A little more than a year ago, I flew to Baghdad from Amman for a trip that would eventually lead me to Yunis, the subject of The Prisoner Or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair. About an hour after my plane landed, a sand storm kicked up and I was stranded at the airport desperately seeking a secure way into the city.

My instructions were pretty simple: when you get in to the airport, find the KBR contractor who is posted near customs and he?ll make a call to a KBR driver who will pick you up in a black Suburban and take you to Camp Stryker where they?ll manifest you on the Rhino to take you to the Steel Dragon. The only problem is, KBR is nowhere to be found and the  Nepalese Gurhkas and South African dog handlers guarding the terminal have no idea of what I?m talking about. So I sit on the curb of the arrivals area of BIAP (Baghdad International Airport), watching an Italian Special Forces team--kitted out all Gucci-like with snug fitting vests, upside down survival knives and ankle holsters--prepare a convoy of Italian doctors and their Iraqi patients, who have just returned from treatment in Italy, for the short, but dangerous drive to Baghdad.

Rhino, armored transport

Years ago--and it is years now--in that time hastily referred to as the ?end of the war?, which could now be called the ?end of the beginning of the war?, getting to Baghdad was all together different, much like Lonely Planet travel  is to packaged tourism.  Back then, in the Spring of 2003,  a German armored car salesman invited me to film his exploits as he drove into Baghdad with a fleet of armored cars bound for service with news agencies and diplomatic missions. After 12 years in the armoring business--a career dotted with all the late 20th Century wars--this was the one he had been waiting for: The Perfect War. I won?t say that he was a seer--far from it--but he knew this was just the beginning. It wasn?t about a dozen cars, or even a hundred, it was a thousand car war where security would become the ultimate commodity.

Waiting for taxi one morning at the Intercon in Amman, we watched as an itinerant peace activist unfurled a rainbow banner with the word Pax spelled out in the shape of doves. ?Peace?? the salesman asked, ?I don?t want peace, I want war.?  Even then, a few weeks after the fall of Saddam?s statue in Firdos Square, with only a  peep of organized resistance in the air, his Nokia rang with frantic calls from buyers who needed cars now.  He had a factory in Poland churning out two dozen B6 (Kalashnikov Class) armored Land Cruisers a month, which drove straight off the assembly line to Maastricht where they were loaded on Royal Jordanian jets and flown to Amman. From there, he simply had to form a convoy for the 1000 kilometer drive to Baghdad. His biggest worry--beyond a premature peace--were Ali Babas, the tribal bandits that worked the road between the border and Baghdad. They weren?t interested in taking your life--just your money, your car and your sat phone. During Happy Hour at the Intercon?s Mexican themed hotel bar, the SAS and SBS men who worked as security advisors for the networks would recount the security incidents of the day: a CNN convoy was held-up at a road stop and the security advisor was shot in the hand during a struggle for his weapon. A Jordanian driver was shot in the head near Ramadi. Look out for a white BMW just before you reach Ramadi. Meanwhile, in the Intercon?s parking lot, amphetamine fueled drivers fresh from Baghdad checked out our G-Wagen--tapping on the armor, mumbling something about a place called Falluja while laughing at the stickers on the hood and doors that implored in Arabic, ?Please don?t shoot?.

On that first trip,  we had the good fortune of forming a convoy with the German Ambassador and his GSG9 close protection team. It was Herr Doktor?s first trip back to Baghdad since his mission evacuated, so his CP team wasn?t taking any chances. We crossed the Iraqi border with a Jordanian military escort and then, with a touch of theatrics, the GSG9 team leader opened their diplomatic pouches at a gas station to reveal to all eyes their arsenal of weapons. The Jordanian drivers the Germans had hired to drive support vehicles grinned as each high-tech weapon was placed on the hood of our G-Wagen. Surely, Ali Baba was no match for these elite anti-terror commandos.

