Route Irish

Bernard pulled out into traffic at the terminal and wove around the awkwardly parked Hummers, cabs and buses. It wasn’t long before we were out of the terminal area and surrounded by t-walls and razor wire. T-walls are huge concrete barriers, anywhere from 6 to 20 feet high, which are ubiquitous in Baghdad. They surround everything to protect buildings from mortar & rocket attacks

Now that I am officially on an unsecured battlefield, it’s probably as good a time as any to discuss the nature of the danger. First there is kidnapping. The best estimates range from 10 – 20 per day in Baghdad. Most of them are Iraqis, and most of them are for ransom. When we were sitting in the terminal the night before, Ethan (one of the Global guys) pointed out a guy he met who was sitting across from us. “He’s here to pay a ransom on one of his relatives,” Ethan said. Experts also estimate that about 20% of kidnapping victims are murdered. However, that number climbs when speaking of Americans. Only about half of all American kidnapping victims make it out alive. Kidnapping is big business in Baghdad. Most insurgencies around the world need a source of sustainable funding, often its place is taken by narcotics or trafficking of some other contraband. But in Iraq, the business is kidnapping. The ransom demanded for westerners can range anywhere from $20,000 to $200,000, depending on the value of the target.

The second danger is the obvious. Baghdad is a war zone. Few people go anywhere without body armor, personal security details and armored vehicles. Nearly all Americans who are here never go outside of the Green Zone, and they often wont ever even leave the Embassy compound. Mortars and rockets attack buildings, vehicles and personnel. IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and V-BIEDS (vehicle borne improvised explosive devices) threaten travel throughout the city. Small arms fire is ever-present. No one is safe. It really doesn’t matter if you’re a native Iraqi. Which brings up an old saying I heard about the danger of an artic expedition encountering a polar bear: Avoiding death is easy, all you have to do is not be the slowest guy. So it goes in Iraq. To the insurgents, little is sacred. This includes the lives of Iraqis, especially when so many of the insurgents are foreigners – fighters shipped into Iraq to prosecute their global jihad against the infidels.

When we passed the last checkpoint (they’re designed to keep people out, not in – so it was relatively easy to pass through) there was nothing but desert scrub and open highway. Bernard immediately stepped on the gas. “Look straight ahead!” he semi-shouted. He was weaving in and out of traffic, and before long he had the needle red-lined. We took two huge hairpin turns coming out of BIAP. Why they put those on a highway I’ll never figure out. Maybe to slow traffic. Well it did not slow Bernard. The tires were squealing the whole time. I was thinking we could easily slide into the retaining wall. Then we’d be stranded on the most dangerous stretch of road in the world, and I’d probably be dead. After we made it through the turns, Bernard opened it up again. I turned to look at him. He was sweating. He wasn’t when we left BIAP.

Out of the blue, he slowed down and turned on his blinker. “Oh no,” I thought, “Where are we going?” That’s when I saw the Hummers. An armored convoy was turning onto the highway in Yarmuk. On the back of each one was a sign that said in Arabic and English to stay back 100 meters. Apparently all the locals took the message very seriously. No one crept up on the convoy. We were going slow, and I was edging forward in my seat to make full use of the visor shield since there was a car shadowing us on my right. I was a wee bit nervous.

They convoy was patrolling at only about 35 – 45 mph in what was arguably one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Baghdad. I did not envy those soldiers. The convoy turned off and Bernard again gunned the throttle. That’s when I heard the explosion. It shook the car a wee bit. Two vehicles about half a block to our left were on fire when we passed. Small arms fire was popping in the distance. Bernard didn’t even say anything, he just kept driving like a bat out of hell. I saw the needle topping out at 170 km/h. I still wasn’t sure how fast that was, but it sure seemed fast to me, and I was grateful for the speed.

Suddenly, he slowed, went under an overpass, made a 135 degree turn and WENT UP AN EXIT RAMP THE WRONG WAY. Cars were honking at him. We were dodging traffic left and right. Horns were blaring. Then, when he got to the top of the ramp, he made another 135 degree turn and we turned northbound onto the other highway. This guy was a trooper. We drove about a mile and he turned off the highway into a neighborhood. Then he finally spoke, “This – good. Back there (he pointed to where we had come from) – not good.” I got the point.

It took another half hour for us to sit in clogged traffic before we got to a small alley-way off the main road. There was a man standing there with an AK-47 and wearing ski mask. This didn’t look too good. As we turned in he pulled off his ski mask. He and Bernard exchanged a few words. I wondered if it was over the price of my head. We wove through more t-wall barriers (designed to keep a car from careening through the alley) and arrived at a heavily guarded checkpoint. This was all the further Bernard was allowed to drive the car. I got out and the guards checked my passport. I was in one of the better secured areas in the Red Zone – the walled compound housing what was left of the Baghdad Sheraton and The Palestine Hotel.