The Bremer Detail (9 page)

Soon the party numbers swelled back to well over a hundred. After the rocket attack it seemed like everyone needed a drink, and we always welcomed the company, especially the female company. By this time a Blackwater mystique had taken firm hold. We were the rock stars of the palace. And it certainly didn’t hurt that the majority of the guys were built like professional athletes. The testosterone and strength oozed from their pores and they knew how to play the game. We were the superheroes keeping all the women safe. Or, at least, that’s what we told anybody who would listen. The other guys rarely had a chance when it came to getting and keeping a female’s notice. It was truly comical. Women got all the attention they could have imagined; they met guys who they would never have met back in the States; they had their choice of studs. What could be better? It was a good deal for all involved. The guys kept their stress levels reduced, and the women lived their fantasies. Everybody was happy.

These women were, by and large, extremely bright, professional career women—and aggressive. Most were college graduates with postgraduate degrees. Some were in politics, some were military, some were nurses and doctors, and some were career diplomats. They were smart as hell and knew what they wanted. I had great admiration for all of them. They were in the sandbox because they had volunteered to be there. They were driven to succeed to a degree rarely seen by most of us. And they endured the same discomfort and risks we did—the heat, the water outages, the power outages, the rocket and mortar attacks—and yet they showed up for work every day and they supported the mission to the best of their abilities. There was no crying in Baghdad. Some of them were tougher than some of my guys. They were truly a breath of fresh air. And they smiled and smelled a lot better than did my guys.

The new guys were quickly brought onto the teams in positions that I thought best met their backgrounds and skill set. It was a trying process. Without any résumés to review, placing guys was difficult. Ken had to get a quick feel for them, and then we hoped the new guys had not misled us about their past. Some did. The reaction to the new members of the team by the experienced members was always difficult to manage. The margin for error was nonexistent by this point. We were running 100 mph each and every day. The new guys were expected to pull their weight immediately, and the guys who had been here for a while were very quick to point out any and all mistakes. Several times each day, someone would come to me and tell me how this guy or that guy was not going to make it. The experienced guys knew what the risks were, the new guys did not. I urged each complainer to work with the new man, and told him to try to remember that only a few short weeks ago he himself did not know his ass from a hole in the ground. Tempers were short.

More than once guys had to be separated after exchanging words. New guys did not know what they did not yet know. Guys who had been there knew what the risks were and knew why we did things certain ways. The good-idea fairy is a dangerous thing in a war zone. I begged the new guys to learn
our way
for at least thirty days before they came up with suggestions we had already tried and likely eliminated weeks or months earlier. We did what worked, not what we thought might work. We were writing the book, not reading it.

The story that the new guys were being told back in Moyock and the promises they were being given by Blackwater HQ during the train-up created frustration and disenchantment when these guys realized immediately they were not being issued the gear and not being assigned to the team leader slot that someone back home had promised. OOOPs! Not my problem. My only promise was that once they got to the sandbox we would work them to death. Maybe not in the spot they wanted, but the spot we thought they could best fill.

Another intel report came in stating that a raid had uncovered videotape and photos of the detail at various locations we had been to with the ambassador. We always assumed the bad guys had been doing surveillance on us, but it had never been confirmed until this point. Surveillance is always an important part of the bad guys’ arsenal. They wanted and needed to know how we were operating, our tactics and techniques, so they could attack us in a way that would maximize their chances of success. Everywhere we went there were photographers, press, and others milling about taking pictures. Who were the bad guys? Hell, we had no idea. This information caused me to pause and reflect on how we were doing our job. Should we change anything? If so, what and how? With new guys arriving it went without saying that many times people were out of position, and the synergy of fill and flow was not what it had been with the guys who had been working together for weeks.

The press is the bane of any protection operation’s existence. They were difficult to work with at best. Al Jazeera had a bad habit of being on the scene minutes before spectacular attacks took place against coalition forces and personnel, and was thus able to record and broadcast the mayhem. Was the press doing research for the bad guys? I went to our press team to see if we could somehow limit or restrain the press at certain events. It was then I learned that from a public figure’s point of view, if an event is not recorded and broadcast, it never took place. It was a sobering realization that everything we did was going to be recorded, and that the press would be an integral aspect of anything that happened. We had a job to do and so did they. We had to work together.

I met with Sax and we decided the press would have to get to the locations at least an hour before the boss did so that we could check their equipment for explosives, weapons, etc. Then we would confiscate their cell phones so they could not call anyone to let them know exactly when the ambassador would be arriving. We kept them sequestered in a holding area and assigned a guy from the advance team to keep an eye on them. Individuals found videotaping outside the location had their cameras taken from them and held until after the detail team had departed. This was not met with any enthusiasm from the press corps, but we had to do what we had to do, while they were doing what they had to do. It was a compromise that neither side was happy with.

As the new guys settled in, the remaining members of the first group began to make noises about their pending departures. I was faced with the realization that in a few short weeks I would have an entirely new crew working with me. The prospect of that did not make me happy. It seemed that every time things were going smoothly, a new problem popped up. Unfortunately for me, Ken was also scheduled to depart. This meant that his sidekick would have to make all the arrangements for the guys leaving and the guys coming in. I asked Ken to take his partner under his wing and make sure that he had a full and solid grasp of how to make these things happen.

One morning around 0630, while waiting for the ambassador to come out of the villa, I got a call on my radio that there was something that I just had to see. I headed out to the parking area and saw my stone-cold-killer PSD team standing there staring up in the sky.

“Can you believe this?”

“Oh my God, I never thought we’d see them again.”

“Wow.”

