I Lost My Love in Baghdad (25 page)

Outside on a small cement sidewalk surrounded by the gravel that covers up the mud on the base, I ask Lieutenant Colonel Franks and Karen which pair of sunglasses looks better, my old ones or my new ones. Karen declines to answer; Lieutenant Colonel Franks says the Ray-Bans, definitely, they fit your face.

BAGHDAD, KUWAIT

There is no blue in the sky. Dark gray clouds press down on the long runway, rolling in to stay for the afternoon. The cargo bay door on the C-130 drops to the ground; a white van pulls up about 150 feet away. Two rows of men and women, most in desert fatigues, others in blazers and dresses, form a line from the tail of the aircraft to the van. There must be at least thirty of them. I am standing second in line on the left side of the plane's ramp. Ambassador Khalilzad stands to my left. I take off the Ray-Bans.

“I'm sorry for your loss,” he says.

“Thank you, Mr. Ambassador, and thank you for coming out here today, I know Andi would have appreciated it. It means a lot.”

I try to say something else, and he does as well, but it is lost in the wind, and we stand in silence.

The first casket is removed from the van. It is the Hungarian's casket, wrapped in a Hungarian flag. It is a new flag—Lou finally convinced the Hungarian NATO attaché to provide a flag that didn't smell like French fries. The soldiers carry the casket onto the plane.

There are salutes, military commands are yelled out, the van's ramp is lowered to the ground again, and there she is, covered in an American flag.

Six soldiers step forward, one foot measured in front of the other, carrying her silver casket. She moves slowly. I see tears in the eyes of a number of people standing across from me, her friends from the State Department.

Lieutenant Colonel Franks discreetly takes pictures, pictures that will have to be approved by CENTCOM before they are released. I see Karen with her camera, videotaping, following the casket as it makes its way to the plane.

The wind picks up, the worst wind all day, sweeping across the runway, strong enough to knock me off balance.

It would not have been right for there to be sun on such a day. It has been sunny since she was killed, but as she gets closer to leaving this place, this evil place, there are thick clouds, threats of rain in the desert, the sky dark. The coffin passes me, the closest I have been to Andi since I kissed her goodbye nine days earlier, her head resting on my shoulder, fitting there, perfectly, such a rare thing.

The six men set the casket down inside the C-130's cargo bay.

Another military command is shouted, and the two lines of men and women move into the plane. There is no light inside the cargo bay; words fade without echoes. Ambassador Khalilzad speaks; the head of NDI's Baghdad Program speaks; the head of Unity Resources Group speaks; then I speak.

“When things like this happen, the first question one asks is why…In this case, the second question is why would she want to be with a jerk like me?”

I don't think the joke works.

“What I'm saying, what I'm trying to get at, is what an amazing person she is…Yesterday, when I was going through her personal effects, I found a piece of paper…”

My hand shakes as I put the paper back in my pocket.

The army chaplain says a prayer.

A series of hugs, handshakes, goodbyes, be strong, and the people file out of the plane.

“You're gonna get these guys who did this,” I say to the ambassador as he walks away. “No doubt about it,” he responds.

I sit down in the seat closest to her casket at the back of the cargo bay, pulling on my body armor, putting on my sunglasses, and strapping myself in. Karen sits across from me. About fifteen other passengers come in the front entrance of the plane, so as not to walk past the two caskets strapped in the back. The ramp on the cargo bay closes; it's chilly in here.

The aircrew gives instructions—the bathroom, air sickness bags, what to do in case of emergency. They recommend we keep our body armor on. A Black Hawk helicopter was shot out of the sky the day before, killing thirteen, and there was speculation in the press and among the military about whether the insurgents had a supply of new missiles.

The plane starts to move, its engines roaring. There are no windows on the C-130, and you quickly lose sense of what altitude you are at, or even if you're still on the ground. I lean back in my seat and feel an urge to reach out and touch her casket, to touch the flag. Maybe I think it will be warm to the touch, maybe I think it will bring me closer to her. But I worry that if it is cold to my touch, I will not like that. I am wearing my sunglasses, tearing up so much there is now a layer of dried salt on the inside of the lenses. The other passengers are not looking or talking; they are staring straight ahead. Finally, I reach out and touch the corner of the casket, caressing her and the flag.

It is neither warm nor cold.

The plane lands, a faster flight than expected. We are in Kuwait.

