Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Captured by the Taliban | Betrayal And Escape

Episode Date: April 24, 2026

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This episode is brought to you by FedEx. These days, the power move isn't having a big metallic credit card to drop on the check at a corporate lunch. The real power move is leveling up your business with FedEx intelligence and accessing one of the biggest data networks powered by one of the biggest delivery networks. Level up your business with FedEx, the new power move. Salma Belon has just been killed and he turns to me and he says I'm not going to let you guys leave I call the U.S. Embassy

and I tell him hey they're two expats we've been taken hostage they're like sorry there's nothing we can do and all of a sudden that's when we start working on our escape plan I always kind of had this idea that I wanted this job

and I always saw it in my head where it's like you get this phone call and you get a suitcase and you're going to go somewhere or something like James Bond or something something super secretive Yeah something kind of cool like that And I'm a huge fan of James Vaughn.

Really? I love the whole. They walk and they push the button. They get the phone call. Yeah. You know, they walk over the room. They open the special cabinet and they've got their guns and they grab their stuff and their gear and they walk out.

They get in a car and they helicopter lands and takes them off. Like, how fucking cool is that? Yeah. I mean, that's a little bit what it ends up turning into except that there's no helicopters. But you do get a phone call and you get. That's Hollywood. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You do get a phone call.

You get plane tickets. grab your bags and next thing you know, you're on a flight to Jordan or Dubai or whatever it may be. And I love that lifestyle. What exactly do the military contractors do? Like what are they doing? Oh, so every single job that the military has, that's what contractors do. So it's everything from cooks to HVAC to security around the base. So contractors have been doing this job since the American Revolution, basically.

and people think that they're evil, they're all mercenaries, and that's not true. And to apply the word mercenary to it is really a service. Absolutely, 100%. So you got people that are like literally carpenters and stuff like that going over, that they do the mail, they do every single job and they do it far more efficiently than the military can do it. So like one contractor can probably do the job of 10 service members, right? So it's actually people think these people, like the individual may get paid more

and the contracting company may make a lot of money doing it, but ultimately still it's far more efficient than the funnel it takes for the military to do it, and for them to have the bulk of its pay system, its support, all these different things it takes for the DOD to do it, so it's a huge funnel, and economy is a scale kind of thing. The bureaucracy of being in the military is massive, as opposed to the private contractors, which is much more efficiently.

And the ability for a contracting company to do the, employ quickly and be able to do that and set it up is unbelievable. So I'm with Triple Canterby for a number of years. And then eventually I end up going over to Afghanistan. And I take over a program there. So I end up running the largest State Department program in Afghanistan. So that was for the prison program. It's a rule of law program. So basically, I'm overseeing all the prisons in Afghanistan for the U.S. State Department. And that was a program that was first valued about 70 million. That grows to 100 million under my term. And when I say, say we ran all the prisons. What it was was, again, I know nothing about prisons when they asked me to take

this over. So my background is like military, training, embassy, you know, security, like, you know, doing these kind of things or whatever. And I get this call to run this prison program. And so I think, oh my God, like before I get there, like, man, it's going to be totally squared away. They're going to have these prisons like American prisons. There's going to be like doors out lock and dude showing them how to like do things. So the very first time they take me to a prison, which is Saraposa prison, which is like probably, I think it's the second largest prison in the world. It's shaped like a wagon wheel. So it's got all these like wings that come out, right?

And it's this Russian-built prison. And so two of my guys take me there. And I'm thinking, again, that this is going to be like the model of efficiency. Americans have been showing them how to do this thing this whole entire time. I get out there and they take me through the first gate, go to the second gate. It's like a supposed to be like an airlock thing or whatever. and locked behind us and we get through and I'm like I realize I'm like no one can fucking see us after this.

I'm just in there with these two dudes from Oklahoma. They did become good friends and I'm like fuck man and like we get into this area that's like sort of like a general population area kind of right where all these app there's two 300 afghans in there and again there's no overwatch no prisoners prisoners okay yeah no one can see us and they're just in this huge area. area like it's indoors, but it's like a, it looks like a swap mart. It looks like a campsite. There's, there's no like cells or anything. I mean, there's like bars around. I don't know if they just tore down everything else, but everybody lives however they want. There's like little

huts set up in there. There's camp stoves. I mean, just anything. And I'm just like, they could fucking take us at any time. I'm like, this is fucking nuts. But that's how it's, that's how it's run. I'm just like, wow, this is insane. So I guess they just keep a good rapport with the guys, and no one gets atticud there. Right. First of all, are the guards armed? The Afghans are, not our guards.

So our guards work as advisors, basically. So our guards are not armed, but the Afghans are. Okay. That seems like a bad idea. Because guards in state and federal prisons, they don't have any weapons. Yeah. So anyway, so, so, but and that was a Soviet-built prison that the Americans took over. Well, it's still, the Afghans still own it. It's still an Afghan prison. Right. But it's overseen by the Americans that, like, mentor them and stuff like that. And so U.S. State Department, they basically fund the mentoring, they fund the training, they fund the equipment. And so all that money filters down to the Afghans.

