Escape from Baghdad [antikvár]

PROLOGUE N WEDNESDAY, 19 March 2003, my former regiment, the Duke »-J of WelHngton's, joined the Coalition Forces in the invasion of Iraq. It happened to be my daughter Natalie's third birthday. I was working in a law office in the City and watched the news in a wine bar at lunchtime. As I travelled home that night on the Tube with a pink box tied in ribbons, I had a taut feeling in my gut and it felt as if my tie was strangling me to death. I daydreamed of quitdng my job and rejoining my old battalion, but in three weeks the famous statue of Saddam was toppled and the war was over. But the seeds of dissatisfaction had been sown. Law and the London Underground were not for me. I was thirty-seven years old. I was drinking a bottle of wine with dinner every night and grey hair was beginning to thread through the bronze. A month passed and I got a call from an old army buddy by the name of Angus McGrath, a former infantry officer like myself, a fellow Scot not known for wasting 50p on a friendly phone call. He was working in Baghdad for a private security group called Spartan. They needed more bodies - $500 a day to begin with, full insurance, an easy job you could do standing on your head, start immediately.