Licensed to Kill Read Free

the back of his armor vest and another drawn on his Kevlar helmet. All the gear covers the skull tattoos. T-Boy mans the lead PKM light machine gun and has to stay tight since the insurgents have started a new tactic of pulling ahead and then slowing down to detonate in front of a convoy. He won’t stand down until we get back to the team house.
    Baz, a former Kiwi SAS (Special Air Service), breaks out a Macanudo cigar, and Gecko hits the duty-free shop for a soda, while 86, Baghdaddy, Critter, and the others shoot the shit. A tousled blond ex-marine from Mississippi, 86 has gym-built biceps encircled by swirling black tribal tattoos and likes to wear a dirty crushed Yuengling beer ball cap and oversized Ray-Ban aviator glasses. He got the name 86 because he was 86’ed out of the State Department detail when they actually checked his record and pulled his clearance. It’s an old joke. As the only good ole boy on the team, 86 always suffers good-natured jibes from his other teammates.
    Juan, the dark-haired, ever-smiling fiftysomething Hispanic from El Paso, hangs out with the Chileans, joking and chattering in Spanish. The Chileans are former Pinochet-era soldiers brokered to Blackwater by Grupo Tactico as TCNs, or third-country nationals. They make about $2,400 a month doing “static” work—mostly guarding the Blackwater compound back in the Green Zone. In their late thirties and early forties, the excellent former officers get tapped to do the Mamba run when manpower is short, or when they get bored.
    Tool, the redheaded ex-marine and driver/mechanic, uses the wait time to have a Camel cigarette and check out the three-Mamba convoy for any mechanical problems. The Mambas are South African–built leviathans, designed to withstand mine blasts and provide protection from snipers—a definite move up from cramped GMC Suburbans or armored BMW 7 series. The downside is that the Mambas are slow, top heavy, and look like a convoy of white circus elephants bristling with helmeted men and guns popping out of their five hatches—not exactly low-key swimmers in an ocean of sharks.
    Miyagi, who got his radio handle because of his resemblance to Pat Morita in the
Karate Kid
movies and his need to wear thick reading glasses, leads the convoy. A former L.A. cop from a tough inner-city beat, Miyagi speaks in a cool-guy Latino riff. For luck, he wears a dark red scarf his wife sent him. Short, with a salt-and-pepper beard, his weapons and gear hang off him with a comfortable look typical of security contractors. As a group, they resemble the actors in a badly cast B movie about mercenaries. “Bro,” Miyagi says, describing the look the contractors try to achieve. “We call it CDI—Chicks Dig It. When we pull in to the airport and stare at ourselves in those mirrored windows, all we say is, ‘Hey, bro, CDI.’” The team laughs.
    Miyagi continues, “We also use the expression ‘You’re shit hot.’”
    Griz answers with an exaggerated pointed finger, “No, you are shit hot!”
    Miyagi shoots back, “No, YOU are shit hot!” The others laugh. They know Miyagi is jacking the new guy with the usual cliché of contractors being vain cowboys.
    Gecko, a young, square-built, shaven-headed ex-marine, gets back with an armful of duty-free junk food. He rhapsodizes of the days when they could walk through the airport with all their gear. “Now you have to take all your weapons off just to go into duty free,” he complains as he passes out Cokes and candy bars.
    Griz continues snapping at Iraqi flies, trying in utter desperation to keep them off his Coke can. Miyagi advises him to chill again, though a steady chorus “Fuck! FUCK! Fuck!” underlies the rest of the conversation as the stealthy insects escape Griz’s angry grasps. Flies are like insurgents here, omnipresent, persistent, and a part of life and death—just one more thing to