractor
PSD Personal Security Detail, used as a noun or a verb
PX See AAFES
RPD Soviet machine-gun from 1953, very light, fires 7.62 short from a non-disintegrating belt fed in from the left-hand side. Manufactured and found in most former communist-bloc countries and especially SE Asia. Also known as ‘Degtyarev’ by the Iraqis
RPG RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade, a common Soviet weapon featuring a reusable launcher tube and a separate rocket with an 84mm high-explosive anti-tank warhead
SAW Squad Automatic Weapon. See Minimi
Septic Or Septic Tank, rhyming slang for Yank
Short Slang for pistol or sidearm
Sig Sig Sauer firearms manufacturers, who produce the quite excellent P226 and P228 pistols amongst other weapons
USP A Heckler & Koch pistol
VBIED Vehicle-borne IED
VCP Vehicle checkpoint, a British term. US equivalent is TCP, Traffic Control Point
Baghdad
Escape route – Baghdad to Amman
PROLOGUE
ON WEDNESDAY, 19 MARCH 2003, my former regiment, the Duke of Wellington’s, joined the Coalition Forces in the invasion of Iraq.
It happened to be my daughter Natalie’s third birthday.
I was working in a law office in the City and watched the news in a wine bar at lunchtime. As I travelled home that night on the Tube with a pink box tied in ribbons, I had a taut feeling in my gut and it felt as if my tie was strangling me to death. I daydreamed of quitting my job and rejoining my old battalion, but in three weeks the famous statue of Saddam was toppled and the war was over.
But the seeds of dissatisfaction had been sown. Law and the London Underground were not for me. I was thirty-seven years old. I was drinking a bottle of wine with dinner every night and grey hair was beginning to thread through the bronze.
A month passed and I got a call from an old army buddy by the name of Angus McGrath, a former infantry officer like myself, a fellow Scot not known for wasting 50p on a friendly phone call. He was working in Baghdad for a private security group called Spartan. They needed more bodies – $500 a day to begin with, full insurance, an easy job you could do standing on your head, start immediately.
I didn’t need to think twice. After Oxford, I had gone to Sandhurst and served as a captain for six years in hotspots like Northern Ireland and Bosnia. It wasn’t a great life, but the company had been great, I had taken pride in my achievements and, most importantly, I was good at it.
Krista, the lady in my life, wasn’t exactly thrilled, but she knew me well enough to know that I wasn’t happy in my career and the money, at least, was going to pay off our credit-card bills. I went out and bought cargo pants, desert boots, some sand-coloured shirts, a couple of holsters, a pair of shades and a daysack to throw it all in. Before the week was out, I was at Heathrow, waiting for my flight to Amman.
From 2003 to 2005, I worked with a team of former British and South African soldiers as a private security contractor. Of the first $80 billion of reconstruction money granted to Iraq by the US Congress, 30 per cent was for security, and Spartan won the contract to train a guard force of 1,500 Iraqis to protect the nation’s water supply.
We lived outside the protection of military compounds in a small house within the Baghdad community from which we recruited our men and which had become our home. For eighteen months during the peak of the insurgency we trained them and fought next to them, enduring both countless bombardments and small-arms fire. And when the infighting between Shia and Sunni became endemic, insinuating itself even into our close-knit units, they betrayed us and chased us out of the city, completely ignoring every tactic of urban warfare I’d taught them – the whole extraordinary escape recorded in my book Making a Killing.
I was lucky to survive and only did so thanks to our interpreter Sammy – Assam Mashooen, a former pilot in Saddam’s air force. With about a hundred guards chasing me over the rooftops from the old bus depot where we’d built our HQ, Sammy appeared in his old Toyota. The back door flew open and he drove me to safety as I bled from a leg wound all over his seats.
Still, Iraq had been a great job. At the end of the day I had paid off all my debts, made good friends and done a job that I justifiably felt proud of.
I never went back to my law office in the City. Instead, I scored a cushy number doing various security jobs in sunny Africa. But just when I had finally forgotten Iraq and written it off as a colourful chapter relegated to history, I got a call from one of my old South African comrades.
I may have forgotten about Baghdad, but it seemed that Baghdad had not forgotten about me.
CHAPTER 1
THE SEA OFF Côte d’Ivoire is silver-blue with whitecaps that break around your feet like foam from a cappuccino. The sun bakes your brain and burns your skin. You’re just dying to dive in and cool off, and can’t help wondering whose idea of irony it was to fill the most beautiful stretch of water in the world with sharks.
It’s not that I don’t know the statistics. I do: you’re more likely to die being kicked to death by a horse in your own bedroom than by shark attack. But facts don’t cure phobia and fear. One tim
e I was swimming quite happily and suddenly got the feeling that something was wrong. As I stopped to tread water I suddenly knew a shark was underneath me. In a flash of panicked spray I was out of the water and panting with adrenalin on the side, much to the alarm of the family sunbathing on their deckchairs who looked at me in bewilderment and then peered curiously into the water of what was the small and fairly shallow pool of our five-star hotel.
‘Sorry.’ I laughed at them nervously. ‘Cramp,’ I added, pointing to my leg before hobbling unconvincingly off to my lounger, where my wife Krista was leafing through a magazine.
She did not bother looking up from her reading, used to my strangeness, although I noticed she was pursing her lips thoughtfully again. It usually meant she was wondering why she hadn’t just married that nice kid who used to sit at the back of the maths class and who was now a rich doctor back in Oslo.
‘Another shark, was it?’ she murmured, raising an unconcerned eyebrow, and turned another page.
‘No, no,’ I chortled, massaging my thigh dramatically, ‘just a little cramp, but don’t you worry, I’m sure I’ll be fine. Hard as nails, me.’
She laid the magazine down on her lap and peeked over her shades at the pool.
‘It seems to have gone now, James,’ she said.
‘That’s because you terrified it,’ I replied.
She was looking up at me, smiling now, eyes sparkling the same colour as an Arctic-blue sky, and so beautiful that she still took my breath away, just like the first time I saw her. After five years refusing point-blank to marry me – after her nasty divorce from a sergeant, Krista doesn’t much like soldiers, or ex-soldiers for that matter – we’d finally tied the knot when I got back from being a private security contractor in Baghdad.
She had looked me in the eye and informed me that being officially married to me would make things much easier in terms of sorting out my estate in the likely event of me dying on the job. Especially since we had two children. Natalie was six now, the image of her mother, and had a baby sister, Veronica, just taking her first steps and getting territorial with her own bedroom and its menagerie of stuffed toys and finger paintings Blu-Tacked to the wall.
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