From the get-go Rosie, Adam, and Jim worked insanely hard. They were up at 5:00 A.M. checking on the overnight security. They had to plan routes to get the clients—the diplomats—to meetings, plotting their A-to-Bs based on intelligence, known danger—“red”—areas, and prior reconnaissance of the meeting location. They would be working until close to midnight. Three RSOs were certainly better than one, but more were needed to handle the workload, and they needed to be stationed here for longer.
The turnover was a major issue, for as soon as an RSO got to know the ropes, they—like Lee—were burned-out and gone. That formed part of Rosie’s earliest feedback that she sent to Washington, but I got the sense that Washington was proving to be something of a black hole: it sucked in every bit of information that she gave them, but nothing came back in return.
Thankfully, my local intel network was proving somewhat more responsive. I’d put out the word that I wanted maximum vigilance, and my guards were to report to me any information they might pick up on the streets. I wanted anything on the Shariah Brigade, plus other assorted bad guys. Snippets of intel started filtering in, and word was that people were getting “disappeared” almost daily.
The city’s supposedly peaceful image was a mirage, behind which dark forces were at work. There was a growing Al Qaeda presence in the area. Partly, it was lone-wolf-type extremist individuals, and partly the ranks of the Shariah Brigade. The Shariah Brigade hailed from the eastern provinces of Libya, an area long associated with Islamic extremism. They’d supposedly joined the liberation struggle to topple Gaddafi, but in reality they were a coalition of various extremist militias that had emerged after Gad-dafi’s downfall.
Their fighters were tolerated in Benghazi but hardly welcomed. Shortly after Gaddafi had fallen the disappearances had begun. It was an “open secret,” according to my guards, that there was a long list of those who were to be “dealt with.” It included top commanders from the Libyan Army and Air Force, government officials, bureaucrats, and businessmen, plus anyone else who could be remotely linked to the former regime.
These people were getting blown away on the streets of Benghazi. There was no rule of law to stop these extrajudicial executions, and it wasn’t just the Shariah Brigade who were at it. All the militias—the 17th February included—were apparently putting bullets in people’s heads as they worked through the “to-kill” list. It was cold-blooded murder and score-settling and it was rampant.
The fact that the militia who formed our QRF were out there killing on the streets made the situation at the Embassy seem all the more insane. There were even reports that 17th February militiamen were joining the ranks of the Shariah Brigade. The more I looked around me, the more I saw Shariah fighters lurking around the city. It was deeply ominous. I kept briefing the new RSOs on what my guards were telling me, and what I was seeing with my own eyes.
Jim, Adam, and Rosie thanked me for the warnings but said they were aware that there were “Al Qaeda elements” in the city. I didn’t have a clue where they were getting their intel, for they didn’t seem to be building up much of a local network of sources.
Whenever they left the Embassy compound they were driving their armored SUVs all tooled up with weaponry. In a sense they were better protected than me, for I drove around in a thin-skinned local vehicle, keeping a low profile. But they were still only three, and that didn’t make the Embassy itself a great deal better protected. We’d had some small-scale attacks already, and I was worried that if the bad guys came in force they could seriously hurt us.
All three of the new RSOs put the obvious question to me: Did I think the bad guys could get into the Embassy compound?
“If they come at night with ten guys or more, they can take us,” was my reply. “They’ll hit the point of greatest weakness, the front gate, take that out, and kill the guards. No duck-and-cover alarm will be pressed, so you’ll have no warning. You’ll be in your beds, with no weapons or body armor. They’ll be in among you and have the compound before you even know it.”
They knew this was the truth but they hated having to hear it—for what more could they do to counter the threat? We were desperately in need of more manpower and resources, but for that they needed backing from Washington.
In my head I’d nicknamed the new lead RSO “Take-No-Shit Rosie.” Already she’d caught our first guard sleeping on duty. She told me right away and made it clear that it was unacceptable. I told her that I was in complete and utter agreement with her. I drew up a sign in Arabic and posted it in the guardroom. It warned that anyone caught sleeping on duty would face immediate dismissal. All the guards would be forced to read it before starting their shift.