Okay. So what happens? So you take this whole program over, like how long are you there? Does anything happen while you're there? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So again, shortly there. I'm there shortly within the first month or so. There's probably like the largest prison break that happens in all of Afghanistan. So we get a call to that down in Kandahar. There's, I think, 150 prisoners escape. They have a fucking tunnel. And so we got to fly down there like the next day or so yeah, right? It's like literally the great escape. And I get a call on the phone and it's basically like pretty much like the ambassador yelling, you know, like what the fuck happened? You know, like, you know, like, you know, you guys got to find out what you guys did. And I'm just like, sir, I have no idea. I've barely been here kind of thing. And so, again, I don't know what the story is. I'm going to have to find out what's going on and trying to get everybody to like settle down and, you know, wait until information is solidified before people start, you know, blaming people.

are blaming anybody on my program for it. And thankfully, my counterpart out of D.C., this guy, Mike, was flying out at the same exact time. And thankfully, he landed. So as soon as he lands, me and him fly down to Kandahar. And we get down there and we meet up with our advisors down there. And literally, there's like a tunnel from far outside the prison to the inside. And they'd been building it for, I think it was like six to nine months or something like that. And in fact, to finance the tunnel, they were actually selling the dirt in the market because I guess the dirt was like valuable for farming or some shit like that. So that was kind of crazy. And they ended up arresting the prison commander because certainly he was involved. They ended up arresting most of the staff or whatever.

But it was 100 high value Taliban leadership and stuff like that. So it went to the absolute, that, that ran to the section of the prison that had the most high value targets. Okay. So that's who they busted out, basically. And then we get there as well, and right where the tunnel entrance is,

is like this painting on the wall that's got, like, the tree of life they drew, and like a little, like, stream that runs from there, and it's like inside the prison, the stream, and it goes, like, to the outside. And I'm, like, looking this thing going, like, this is like,

what's the fucking movie with Andy Dufain and all that? Oh, yeah, yeah. Shoshank. It's like Shawshank. And I'm just like looking at that like, like, thinking like Shawshank. And I'm like, no one ever looked at this picture and realized like, and they drew the prison. Like there's no river around here.

There's certainly no river that runs from the outside into this prison and probably into like this room. Like no one looked at this and was like, this seems suspicious. Like no one ever thought they were drawing a tunnel like not a river. Like thought twice about that. I just felt like throwing the rock in it. Was there like another tunnel behind it? Do you see that Shawshank? I've seen it

It throws a rock at the poster And it goes through the poster Because the poster's covering the hole And so he just, he's the warden's angry And he just throws the rock And he goes And you hear it go And then they walk up to the poster

And they pull the poster back And there's a huge hole Doug through like a 30 foot wall That's how they find the hole Yeah, his tunnel back there That was his tunnel They have no idea They're standing in his cell

Like where is this guy? He's gone he's just gone yeah he's just gone and that's how they find it when they they're the um yeah so those dudes are all gone and there's the tunnel right so I have that that painting I kept that painting right yeah so I kept that

yes I kept that yes we end up arresting the the senior leadership because we know they're they're involved they're involved yeah so we arrest them or whatever here's the other part that that was kind of funny there's a fucking whole pile of sandals like at the at the top of the hole where they all went down to the tunnel

So then they all came out barefoot apparently. I mean, well, I guess they probably had rides set up for them on the outside. But yeah, there's always these sandals left everywhere in Afghanistan. That was always like a mystery to me. Did they ever recapture any of these guys? A number of them got recaptured. So that was actually part of it as well that they started doing biometrics on some of these guys. Not all of them had biometrics done yet.

And so some of them were picked up, but not all of them afterwards. And so we started doing our investigation. And then thankfully we found out it was the Canadians' fault. It wasn't ours. And we didn't have the prison yet. So I got to report back to the ambassador like, sir, thankfully, we don't have operational control of the facility. It's the Canadians.

So blame it on Canada as usual. It's usually a Canadian problem. And so we were doing what's called like a left seat, right seat ride where our guys were getting ready to receive control the prison and get when we were like cross-training with them sort of thing. And so again, thankfully, it wasn't us. And so me and my counterpart, we fly back to Kabul the next day or that night or whatever, but we land. We have this like small plane or whatever. We land. And as soon as we land at the airport in Kabul, like, we're not even off the runway. And they tell us our plane to hold them place. And we're like, okay, what is this about? And

to like, you know, just stay in place. We're not even allowed a taxi to, uh, wherever we're supposed to taxi to, right? Terminal or the, yeah. Yeah, it's not even a terminal. This is a military airport. It sounds like a hanger. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hangar is not even like, there's like a little spot, right?

Parkin lot. Yeah, yeah. They're just like, hold in place. And we're like, okay. And I'm like, what the fuck did we do? Like, and they're like, yeah, just stay in place. And we're like, okay. Like, it's really odd that we're like sitting at the end of the runway.

And I was like, are we in trouble? I'm like, what the fuck did they think we did? I'm like, and the whole time, I'm kind of like, and they're like, yeah, just hold place, maintain radio silence kind of thing, you know, like, telling the pilot whatever, I'd like to say anything. So we're just like sitting there. It's going on for like 30, 45 minutes and like the pilot just got any updates.