A master sergeant enters the plane.

“We have two angels on board today, so please join me for a prayer.”

Angels, I think, angels, not knowing at that point that the U.S. military calls all the fallen “angels.” Planes with the dead are called “angel flights.”

Another honor guard comes on; a sergeant is giving instructions. I stand next to him. I have a picture of Andi in my blazer pocket, a crumpled picture, and he talks in what seems to me like a casual manner. It isn't his fault he is doing his job. I say to him: “This is Andi, this is who is in that casket.” He says, “Really, I'm sorry,” and they carry her off into another white van, to hold her in the morgue while we wait for the next flight to Germany.

In Kuwait, we wait at another PAX terminal. I watch CNN until three other soldiers show up, “escorts” as they call them. “Escort” is the word for friends who are allowed to accompany the dead on flights out of Baghdad. I am an escort, but I am a rarity because I have permission to travel with the casket all the way back to Dover. These three escorts just arrived on a flight from Baghdad; they are friends with the pilots who were killed in the Black Hawk crash yesterday. I talk to the soldiers. They tell me they were granted permission to escort their friends' bodies to Kuwait, but then they have to go back to Baghdad. I ask one if what I heard was true—if they think the Black Hawk was shot down by a missile. One of the soldiers tells me he thinks that is what happened.

There were only two caskets on my flight from Baghdad—Andi and the Hungarian—but in Kuwait the other war dead catch up to us. Thirty-five American soldiers have been killed in the past five days. On our next flight, to Germany, an army chaplain tells me, Andi will be joined by the caskets of twenty-four of the soldiers who have been killed since January 17, 2007, including those in the Black Hawk crash.

It is around 8
P.M.

Karen and I talk. It is really our only real conversation in the forty-eight hours we spend together.

She explains that NDI had such a good relationship with the IIP, such a good relationship. I do not say a word. She says there are people at very senior levels of NDI considering whether or not they should continue working with the IIP. I try not to say anything, but I am greatly disturbed by what she says. They had assumed a level of trust with these men, a fatal mistake when operating in that environment. I wish they had not trusted them so fully; I wish they had played it safe and had the meeting at the Green Zone, where the IIP members go regularly, or told them to visit the NDI compound instead.

I don't know if it is naïveté or incompetence on NDI's part, but either way, I am angry. I can't speak to Karen about my anger of course; I can't speak to her about Andi. I can see that she doesn't want to know about Andi, not really; she cannot bear to hear it. They never had the chance to know each other; I can see her struggle with her own feelings of guilt, as she was Andi's supervisor, one of those who had signed off on the trip to the IIP that led to Andi's death.

“I just remember she was so bright and beaming that morning,” says Karen. “And in December we took one look at her résumé, and said of course we want this person; of course we want her to be part of the program. She was self-motivated; she had a plan for what she wanted to do, and she presented it to me, and I was like, go for it.”

After talking to Karen, I realize there was no conversation that morning, no security briefing with Andi, no talk about what signs of danger to look for. There did not even seem to be much talk about the purpose of the trip, except as a meet and greet. I knew Andi would never refuse to go on a trip. It is the job of the field worker to want to push boundaries, to do as much as you can, and the job of the supervisors and private security team to temper that desire, to say, look, that is a big risk: Is it worth it? Can you accomplish your work without a visit? Can you meet them in the Green Zone or perhaps they can come here? These are the questions that should always be asked in Baghdad, especially in January 2007, when there was open fighting in the streets and kidnappings were a common occurrence. Were none of these most basic questions asked?

Karen tells me her information about the attack is from one of the PSDs who survived the attack, the man in the first car.

According to him, the first car drives out of the compound and down the street; his radio crackles with the word “contact.” The driver, an Iraqi man, pulls a U-turn, and something gets in the way—an Iraqi family or something. Karen says the Iraqi driver then gets nervous, like something is wrong, maybe the family was trying to slow them down. By the time the first car goes back down the street, they think Andi's car has escaped, because there is so much smoke they couldn't see it. So then the first car pulls back into the IIP compound. A second team of NDI PSDs is dispatched and is on the way. The guard in the first car gets out and moves onto the street on foot; he sees about four or five insurgents trying to drag the body of the PSD team leader who had been killed after he left the tail car. He opens fire on the insurgents, hitting a few perhaps, and they run off. He then takes cover, and a gunfight ensues. The second NDI team arrives about twenty minutes later; they are also in heavy contact with the insurgents. Around forty minutes later, Coalition forces arrive, and—unusually, says Karen—they find the PSDs all still there. In most cases, the private security teams involved in gunfights leave the scene of an incident as quickly as possible.