A week or so into Rosie’s reign Tom was driving Dan and me to work when I spotted a familiar figure on the street. It was Alif, one of the first guards that I’d sacked and the first who’d threatened to kill me. I was getting reports that Alif was thirsting for revenge, and that he was trying to foment unrest among my guards. I figured now was as good a time as any to deal with it.
“Pull over, will you, mate,” I remarked to Tom.
Being none the wiser Tom drew to a halt at the roadside. I jumped out and walked up to Alif. “I hear you’re still looking to kill me,” I announced, in Arabic. “Here I am. Come on—you and me, man to man.”
By now Tom had realized what I was up to. He came rushing over and tried grabbing me by the shoulder to pull me back. “You can’t do this, Morgan, you can’t do this!” he hissed, in English. “You can’t just challenge him on the streets.”
I shrugged him off. “I can. Just watch me.” I repeated my challenge to Alif, in Arabic.
“I didn’t threaten to kill you,” Alif tried. “It’s Dan I wanted to kill. He was the one who disrespected me.”
“Well, that’s even worse,” I countered. “Dan’s older than me, and he’s old enough to be your father. You know, in the Koran it says you must respect your elders. You should be ashamed.”
“But Dan disrespected me . . .” Alif tried again.
“Well, d’you want me to go fetch him? He’s in the vehicle. You can have it out with him right here and now, if you fancy it.”
“No, no . . . As you say, we should respect the elders.”
“Look, let’s cut the crap. I’m the one who sacked you. So either we get it on now or you can shut it. Period.”
“Okay, I will shut up,” Alif conceded.
“That’s better. And don’t ever disrespect Dan. He’s seen more action in more wars than you’ve had hot dinners. Got it?”
Alif told me that he had.
“And if you keep trying to mess with my guard force, trust me, I’ll come looking for you.”
Alif assured me that he wouldn’t dream of it. As far as he was concerned, we were all good.
I made my way back to the vehicle feeling it was a job well done. But I could tell that Tom was fuming. No sooner were we under way again than he started.
“Morgan, you cannot do this! Challenging people on the streets! You do not understand Muslim culture . . .”
That was it. Tom worked for us, we paid his wages, and for days now we’d had this twenty-year-old Libyan twerp giving us death threats and messing with our guards—and here was Tom trying to defend the guy. I’d had more than enough of this.
“Listen, mate, I’ve worked in Iraq, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and the list goes on. I’ve seen more Muslim culture and more Muslim wars than you’ll ever see. Between us, Dan and I have twenty years’ experience working in the most dangerous parts of the Islamic world, so don’t ever think you can use your you-don’t-understand-Muslim-culture bullshit on us. You need to sort out where your loyalties lie. Is it to us and the guards, or to Alif and his sort?”
Tom didn’t reply. He knew he was out of order, not to mention out of his depth. I expected honorable, decent behavior from my guards, and especially from the guard force commander. If Tom’s loyalties lay with Alif—a lazy, duplicitous ex-employee—then I’d get rid of him, too, and I think he more than knew that. I had challenges enough to deal with as far as the guards were concerned, without Tom’s shit on top.
It was around this time that Dan rotated back to Britain, leaving me in the hot seat. I figured I needed to get myself seriously “local” now. I would be back at the villa every night, alone, and I wouldn’t always manage to settle it so I had our shared AK-47 with me. I needed to get streetwise. I got Tom to take me into downtown Benghazi, but to drop me at different locations and to wait in the car as I moved around the streets running whatever errands needed doing.
The more time I spent alone on the streets, and the more I settled into the pace of life here, the less anyone seemed to notice me. I needed to be able to operate low-profile like this, for I had zero backup. At the best of times Tom was a drive away, and I wasn’t sure I could really count on him. As for Rosie, Adam, and Jim, if I was hit in the villa it made sense that the bad guys might be coming for them, too, in which case they’d have to prioritize their clients—the Embassy staff.