Like, no, just stay there. We're like, okay, weird again. Like, and then like literally, I'm kind of like thinking like, like did something happen or like, in my head, I'm just thinking like, are we responsible for something? Like, did we get in trouble? And then finally, they tell us, Okay, you can proceed to wherever or whatever.

I'm like, okay. And then they tell us over the radio, oh, Osama Bin Laden, it's just been killed. Oh, okay. Yeah. So that's why you've never heard this story about this prison break, by the way. Because it was overtaken by, overshadowed by the Osama bin Laden.

Yeah. Was it zero? Zero, dark 30. Yeah, because Osama got killed. Like, you never heard about my prison break. So it's awesome. Like, yeah. And it's a Canadian problem.

So two things. Nice. So how long were you there? So I ran that program for about, it was like about 18 months. Actually, actually almost two years. So that's right after I left. I left, and this is kind of where it goes into where I end up meeting my ex. So I left and I took over a medevac company for my friend.

He had this medevac company for a number of years in Afghanistan. And it had been struggling for a while. And basically what it was was he had. So the camp we lived on, it was a really cool camp, and it had all these different entities on it. So it had our contract on it for the State Department. It had the European police on it. It had a couple different classified elements on the camp. It had some diplomatic entities.

So technically, like, we would be considered like an embassy for a couple different countries. Their representatives were on this camp. So think of like the way it works with these camps overseas. it's almost like a massive hotel facility, but with like guards all around it, like huge guard gates and then to come in when these guard towers and machine guns coming out of it, so it's highly secured, right?

Now he had a medical clinic on that camp, and then as a Medevac company, they had the capabilities of any time like these guys would be out doing missions and stuff, if somebody got hit, they were supposed to go out and go like an ambulance basically and go help these people and then bring them back to the clinic or from there be able to call like some kind of any kind of capability of whether there was like a like a helicopter

or something when like medevac that person out or get them to another location where they can coordinate with a plane to get them out right but his company had been struggling for a number of years and struggling to pull this off or struggling yeah financially all of it financially yeah just everything and so i basically had management yeah Yeah. Okay. Oh, yeah, horribly. So basically I had like three goals. It was like make them profitable, win them their first big contract, and get them on to Bogram Air Base. Because they had actually bought a clinic on Bogram Air Base, like literally like they bought a clinic that was there from another. This episode is brought to you by Tell Us Online Security.

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Please sit and sip. Play. Post. Taste. view and enjoy via rail love the way I'm the one that closed down except they weren't allowed to open it so they paid like a bunch of money for it

but the base commander wouldn't let them let them have it and so they needed me to get them permission to go on there which I did I met with the base commander and based off of my reputation and given the guy with my ward and stuff like that we were able to open that and that became a pretty quick cash cow or whatever and then my deal with him was I was renegoti I'd never finished signing my contract I was renegotiating

with them the entire time my percentage of what I was going to get in the company so initially it was supposed to be like 7% and then I was going to go to 10% or whatever but he had a partner in the company too which is like one of his best friends and he was an attorney these guys are Australian by the way and and again the guy that owned the company I was I was friends with him at the time and it was just all horribly run. And so I'm running this company, and he ends up hiring this girl, and she's working in Dubai at the time. And she's awesome.

She's awesome at everything she does, highly administrative competent, highly administrative competent and everything she does. And we're the only ones that are working like 24-7. At night, she's working. I'm working all the time. And I tell the owner of the company, I'm like, dude, I need her over here. because I need someone here to do this. Like she doesn't need to be there.

And so eventually they end up transferring her out there to Afghanistan. And this becomes who ends up becoming my ex-wife. Right. So we end up working together. And literally her first day on the ground, she lands. And I pick her up at the airport. She lands with another guy who's our physician assistant, our PA. So now this company, like I said, is fucked up.

So we had another guy that worked for the company. He was like doing business development. Another Australian guy. He's a former Australian Commando. He'd been with the company for a while, and he was like business development and security. So he's all frustrated with everything. And mind you, I'd only been to the company for like a month at this point or something. He's pissed off.

So he leaves the company. He takes all of our weapons. So we have no weapons. Why? I mean, are they his weapons? Yeah. How does that work? Oh, okay.

Yeah, they're all his weapons because the company, never got its registrations, never did what was supposed to do. And he secured all these weapons basically on his own. Because, again, Afghanistan is still like the Wild West. It's pretty, everything's shady over there, right? So he leaves, and basically we have no weapons. And I brought all my own body armor anyways, because I had a feeling that this was going to be, like,

a really fucking shady thing. And so thank God I had my own body armor and all this other stuff. Well, we go to the airport to go pick up these two. girl and the guy. And so I'm with the driver and another guy who's like our local national fixer. This is this guy, Abdul. And I know Abdul a little bit, but I don't know. I'm like a lot or whatever.