It is a forty-five-minute-long gun battle, with bullets flying over the smoking remains of Andi's car. Karen says the PSDs were considering going back that night to find the killers, but they didn't do that—that was a bad idea, it was the anger talking, the desire for revenge, and besides, they probably wouldn't be able to find them.

This the last sequence of events I get for months. It is basically accurate, but a more complete description emerges in the coming year. I contact the American unit that arrived after the attack; I contact Andi's coworkers at NDI; I talk to Unity Resources Group, as well as my contacts in the security industry.

After months of asking NDI and URG for a full briefing, I finally get one in August 2007. I learn that the incident happened at 12:07
P.M.
I learn that a local Iraqi car, believed to belong to the insurgents, got in front of Andi's car to slow it down. At that point, the car was attacked and disabled with machine-gun fire. The attackers rushed the car, shooting, tried to open the doors, and threw a grenade under it. After the explosion, the third car sped ahead into the smoke, crashing into Andi's car. That's what Jacob crashed into, the crash he couldn't talk to me about. One of the security guards in the third car got out and was killed; the other two, Jacob and the Iraqi driver, ran into a building for cover. The insurgents then rolled a grenade under the third car and it exploded. The first car returned to the incident, but it was too late. Twenty minutes later, they were joined by NDI's reinforcements.

NDI and URG tell me that they followed all of their normal security procedures. The procedures had never failed before; Andi is the first client URG has lost, and the first NDI staffer to be killed in Iraq. NDI spent over $20 million a year on security for their Iraq program. However, NDI closed down its operation in Baghdad in the month following Andi's death, moved its Western staff to Amman and Kurdistan, and has not reopened it.

KUWAIT

Karen and I wait for our flight in the television lounge at the Kuwait passenger terminal. It is late, past midnight, and we have not heard from our military contacts who are supposed to let us know what time we are leaving. Karen is asleep. I am getting nervous—I have little faith in the miracle of military travel. It has been five days since Andi was killed. I've been told that in Dover there might be up to a week's delay, as the U.S. military finishes the final identification of her remains. I am anxious to get out of Kuwait and into Germany for the last leg of the flight.

I ask the retired air force colonel, now hired as a private contractor, at the desk, “How's our flight?”

“The flight has been canceled,” she says. “Mechanical problems.”

“That's no good. So what flight are we on then?”

“You'll be on the flight with the other caskets from the Black Hawk crash,” she explains.

“And what about our flight from Germany to Dover?”

“Right now, you're on a flight that takes off Tuesday morning from Germany.”

“Tuesday morning? That's almost forty-eight hours later than when we were supposed to arrive. We need to get on the earliest flight possible from Germany to Dover. I can't believe there's not an earlier flight.”

She nods, and says she will see what she can do.

I wake Karen. “Karen, there's an issue.”

I hear the air force colonel on the radio. She is facing resistance. They don't want to move the flight in Germany up.

I make a call to
Newsweek,
and explain that we are being held up—they aren't giving us the flight that was promised. I tell them that I suspect what is happening is that with all the other dead over the weekend—a total now of twenty-four—they are trying to economize and put all of them on the same flight to Dover. I understand, I say, but Andi died first, she should have priority.
Newsweek
is going to make calls, to try to put pressure on the right people to get us an earlier flight. I say I will work it from my end to see what will happen.

I wait by the desk; the colonel says the problem is fixed. She arranged, in less than fifteen minutes, for the mission to be the earliest possible flight from Germany to Dover, which turns out to be leaving at 5
P.M.
German time, arriving in Dover around 8
P.M.
Eastern Standard Time.

It is still unclear when we will be leaving Kuwait, however.

I ask the Mortuary Affairs sergeant if I can come over to the terminal.

“Hi, Sergeant, I have a question for you, if you have a second, thanks. When are we going to get out to the flight line?”

“Sir, the HRs are going to be loaded in an hour, so you can go out in like fifteen minutes,” he says.

“HRs? What does that mean?”

“Sorry, sir, HRs, uh, human remains.”

