1. 11:24 PM CST on Sunday, December 24, 2006 By TOD ROBBERSON / The Dallas Morning News KABUL, Afghanistan – Whenever Marc Owens climbs into the front seat of an armored DynCorp International SUV, he leaves no question in the minds of passengers that his Dallas- area employer's business is deadly serious. Mr. Owens, a bodyguard from Crowley, packs multiple weapons and ammunition clips in case of a street battle. He makes sure all of his passengers wear body armor even though they're already protected by 2-inch-thick bulletproof glass and heavy steel blast plates. No matter how calm Kabul's streets might seem, Mr. Owens constantly scans the field, looking for any sign of potential attack. If he sees even a hint of trouble, a code word whispered into his lapel microphone brings a DynCorp backup car racing forward. Security men jump out yelling, assault rifles pointed skyward, to clear an escape route through a dusty swarm of motorists, cyclists and pedestrians. Working for DynCorp is a betting man's game. Take a job in a dangerous venue like Afghanistan, and the odds are very high of coming under attack before your contract runs out. Death is a distinct possibility, as the Tatar family of Denison, Texas, and many other relatives of deceased DynCorp employees can attest. The danger often overshadows the $100,000 to $150,000 salary that lures people to take jobs as police trainers or bodyguards in war-riddled countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Colombia and Sudan. Their relatives often protest the decision to go. Some question whether Dyncorp – a military services company that runs its operations out of Irving – is doing enough to protect their loved ones. Every news report of a serious attack prompts a new round of anguish back home. Still, recruits continue answering DynCorp's call to action. DynCorp's business structure – built on doing the jobs the U.S. military chooses not to undertake – depends heavily on the willingness of employees like Mr. Owens to accept a simple wager: that they will live long enough to enjoy the big salaries they're sending back home. Without risk takers, the company would lose the contracts that generated $2 billion in revenue this year. "It really is a huge gamble, there's no question," said Mike Heidingsfield, the former commander of DynCorp police trainers in Iraq, whose annual salary topped $250,000. "The dice rolled very badly a number of times during the course of my 14 months in Iraq." No shortage of applicants Thirteen American police trainers were killed during his time there, along with eight members of DynCorp's security detail. Including Iraqi citizens, more than 100 DynCorp employees have died

2. in Iraq while serving their company. Dozens more have died in Afghanistan, the Balkans and Colombia. Because the pay is far higher than that offered by the U.S. military and most American police departments, DynCorp says it has had no shortage of job applicants. But in interviews, employees tended not to cite salaries as their main reason for taking the job. "The money is not a source of motivation, but it certainly makes things a lot easier," said Mr. Owens, a quiet, former U.S. Army scout in his mid-30s who has spent 18 months protecting DynCorp executives in Kabul. No one needs to remind Mr. Owens that his work is dangerous. Al-Qaeda has made clear that it regards DynCorp as a primary target and has launched several major suicide bomb attacks against company facilities in Kabul and Baghdad. Mr. Owens' predecessor was killed in an al-Qaeda bomb attack in 2004. In May, a DynCorp police trainer was killed in a suicide bomb attack while sitting behind armored plating in an SUV identical to the one Mr. Owens uses to transport his boss. Whenever DynCorp employees leave the company's main compound in western Kabul, they must exit through narrow, unpaved streets where they are visible to residents looking down from surrounding buildings. They know they are being watched and are keenly aware that an attack could occur at any time. DynCorp posts its own lookout teams whose specific job is to scan the neighborhood for any sign of suspicious activity. Employees said in interviews they are fiercely proud of their work and their country. They do not share the sense of skepticism reflected in American opinion polls about the value of sending troops and contractors abroad to fight terrorism and rebuild war-battered countries. Many, such as Mr. Owens, are devoutly religious and are using their incomes to pay for their children to attend private Christian schools back home. Most are retired or on-leave police officers or recent military retirees. Company officials say Texas supplies more DynCorp recruits than any other state. Living abroad for up to a year at a time means tremendous personal sacrifice. Some have had to watch from afar as their children grew up without them. The only chance to hug them comes during vacation breaks of about six weeks a year. To make daily family life more manageable, DynCorp has installed Internet telephone services and webcams in even the most rural outposts. Children who misbehave now must sit in front of a computer screen and get a stern talking-to from parents 7,700 miles away. Employees say they like the structure and discipline of this life. Many enjoy the challenge of living under hardship conditions, while a few said they are attracted to the adrenaline rush of danger. Others simply like the idea of serving a greater good.

