Into The Cauldron

Jerry Zovko was muscle for hire, and he plied his trade, private security, in a place that for Americans is perhaps the most dangerous in the world. Zovko joined the Army in 1992, serving in the 82nd Airborne Division and qualifying for the Ranger corps. After tours of duty in Bosnia and Kuwait, he left the Army in 2001 and worked as a bodyguard for executives in Dubai. But Zovko, friends say, still yearned for adventure and the chance to make a difference in the world. As an employee of Blackwater USA, a private company hired by the Pentagon to provide security for nonmilitary personnel in Iraq, Zovko recently returned to a war zone: Iraq's Sunni triangle, home to Saddam Hussein loyalists and those who do their killing. Fallujah, a city of about 300,000, is the hotbed of this bandit country, and it was there that Zovko, 32, was passing through with three colleagues on the morning of March 31. Like Zovko, all the others--Scott Helvenston, 38; Wesley Batalona, 48; and Michael Teague, 38--had served in elite fighting units in the U.S. military. If Zovko thought he was risking his life, he did not let on to his family in Willoughby, Ohio. "He made all of us believe," says his aunt Marija, "that what he was doing had to be done." But no amount of training or experience would enable him to survive what was coming.

On Wednesday morning, Zovko and his team set out in two SUVs on Highway 10, a four-lane strip that runs through Fallujah. Shortly before the vehicles arrived in town, according to eyewitness accounts, a small group of men in masks detonated a small explosive device, clearing the streets and prompting shopkeepers to shutter their doors. The attack, locals later said, was hardly a surprise: insurgents reportedly set up ambush points around the city, waiting to assault any foreigners who might venture in. As the Blackwater vehicles made their way down the divided road, according to reports, at least three men cut the convoy off and opened fire with assault rifles. An eyewitness says the assailants threw two grenades at the SUVs. Three of the Blackwater employees apparently died instantly; another was badly wounded, only to be beaten to death with bricks by a mob that gathered at the scene. As horrific as the killings were, what happened next would soon be televised around the world, forcing the U.S. military commanders to plan retaliation and bringing Americans face to face with demons that, one year into a war that has cost the lives of more than 600 American soldiers, the U.S. has failed to exorcise.