“You know, Sergeant, in most organizations, HR stands for human resources, but hey, what are you going to do.”

He laughs.

A van arrives to bring Karen and me out to the flight line. This time we are on a C-5. I climb inside, and it is the largest military aircraft I have ever been on. There are bright lights and an arenalike area for cargo that is currently empty. There are two levels, and the second floor is a passenger section of the plane that resembles the economy class of a commercial jet—it's up a wobbly set of folding stairs. We place our luggage on those seats, climb back down the stairs, and wait.

There will be another ceremony, I'm told. This time, it will take much longer, possibly up to an hour. There is only one honor guard detachment and there are twenty-five HRs that need to be loaded. They'll do it in two sets, the first twelve, then a brief break, then the second set.

I go smoke on the runway with members of the crew.

We are called back after twenty minutes.

It is 3
A.M.
There is a glow of electric red light over the Kuwaiti base, blinking towers, high-intensity spotlights, vehicles scurrying across the runway. The war is getting farther away. The fear one feels instinctively in Baghdad fades. You can stand outside without thinking that a mortar or rocket could end your day. The loud noises aren't soldiers shooting or clearing their rifles, accidental discharges, warning shots, ambushes, death squads killing someone in the night—the loud noises are just noises. Most Americans posted to Iraq, all the living and all the dead, pass through Kuwait. We wait in the bright lights of the C-5 cargo bay, two rows of soldiers in air force gear, another chaplain, another prayer, another ceremony, standing and watching.

The ramp opens; another plain white delivery truck pulls up to it, revealing caskets resting inside. The caskets come in, one after the other, and after about five are loaded it all blends together, your legs start to get numb, and you start to shift your weight from one foot to the other. You can't sit down although you want to. You must respect them, the fallen soldiers, the angels, the lost, the mourned, the wasted, the sacrificed. You wait while one after the other is set down carefully, with precision, in two single-file rows. “Flag draped” is an inaccurate description. The flag does not drape, it is tightly tied down. The flag is much nicer than a black rubber body bag, it gives meaning to what is inside, the HRs, the human remains, the mutilated bodies, the bodies not mutilated, the bodies wrapped in plastic inside silver, the bodies whose organs are no more, the bodies without enough for a good DNA sample and bodies that are preserved, bodies with flesh and the bodies whose flesh has been burned away.

Andi's remains.

I am losing my shit.

I am numb. The twelfth casket is laid down on the floor of the plane.

There is a break in the ceremony; each casket takes about three minutes to load. The honor guard needs a break, as do those watching in silence.

“Which one is Andi?” I ask the master sergeant.

I want to make sure she is on the plane. I have asked this question a number of times, and have yet to get an answer. It is hard to say, they all look the same, and the only way is to check the papers on the side of the casket. The master sergeant goes and has words with the Mortuary Affairs sergeant. When he returns, he points to her casket.

The sixth one loaded on. I go up to it, and tap it.

She is here with me again.

The ceremony begins again.

The last thirteen caskets are loaded on. This time I am prepared for the time to pass slowly.

It is 4
A.M.

I notice Karen is on a cell phone.

When the ceremony is over, I ask Karen what's going on.

The Hungarian, Yonni, they didn't put the Hungarian on.

I look at her. I am too tired to try to get the Hungarian on. My responsibility is Andi, and Andi is on the plane. Her responsibility is the Hungarian, and he is not on, and she cannot get him on—something to do with orders. I realize this might delay things further in Dover—because of the “comingling of remains” they want to make sure Andi is separated properly from the Hungarian, and that can take time. But I don't have it in me to address the problem, and Karen doesn't seem to understand how it can be fixed. I don't have the strength to explain to her how to operate in this environment, that you must never take anything for granted, that you must be persistent, you must verify, you must keep on them, because things just don't happen. You can't be complacent and doze off in the TV lounge if you have to get things done. But I don't say any of this. We have been traveling now for almost twenty-four hours, I have not slept, and instead I go smoke another cigarette. The chaplain gives me a rosary and a quarter-sized gold angel coin, which I put in the top pocket of my blazer.

The C-5 takes off. Karen and I sit in separate rows on the second level, the whole compartment to ourselves. We are the only escorts, the only passengers on the flight. I wrap myself in three blankets; it is very cold up there. I sleep for four hours. When I wake up we are an hour away from Germany.