My guys were staring at clouds. There had been zero clouds since I arrived in August, and now floating peacefully in the Iraqi sky there they were. It was quite a sight, especially when a group like this was staring, slack-jawed, at Mother Nature. It’s the little things that sometimes make for a good day. In hindsight I can remember it raining only twice the entire time I was there. Both times for about twenty minutes. The clouds were cool.

Early on another morning, I got a call from the “Force Protection” commander (a Marine major in charge of overall security for the palace grounds); he asked me if one of my guys had an accidental discharge at the airport PX the day before. An accidental discharge occurs when someone fires his or her weapon when the person is not expecting it to go off. It is also referred to by professionals as a negligent discharge because if you are carrying a weapon there are no accidents, just negligence. I responded that I had not heard anything about it but would look into it.

I called the advance team and detail team leaders over to my trailer, and asked them if they knew anything about this. They did. And, of course, had hoped that I would never catch wind of it. With around forty-six guys now on the ground it was impossible for me to be everywhere at all times, and I relied upon the different group leaders to keep me in the loop. I was pissed. It seems that one of the new guys had tried to unload his Glock before entering the PX and had managed to squeeze off a round into the clearing barrel. This guy was a former SEAL who had been brought over to my team after a stint with The Dirty 30. He had been described as a weapons expert, weapons instructor, sniper, and a great guy by their team leader. I had found it odd; if he was all that and a bag of chips, why had they let him go? I soon found out.

I called Blackwater and told them I was sending another guy home. As a SEAL-centric organization, the leaders at Blackwater were very protective of their brother SEALs. I was soon to find out just how protective they were, and how protective they had been. Ken managed to get this guy a plane ride out the next day and off he went. I hated losing another guy, but Blackwater and my reputation were at stake here. A negligent discharge is unacceptable anywhere in the world. It was even truer in a war zone. We were supposed to be the best of the best, and this incident gave us a huge black eye. I was now asked repeatedly about my “high-speed, low-drag superninja operators.”

At the chow hall the next day I ran into several of my friends from The Dirty 30. They had heard what had happened, and they were enjoying my pain immensely. They could not understand why I had even agreed to take him after what had happened to him on their team. I had no idea what they were talking about. I said I had heard nothing but great things about him from their team leader and Blackwater HQ. It seems as though this guy had a negligent discharge while he was with them and had actually shot himself in the leg. I was stunned. The light came on very quickly that I had been played like a fool by Blackwater. They had apparently hoped I would never find out, and that the guy would somehow save his reputation by working on The Bremer Detail. I was beyond pissed off. Needless to say, I exchanged some unpleasantries with their team leader, and from that day forward their access to my helos was severely limited. As long as that particular team leader was there, they could not use them. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. I could no longer trust him, and I never did again.

As though I did not have enough other things to occupy my time, a few days later another memo about drinking in-country and fraternizing with women came down the wire from Blackwater HQ. This was getting ridiculous. I knew where this was coming from, but could never prove it. I posted the memo without comment, and I never mentioned it again. I don’t even know if the guys read it. The funny part is, just two days before this we had attended a party with the Dirty 30 guys. They had a bar set up at their place where they served drinks to any and all.

We had made a run out to the airport to pick someone up and had decided to stop by and say hello. As we approached the Dirty 30 camp we could see flames soaring forty feet into the air. They had strung Christmas lights up, and the music was blasting. On the walls of some buildings, .50 caliber machine gun impact holes etched out their familiar pattern. It was like a scene from the old
Apocalypse Now
movie. There were two hundred people gyrating to the flames and under the lights. It was surreal. Every few minutes somebody would throw another pallet on the fire and the flames kept rising. The highlight of the evening was when one of the female attendees actually fell ass first into the fire. Fortunately she was not badly burned. So, somehow, these guys could operate a bar, but we could not have a beer. They could light women on fire, but we couldn’t fraternize with our female colleagues and coworkers. What was the deal? Apparently, according to them, they were never questioned about their after-hour activities. The HQ hypocrisy was overwhelming.

As the party wound down it became time to head back to the Green Zone. It was about 0200, and we had to navigate the airport road. The prime time to be attacked traveling this stretch of highway was just after dark to dawn. The Iraqis would wait for dark to set up their ambushes and wait for the first unsuspecting coalition convoy to happen upon it. It could be an IED attack, a small-arms ambush, or an attack from vehicles lying in wait. They used the darkness to their advantage and they were very good at what they did. We were leaving in the prime attack hours. Q was driving one vehicle, a level-6 armored monster with a 500-hp McLaren engine. Travis T was in a Suburban. As we moved out onto the highway the speeds went up dramatically. Our best ally was speed, and speed is what we did. The best we could hope for was to throw off the timing of any possible attack. We wanted to blow past the IEDs that were waiting for us before the bad guys could react. Q was at 120 mph before I knew it. I was just along for the ride. The bad guys would have had to be extremely good to hit us. As we rounded the last overpass for the final stretch home the tires were chirping from the speed. We made it back safe and sound.

We continued to work our asses off. The ambassador, we had become convinced, was a cyborg. He never got tired. He just kept going. He had a trip being organized to Spain. I notified Blackwater we had a pending international trip, and I began (or rather Ken began) the process of gun permits, visas, hotel rooms, etc. Everything was in motion when Blackwater called me and told me that international trips were not part of our contract with DOD. This was not my fight, so I approached Brian Mac. The DOD rep said yes, we were expected to provide protection for him anywhere he went with the exception of the United States. Okay … we continued to plan. Blackwater came back and said no, we would not be going. This back-and-forth took place over the next twenty-four hours before Blackwater finally confirmed we would be going. I began to question my own sanity. I had never seen the contract, so I had no idea who was right or wrong when it came to contractual issues.