Well, thankfully, Abdul is like he's pretty squared away. And again, I don't know a lot about him, but he's like squared away. He gets me a handgun. He's got a handgun or whatever. He's got one. And so that's what we got. And so her first day landing. Now, mind you, her and I have, like, talked a lot.

We kind of know each other already. We met in Dubai once before. So we go to the airport. We pick them up. And the other guy, the PA, he's like, he's talking the whole time because he knows a lot of people. And I'm like, bro, we got to get back because there was riots going on in the city at that time. And our camp was like going to get, if we didn't get back in time, those riots were going to move and cut us off and getting back to our own camp. And I kept telling him, I'm like, dude, we got to go.

We got to go quickly. We're going to get cut off. And we're not going to get, we're not going to get back to our camp. And he didn't listen. And I was like, dude, we've got to go. We got to go. And he kept taking too long. And so we start going back.

And of course, sure is shit. We get cut off. And we're not able to make it back. And so, and again, I don't know all the other stuff about this company. What I thought I knew enough. But so I'm like, fuck, you know, we're, you. I'm thinking where are we going to go as an alternate. Abdul's like, well, we have a safe house we can go to.

And I was like, what are we going to use as a safe house? There's an alternate clinic that's not used by us, but it's the property of ours. And I don't know that 100%. I mean, I know Abdul a little bit, but I don't know if that's true. And so I turned the other guy, the PA, Carl, I'm like, is that true? And he said, yeah, yeah, we do have that. I was like, and I'm just now hearing about this. And so we go to that clinic, right?

And so I think we're going to go there and we're going to post up there until maybe this, the riot clears and we can get back. And so we go there and we go into this place and we get in there. And all of a sudden I'm like, what the fuck is this? We have this clinic that's got all this medicine, all this equipment, all this shit I didn't know we had. And we've been struggling and finding medicine at our own clinic. And there's these two dudes in there.

They're like, it's cold as fuck. They're in there shivering. and I'm like, who are these guys? Like, oh, they're like the caretakers. And I'm like, these guys, like, stay? They live here? Like, I guess. I'm like, who's been paying them?

Like, no one has. I'm like, okay, so I give them, like, money to go. I'm like, okay, here. Like, I give them money on my pocket. I'm like, go get, like, propane. So you guys can be warm. And I give them, like, 50 bucks each. Just like, no one's probably ever given them money.

Right. And I'm like, get food or whatever. But go get propane for yourselves and get warm. So they go do that. And I'm like, okay, I guess we'll just post up here until we can wait it out or whatever. What time is this? In the middle of the night or middle of the day? Late evening.

Late evening. Probably like 6 p.m. or something like that. So they leave and then probably, yeah. Yeah, so lesson learned not to trust anybody in Afghanistan. So probably about 10 minutes after they leave, all of a sudden this dude shows up and he's the, he's the landlord. So they left and called him. The landlord shows up. And he's like, he's like, yeah.

donor of the company. He's like, yeah, Marcus owes me $10,000. And I was like, okay, what do you want me to do? He's like, well, Marcus owes me $10,000. I'm like, okay, it's not like I have it on me. And I'm just finding out about this. And he's like, okay, well, you got to pay me. And I was like, well, I can't pay you. I don't even have the money for that on me. So what do you want me to do? And he's like, well, markets owed me for a long time. And I'm like, okay, I'm sure he does. Let me find out about this. And then we'll get it taken care of another time. I'd like to figure this out. He's like, okay, well, you need to pay me now.

I'm going to turn you over to the crowd. I'm like, oh, okay. This guy's like, like, what the fuck, right? And we're all kind of like looking at each other like, you got to be fucking kidding me. And this guy's, yeah, so what is it going to be? And he's like, interpret, like he's telling Abdul this to us. And I'm like, Abdul, this guy is serious.

he's like, yeah, he's serious. And he tells us again, like, pay me now or I'm going to turn you over to the crowd. These rioters are like coming through, right? And I'm like, okay, well, I guess that just went south. And so I tell Abdul basically like... Is this guy by himself? Yeah. Does he have people with him?

No, he's completely by himself. You still have your weapon. Yeah, yeah. So that's where this goes. I'll pull my gun out. I'll fucking cap you in the fucking leg and the kneecap and you're not going anywhere. And that's where this goes. So this guy, imagine we're all in this room where the clinic is.

And I have a really good memory. So I can almost like photograph. I can almost see this. Like the door's behind us. Like we're all kind of like here. And for whatever reason, he like walked up. And it was like he was like looking around in there. So he's on this end of the room.

But he's, we're between the door and him, right? And I tell Abdul, I'm like, okay, I want you to trans or I want you to tell him this exactly, translate this to him. Don't interpret it. Like, you just translate it exactly. Tell him exactly what I'm saying right now. I just want you to tell him that between him and I, I'm going to leave this room.

