‘Mercenaries, Gunslingers, and Outlaws’: Staring Down Death From Above

by Robert M. Kurtz

Excerpted from Mercenaries, Gunslingers, and Outlaws: Two Years as a Security Contractor in Iraq.

Whoever set up the last IED that directly targeted my vehicle showed a little more ingenuity than usual. We were somewhere just outside of Bagdad; all the convoys seem to run together after a while especially when you’re the last vehicle. It’s like you never really know where you are, you just follow the vehicle in front of you, the whole while watching out for potential threats coming up from behind you. The only sure way to know where you are is the notification coming across the radio from the first vehicle. Anyway, it was an expressway with the usual overpasses. I do remember that we didn’t have any trucks with us at the time so we must have been heading back to camp at the end of a run. 

As we approached an overpass, I noticed two Iraqis standing on the little grassy slope on the edge of the road that went over the expressway. They were both just standing there leaning on rakes or shovels and watching the convoy go by. It seemed odd to me because there were just the two guys. No service truck and no other workers. They didn’t have vests on or anything, not that meant anything in Iraq. I got that feeling again that something wasn’t right. The one that it usually isn’t a good idea to ignore.

It was a standard tactic to try never to come out from under the other side of an overpass in the same lane you were in when you went in under it. There had been cases of people waiting on the overpass to shoot down at vehicles because most up-armored SUVs don’t have any armor in the roof.  Sometimes they would drop a grenade tied to a string so it would stop falling at windshield level before it blew up. Switching lanes under the overpass might throw an ambusher off.

The expressway had three lanes in each direction, and I went from the right lane to the far left lane. I remember going around one of those little white Toyota Hilux pickup trucks that are all over the Mideast. Just as I got to the far left lane under the bridge the IED went off. It had been mounted up under the far right edge of the overpass, probably with an aimed charge pointing down onto the road. Pretty creative, really.

I’m guessing the two guys standing by the overpass triggered it with a phone or garage door opener, but they weren’t expecting me to change lanes like I did. The way it worked out, the IED mostly missed us, but it hit the little white truck with the two Iraqis in it pretty hard.

An incident in Samara. Photo courtesy of the author.

There was a lot of smoke and dust so I couldn’t see much, but I had a fleeting impression of the little truck stopped in the middle of the lane with the doors open. My ears were ringing, but I thought I heard a few gunshots, which my Kurds must have heard too because they opened up with their AKs. I had no idea if they actually saw anyone shooting at us or if they started shooting just in case. We all just wanted to survive another day.

I got on the radio to tell the rest of the team that we’d been hit with an IED and that I thought we were taking fire. I hit the gas and closed up with the team, which had sped up to get out of the ambush area and then stopped about a klick up the road.

As I pulled up to them, everybody got out laughing and clapping their hands. Being the sensitive guys that they were, they all laughed and said they thought I’d bought it that time for sure. They also thought my radio call under pressure had been very entertaining. I will admit my voice may have been an octave or so higher, but I didn’t think it was that funny.

As it turned out, my tail gunner had caught a small piece of shrapnel in the leg and there were a few dings in the truck. We patched him up and radioed ahead to have a medical team waiting for us when we reached the perimeter of the secure area near BIAP where our camp was. A team from our company and an Army medical team were there waiting for us and checked him over. The medic said he thought there was probably a small piece of metal in his leg, but it wasn’t worth the pain and effort to dig it out. Since he didn’t need any additional treatment, we all went back to camp where I got to tell my story several times to different people. 

A couple of the senior guys came and checked the truck out and told me how lucky I was. As if I didn’t know. It was one of those close calls that provided plenty of excitement with no harm being done, at least not to us. I’m sure the two Iraqis in the little pickup truck felt differently. It was just another example of how indiscriminate weapons like IEDs are. I had seen it with the bus and the wedding party from the previous IED attacks, but I’ll never forget that little truck sitting there with the doors open.

You can buy Mercenaries, Gunslingers, and Outlaws: Two Years as a Security Contractor in Iraq by Robert M. Kurtz here, through Casemate.