A 2010 study by George Washington University found that contractors accounted for one-quarter of the total American fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan, that in 2010 the Department of Defense employed over 250,000 contractors in the Middle East and Southwest Asia alone, that in 2010 thirty thousand more contractors served in Afghanistan than military personnel, and that in 2009 and 2010 more contractors died in Iraq and Afghanistan than military personnel. A 2013 study by the RAND Corporation found that 25 percent of contractors who have seen combat duty have post-traumatic stress disorder, a rate roughly equivalent to that of the military population.
Contract it all out. Contract out the shooting, contract out the dying.
“Truth is, military, CIA, contractor, I don’t care which one of our guys get their guys, as long as it happens,” M——said. “Even now, when I drink a beer, I think about it and smile.”
M——took being a contractor seriously, and he decided that if he was going to play the part, he needed to look the part. He was never scrawny or out of shape, but he noticed his fellow contractors were big, real big, and it looked good. So he crushed it in the gym twice a day, and took some stuff to help him along and add weight. The community affords respect based upon appearance, and the bigger he got, the more contracts started coming his way.
He put on a new attitude, decided to carry himself differently. He moved his frame in a new way, and it didn’t take long to look like the real deal. The beard, the traps that shrunk his neck, the tris that stretched his sleeves. It was about the job. And maybe a little bit vain. Okay, maybe a little bit more than a little bit vain. But it helped him get jobs and do jobs.
He bought a smaller plate carrier, one that covered only his vital organs, so he could move his arms more freely. To protect his femorals, he bought tight leggings with stitched-in armored plates and wore them under his khaki pants. You couldn’t even tell he had them on. He bought a titanium face mask with slits for eyes and the Punisher logo painted on the front. He used it only if he went in the house first, when the threat was completely unknown. It was badass, but it cut his peripheral vision.
He bought a Glock pistol because once he had seen a demonstration where one soaked in dirty salt water for a week and then took a mag while still dripping wet and cycled perfectly and put fifteen rounds in a one inch group. He used the M4 the company bought him, but he modified it and preferred the shorty barrel. He bought an EOTech sight because he liked the bright dot and the ring. He could hold his rifle from any angle, and just put the ring on the target, put the thing on the thing, and know that’s where the bullets were going.
In Call of Duty: Black Ops II, you can get an EOTech sight. The reticle is pretty realistic.
He was happy to do the job in Sadr City. Most of his bros wanted to be there too. If something crazy was fixing to happen, it would happen there first.
When the American military pulled out in 2011, left Iraq for good, or so they thought at the time, he waved at them as the last convoy drove off the FOB.
The base wasn’t closing; a full compound of contractors remained. That night it rained mortars, and small arms fire poured from the police station and the old police academy, a fifteen-story building with a direct view inside the wire.
Ironically, the day the military left, that’s when all the bullshit started back up again.
“We’re worried about the base being overrun,” his boss said.
“I’m not,” said M——.
“Well, what do we do with the bunkers of ammo and explosives?”
“I’ll throw a few thermites in there. There’s magnesium in the floors. It’ll burn for days.”
“But what about everything inside?”
“Fuck all that.”
“You can’t just leave.”
“Watch me,” said M——. “This place gets overrun, I’m out.”
Every time he had one of those conversations, M——smiled. Ch-ching. He just got paid $100 to listen to his boss bitch about bullshit.
When the military left Sadr City, they took more than air support and laundry. Now the State Department was in charge, and that well-oiled machine couldn’t make a fucking decision to save their lives.
Bullets pinged off the armored glass on the far side of his Suburban. The cop car sped away from the checkpoint. M——had a motherfucker by the collar. The shitbag’s interpreter and bodyguard were still in the backseat, two bros drawing down and another pulling out the flex-cuffs.
He keyed his radio, called the embassy. “What do you want us to do with this guy?” Silence from the State Department, whistles over his head. “He’s the head fucking honcho you guys wanted. What the fuck do we do with him?” More silence.