And only one of us is armed. Right. Only one of us has a gun strapped to our chest. Because Abdul gave me the gun when it's on my body armor. And I'm like, only one of us is leaving this room. And he tells him that. And I just let it hang there for like a second or two. Before I tell him to say anything else,

he's just looking at me like yeah i'm like are we clear you know um i'm leaving and my friends are leaving like exactly like you said like i'm the one that's armed we're going to leave no matter what yeah you're you're you're telling me right now you're going to have me you're going to throw me to the crowd they're going to tear me apart they're going to kill us all of us you're telling me right now you're going to kill me so i'll just fucking cap you right now like you're not going to get that chance like that that's a death threat like i'm 100% i'm absolutely within my rights the fucking 100% i just probably shooting them in the news. recap, let him scream and holler on the ground for a little bit. But still, yeah, he's not leaving.

No, no. Between us and him, like, we're going to, we're going to leave that room, no matter what. And I mean, in all honesty, he brought a phone to a gunfight, you know. But I mean, legitimately, me and Abdul could have overpowered him. We could have tied him up, whatever, and we could have left. But so I tell him that. I think he quickly reassessed that it was fucking serious, right? And so then I tell him, I go, look it, now I am willing to negotiate with you. So we all have a solution here. And I say basically, we are leaving no matter what, but this is what I will do. I will give you all the furniture, fixtures, and equipment that are in here.

And we're going to take all the medicine. And we're going to leave with all the medicine. But you can keep all the equipment that's in here in exchange for the $10,000 that Marcus owes you. And you're going to sign a letter right now stating that, that this is the exchange, and we owe you nothing after this. And I don't owe you anything. Marcus doesn't owe you anything, whatever. And so he agreed to that, basically, because we had no other way, but it's a good way to defuse

the situation, make sure he wasn't going to come back later, and we could leave, he wasn't going to make false claims to the police, all this other shit. So we got him to do that. And in fact, the thing was, that clinic. that was nothing to me. It was like, it was a loss. So closing that down, instantly, I knew that was like something we weren't going to use. We needed all those medications. So the medications to me were worth more than like the chairs and all the things that were in there and even, even the medical tables and all the other stuff. So I think he found that to be probably like an equitable deal or whatever. So we did

that and we got out of there. We get out of there. And then Abdul tells us we can go to his brother-law's place. So we go there. That's the next place we go to. And I meet his brother-in-law for the first time. It becomes another player in this story. His brother-in-law shows up, brings us more weapons, thank God. He shows up with like an AK-47 with a grenade launcher. Like, awesome. You know, it gives me a little, a little crank-off, AK-40. So it was just really cool gun. But I'm like, why does he get the grenade launcher still? And then we hang out there for most of the night to have finally clears and we can finally make it back to our base. And that was, that was her first night that I met her, or got her in country. So how was she during that? Perfectly calm, okay? Oh, yeah. Panicking. No. No, not at all. And it was

funny because their faces were still pretty like, I think they were a little bit shocked when I first made that threat to him. But she's, so her background is, and this is why I was attracted to her as well. So her background is really interesting. And it plays all into it later as well, is that, so she was a medic, a bodyguard. She'd gone through. the Ronan course in South Africa. So she was a medic, a bodyguard. She'd been to DJ for a while. She was, yeah, she was a bartender in Brighton Beach. And she's English, by the way. Okay. She's in Brighton Beach. She worked high finance in London. What else? Just a lot of- How old is this chick? Like this is, that's about five lifetimes right there. Like what?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just all these weird careers, right? And I mean, even, even, she was a stunt woman, too. So she was in a few movies that she was even in a movie with Tom Hardy. Okay. Yeah, like a kind of shitty movie, The Flood. But yeah, so she was in that as well. But yeah, so she's, she, now she at the time, she was the oldest girl I've ever dated, but she was still, she was still a couple years younger than me. So at that time, I mean, I don't know, she was in her 30s or whatever.

But yeah, so she's just a few younger than me, or a couple years younger than me. And she'd gone to university, but she never completed her degree. So she was one credit short from completing her degree. She said because at the time she was working as a flight attendant and she had something to do or something like that. She had to go and couldn't come back and finish it, which is always kind of odd or whatever. But yeah, so she had this like weird, this weird background.

And again, at the time, I thought like, oh, my God, that's so interesting and stuff like that. But then it all kind of makes sense a little bit later on. Yeah, so that was kind of, that's the intro. to her. So you guys are back in the base. So do you get this whole, do you get the clinic turned around or? Yeah, for a while there, we start, we start getting, yeah, stuff kind of like, kind of up and going. Things are starting to turn around. And then we get, now, now Marcus is still like, he's got a thorn in his side for me doing what I did there. He doesn't like that. I got rid of that. Because to him, he still thinks that that's something valuable to him, although that hadn't ran in

probably like more than a year. And then we get another operation going. that starts to make money. And but then that one, like, I forgot what happened. There was something there that we had to end up closing that down for a reason, which he was upset about, but it was something went wrong that we had to close that down. I was like, okay, we're not going to make money on that. So let's just close that down. We'll reopen it somewhere else.

And then so we're on our base where we live, right? And I'm trying to think what year this was. 2011, 12, something like that. And now, me and her at this time, We're dating. We're, like, we're pretty much together at this point. And we're asleep. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be.