3. 'God's work' Retired Army Brig. Gen. Herbert Lloyd, whom Mr. Owens guards as DynCorp's top commander in Afghanistan, refers to the company's mission as "God's work." Whenever he sits down to eat inside one of DynCorp's communal mess halls, he bows his head in silent prayer while his staff members either bow their own heads or sit silently. "You obviously have a complex mix of motivations that drive people to these decisions. ... These are people who come from warrior societies – police departments – where their task requires them to do certain ... potentially dangerous things," said Dr. Alan Ingram of Terrell, who is the staff psychologist charged with monitoring the mental health of DynCorp employees in Afghanistan and Iraq. Dr. Ingram spoke in a conference room of the DynCorp headquarters in Kabul, where one wall is lined with photos of Americans, Russians, South Africans and Ghurkas from India – all employees who died in Afghanistan. The mere mention of their names tends to bring conversations to a halt, as if a moment of respectful silence is required. "This is a select group of people with personality characteristics that are attracted to risky situations, attracted to activity-driven jobs. They're attracted to challenge," Dr. Ingram said. "Often, police societies, warrior societies, are conservative societies with conservative values about law, about justice and about religion." One of DynCorp's biggest tasks is to identify undesirable personality types and weed them out before potential problems arise, Dr. Ingram said. There are the gung-ho, warrior types who think working for DynCorp will give them an excuse to strap on weapons and wage their own personal war on terrorism, said Louis Cobarruviaz, who was the company's contingent commander in Iraq until November. Others can be starry-eyed and underestimate the rigors of life abroad: the long months away from family and the constant exposure to danger, hardship, boredom and loneliness. Others do it out of financial desperation. Mr. Owens said that when he left the Army after eight years of service, he was still not quite ready to make the transition to the sedate life of a civilian. "I wouldn't say I find it exhilarating," he said of the danger. "But I just find myself more comfortable in this environment – certainly more comfortable than doing a 9-to-5 job in the civilian world." On any given day, the job takes Mr. Owens through multiple layers of guards and barriers outside Gen. Lloyd's headquarters to meetings at the U.S. Embassy, to a hillside training center overlooking Kabul's sprawl of buildings and mud huts, or possibly to the company's private airport hangar, where he and the general might board a Soviet-era MI-8 helicopter to visit a remote company outpost.

4. A well-hidden earphone keeps him constantly updated about the security "chatter" going on around him. Mr. Owens knows his wife worries about him back in Crowley, but the prospect of death doesn't deter him. "Hey, it could happen to me on I-35," he said with a shrug. 'You worry about it' Gen. Lloyd, who grew up just down the road from former President Bill Clinton's boyhood Arkansas home, said he grapples with the odds whenever he sends employees, including Afghans, beyond the heavily guarded walls of DynCorp's compounds. The psychological burden of sending others into harm's way weighs heavily on his mind, he said. "Every time something happens, you worry about it all the time. ... You always ask yourself: Could I have done something better?" said Gen. Lloyd, who was among the first U.S. troops in Vietnam and served four tours there. He was wounded twice in combat. "People of our background know instinctively that, if we have people killed, how are we going to answer this to ourselves, much less to their families and to the country? We've got to do it right," he said. The first person he used to greet each morning, and the last person he would say goodnight to, was John Deuley, Mr. Owens' predecessor as the general's personal escort and chief of his security detail. Gen. Lloyd described Mr. Deuley, a former Texas police officer, the way a father would talk about his son. At 5:30 p.m. on Aug. 29, 2004, Mr. Deuley entered Gen. Lloyd's office at DynHouse, the main housing facility for DynCorp in Kabul, to escort the general to dinner at another location. "You ready, boss?" he asked. Gen. Lloyd put on his body armor to follow Mr. Deuley but instead decided to finish the final questions on a personality profile that the company needed. Mr. Deuley waited downstairs. "I remember the question on the form said, 'What best describes you?' And I wrote down, 'I am blessed.' And right then, at that very moment, the bomb blew up," Gen. Lloyd recalled. The blast knocked him into a wall and flung a razor-sharp piece of shrapnel into the back of his head. Downstairs, everything was destroyed. More than a dozen Afghans were dead on the ground along with two Americans: John Deuley and another DynCorp staffer, Gerald Gibson. Gen. Lloyd broke down crying as he described how he found Mr. Deuley's body, with his arms blown off from apparently trying to raise his weapon and shoot at the suicide bomber. Then came tears of frustration as Gen. Lloyd discussed a civil lawsuit filed last year against DynCorp by the widows of Mr. Deuley and Mr. Gibson. It alleges that Gen. Lloyd had deliberately ignored intelligence and rejected advice that could have saved the men's lives. The company denied the

