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Dispatches from a Mercenary in Iraq
Broadway
August 2008
On Sale: August 12, 2008
288 pages
ISBN: 0767930258
EAN: 9780767930253
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
βThey come from across the globe: former special forces soldiers from Britain, the U.S., Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and every country on the European mainland. There are Gurkhas from the Himalayan foothills and Fijians from the South Sea Islands. There are men who learned their skills with the Japanese antiterrorist paramilitaries and many from southern Africa. There was even one guy whoβd served in the Chinese Peopleβs Army and Chilean commandos and Sri Lankan antiterrorist experts who joined the mercenary gold rush to Iraq. They donβt share a common ideology or common loyalty, but what they do share is a thirst for adventure and a hunger for big bucks; Iraq is the one place they are certain to find bothβ¦β For the first time a private military contractor delivers a frontline report on life as a hired gun in Iraq. βAnyone entering Iraq must travel the road from Amman to Baghdad along the Fallujah bypass and around the Ramadi Ring Road. Itβs the most dangerous trunk route in the world, used as a personal fairground shooting gallery by insurgents and Islamists with rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikovs. For newcomers to the country itβs terrifying β but hell only really begins when that first journey endsβ¦β Amidst the ongoing controversy over the widespread employment of private military contractors in Iraq, Highway to Hell is a mercenaryβs graphic, first-person exposΓ© of life in βthe second biggest army in Iraq.β Not since the days when the East India Company used soldiers of fortune to depose fabulously wealthy maharajas and conquer India for Great Britain, and mercenaries fought George Washingtonβs Continental Army for King George, has such a large and lethal independent fighting force been assembled. Hired to do everything from securing American bases and supply routes to guarding the thousands of government officials, executives, aid workers, journalists, and other civilians now populating the Middle Eastβs most notorious target range, todayβs clandestine soldiers of fortune earn up to $1,000 a day, while remaining almost entirely immune from government oversight, military authority, or Iraqi law John Geddes, a former warrant officer in Britainβs elite SAS and veteran of several wars, became a private military contractor in Iraq immediately following President George W. Bush's declaration of the end of hostilities in early May 2003. In Highway to Hell Geddes gives an unsparing account of his harrowing, often bloody, and occasionally absurd adventures in the wild west of Iraq. After a chaotic chase on the Ramadi Ring Road, he takes out insurgents with a sniper rifle (while nursing the mother of all hangovers). He provides security to a cameraman during to a shootout on the rooftop of a Baghdad hotel alongside Kalashnikov- wielding Iraqi waiters (and accepts a marriage proposal that is almost drowned out by RPG fire). He witnesses American contractors shooting and pushing other vehicles off the road first and asking questions later (or, rather, not at all). From rushing a TV crew into the mayhem of a suicide bombingβs aftermath to accompanying an oil executive to a meeting in the heart of darkness of Sadr City, Geddes presents a stunning, chilling inside look at the face of contemporary warfare.
 Media BuzzFresh Air - NPR - August 12, 2008
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