With confident smiles, we drove the wide German designed highway to Baghdad at a steady 100 MPH, popping Imodium to forestall any dangerous pit stops, chugging warm Red Bull to stay awake and bobbing our heads to the stereo. As we reached Falluja, the sky blackened by tire fires, Kiowas and Little Birds beating the road ahead of us, Coolio spat out Gangsta?s Paradise as we made  the final turn towards Baghdad.

Arriving that afternoon, even with smoke in the air from looting, Baghdad somehow felt optimistic. Soldiers played soccer clumsily with kids on the street. You could see guys from 3 ID ticking off the days they had left Down Range on the sides of their humvees. At the checkpoints near Firdos Square, soldiers lounged in lawn chairs, body armor hanging from their vehicles, occasionally getting up to chase glue sniffing kids out of the wire with an ax handle. Over at ORHA  (Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance), Jay Garner was floating around some kind of 90 Day Plan. Worst case? Everybody would be home by Christmas. In the meantime, the whole country would be rebuilt, schools would be renovated, every child would receive a ?Back to School? gift from the American People, oil revenue would pay for a lasting peace and democracy would flourish.

The problem was, nobody bothered to share their plan with the insurgents. On July 5th, Richard Wild, a 26-year-old journalist from the UK was shot and killed at close range in front of the Natural History Museum. The next day, Spc. Jeffrey Wershow, a Florida National Guardsman was shot in the head at Baghdad University as he waited in line to buy a cold drink. With that, people who had routinely jogged along the Tigris stopped jogging, even the most discrete security details were openly brandishing weapons and the soldiers at Firdos Square were wearing new body armor--that they rotated between shifts--as they stood behind a barricade that grew bigger every day.

Out on the road, the rules changed too. As we prepared to leave Amman for another trip to Baghdad, we heard the news that  GSG9  had been attacked in the dark near Ramadi by a Nissan Patrol that had cut them off and opened fire from the cover of a bridge. The security detail slammed into reverse as their backseat snipers fired blew out their own windshields, laying down suppressive fire so they could escape. While they lived to tell the tale, their reputation as an elite anti-terror force was diminished in the eyes of the salesman, who immediately bought an MP5 in Amman which he smuggled into Iraq under the stores of canned mushrooms, Becks and wurst that he?d promised the German Embassy in Baghdad.  I never quite figured out how one weapon was going to stop two car loads of determined insurgents potentially armed with RPGs, but psychologically, it felt good to have a weapon in the car. Of course, nothing ever happened  to us,  but there was reason enough for the salesman to continue his investment in weapons: an M4, an HK33, short-stocked AKs, three handguns, laser optics, infrared strobes, and thousands of rounds of ammunition. 

Fast forward two years and the salesman looks simply well prepared. Name a scenario from his sales literature and it has been played out: embassy bombings, car-jackings, kidnap for ransom, political assassination, it?s all been done and then some. Al Qaeda in Iraq makes Ali Baba look downright friendly--the kind of guys you might sit down and have a nice cup of tea with. All that has changed now. These guys don?t want  your money, they want your head. Small arms? The least of your worries. These guys are putting shaped charges on the side of the road powerful enough to stop an M1 tank. Gunners are resorting to wearing flame retardant Nomex flight suits because some clever bomb makers have cooked up homemade napalm straight out of The Anarchists Cookbook. So now, even security advisors have security and you can?t move a piece of mail, a bullet or any one of the three flavors ice-cream served in the DEFAC without hired guns--and lots of them. Rumor has it that there were more South African Special Forces in Iraq than in South Africa. At the center of all of this is KBR, the Wal-Mart of war, manned not by the ?best and brightest?, but by the willing.

This is apparent as I sit in front of the arrival gate of the airport. Every hour a new batch of contractors lands, runs through customs, and then follows a group leader to a fleet of busses, each displaying its destination on the windshield: Victory, Falcon, Anaconda.  As the contractors walk by, I imagine them heading off to oil rigs or factory trawlers, the fact that this is a war zone is lost on many of them. They are just warm bodies, here for the money.

