The Bremer Detail (19 page)

The Air Force guys were relieved that day, and CID took over the protection. The original CID guys, who had been royal pains in the ass, had departed. Their replacements were top-shelf guys, younger, in great shape and extremely professional. Much easier to work with. We never had another problem with the UN.

A day or two later I got a call from Bill Miller telling me the Air Force wanted to remove the surveillance system that had been installed at the ambassador’s residence. It was a very sophisticated system with thermal imaging capabilities, and it allowed the villa guys to keep an eye on everything that was happening around the villa, even at night. It also gave them the ability to zoom in on anything suspicious they wanted to examine. More than a few times the villa guys spotted bad guys setting up mortar emplacements across the Tigris River and were able to alert the military about the impending attack. It was truly a great piece of equipment, but the Air Force was a tad pissed off about the OSI guys getting booted off the UN detail … oh well.

Remembering Jim Cawley’s advice to call him if I ever needed something, I took it down a notch and got in touch with him at the Secret Service to explain the situation. He said he would take care of it. He talked to the director of Protective Operations, called back, and told me not to worry; the Secret Service had handled the issue. The surveillance system never left. As a matter of fact it even stayed in place for Ambassador Negroponte when he took over from Bremer. The Secret Service was a godsend to us while we were there. Of all the people who truly understood what we were doing, they had the best handle on just how tough it was. Like many others I can never thank them enough—especially Jim Cawley. Jim was always there when I needed him.

With all the additional people now working and driving in and around the palace and the Green Zone, traffic was bad. The Force Protection team, made up of U.S. and coalition military troops in charge of the overall protection of the Green Zone, decided to reroute traffic for security and safety. They blocked off some routes with additional blast walls and opened up streets that had originally been closed. It took us a few days to completely learn the new traffic patterns.

The biggest problem was the heat of the Iraqi spring. Everything in Iraq is covered by a film of what can be best described as talcum-powder-like sand. We called it moondust. Every time you walked anywhere, your shoes or boots would be covered with this dust. That was the reason the ambassador opted to wear his “Bremer boots” in lieu of dress shoes. On the nonpaved areas the dust was about an inch thick. The roads that had been closed for months were thick with this substance. It was slippery as hell, and dangerous until the traffic eventually blew it off. The few times that it rained, water turned the moondust into thick, sticky mud that got into everything.

One day, on a trip to the IGC, the lead car attempted a right-hand turn but the front wheels hit the talcum powder and the Suburban did not respond. The vehicle went straight at and into a twelve-ton blast wall. The driver hit the brakes, but even stopping on this substance was impossible. Fortunately the vehicle was only moving about 5 mph when the collision took place and no one in the vehicle was injured. The air bags didn’t even go off.

The ambassador was in the limo and watched as this unfolded. His only comment was,

“Oh, that’s not good.”

We continued on to the meeting while the lead car backed up and tried to join us. Rather than take any chances with a damaged vehicle I had the driver drop off his team and take the car to the shop to be examined for structural damage. I truly thought there would be no, or minimal, damage. Wrong. The energy of a 10,000-pound vehicle hitting a twelve-ton concrete barrier at 5 mph is apparently greater than I, with my limited physics background, could have guessed. The frame was bent, and the vehicle was totaled. Fortunately, by now the CPA had a large inventory of armored vehicles, and we were able to replace the car the same day with an identical unit. Thank you, Ambassador Kennedy. The damaged vehicle was stripped and used for spare parts.

Q decided to have some fun with the lead car driver and told him that he was pissed and had recommended to me that the driver be fired. He told the driver that I was trying to decide what to do. Later that evening I got a knock on my trailer door. It was the driver apologizing for wrecking the car and saying he fully understood why I was firing him. I told him there was no way it was his fault and that firing him never even crossed my mind. Like more than a few others who had made mistakes, I told him that he had major chips in the Frankwater bank that could be exchanged for an “oh shit” moment. He looked at me like I was crazy. I asked him where the news of his demise was coming from as it certainly had not come from me. He told me that Q had told him he was going to have to pack his gear in the morning. We both realized that Q had set him up, and we laughed like hell. Just another day with the boyz. No one was immune to the daily shenanigans, not even close friends.