In such circumstances the only person I could depend upon was myself. I didn’t particularly like it. It hadn’t been like this on previous jobs. The smallest team I’d ever been a part of was four, and that was when shepherding a ship through pirate seas. On a ground operation such as this one you’d never normally form a team of fewer than eight, all of whom would be well-experienced and battle-hardened Brits, Aussies, Kiwis, Canadians, or Americans.
In addition, you’d have a layer of good local security around you. In Helmand Province, Afghanistan, we’d had some immensely brave Pashtuns working for us, and I’d grown close to our local operators. I’d made friends for life there, literally. One guy used to guard our villa in the midst of Lashkar Gah, the capital of the province. It could hold up to sixteen men, and it was a safe house where we could run to if we’d been badly hit.
We’d nicknamed him “Crack Head,” for he looked so wired from all the gunfights he’d been in, but he was one hundred percent reliable. He had a team of four under him, and he’d been there since day one of G4S—the security company—getting the contract. Nothing ever seemed too much for Crack Head. I’d have given anything to have a few guys like him on our security team here in Benghazi. If Crack Head and his boys had been parachuted in to replace the 17th February Militia, then we’d have had a QRF to be reckoned with.
Crack Head and his men had been our first line of defense, and we knew we were safe with them on duty. One night I’d had a major row with Kevin, one of my fellow white-eye operators. Each day we’d save some of our food to share with the guards. Kevin had started volunteering to take it out to the guys on sentry. At first I’d thought he had to be a real nice guy for doing so. Then I discovered he was taking the main course and mixing it into a mush with the dessert, so deliberately spoiling the food.
It was so utterly mindless and disrespectful, not to mention plain stupid. We depended on Crack Head and his boys for our lives, and over the months they’d become our friends. And now this. Kevin tried telling me they were “only a bunch of stupid ragheads, so what did it matter.” I went berserk. I was team leader, and I made it clear that one more transgression like that and he’d be gone.
A few days later we were heading through open countryside in a four-vehicle convoy. Kevin was driving and I was commanding, so sitting in the passenger seat. We were moving toward the villa when he spotted two young kids coming the other way on a little putt-putt moped. A moment later he’d spun the wheel around in an effort to force them off the road and into a ditch.
I reached over, wrenched it back my way, and just managed to save the kids from getting crushed by four tons of armored SUV. I went completely mental. I practically ripped the guy’s head off and stuffed it down his throat. And when we got back to the villa I made it clear to the boss that I wanted rid of this joker, now. Or if not, I was out of there.
It wasn’t just that he was a racist, cowardly, murderous bastard. He was also a total liability. His behavior with the food had threatened to turn Crack Head and the others against us. That was bad enough. But if he’d succeeded in killing those kids—for there was no doubt in my mind that they would have died—word would have gone around like wildfire, and the entire population of Lashkar Gah would have turned against us.
There was a strong sense of honor and duty among guys like Crack Head, and woe betide anyone who disrespected it. Had those kids been mowed down, we’d have been lucky to escape with our lives. And the key difference between our local security in Afghanistan and here in Benghazi was this: if any one of Crack Head’s guys had proven himself incapable of handling his weapon, Crack Head would have been the first to get rid of him. It rested upon his honor to ensure that all his guys were utterly dedicated and shit-hot.
The guy I’d seen at the Embassy who’d lost the magazine off his AK-47 actually turned out to be Mutasim, the leader of the 17th February QRF—so there was a fat chance of Mutasim sacking himself. Crack Head and his boys were also some of the bravest of the brave. On several occasions I’d fought shoulder to shoulder with them, and I’d had absolute confidence they would have died for us. By contrast, my confidence levels in the 17th February Militia were at zero.
I already had Mutasim’s measure by now and he knew it. He was in the midst of doing a tourism and leisure degree at Benghazi University, yet here he was acting as the leader of the American Embassy’s QRF. The rest of his boys were equally inexperienced and unsuited to the task. One was a guy called Hamza. His favorite pastime seemed to be boasting about being a sniper during the revolution to topple Gaddafi.
“I have twenty kills to my name,” he’d announced to me. “Twenty confirmed kills.”
