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The city is crawling with security contractors, a ghost army of more than 10,000 private guards. In other times, other places, they’d be called mercenaries, but here contractors is the preferred term.

“Look at that GI Joe,” one of my guards says, pointing to a contractor manning a roadblock. “Isn’t he all decked out.”

You see all kinds: from former Navy SEALS who know what they’re doing, and keep a low profile, to weekend warriors you don’t want to get anywhere near. The latter swagger around the city tricked out in ninja gear: commando vests, kneepads, pistols on hips, knives in boots, machine guns at the ready. A little overweight, a lot down on their luck, for them Iraq came along at just the right time. A year here, and they can earn two hundred thousand dollars. The ones who worry me the most are South Africans—Afrikaners: big buzz-cut blonds with legs like tree trunks. They come for the money and the frontier freedom. One of my security guards complains that they’re out of control.

“I saw some South Africans shoot up the grill of a car that was driving behind them,” he tells me, shaking his head. “There was no reason, they did it just because they could.”

There’s not a lot of talking in the car on the way from the airport. I want to shoot a story about driving on Route Irish, and planned to videotape my guards, and the drama of the ride into Baghdad, but when I take out my camera, they strongly suggest that I put it away. They don’t want anyone knowing who they are.

Even in an armored car, we have to wear Kevlar vests. If we got ambushed, insurgents might be able to disable the car, then we’d have to take our chances outside. That’s when the vest could come in handy. The guards radio our location constantly to CNN’s office so that if we’re kidnapped, CNN will at least know where it happened.

Thousands of Iraqis use Route Irish each day. The traffic moves in fits and starts; cars merge from unseen on-ramps. That’s often from where attacks are launched.

We drive fast, constantly scanning the traffic around us. A car suddenly appears out of nowhere. It’s coming up quickly behind us. Eyes dart. Bodies shift.

“Four guys, young, bearded,” one of my guards says into a walkie-talkie.

“Ali Babas,” says another, using the universal term for bad guys.

We stay tense, expect an attack, but nothing happens. The car swerves off; another takes its place. After awhile I stop paying attention, stop noticing my heart pounding against the Kevlar.

“THIS ROAD, I think it’s the most dangerous in world, you know?” my driver said, smiling.

“Yes, I know,” I said. “Thanks for reminding me.”

This was on another trip to Sarajevo. I think it was 1994, into the war’s second year. I had an armored Land Rover this time. The airport was shut down—too many mortars, too many snipers. The only road in and out of Sarajevo zigzagged down Mount Igman, a small dirt-and-gravel lane with hairpin turns. It scared me more than I liked to admit. Every now and then we’d pass the rusted remains of shot-up trucks, which only added to the Apocalypse Now feel of the trip.

At first I kept quizzing the driver at every turn: “This stretch, coming up, is this dangerous?”

He’d just smile. After a while, I stopped asking. It was all so dangerous; there was no point talking about it. You just had to sit back and hope the morning mist held long enough to cover you, or hope the Serb snipers were too hungover to aim straight. Luck, fate, God—you believed in whatever got you down the mountain. I put my faith in the Clash, and made a couple promises to God just in case. (I like to cover all my bases.) My driver seemed crazy, perhaps manic-depressive, but in Sarajevo that wasn’t unusual. He was a big, bald, good-looking Bosnian, who attempted to screw just about every woman we came in contact with. He seemed to succeed more often than not. I’d get into the armored Land Rover in the morning, and there’d be a used condom on my seat.

“Jesus Christ, do you have to have sex in the car?” was usually how I greeted him.

“I know,” he’d say, “but what can I do?