This is why you don’t capture anymore.
“Throw these guys in the trunk. You two, get out here and button this bitch up. You’re driving their Escalade. Do not let that cop get out of your sight.”
Four armored Suburbans and a bad guy Escalade, one hundred miles an hour, chasing an Iraqi Police car.
M——hit his radio again.
“Tell us what to fucking do or we’re about to open fire on a dirty local cop on the busiest road in Baghdad.”
“Remember when we used to get Apaches whenever we wanted them?”
“Remember when they used to at least fucking answer the radio?”
Sometimes he called home, in spite of the nagging two-second delay that poisoned real conversation. He just wanted to listen to his girls laugh.
These guys have become such assholes, M——thought. But that’s our fault. We trained the Iraqis that way.
Some of these fucksticks were idiots and dangerous. Better to let them go first into a room. And some guys, during training, you just knew, you’d see them again, on the other side of the rifle after they deserted. But some guys, the assholes, you could trust them.
M——checked the line of Suburbans and Iraqi armored trucks and called to the army captain.
“Hey, Mohammed, we ready to rock?” M——said.
“Salaam, brother, let’s go,” Mohammed said.
Iraqi National Guard. I bet half these guys would like to shoot me in the back of the head, he thought.
“Be polite, be professional, have a plan to kill everybody you meet” (Marine General James Mattis).
Up at 0500. EOD guys make good planners, so guess who was doing the convoy plan that morning? M——studied the maps, picked a primary route, picked three alternate routes, planned every ambush, planned every break in contact.
A late dawn. Convoy rolling down the streets, principal tucked away, M——in truck one navigating the route on the radio.
A barricade of cars. That doesn’t look right.
“Go to Charlie. Go to Charlie. Go to Charlie,” he called on the radio.
When the IED detonated under the Suburban, he was tossed sideways, into the middle bench seat, his weapon caught and pinned, eardrums pounding as if on the outside of his head.
This job doesn’t pay enough anymore.
“I’m done. Dunski. I don’t need this bullshit,” said M——.
“Come on, man, stay,” said his boss. “We need you here. We want you to stay.”
“I bet you do, cuz no one’s coming to replace me. Everybody knows this job is fucked. The rules are fucked. I don’t need to go to court for shooting somebody. I’m not playing that game. I’m out.”
“You could just leave?” I asked M——.
“Hell, yeah, I could do that! My contract said ninety days, I had already done one-twenty. Fuck that place.”
Contractors measure pay by the day. You get a base daily pay and then extras for being an EOD guy, extra for each badge and qual, extra for hazardous duty.
M——got $825 a day for his first gig. He got $1,240 for his second. That doesn’t include signing bonus, end of contract bonus, anniversary bonus, Memorial Day bonus, Fourth of July bonus, or any of the other holiday extras.
The guys who sign up for a grand a day are pis
sed their buddies are making twelve hundred. The guys making twelve are pissed their buddies are making fifteen. The top M——ever heard was an ex-DEVGRU guy, a trigger-puller who ended lives via immediate lead poisoning, making $1,850 a day.
Asshole.
Those were the good old days. Then the economy went sour and tons of veterans came home to no jobs, and suddenly the market was flooded with grunts who thought they were operators. The free market at work, everyone’s pay went down. The really qualified and experienced guys got bumped to the more delicate missions. The young guys, the lance corporals with one tour guarding an ammo dump, got the average protection missions.
That’s why you started to hear so many stories of contractors shooting civilians. The young guys still asked, “Can I shoot?” instead of, “Should I shoot?” They didn’t know when not to shoot. They didn’t realize that they got paid not to shoot. Well, except for sometimes.
M——kept going back, because he got the more lucrative delicate missions, and because when his team leaders called on the phone, he couldn’t say no. There were some guys, if they needed him, he’d drop everything and follow them anywhere, to hell and back.
