Licensed to Kill Read Free Page B

trucks loaded with armed men bearing down on them. They run in terror. False alarm. Or was it? Insurgents use distractions to slow or stop vehicles so they can be blown up.
    Gecko calls off oncoming vehicles like a quarterback calls plays. “Car coming up fast, check out the passenger. Oncoming…four people in a taxi.” Tool uses the mirrors to watch for any fast movers from the rear. Passing by the Saddam monument. It’s 2:40. We enter the Kill Zone. Intel charts with colorful green, orange, and red graphics have shown us that most people die along this stretch. The tone on the radio changes. “CLEAR!” Another exit coming up. Low, stunted, dirty trees block the view. A bullet cracks by my head. No sniper in sight. Focus on the road. We take the off-ramp that will lead us to Gate 12, and from there, into the relative safety of the Green Zone. Over to the left, the twisted shell of a car still burns. No time to stop.
    A flat pressure followed by a deep heavy boom comes from behind. Then the rolling gray smoke mushroom ascends to mark yet another Iraqi martyr sent to Allah’s paradise in a cheap Japanese import. We missed this one by a good five or six minutes. Focus ahead. High fencing on each side. T-Boy sounds tense. A pile of trash on the side of the road we don’t recognize. IED? Keep rolling. Just debris from a blast the day before.
    It’s 2:41. The “Little Birds,” Blackwater’s tiny teardrop-shaped Boeing helos, swoop down to a mere few yards above and arc up in tandem like an insane carnival ride. I can see the pilot, Steve, and the two gunners hanging off the skids with their SAWs (squad automatic weapons). They are Blackwater’s guardian angels, dispatched without being asked to provide cover for the Mamba convoy.
    Gate 12 to the Green Zone. Almost there. Up ahead a car brakes. Another car darts toward us. Guns up. “CHECK HIM OUT!” Gecko barks. Is the driver nervous? Dressed in white? Clean-shaven? No, just a taxi trying to avoid the traffic jam around the gate. Coming off the overpass. It’s 2:42. Residential neighborhoods to the right and left of us. Young marines lounging on gray concrete barricades wave us through. Not safe yet. Juan yells to the marines that an Iraqi was stuffing a package in a drainpipe just as we drove in.
    We roll through the priority lane and stand down. Exhale. Weapons on safety. Back in the Green Zone. It’s 2:43 and we’ve just completed the most perilous eight-minute drive in the world. When Tool goes over the vehicles, he finds a new spider mark from a high-powered round in the windshield of our Mamba. No sweat. Tomorrow they will do it again. New day. New mission.

Part One
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    Hired Guns

CHAPTER 1
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    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    Kill Them All
    â€œI am here for the money.”
    â€”A FGHAN G ENERAL Z IA L ODIN TO THE CIA
    â€œThe solution is to let them kill each other,” the small, energetic senior citizen in the Windbreaker tells me over a fiesta omelet with extra jalapeños at a Florida Waffle House. He points upward. “Send up a satellite and take pictures. Keep the Special Operations teams in the hills, fifty miles out of the towns. Then go in at night and do your work. Kill them. Kill like we did in Germany. Flatten the place. You have to not mind killing innocents. Even the women and children.”
    These are the words of seventy-five-year-old Billy Waugh, Special Forces legend, seasoned CIA paramilitary, renowned assassin, covert operator, and the world’s longest operating “Green Badger”—or CIA contractor. Over breakfast we discuss my most recent trip to Iraq with contractors and the deadly and confused situation there. Billy is giving me his frank opinions on what needs to be done in Iraq to stop the ever-mounting toll of dead Americans. His reference to tactics in Germany and other wars is not based on a book but on events in his lifetime.
    The best