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We hear this is a huge noise. And I'm in bed with her. And I fly out of bed. And I'm like looking up at her. Like, what the fuck was that? And it's kind of like, like, you just don't know what it was. And we're both looking at each other. And then all of a sudden you, then you hear like,

you hear like AK fire. Right. Okay, cool. Now we know what it. This is an attack. And then you hear like a few seconds after that. You hear a couple more like smaller explosions. And like, oh shit.

There's bad guys. coming in, like bad guys in the wire. So basically, like, you can assume that there was initial car bomb blast, and then there was, like, follow-on suicide bombers, like, probably penetrated, right? And this is coming in your base? Our base. I mean, your... The base were on. Yeah. Yeah. And so... How many guys do you have there that are, are they now armed? Yeah, yeah. You lost all the weapons. Our company lost all the weapons. Right. Yeah. So our company lost all the weapons. So we're not armed. Okay. Okay.

But the guys that run the base, they're armed. Okay. So they're armed, and then there's a lot of, there's a lot of armed people on the base. But I mean, these are Peruvians. No, no, no. They have like spears and stuff? No, no, no. They have blow darts.

They're like poisonous dars. Yeah. No, sorry. No, no. They're well armed. Like these guys were like Gurkhas and stuff like that on the base. And then there's army guys on the base. Yeah.

And then there's like the European police guys on the base. So there's all these various factors. actions that are armed as well. And so there's a explosion. And we're like, oh, fuck, you know, like, yep, it's an attack. And we both kind of look at each other like, yep, we know what to do. And so we start getting ready. And we're both like a little vein. We're like, well, we've got to look good because there's going to be an attack. Like, I mean, you probably get this, right? I mean, you got you look better. You fight better if you look better. Right. So we start getting ready. Like, she's like, I'm putting in my contact. She's kind of doing her hair a little bit. I mean, well, the other

point too is like there's always a camera around we there's going to be media somewhere i found this out in iraq like there's always going to be a camera and sure is shit later on there's a reporter like stuck with us the entire time like this is all happening later later but so she's kind of getting ready a little bit i'm getting ready i i know we got like a little bit of time because there's going to be like some defenders out there fighting a bit and before anybody gets to where we're at now where we're staying We're on the second level of these buildings, and all these buildings are, like, prefabricated. So they're all aluminum or whatever. Right.

And while we're getting ready, and you can hear, like, bullets, like, hitting buildings and stuff like that. And you just, they go through them, like, AKs go through them, like, just tearing right through them. And so she's getting ready, I'm getting ready. And then all of a sudden, you can, like, I mean, everybody else is gone. They've gone to the bunkers. It's just her and I. And so I'm like, okay, let's head out. We'll go to the bunker now.

And but you can hear like people running up up and down the hallway. And we're like, oh, fuck, those just might be bad guys. And we're like, fuck. Like, okay, this might not be good. And so I got my body armor. She's got her body armor. And I'm like, okay, this is what we're going to do is we're going to open the door. And we got to go out the door to the stairwell or out the hallway down the stairwell.

and we're going to get to the bunker. And there should be armed people down at the bunker. We just got to make this way to go do that. And hopefully we're not going to run into anybody that's running around because we think those are bad guys, right? And we're not armed at this point. And I tell her, I'm going to go out first. If I get hit, I'll do whatever I can to like,

I'm going to kind of open the door and face that way. So if I get hit, the best I can do to protect her is, stay like this. So my plates, maybe two plates, would keep her from getting hit, right? Because she's got body armor too. But when I tell her, like, I'll do my best to crumble if I get hit and shot, not like fall over left or right, but kind of protect her so she can still run. I mean, that's like literally the best plan we got is for me to save her that way. So thankfully, we get out. We don't get shot, obviously. We get down to the bunker. And so we're down there. And we get in there and there's a bunch of people that are like really non-combatants at this point and they're fucking freaked out and they're armed and we're kind of pissed about that because we're not and yeah so yeah we're kind of pissed off about that and our nurses are down there too and so we're down there for a little bit and finally comes over the radio like hey we got casualties can you guys get to the clinic and I'm like yeah of course we'll get him so now we got to move to the clinic and so is me and the nurses

and me and Claire. And so these nurses, the nurse and the doctor, and they're from Uzbekistan or one of the stands or something like that, because again, third country nationals is cheaper. So now we got to walk from out of the bunker. We've got to go all the way around this big way to get like around all these other buildings to come all the way back around to get to the clinic. But to do that, we're going to have to move through the field of fire to get there.

So where the front of the base kind of got hit and where the firefight is going on, because there's a firefight now going on against the attackers. So we got to move past all that to get to the clinic and to get to the casualties and stuff like that. And so once we start moving out, the nurses and the doctor, they're like, it's a female doctor. I mean, they're just like, they walk down the middle of the street. They're like brave as shit. They're just like, and you see all these like army guys running around.

They're like hiding behind buildings. They're all scared and everything. and here comes to this. The nurses run down the street. Are they not grasping the gravity of the situation? Oh, no, they get it. They get it. They don't give a shit, you know?

They're from like Erzgan or whatever. I'm sorry, not Erzgan, but like Uzbekistan or whatever it may be. Like a common thing? Like you're going to get hit you. They're hard as shit. Yeah. Like they grow up in winters that are like 20 below. Like, yeah, they don't care.