5. lawsuit's allegations. "I loved John Deuley. We were really close. ... I don't think there was anything we could've done to prevent that [attack]. I really believe that," Gen. Lloyd said. Another DynCorp executive back in Texas, Richard Cashon, is named in the widows' suit as another "agent" of what they allege is the company's lax decision-making on security. Although neither he nor Gen. Lloyd are listed as defendants, both are accused of putting financial concerns ahead of the lives of their employees and not taking even minimal precautions, such as parking company vehicles to block the street and serve as deterrent barriers, to protect the staff from attack. The suit also suggests that DynCorp had taunted al-Qaeda into attacking by choosing a house formerly used by its leader, Osama bin Laden, as the DynHouse headquarters. Mr. Cashon said there were limits to the security measures DynCorp could take on the public streets of a sovereign country. He said President Hamid Karzai's government at the time was trying to remove street blockades and ease the flow of traffic to eliminate the combat-zone atmosphere that continued to hang over the city after two decades of war. DynCorp, which was a contractor to the State Department and therefore a representative of the U.S. government, could not simply block streets or install machine-gun posts without the host government's approval, Mr. Cashon said. Arms shortages As the program manager for police training in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mr. Cashon was the DynCorp official responsible for ensuring that employees had adequate weapons, armored cars and protective vests. At times, he said, equipment shortages led to the purchase of arms through local suppliers in Iraq. Such a practice had fatal consequences in Baghdad for Mike Tatar, a police trainer from Denison, north of Dallas. He was killed when a locally obtained, untested AK-47 assault rifle misfired after being jostled. Mr. Tatar's brother and sister contacted a Dallas lawyer this year about filing a wrongful-death lawsuit against the company but ultimately decided against it. Mr. Tatar's older brother, Walter Tatar, said he felt torn by strong patriotic feelings and a conviction that DynCorp was performing a mission of vital importance to enhance Iraq's security and further America's interests. At the same time, he did not feel DynCorp had adequately looked after his brother's safety. "I know enough about business to know that if you're going to stay in business, you have to make a profit," Walter Tatar said of DynCorp. "The risk is there, and the men who sign up know that.

6. It's a horrible thing, but that's the way I see it." Mr. Tatar's sister, Katherine Carey, said she has never questioned her brother's patriotic zeal but opposed his decision from the beginning to take the DynCorp job. "Of course, I didn't want him to go. Not that you don't feel for the people there, but it's just the dangers involved," she said. "It certainly was worth him risking his life for. I just didn't want it to be his life. ... Regardless of what the cause is, you don't want your family member in danger." Walter Tatar, a Vietnam veteran from Bloomington, Ill., said the pain of his brother's death continues to be overpowering, particularly when he sorts through e-mail messages and other memorabilia from Mike's days in Iraq. Walter Tatar keeps printouts of the e-mails in a box along with photos and a copy of a U.S. military autopsy report, which refers to his brother's death as a homicide. Mike Tatar was nervous about going, especially because of mounting reports at the time that police trainees were becoming the No. 1 target of insurgent attacks. He had never served in the military or previously seen combat. "Absolutely he was afraid. You could tell by the language he used that it was pretty frightening," Walter Tatar said. "There were situations where they were being shot at, and they'd have to shoot back." Mike Tatar e-mailed one photo to a friend in Denison in which he stood next to a Humvee that was riddled with bullets. After the funeral in Denison, Walter Tatar wrote a letter to President Bush describing his brother's heroic mission and tragic death. "I brought a bucketful of dirt from the cornfields of Illinois," he read from the letter, then paused repeatedly as he began sobbing, "to put on Mike's grave to mix with the Texas soil. I'm very proud of my brother and all of the soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen who are proudly serving their country." Even though his brother never served in the U.S. military, Walter Tatar said he regards Mike as a veteran who died in the service of his country. "He was well aware of the danger, but he thought it had to be done."