The Foreign Service Journal, June 2004

team of NCEs on the left pop out of their car and raise their rifles. The distinctive pop-pop sound of multiple AKs started up, but although I’d heard and even fired AKs on the range, my brain refused to accept reality until Rick shouted, “They’re shooting at us!” Since we couldn’t fire back through the bullet-resistant windows, Rick, Grace and I hit the floor of the truck. I could see nothing but truck flooring but here’s what I heard: A steady drumbeat of AK fire. Gato shouting orders over the radio in Spanish. Lionel on the radio, asking if we were OK. Here’s what I smelled: burning tire and the sulfurous odor of gun- powder. All three cars had now lost a tire on the right side. Evident- ly the NCEs had planned to cripple the vehicles with fire from the berm on the right and finish us off with fire from the left and left rear. Our right front tire had been hit but German maintained control even as the tire shredded. Then the pop-pop of the 7.62mm AK’s slacked off, replaced by another sound from our trail car: the zip of a 5.56mm light machine gun. Mini-Me Strikes Back The enemy was used to seeing CPA and other civilian vehicles with riflemen poised to pump out fire from the sides. However, the rear is usually the weak spot of a CPA convoy (unlike a military convoy, which will have a humvee or other heavily armed combat vehicle bringing up the rear). So we think they were surprised when the sergeant the other Salvadorans called Cuervo, but whom the Americans had dubbed “Mini-Me” (from the Austin Powers movies) — a runty, shaven-headed guy with a gold tooth and a scary grin — opened up with disciplined, sus- tained Squad Automatic Weapon fire through the rear window of the trail car. He fired two full belts — 200 rounds — at the 12 or more guys now firing at us from behind, with such careful aim that he shot only a small cir- cular hole through the rear windshield. (We later told him he would have to pay for the windshield, horrifying him until he realized we were kidding.) Meanwhile, Tauro and Alcon were blazing away through side windows with their M-4s. Mini-Me claimed one confirmed kill (I’ll spare you the description) and two probables; Lionel saw them go down hard in the rear-view mirror as enemy tracers continued to pass the vehicles on both sides. Still lying on the floor, I felt the hard car vibrate as the right front tire disintegrat- ed. We rolled on through the ambush and continued for per- haps two or three kilometers. By now all three of our vehicles were running on three good tires and one wheel rim. It was enemy doctrine in such situations to pursue escaping vehicles to finish them off. Lionel observed that the heavy Excursion had slowed to about 60 mph and was unable to keep up. Demonstrating self- less courage, he turned the lead car around and radioed us to stop and form a perimeter. All southbound civilian traffic had stopped a couple hundred meters up the road from us and traffic was begin- ning to back up all the way to Baghdad. Unlike rubber- neckers at your ordinary highway accident, the north- bound drivers took one look at our little band across the median and hit the accelerator. With Gato and Lionel directing the defense, the six Salvadorans went prone on the road and on the shoulder looking back at northbound traffic, waiting for the NCEs to come up on us from behind. Everybody, including the civilians, was calm and businesslike — until Mini-Me, repositioning, tripped, dropped his SAW in the dirt, and did a header. Black-clad, he looked like a Mayan bowling ball rolling down the shoulder, and those who happened to catch this sight couldn’t help but laugh despite our cir- cumstances. He laughed, too, shy and embarrassed, before recovering his weapon and resuming his position. Sam, with his MP-5, knelt on the west side of the vehi- cles, scanning some mud huts and intermittent traffic on a dirt road a couple of hundred meters away. I couldn’t see Mike, who was covering the east with his AK. Lionel and Rick, weapons at the ready, were using satellite phones to call for help and warn coalition forces of the danger. And I was kneeling in the dirt on the south side of our position, covering the traffic coming from the south with my sidearm in case the NCEs had another team in J U N E 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 29 Philip S. Kosnett, a 20-year FSO, was detailed to the Coalition Provincial Authority in Iraq as deputy gover- norate coordinator for Najaf. He is now the coordinator (the senior CPA official) in the province. He has also served in Ankara, Nagoya, The Hague, Pristina and Washington, D.C. NCE, a goofy new military acronym, stands for “non- compliant elements” — in other words, the people still shooting at us in Iraq.