So we're walking. And then I see these two army guys. And these guys were like Sergeant May or something. And they're like hiding my everything. I'm like, hey, Sergeant Major, cover me in the medical party while we go. They're like, what? I'm like, cover us. I got the medical team.

You need to cover us. And they're like, no, we're going to stay right here. I'm like, fucking cover us. This is the fucking medical team. We need to get to the clinic because there's casualties. Because these guys are doing, they're doing nothing. They're way in the back. Attacks up here.

Like, by military doctrine, you've got to actually protect your most important people. Right. So I finally get these guys to help me cover the medical team to get them to the clinic. And we pick up a couple more people along the way to help cover the medical team to get in there, right? So we move around. And as we're moving around and we get around this bend, as soon as we get around the bend, we see the first casualties. And there's an SF medic and he's doing first aid on some guy that guy, like he got hit in the, I think got hit in the stomach or the chest. I can't remember.

but he got hit and he's doing first aid on him or whatever. And so Claire could be a medic and she's got a lot of medical training. So she goes and starts, she relieves the first special forces medic and she starts working on the guy right away. So he can get back in the fight basically, right? Because he's armed. He's an SF medic. And so she starts working on him.

And the medical team continues to the clinic, which is right around the corner. And then I start grabbing, there's a couple other guys that were hit. So I start grabbing those guys and start pulling them. towards her, right? And there's a guy that got like shot through the face. And so I grabbed him. I started pulling him over. And he looks really bad. And so I'm like, I'm dragging him towards her. I'm like, oh, look at him. He got shot in the face. You got to help him. And she's like, he's fine. He got shot in the face. You know, it looks really bad. He's like, no, he's fine. Just put him against the wall. I'm like, no, look, he got shot on the fucking face. He's fine.

Just put him against the wall. And I'm like, okay. I'm like, bro, she said you're fine. You just got to wait here. Just gets to you. Because I'm like, but she's like assessing the casualty. Yeah, I was going to say he's probably, he's probably not as in bad as shape as somebody who got shot in the torso. Exactly, exactly. Like, and I think it's just like gone through his face or something.

If it went through in this portion, it may look horrible. Yeah. If it didn't hit you in the skull, you're probably okay. Yeah, like it looked gnarly to me, but like, you're not going to die. Yeah. Right now anyway. Yeah. And in fact, weirdly enough, her ex-boyfriend who was on that contract, she was on with the

male thing, like he had got shot and through the face too or something. like that. So she'd seen it before. I mean, she wasn't there when it happened, but she's been accustomed to that. So, so yeah, so that guy put him against the wall or whatever. And so I'm helping with that and stuff. Local news is in decline across Canada. And this is bad news for all of us. With less local news, noise, rumors, and misinformation fill the void. And it gets harder to separate truth from fiction. That's why CBC News is putting more journalists in more place across Canada. Reporting on the ground from where you live, telling the stories that matter to all of us. Because local news is big news. Choose news, not noise. CBC News.

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There was like a random guy there. One of my buddies from Triple Canopy, this guy Chris, and he, I knew him from, I was in Basra once. And there was a siege there where the Madi Army was. attacking us and I came in that really good story about the siege I came in during the siege and Chris is like it's just like fucking Basra man he's like shooting over the wall I'm like it sounds like Vietnam the way you're saying it's just like fucking Basra man he's like ta-t-tac-tut-tut-to-ta I'm just loving this I'm like word dude like so he's just fucking firing away and so so we're doing all of our shit or whatever and now mind you at some point I had also given my body armor to the doctor I think at

some point we stopped and I gave my body armor to the doctor just so she had it even though she was in the clinic and stuff so claire's doing her thing I'm like going around trying to help people do my thing or whatever and just like moving casualties and then at some point like we just kind of get separated and because we're all doing our own shit or whatever and then there's like a group of dudes that are like going to go assault the like they're going to they're going to like flank this area where the bunch of like the bad guys or the bad guys are supposed to be like shooting from right And there's like, there's like one guy left or there's like one guy in this like area or something like that. And he's like in the, in the laundry area or something like that.

And so these guys are good. Yeah. Okay. There's like one bad guy. And he's, and he's kind of like, he's putting down harassing fire. And we got to cross this parking lot. And everybody's like, there's like five guys stacked here. And they're going to try to flank him, right?

And so I'm like, yeah, I'm going to go with you guys. And there's a dude. I never get along with him. And he's like, what the fuck you're going to do? Because he actually would hit on Claire all the time. and he was a fucking retard. He's hit on her all the time and never get anywhere

because obviously I'm dating her and shit like that. So he's starting to talk shit to me. What the fuck you're gonna do? You're not even armed. I'm like, yeah, bitch, it's like fucking Russia. Like 1918.

Like, first person that dies, I'm taking their gun. I hope it's you. Like, because I'm not armed or whatever. I'm like, I'm like, dude, clearly I'm not fucking armed. And I'm going with you to go fucking do this. So it's like, shut the fuck up.