The heat was back with full fury. Hacksaw and I had another talk about getting smaller door gunners due to the lift issues associated with the heat. We needed more door gunners as some had rotated out. I called a team meeting and asked for volunteers. Volunteers were numerous, so Hacksaw and I went down the list and chose ten guys to take the course. He would take the top six, and they would belong to him. The course would be run by Hacksaw and Ron “Cat Daddy” Johnson.

Cat Daddy was a former Army Ranger who had been injured during the Grenada invasion. Rather than retire with a medical discharge he volunteered for helicopter flight school. Eventually he became a pilot for the famous TF-160 Night Stalkers. He was a great guy, strong as an ox, tough as nails, and funny as hell. He, Carmine, and Clutch were my Ranger poster children. Ron was killed in action in 2007 while trying to rescue another Blackwater team that had been attacked in Baghdad. He was a warrior of the highest order. His Little Bird was shot down and somehow Ron survived the crash only to be executed—shot in the head—while trying to escape. The militants also stole all his personal items—watch, ID cards, etc. Those of us that knew him were devastated. The other three Blackwater guys on his Little Bird were also killed.

Back in the command post, Ken was going stir-crazy. I liked Ken, but some of the guys did not. A few felt that he thought way too highly of himself for being only the OB (office bitch). Ken had been given several call signs over the months that he’d been with the team—Radar O’Reilly, Christian Slater, OB, and B-Town’s all-time favorite, “Habibti,” which loosely translated in Arabic means “my beloved girlfriend”—but none of those had stuck.

When Ken wasn’t killing people with kindness to get things done he had an acerbic wit, was brutally honest, and didn’t take anyone’s shit. Hacksaw was not a fan of his. In addition to the business degree that caused Babs to select him as the operations and logistics manager for the CP, Ken had extensive weapons skills from his time assigned to the Special Boat Teams—a lesser-known Naval Special Warfare unit that conducted missions with SEALs and other U.S. Special Operations Forces. Ken had been up with the Ass Monkeys before, flying aerial surveillance and route recon with a camera during familiarization flights. He had even gone up to shoot pictures of post-VBIED damage at the Assassin’s Gate for the FBI. Ken wanted to be a door gunner. He had lobbied long and hard to get out of the office. I had previously allowed him to go on some low-key Green Zone advances since he had trained up with the rest of the detail and had been with the team since day one. Some of the air guys apparently didn’t like him and didn’t want him along, but he still wanted to fly. When we had this tryout, I broached the subject of Ken to Hacksaw. He dismissed the idea immediately. I later called Hacksaw and asked him, as a favor to me, to let Ken try out. Hacksaw was not happy, but out of professional courtesy to me, and against his better judgment, he said to send him over. I thanked him.

The tryout was not easy. The guys had to field strip the SAW, put it back together, clear malfunctions, load, unload, and do it while being timed. Some guys washed out right there. The remainder flew out to an area in the desert outside of Baghdad where targets had been set up. The guys had to shoot a qualification course while the Little Birds went through all the maneuvers they might use while engaging bad guys. They started with the M-4 firing semiautomatic, then moved up to the SAW shooting fully automatic—all while herking and jerking around as if providing fire support in a real situation. It was not easy.

The door gunners finished up around 1600. At 1602 my phone rang. It was Ken. “Frank, we need to talk.” This was never good.

“I’m heading to the office now to check the schedule. I’ll meet you there.”

“Roger.”

I asked myself WTF happened.

At 1604 my phone rings again. It was Hacksaw. “Frank, we need to talk NOW.”

“Hacksaw, what happened?”

“That motherfucker shot my helicopter.” He was livid.

“You’re kidding, right?” I could not imagine this was even remotely possible.

“I’m not fucking kidding. We have to put a new blade on it. We barely made it back to the LZ.” Fuck me.

“I told you that SOB shouldn’t even have been allowed in my birds.” He was not happy at all. Just then I see Ken approaching, and I tell Hacksaw to fix the bird.

“Frank, I fucked up. I wanted you to hear it directly from me, not through the rumor mill. I’ll understand if you want to offer me window or aisle. I’m sorry. You put it out there for me, and I let you down.”

“Yeah, well … That is not going to happen. You’ve been here since the beginning and you have enough chips in the Frankwater bank to cover a fuckup.”

“You heard what happened?”

“I did. Shit happens. Nobody was hurt. Take the rest of the day off and relax.”

