GANGSTERS & OUTLAWS > COPS & OTHER CHARACTERS

Jonathan Idema: Our Man in Kabul

There is No Business

"There is no business," Jack would later sputter over the sat-phone. "That's exactly what a four-star general asked me the other day: 'What's your financial motive?' I don't have one, and that's a hard thing for people to make an understanding out of. All of us are volunteers...10 times over. We volunteered for the Army, we volunteered for Special Forces, we volunteered for combat, we volunteered for Afghanistan, and now we're back volunteering. Somebody once said to me, 'What's your authorization? Under whose authority do you work?'

"I don't need no authorization. President Bush got on TV and he said all Americans are now soldiers in the war on terror. He hasn't rescinded that, and until he gets back on TV on the matter of rescinding his authority, I'm going to continue to operate, and the Pentagon knows that. That's why they let me operate. The Pentagon knows how I operate and they don't impede me at all."

So outraged was Jack at his wife's tale of FBI harassment that he didn't pay much attention as a squalid little taxi sidled up next to his SUV. He didn't notice as one of the men inside the cab took the safety off his weapon. The first burst of automatic weapon fire that raked Idema's truck got his attention.

Idema didn't even bother to hang up the phone. He just dropped it on the floor and returned fire. From seven thousand miles away, his wife could hear everything as bullets ripped through the Kabul night and tore into the metal surrounding Jack Idema.

Map of Afghanistan with Kabul locator

Of all the nights for this to happen, Jack thought, it had to be the one night when Idema's regular Afghan driver was off, spending time with his girlfriend. Whoever heard of a Muj with a girlfriend? The taxi sped off and Idema barked a series of curt orders to his American buddy. For the next several hours, Idema and his small band of comrades raced through the streets and donkey tracks of Kabul, searching for the would-be assassins. Only later would it become clear that several taxis had attacked several locations in the city that night. By that point, though, the gunmen had disappeared.

"We were out till like 5 o'clock looking for those guys," Idema later said. "The only reason we didn't catch them and kill them was that I didn't have my normal driver. I had an American driving and he didn't know the roads, so he got lost. If I had one of my Afghan drivers we would have killed those f---kers."