Licensed to Kill (19 page)

Young recounted to the
Virginian-Pilot
that he remembers it being shortly before noon when he heard the sound of incoming AK-47 gunfire. While the occasional smattering of an AK burst is not unusual anywhere in Iraq, hearing a volley of return fire usually meant something serious. Young pulled on his gear and helmet, grabbed an M249 SAW, and headed upstairs to the roof of the CPA headquarters, where he joined the Blackwater contractors already positioned and returning fire. Young settled in behind the cement wall where he watched in horror as armed men outside the gates unloaded from trucks and took aim at the building. His military training made him shout out, “With your permission, sir, I have acquired a target.” But there were no other soldiers on the roof, and Young yelled his request over and over until one of the Blackwater contractors shouted back to commence firing. So at this point, not only had the contractors been pushed by circumstance into engaging in combat, but they had also de facto assumed a command position over a U.S. marine. Eventually, a handful of U.S. military police and another marine would make it up to the roof to join the fight.

While the roof of the CPA headquarters offered a prime high-ground position for shooting down on those gathering on the ground outside the gates, a nearby multistory hospital, a high-rise apartment building, and other recently half-assembled construction made the entire compound vulnerable to snipers. For what seemed like hours, the men put controlled bursts into the crowd below while Blackwater snipers targeted gunmen shooting from windows a few hundred yards away. Estimates of how many insurgents were attacking the compound vary, though most have reported numbers in the hundreds. Years hunting around his small town in Kentucky had given Young the ability to acquire a target, fire, and aquire and fire again, and he did this over and over as bearded men in long robes kept charging toward the front gate. At one point, a couple of American Apaches circled overhead but didn't lay down any fire and left without landing in the compound.

Then a young captain let out a scream and yelled for a medic. They had no medic on the roof, so Corporal Young rushed over to see what he could do. Young removed the captain's gear and carefully cut away his clothing to expose wounds in the arm and back. Bullets pinged into a tin air duct and ricocheted off the cinderblocks above their heads as Young applied compresses from his first-aid kit. Young yelled for the contractors to lay down cover fire and helped walk the bleeding man down the four flights of stairs to the ground floor, where an impromptu emergency room was established.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The marine corporal loaded up on magazines and carried roughly one hundred fifty pounds of Blackwater's ammo up four stories to the roof. Young had time to resupply the Blackwater contractors, but no time to return to the fight himself. Blackwater's Arabic linguist was hit in the face—blood sprayed over the floor from a quarter-sized hole in his jaw. Young reached in with his finger and fished around in the gore until he found the man's carotid artery and pinched it hard to close it. With his free hand, he dragged the translator by his vest toward the stairwell. Then an incoming bullet smacked into Young, knocking him to the floor. A bullet had smashed into his left shoulder, coming to rest an inch from his spine. A piece of shrapnel had also lodged in his left eye, partially blinding him. Under fire and too amped up on adrenaline to pause for the searing pain in his back, Young grabbed the linguist again and dragged him behind the air-conditioning duct. He put his fingers back into the hole in his jaw and pinched again to stop the bleeding, and a Blackwater medic applied a hasty compress. Young then picked up the linguist and carried him down the four flights for further emergency treatment before returning to the roof to continue the fight. Dripping with sweat and blood, Young kept hammering away. He didn't realize that he had been shot until someone yelled at him to get off the roof and get some medical attention. Once down below, he faded and almost passed out.

When they heard the sound of helicopters outside, the medic told Young he needed to catch a ride to the Baghdad hospital. Young stumbled outside to see three helicopters with rotors buzzing, but they were black, not green. Under fire and running low on ammo, Blackwater had called upon its own helicopters after the U.S. military had failed to respond to requests for backup. The three Blackwater Little Birds had flown in from Baghdad with reinforcements and a fresh supply of ammunition, and picked up the wounded to fly them out for medical attention.

With a new stock of ammo, the contractors continued to lay down fire and beat back the insurgents. Two Spanish soldiers in full combat gear sat joking behind the thick concrete wall. The Spanish contingent was supposed to be functioning in a strictly peacekeeping role and had been ordered not to return fire. They just sat and watched the action without taking part. Lionel, Blackwater's armored car rep from Texas Armor, was pressed into service as a spotter for Cread, a skilled shot with a sniper rifle. Cread saw an insurgent sniper shooting from a window in the hospital building near the compound and carefully tried to pick him off. Every time he shot, Lionel winced and looked for the puff of dust as the bullet hit around the window. “A little to the left.” BOOM! Wince. “A little to the right.” Boom! Wince. “More.” Boom! Wince.

While varying accounts by witnesses portray a compound under heavy attack, the incoming fire was not heavy enough to prevent the contractors from filming their own videos and taking pictures during the battle. Most of the video captures a steady stream of outgoing fire, with an occasional burst of incoming. One video has Blackwater IC “Mookie Spicoli” yelling, “Jesus Christ, it's like a fucking turkey shoot!”—suggesting a plethora of slow-moving easy targets and a contractor methodically picking them off.

A Blackwater contractor remembers that Sunday: “When Blackwater was hit in Najaf, in April, it wasn't a big secret. They even taped it. Clive was taping, Cread had the other camera. The military was out there, but they weren't prepared. The Blackwater guys were getting it on. Even the sales rep for the armored cars was running up and down the stairs carrying ammo. We were shooting M4s, and there was a marine on a SAW. The bad guys got hung up in the hospital. They just picked them off one by one until the Apaches showed up. The Apaches never fired a shot. They just hovered. We found out later they had orders not to engage. About twenty or thirty bad guys got into the compound. It was close.”