What a load of shit, I’d thought. “Really? Twenty kills. So what kind of range were you hitting them at?”
“Erm . . . Well, it varied.”
“Okay, so what was the maximum kill range?”
“Oh, around a mile or more,” Hamza blustered.
“A mile? Wow. Some shooting. So, what kind of weapon were you using—a Dragunov?”
The Russian Dragunov is the most common type of sniper rifle used by militaries and rebel forces the world over. It is ubiquitous and iconic. Every sniper and most soldiers in the world would know of it. It’s a bit dated compared to more modern sniper weapons, but it’s still a fine piece of equipment.
Hamza shrugged. “Dragunov? What is this?”
“It’s more or less the sniper rifle version of the AK-47. It’s also the most commonly used sniper rifle in the world.”
“Oh, I have never heard of it.”
Enough said. Hamza’s twenty confirmed sniper kills were a figment of his imagination.
One morning I arrived at the Embassy to see Mutasim strutting around with his AK and ordering my guards about. He was trying to give them all kinds of shitty, menial tasks which had nothing to do with what they were here for. It wasn’t the first time he’d tried to lord it over my guards, and I’d had more than enough of it.
I walked up to him and gave it to him straight. “The guards answer to me and the Americans only. You got anything you want to say, you say it to me, direct.”
Mutasim’s English was great—it had to be for him to be QRF leader—but he barely uttered a word in response. He couldn’t even look me in the eye. Here was I, unarmed, but I was more than happy to call him out—for I knew he didn’t have a clue how to use the weapon he was carrying. Mutasim was actually scared of his own gun. I knew it, and he knew that I knew, and that’s why he so resented me.
Mutasim went off to find Rosie and he had a good moan. She called me in for a chat. She asked me if I had a problem with the QRF, and I guessed now was the time to go for it. I told her that I did, and if Mutasim continued to try to lord it over my guard force then I was out of here. She asked me what exactly was my issue.
“Put simply, when the shit hits the fan the QRF will not back you up,” I told her.
She asked me how I could be so certain.
“I’ve worked with these kind of people all over the world—or rather, I’ve tried to avoid working with Mutasim’s sort. Trust me, they’ll take your money, but in the event of an attack at best they’ll run, and at worst they’ll help your attackers.”
Rosie was visibly shocked. I told her that the QRF’s weapons skills were atrocious. I told her if she doubted me, then she should get Jim and Adam to do some weapons drills with them. I told her about Hamza boasting to me about being a sniper with twenty kills to his name, something that had sent my bullshit detector off the scale. Of course, Rosie had heard of the Dragunov—not that she claimed to be an ace sniper at more than a mile of range.
Rosie was doubly shocked. The supposed role of the QRF was to repel any attackers once the duck-and-cover alarm had been sounded, so the RSOs could get the Embassy staff into a position where they could protect them. But I knew for sure the 17th February militiamen would never fight and die alongside the Americans they were supposedly charged to protect, and I told her as much.
I’d forged a close bond with many of my guards—first and foremost Nasir and Mustaffa, plus a new guy called Zahid. They were smart, loyal, and sharp, and with Rosie’s help they were fully up to speed. None of them put the slightest faith in the QRF and their ability or willingness to stand and fight.
I’d just recruited two extra guards, Karim and Saladin, both of whom had fought big-time to topple Gaddafi. They even had videos on their mobile phones of themselves in action on the front lines. Saladin was still in need of an operation on his leg from where he’d been shot. They knew the 17th February guys employed as our QRF, and they knew that none had seen any combat—which helped explain their appalling lack of weapons-handling skills.
I explained all of this to Rosie. She pointed out that right now the QRF was the only force mandated by the State Department to carry weapons on the compound. Put simply, she didn’t have anyone else. The QRF was it. She asked me to help her do some joint drills—the QRF along with my guard force—so we could get them working as one team. I told her that I’d help in any way that I could—but in my heart I knew it was hopeless.
We scheduled the first joint training session for the following morning. I arrived at the Embassy early and went and found Rosie. She looked as if she hadn’t slept too well.
