What Every Armored Car Needs

Because of the increasingly dangerous environment in Baghdad, to protect our personnel we purchased armored sedans wherever we could find them on the open market. One day an ISG team en route to a suspect site found themselves riding in an armored BMW that we had just had flown into Iraq. Originally intended for some European industrialist, the BMW came equipped with a DVD player in the backseat. One of the team members accidentally hit the DVD's Play button, not knowing that there was a copy of the movie Saving Private Ryan already in the machine, and the volume was on high. Seconds later the sound of gunfire and explosions came blasting through the car's speakers. It was the opening scene of the movie. For a few seconds, the vehicle's driver and security team thought the gunfire was live. While that might have been a humorous incident, most of the travel around Iraq was no joking matter. The threats were real and considerable.