“We’ll give you details once we get your security clearance, Kris,” Patrick said. “It’ll water your eyes, believe me.”
“Cool,” Thompson said. “The colonel may act like a preening peacock, but when he finds the jokers who shot at you, he’ll bring the hammer down on them for sure.”
“Unfortunately it wasn’t just some bozos out on the range—we detected several other locations both inside the base and just outside the perimeter,” Jon said. “The colonel may be the best around, but it’s not good enough. He’s got sappers inside the wire.”
“As I texted you when you told me you were coming, sir,” Thompson said, “I believe the FPCON here should be Delta—active and ongoing terrorist contact. It makes Jaffar look bad to Baghdad to be any higher than Bravo. But my guys and the Army security forces are behaving as if it’s Delta. So if you’ll follow me, sir, I’ll show you to your quarters and offices and show you around the base a bit.”
“If you don’t mind, Kris, we’d like to get our area of responsibility set up and our first series of flights scheduled,” Patrick said. “I’d like to fly the first mission tonight. The support staff will get our quarters set up.”
“Tonight? But you just got here, sir. You must be beat.”
“One hundred and seventy hits on our plane with one-fourth of them from inside this base—we need to get busy,” Patrick said.
“Then we need to go to operations and see Colonel Jack Wilhelm,” Thompson said. “Officially he’s the second in command under Jaffar, but everyone knows who’s really in charge, and it’s him. He’s usually in the Triple-C—Command and Control Center.”
They all piled into another up-armored white Suburban, with Thompson driving. “Nahla, which means ‘bumblebee’ in Arabic, used to be a U.S. Air Force supply base,” he said as he drove down the flight line. They saw rows and rows of cargo planes of every size, from C-5 Galaxys down to bizjets. “In Saddam’s time it was set up to quell the ethnic Kurdish population, and it became one of the biggest Iraqi military bases in the country. They say this was the base where the chemical weapons that Saddam used on the Kurds were stored, and so this is a major target for Kurdish insurgents that we deal with from time to time, along with AQI—al-Qaeda in Iraq—Shiite insurgents, and foreign jihadists.
“Early this year Nahla was formally transferred from U.S. control to the Iraqi military. The Iraqis still don’t have much of an air force, however, so they designated it an ‘allied’ air base. The United States, NATO, and the United Nations lease facilities and ramp space from the Iraqis.”
“We build it and then get charged to use it,” Jon commented. “Swell.”
“If we didn’t pay to use it, we’d still be considered an ‘occupying force’ in Iraq,” Thompson explained. “It’s the politics of withdrawal from Iraq.
“The main fighting unit here at Nahla is Second Brigade, nicknamed ‘Warhammer,’” Thompson went on. “Second Brigade is a Stryker Combat Brigade Team, part of I Corps, Second Division, out of Fort Lewis, Washington. They’re one of the last units to do a fifteen-month rotation—all of the other units do twelve months. They support the Iraqi army with reconnaissance, intelligence, and training. They’re scheduled to rotate out within three months when the Iraqis will take full control of security in northern Iraq.”
“Do we really have half of all American transports somewhere in the Middle East, Kris?” Patrick asked.
“I’d say easily half of the Air Force’s transports are either on the ground in the theater or flying in or out of it, and the real number is probably closer to three-quarters,” Thompson said. “And that doesn’t include the civil reserve charters and contractors.”
“But it’ll still take a year to draw down our forces?” Jon asked. “That doesn’t seem right. It didn’t take that long to get our stuff out of Iraq after the first Gulf War, did it?”
“Different plan, Doc,” Thompson said. “The plan is to take everything out of Iraq except for the stuff at the two air bases and the embassy complex in Baghdad. After the first Gulf War, we left a lot of stuff in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, and we had security locked up tight so we could roll with ease. It took over a year to get all our stuff out of Saudi when the U.S. was asked to leave there, and we just drove it up the highway to Kuwait. Here, we’re shipping all our stuff either home or to new bare bases in Romania, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Djibouti.”
“Still, it can’t take that long to get out, can it?”
“We’ve been at it nonstop day and night for almost a year, and another year is being really optimistic,” Thompson admitted. “It depends mostly on the security situation. The coup in Iran shut down the Persian Gulf completely for a year, and the few rail lines and highways in and out of the country weren’t secure, so we had to wait for more favorable conditions. Stuff urgently needed elsewhere could be flown out, but taking up an entire C-5 Galaxy or C-17 Globemaster just to fly one or two M1A2 battle tanks out didn’t make sense. And we’re not about to leave over two thousand armored vehicles behind.” He looked at Patrick. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it, sir? Improve the security situation?”
“We’ll give it a shot,” Patrick said. “Obviously the Iraqis can’t get a handle on the security situation, and it wouldn’t be politically correct for American troops—who aren’t wanted in the country anyway—to be providing security, so they offer contracts to private companies to do the work.”
“Well, you’re certainly not alone, sir,” Thompson said. “Contractors do just about everything out here these days. We still have a Marine air unit here at Nahla who fly in support of Iraqi missions, and every now and then a Special Forces unit or SEAL team will buzz in and out, but otherwise the troops here don’t do much of anything except pack up the gear and wait for their ride home. Most training and security, intelligence, food service, transportation, communications, construction, demolition, recreation—all run by us contractors.”
“After the American holocaust, it was easier and faster to hire and retrain veterans than train new recruits,” Patrick said. “If you want to do more with less, you have to outsource the support functions and let the active duty soldiers do the specialized missions.”
“I hadn’t heard of Scion Aviation until the Army announced you were coming here,” Thompson remarked. “Where are you guys based out of?”
“Las Vegas,” Patrick replied. “It’s basically a bunch of investors who acquired a few high-tech but surplus aircraft from various companies and offered their services to the Pentagon. I was offered a job after I retired.”
“Sounds like the same deal with my company,” Kris said. “We’re a bunch of former and retired military physical, communications, and data security technicians and engineers. We still wanted to serve after getting out, so we formed the company.”
“Like it so far?”
“Frankly, I started the business because I thought the money would be good—all those stories of companies like Blackwater Worldwide getting these fat contracts were really attractive,” Kris admitted. “But it’s a business. The contracts may look juicy, but we spend the money getting the best personnel and equipment we can find and offering an effective solution for the lowest price. I can tell you that I haven’t seen a penny out of the business except what it costs me to survive. If there’s a profit, it goes right back into the business, which allows us to do more services, or do a service for a lower cost.”
“Just the opposite of the military,” Jon Masters said. “The military spends every penny of its budget so the budget doesn’t get cut the following year. Private companies save or invest every penny.”