“I caught another of your guards sleeping on duty,” she announced. “So, I guess that’s one that’s gotta go.”
“Absolutely,” I confirmed. “In the British Army if you’re caught sleeping while on sentry you’ll never live it down. The guy’s history.”
I asked who it was. She told me it was Suffian. I winced. I’d always seen Suffian as one of my best. I left it until an hour before the end of his shift before telling him he was done. I gave him half the outstanding wages he was owed and told him he’d only get the remainder once he returned his spare uniform and ID card.
Suffian begged me to give him a second chance. “Anyway, I wasn’t sleeping. Not really. I was dropping off, but not asleep.”
Rosie was a smart lady and she’d taken a photo of him on her cell phone. I showed Suffian the image.
“That you?” I asked.
He peered at the screen and nodded morosely. “Yes, it is.”
“Tell me, do you look wide awake or fast asleep?”
Suffian had to admit that he had been sleeping. Still, he was desperate for the work and begged me to reconsider.
“Suffian, you’ve read the sign. You know the score. I’ve got no option but to get rid of you.”
I told him he was sacked, but I’d try to see if we could bring him back in. Maybe there was a way he could reapply for his job after a suitable lapse of time.
I went and talked it through with Rosie. “Suffian’s gone, but he was one of our best. What about if we let him go on a standby list to reapply?”
“Good idea. He’ll never do it again, that’s for sure. Offer him the option to reapply, but we don’t ease up the pressure. We keep showing the guard force real tough love.”
I agreed with Rosie on all of this absolutely. But there was also a part of me that was baffled by this focus on my guards. On the one hand it was fine: I was glad Rosie was kicking them into shape. But who was getting on top of the god-awful QRF—the only guys with the weaponry to mount a proper defense of the compound?
Maybe all of that was about to change. We’d scheduled the first combined drill—QRF and guard force—for directly after lunch. I got in position at the front gate so I could check how my guys performed. Rosie headed over to the QRF Villa, rousted Mutasim, and made the announcement.
“Quick! Quick! The compound is under attack!”
No sooner had she uttered those words than one of my guys hit the duck-and-cover alarm, and the horrible metallic wailing began. I saw Mutasim disappear into the QRF Villa, presumably to get his gun. The first to emerge after him was Hamza, the guy who’d boasted about being the world’s greatest sniper. I watched in utter amazement as he tripped over his own bootlaces, which were undone, and went crashing to the ground, his AK-47 scooting off into the bushes.
Mutasim came next. He leapt over Hamza, making no effort to help him up, and as he did so two magazines went flying out of his chest rig, spinning through the air, then hit the driveway, spilling rounds all over the place. He didn’t stop to pick them up but made for a sandbagged bunker in front of the VIP Villa.
From there Mutasim’s supposed role was to put down fire onto the main gateway to prevent the bad guys coming through, while the RSOs got the Mission staff to safety. But right now all he had was one thirty-round magazine for his AK to fight off the hordes of gunmen who were supposedly attacking us. The rest of the ammunition was scattered over the driveway.
The QRF were then supposed to grab their armored SUV, which was parked outside their villa, and slam it in front of the main gate to stop any hostiles driving through. A third member was supposed to get into a second armored SUV and bring it to the VIP Villa, ready to evacuate the Embassy staff. It wasn’t a bad drill in theory, but right now it was proving a total fiasco.
By the time Mutasim had made it halfway to his sandbagged position Rosie had decided to give voice to her disquiet, and boy did she let rip.
“START THE DRILL ALL OVER AGAIN!”
Rosie began to drill the QRF day and night. They never knew when the next was coming. She’d seen with her own eyes how my damning assessment of them was at least partly accurate. In terms of tactics and weapons-handling skills, they were hopeless. But she still didn’t seem to believe that they would turn and run when the bullets started to fly. Of course, I didn’t want to be proven right on that. The last thing I ever wanted was for the Embassy to be attacked and for the QRF to run, leaving the Americans to face the fire alone.
But I feared very much that that was what was coming.