He kissed his wife and girls and packed his bags.
It was different, the first time he went after a person. It was cool, true. His first tour in Iraq with the Army in 2003, he was just a tagalong, he didn’t really understand. Now he had the seasoning to appreciate it. How it was different than going down on an IED, different than getting ambushed, different than getting shot at. Finally, to be the one doing the ambushing.
Fye worked in the official system, and his evidence went in a black hole. Frost didn’t trust the official system, so he worked alone. SF didn’t trust the official system, so Sarah Soliman delivered evidence to their J2, who worked alone. The companies and agencies who hired M——? They didn’t care about any system.
“Biometrics? Awesome idea. Never saw it work.”
When M——went on a raid, he was given just enough information to plan the hit. A picture, always grainy and black and white. A note that the target supplied arms, explosives, manufactured IEDs. Nothing like what the MC-12 had.
You always knew when the raid intel came from a Pred. How else would they know a certain guy would take so long to get to a certain place? They must track his car, for hours, right?
Every day he thought about the guys who built the bombs. It was impressive, it took real cojones. Can you imagine getting some folded-up piece of paper with a half-ass, third-hand schematic on it and actually wiring it up and putting bang on it? Some people, when they do basic demolitions for the first time, have trouble just trusting that the blasting caps won’t kill you. But rather than trusting the quality control of American manufacturing, you are trusting your brother in jihad. Biggest balls in the world to build an IED. Even bigger to place it. Inshallah. And they got good, survival of the fittest. They ain’t all got dead yet. They place them and get alive. It’s impressive.
“Do you remember those original Spider Mod 1s? From way back in the day? How they all had yellow, red, and purple wires, just like the ones OGA sold them in the eighties, because they thought the wire color mattered? They learned, by the time they made Mod 2s we couldn’t jam anymore.”
Every time they caught a builder or emplacer, you had to interrogate them hard, because who knows, they might cough up the Engineer. You had to hope. They always sing like songbirds. It’s funny. They’re hard-asses until they get caught, then you can’t shut them up with the names.
He doesn’t know, I thought, that they never give up the Engineer’s name. That they give up every other name and not his.
These intel weenies that say there’s only a few Engineers. How could there be? There have to be hundreds, maybe thousands. How else could there be so many IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan and Uzbekistan and so many Shitstans all over the world? How else could there be IEDs everywhere—everywhere!—if not for hundreds of Engineers with hatred in their heart? He hates us, he has to, and loves blood and pain and death and the taking of limbs.
Let’s call it what it is. The Engineer is utterly evil. And he is everywhere.
“Do you still think that?” I asked M——, after telling him everything I had learned about the Engineer, the evidence Frost collected as weapons intel, Soliman’s biometrics search, Hayes’s analysis and profile on the JPEL, the one photo of one Engineer I found on Google. Did he still think there were that many?
“I never actually got him, but I know who we used to get, the guys we used to tag. So let me think about that, and I’ll get back to you,” M——said.
People don’t understand that being a contractor isn’t about being fancy. Professionals do the basics well. That’s it. Blocking and tackling, shooting and moving and communicating, each footstep deliberate and precise and correct, every time. Soldiering is easy if you don’t mind a few mistakes. It’s really hard to do it right every single time. That’s what he got paid for.
Walking on night patrol, silent. Then, a whisper on the radio, from their overwatch. “Fifteen degrees, nine o’clock.” Everyone takes a knee. One PEQ-15 laser from behind them sparkles the ridgeline. Twelve lasers from their line patrol swing up and sparkle and dance. A single sentry on the horizon, the unknown star of an infrared rave. Another hushed radio call from the overwatch. Their sniper laid out in the bed of a truck, three hundred meters away. One pop and one pop only. The target falls but the sparkles remain. A breath: “He’s down.” Light show over. The patrol continues.
People don’t like Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib, but nobody notices if you just shoot them instead.