After waiting hours for a ride, I hesitantly ask to borrow an an Iraqna cell phone from the man that runs the tea shop in the departure lounge and  I finally manage to get hold of a KBR driver who agrees to drive across the airport to Camp Stryker where I can get a ride to the Green Zone. He shows up about an hour later in a black armored Suburban for the less than hostile drive to the other side of the airport.

In the transit tent at Camp Stryker, the waiting area for rides to the Green Zone and outbound flights, dozens of contract workers sit playing cards or huddle around dusty laptop screens watching bootlegged movies purchased from the Hadji Stand next to the PX. Twenty Bangladeshi cooks sit on their luggage in a corner, their hand-me-down UN blue body armor and helmets show the scars of wars past. A group of Bosnians attract attention, not so much for their duty-free drunkenness, but  because they are dominated by three hotties from Sarajevo-- squeezed into jeans riding low enough on their hips to reveal their navel piercings and tattoos. Some Marines, just in from some shithole FOB on their way to R&R, eat it up, each one sighing like man I?d like to tap that ass.

The higher ranking State department officials have their own tent and come outfitted for the war in Eddie Bauer. High tech hiking shoes. Pants with zip-away legs. Drip dry microfiber shirts. I can kind of picture them walking their black labs in Georgetown, except their legs boast  one--if not two--Blackhawk thigh holsters. Ready for war, or at least a Gatorade run to the food court at the PX.  It?s not a war, it?s an adventure!  Never mind that they probably will never set foot in Baghdad proper, instead their tour will consist of running spreadsheets during the day and Chinese takeaway at night, excitedly e-mailing home when a mortar lands inside the Green Zone, validation that they were in the shit.

Outside the transit tent, newly arrived PSDs (Personal Security Detachments) congregate, each bearing a thousand yard stare learned from watching Black Hawk Down too many times--I?m half expecting someone to breakout in a warrior poet monologue about it being ?about the guy next to you? at any moment. They?re all dressed in the special ops fashion of the day:  military haircuts a little too long in the back, scraggly-ass beards, kaffiyas around their necks, Under Armor t-shirts a size too small and John Deere baseball caps crowned with Oakleys or ballistic goggles. Too bad looks can?t kill. A retired Air Force Pararescue operator now running PSDs told me that he?d met a couple of these guys at the PX recently and asked who they were with, expecting to hear ?5th Group out of Campbell? or the like. Instead, they told him how they?d been running security at a Wal-Mart warehouse in Arkansas and had answered an ad they saw online for ?experienced operators?. Two weeks later they were in Baghdad armed with M4s, DOD passes and an unwritten license to kill.

Iraq has become a playground for wannabe soldiers of fortune to act out their fantasies while earning six figure tax-free salaries, in their wake, giving the few true professionals a bad name. You hear wild stories about steroid fueled PSDs lighting up coalition positions, forcing other vehicles off the road and indiscriminately clearing by fire  as they race to their destinations.  Shot an Iraqi passerby? No problem, you?ll be on a plane away from Iraq--and any justice--the next day.

It?s enough to make your average Joe grumpy. And why not?  Some of these kids are on their second tour in three years, even more are stop lossed--held beyond the separation dates on their contracts --and many of them were seduced by the tax free bonuses promised for reenlisting in theater. No matter how high the bonuses, they definitely are not six figures and unlike the KBR drivers who ferried my VIP ass around the safety of BIAP, they don?t have armored Suburbans, hell, half of them have weapons ready for the display case at the Infantry Museum at Ft. Benning. All they want to do is to finish their jobs so they can go home, but now, the closest any of them can get to home is the Internet Cafe where they sit  silently chatting with their wives and girlfriends on no-name PCs as they receive 4 frame a second webcam images from home, a scene that has all the romance of a high security prison visit where you can look, but can?t touch. Video streams in from Columbus and Tacoma, girls spread out on couches, a leg seductively thrown over an arm rest, a blouse slowly unbuttoned, the conversation leaning towards the mundane, ?Pumpkin, did you make my car payment??