He went back to his trailer embarrassed and feeling like an ass. I met with Sue and we covered the events for the next few days. I went up to our office about an hour later. There were a dozen guys in there howling hysterically. I glance around and saw what was so funny. Someone had made flyers advertising the Johnny Rotors Aerial Gunnery School. The guys could be vicious. Ken handled it well, with some good-natured “Fuck yous,” and “Talk shit when you don’t get your paycheck, motherfuckers.” He was not the first or last guy who had made a mistake.

Hacksaw was still pissed when I saw him at chow. He reminded me how he had been against Ken’s tryout. There was nothing I could do but admit he was correct and I had been wrong. I asked him what happened. He said that when the bird banked, Ken didn’t adjust his line of fire or let off the trigger quickly enough. One round caught the tip cap, an aluminum end cap at the end of the rotor blade, causing the blade to lose its aerodynamic shape. They landed immediately and inspected the damage. Carl, who was flying the other bird, used a Gerber tool to file off the twisted metal at the end of the rotor blade in order to get it as close to a flying shape as possible so they could limp back to the LZ. The helo was vibrating badly the whole way back as the rotor was now out of its proper shape. While not fatal, if he hadn’t let off the trigger and stopped shooting when Hacksaw yelled, “Watch the rotor disc!,” it could have been a real disaster. Ken had violated Ass Monkey door gunner rule number one: Never shoot your own aircraft.

Plenty of guys on the team made mistakes, some worse than others—Ken’s just happened to cost $20,000 (lots cheaper than the recently totaled Suburban at about $125,000). Not a minimal mistake but far better than losing four men and an entire aircraft.

Luck had saved us again. How much did we have left?

For about a week after this incident the guys added “Johnny Rotors” to Ken’s list of call signs; until Carmine walked into the office one day and saw him sitting behind the computer reading or writing one of my e-mails and said, “You know who you look like? Harry Fucking Potter.” That stuck for the rest of his days working for The Bremer Detail.

April had been a tough month. Four Blackwater guys had been killed in Fallujah, the Najaf incident had occurred, the country was in turmoil, attacks were rapidly escalating on the BIAP road—and still the ambassador was moving at 100 mph, which meant that we were too. We had two months left. HB, Drew B, Carmine, Mongo, G-Money, Clutch, Hillbilly, Sax, Jadicus, Kenny C, Russ T, Mid Day, Jeremy W, Matt 2 Ts, Doc Phil, Jimmy Dog, Randy Y, Mongo B, Todd G, and a few others were staying through to the end with me. With the country in crisis I wasn’t sure that date was still accurate. Our collective fingers were crossed.

Kelli’s college graduation was fast approaching. I needed desperately to get the time off. I prayed for a period of relative peace so I could make my move. It never came. Attacks on the military and coalition forces continued unabated. Attacks on the Green Zone rose. Threats against the ambassador went off the charts. My guys were moving at warp speed, and I continued to press them to be perfect each and every day.

I met with the intel guys, the RSO, the military, the CPA leadership, foreign PSD teams, the folks from Strategic Communications (StratComm), and all others who wanted or needed the ambassador. They would come to me to see what they could do to make sure a certain objective they wanted him to do was workable for all of us. It was great show of respect on everyone’s part. They knew that the sooner I was involved in a project, the more likely it was to happen, and happen smoothly. This was a far cry from the early days. We were no longer viewed as a nuisance to be tolerated; we were now a part of the process. They also realized that if the ambassador was present, it was also going to be safer for all of them, so it worked both ways. We may have made their lives a little more difficult, but we did bring value-added safety to their events. It’s hard to say it was pleasant. That’s not the right word. It was tough, but working together was easier for everyone involved, and that made each day seem better.

As a show of appreciation to us the ambassador decided to throw a beer and pizza party for his PSD team. The guys were ecstatic. It meant a lot to the team. We finished up the day around 1400 and took the ambassador to his villa. He had bought about ten cases of beer and forty pizzas for the guys. He also told me he would stay at the villa for the rest of the evening, and to tell the guys to drink up. We were psyched. Since we had the villa security team in place at this time, I told the guys to go put their weapons away and come back in some clean clothes. There was no need for my guys to be carrying weapons while the villa guys had control. Sergeant Major Purdy had taken the SAWs and placed them in strategic locations around the place, and we were quite safe.