In Iraq M——fought hajjis, but in Afghanistan he fought the muj. Think there is no difference? That both are Muslim men with dark skin and turbans and a wish for virgins after death? They all are suicidal, right? They all hate us for no reason, right? They all are crazy, in the most basic sense of the word, and this is the important part, because their actions are illogical and disconnected from reality. It’s easy to kill crazy people, if they want it anyway, right?
They aren’t crazy. Hajjis are effeminate urban hipsters, and the muj are tough inbred hillbillies, but it’s more than that.
The hajjis are Iraqis and their Arab allies from Syria and the Gulf. They take disorganized potshots from hidden spaces. They flee from gunfire. They fight only when backed against the wall. They hide IEDs and fire them from kilometers away. Hajjis kill through deceit. They don’t set out rocket launchers when it’s too hot or too cold or too wet. They cut off your head on videos. They burn and drag the bodies through the streets. They lie and dissemble when caught. No one respects hajjis.
The muj are different. The muj are holy warriors. The muj stand and fight. The muj will assault your position. They’ll ambush and aggress. They’ll defend to the last man. They’ll march over snowy mountains in slippers. They hit what they shoot at. When they set off an IED, it signals the start of an attack, not the end. The muj started getting shot at as children, running ammo for older cousins. The muj were worth training by the CIA in the 1980s. The muj have won before.
Hajji or muj? The Engineer was neither and both.
Sometimes, M——rode a helicopter to work. If a VIP convoy got hit, if a team was in trouble, if one of our guys got snatched, if we had to snatch one of theirs, the Little Bird would land on the X and disgorge its shooters, and they would get the motherfucker or motherfuckers no matter what. The best part of the job was the “no matter what.”
It’s not that the principal was bait. That’s bad business. But you can tell a lot about an ambusher by who they target. If they knew where your VIP would be, in what vehicle, and when, if they used the right IED and the right tactics, then that was a bad guy worth having a long conversation with.
The breeze cooled him on an otherwise hot night, and M——kicked his feet in the open air. He looked around at the other operators sitting on the side-mounted seat pods. Ex-CAG guy. Pararescue. Two ex-DEVGRU. Another
EOD tech like him. No Marines—they all worked for Triple Canopy. Grunts and squids and zoomies. In this business, all you are is what you were.
His earpiece came to life and said it was time to do the job. M——didn’t actually know whose voice it was, or where the intel came from, or if the target was on the JPEL, or what profile Hayes had created, or if it was the Engineer or another crony, or if the call came from the State Department at the embassy or his company or another government agency, one with three letters.
He was a subcontractor for a subcontractor, an independent contractor for a subcontractor for an agency that may or may not be the CIA or the DIA or JSOC or an independent White House office that had acquired a budget line.
None of that really mattered anyway. When the voice on the secure radio said to go, you go. Roger that, two thumbs up, two sandbags full, pop smoke, we’re moving, bros in contact, a target worth tagging.
I thought: Do the TIC lights come on for contractors?
M——looked down off the side of the Little Bird and saw a line of Suburbans stopped in a herringbone on the busy urban street. A squad of his mates had dismounted and were firing toward a number of cement-walled homes, using the armored doors as cover. Tracers and sparks and muzzle flashes drew out the contours of the gunfight below him in bright light.
The Little Bird set down between the trucks and the homes, directly in the line of fire. He unclipped his safety lanyard and hopped to the skid and then the packed earth in two steps, firing his M4 before he had taken his third.
“We want the guys in the houses,” his earpiece said.
M——ran into the dust cloud kicked up by the rotor wash.
“The Armed Forces of the United States are here to seek justice for our dead” (Leaflet dropped in Afghanistan, October 2001).
The men from the Little Bird, pop-pop pop-pop pop-pop, doing their do, doubled the firepower in the multi-factor equation. The ambushers became the hunted.
All the Ways We Kill and Die Page 27