Waiting for a free terminal, I sit outside with a kid from the 10th Mountain Division, sharing a smoke trying to decide the source of the booms we just heard. Could have been controlled ordnance demolition, counterfire from Paladins, insurgents trying to hit Camp Victory with a Katyusha rocket wired to a car battery or a VBID hitting a convoy outside the wire. Hearing it far-off like that it didn?t matter much, it was somebody else?s problem. It sucks to be you. 

The kid tells me a story, ?A couple of days ago we were  out showing some new National Guard guys our routes by Abu Ghraib--we call it right-seat-ride.  Anyway, we?re rolling along the highway and then BOOM!  IED goes off next to the meridian. Ripped the doors right off. My last fucking day on patrol and they blow my shit up. I?m so done with this place. All I want to do is go home and do nothing. ?

I remembered the first time I saw a humvee come in from a patrol hit by an IED, the soldiers pulled in to the gate, dismounted and kind of staggered around--fingers in ears--dumfounded by the little damage done to their vehicle, while their Battery Commander walked up to me with a wink and a smile and said, ?Better to be lucky than good.?  I didn?t quite get it then, but I would later when I got close enough to feel it.  It was apt motto for this war of vehicular roulette. There?s nothing quite like surviving.

At around 2200, an amiable Army Reserve major appears with his clipboard to manifest the passengers on the four Rhino busses waiting outside. Every night, he?s has to move seven or eight dozen people down Route Irish, the section of highway that links BIAP to the Green Zone. It?s easily the eight most dangerous kilometers in the world and rarely a day goes by without an attack of some kind. At the beginning of the occupation, soldiers dubbed it RPG Alley for the obvious reason and while it was dangerous, you could still drive it with some confidence. There were drive-bys, potshots and the occasional IED or RPG attack, but it didn?t stop anybody from taking casual trips to BIAP with its PX and Burger King (the busiest on the planet, I was told once, as we bought 118 Whoppers for a platoon). But now, it is entirely different. Cars drive the wrong way down the highway laden with explosives. Every humvee has a sign hanging on the back of the gunner?s hatch that reads in arabic: STAY BACK 100 METERS OR YOU WILL BE SHOT. And they mean it. 

For awhile, there was an air bridge from BIAP to the Green Zone, a fleet of Black Hawks designated for the purpose, but I suppose that raised eyebrows: were those laundry girls, cooks and low level embassy employees worth the operational cost? So they bought the Rhinos, massive armored busses from Israel that look like a cross between an eyesore ?70s RV parked in suburban driveway and an assault vehicle. Rumsfeld famously rode in one during one of his unannounced visits to Baghdad.  Each one can carry twenty passengers and at least one has survived a near-direct hit from VBID. Every night, the coalition closes Route Irish to all civilian traffic and three to four of the busses slowly ply their way down the road in darkness while Apache gunships hunt for heat signatures below.

The Major informs us that our departure will be delayed as there appears to be contact on the road that needs to be mopped up. An hour later he orders us to put on our vests so we can load the busses. We sit there in the dark for fifteen minutes and then a well armed civilian in a tan jump suit comes on the bus to introduce himself as if we?re on a Delta flight to Memphis, ?Good evening ladies and gentleman.  I?m Special Agent Brent. Tonight I?ll be providing security for your trip to the IZ.  Do all of you have helmets and body armor? Does anyone have special medical needs? Who has a weapon? OK. If you have a weapon it had better be cleared and on safe. OK? If we are attacked stay in your seats, away from the door and let the Army do its job. Do not, I repeat, do not fire your weapon unless asked to do so.? As the Rhinos make their way down Route Irish in the dark, I shouldn?t feel anxious, but I am.  I find myself fumbling for my lucky stuff.

In the end, it took 72 hours to drive the 10 or 12 kilometers from the airport to central Baghdad to find Yunis, but the trip set the tone for the film that would come.