But maybe someone needs to be fucking drug out of here. It doesn't matter. I'm still going. Right. And there's another dude standing there. He was with the, I think, Lithuanian ambassador's personal security detail. Okay. And so he's got his, like, rifle, and he's got his handgun.

I'm like, dude, give me your handgun. He's like, what? I go, yeah, give me your handgun. He goes, okay. So it gives me his handguns. So I'm like, I'm armed now. So we all go flank or whatever. And so we got to get through the parking lot.

And that's kind of where, like, this guy that's harassing everybody, he's, like, shooting at everybody through the parking lot there. So we crossed the parking lot, me and the Lithuania, an ambassador dude, personal detail guy. We crossed the park a lot and we're like literally now on the outside of the compound and we're the only guys that are outside the compound. And like this is where the car bomb had gone off and the tower has been destroyed. And we're literally the only guys on the outside, outside of the camp at this point.

And we make it all the way out there and we think we're going to kind of like work our way in and come around to get this bad guy. And all of a sudden my phone goes off and I say it's Claire and I'm like, okay, I better answer this because who knows what the fuck it is. And she's like, where's your body armor? I'm like, oh, fuck. And she's like, I'm like, what do you mean? She goes, where's your body armor? And I'm like, she goes, well, I know where it is is with Dr. McKean. And I was like, okay. And she's like, well, you need to come back and get it. And I was like, okay. Take care of something real quick. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, no. I was like, okay. And so the dude, the dude,

the dude, that I'm with, I was like, man, I'm like, I got to go get my body. It's like you're like a little kid, like at the playground. I'm like, dude, I go get my body armor. Can you wait here for me and he's like, bro. And I'm like, no, I got to go get it. And he's like, hurry up. And I'm like, fuck. And now literally, to go get my body armor, I got to go cross the field of fire again to get my body armor to cross the field of fire again to come back to get to the point

I was. Like, it makes no sense. So I got to do all that to get back to where I was. And I do. And by the time me and him finally move up, we start to get close again. And somebody actually got that guy. So he was dead. It didn't even matter in the end.

Right. And then during that as well, another guy gets hit. Well, he gets pretty much like blown up, a good guy. Right. He gets blown up because he ran past the body. He ran past the body of a guy that was, he thought was dead that he had shot earlier, but wasn't. The guy blew up. Right.

And so we brought him into the clinic and the doctor operated on him to save him. Turns out that was her boyfriend. Oh, okay. She didn't even recognize him. Yeah. Oh, good. Yeah. So after that, we got a few people put into vehicles.

And again, because the company was fucked at that time, we got a few people put into armored vehicles, and they were taken to the next military base because we didn't have the vehicles to take them as a medevac company. And they got taken to the military base. We did as much as we could. There was a few casualties and all those other stuff. This thing had gone on most of the day.

There was never a QRF dispatched from any other military facilities, even though there was military on our base. So nobody ever came to help? No one came to help. Did they call out for help? Everybody did. Yeah. And so this was during the Obama administration.

In fact, what sparked the attack was Obama had been there that day and just flew out. Okay. So they attacked us because we were a high profile target and Obama left that morning. So they attacked us. And yeah, the next military base was literally just right down the road. But nobody came and helped. Yeah. And so we did our thing or whatever.

And finally, by the time this thing cooled down, all the attacks was over and everything like that. the owner of the company calls, and he kind of wants to report at what's going on, and I tell him everything that happened. Everybody did fucking awesome. Everybody, you couldn't believe how everybody performed. The doctors, the nurse, Claire, just everybody was just unbelievable. And I was like, our faults that we didn't have as a company, clearly we couldn't even evacuate anybody ourselves, but what we did on the base was pretty good.

He's like, okay, well, make sure you get everybody invoice. I'm like, what? He's like, yeah, just make sure you get everybody invoiced today that you carried or picked up or did. I'm like, you got to be kidding me, right? He's like, no, no, no, but give them invoices today. I was like. What does that mean an invoice? Yeah, like, because we as a company, like, if you went to the doctor's office, like,

make sure you give them their bill for that. Okay. But it was like, markets, it's probably a little early for that. Like, you got to be fucking kidding me. He goes, no, no, make sure it's today. I'm like, no, I'm not fucking doing that to anybody. And plus, like, like, we. We didn't evacuate the people either to the base or whatever.

So I'm not invoicing people for evacuations. He was, yeah, but you put them in the vehicle. I'm like, I lifted him on a thing with another guy. Like, there's nothing I did. That's an evacuation with that. Yeah, so he wanted us to, I was like, fuck off. Like, and so basically that, like, that cemented our relationship with him that both him and I, like, we pretty much part of ways at that point.

And we're in disagreement. And same with Claire. And we'd already been kind of, there had been a lot of contention with us. And then I found out because the company's servers were in my room anyways. So him and his friend, they were already like inspiring against me because like they said, oh, once we signed that major deal, they're like, because it was for a multimillion dollar deal, like get rid of Gino before we have to pay him his 10% or whatever, like before he signs his contract with us. Right.

So they terminated me, sorry, they terminated me before. for that. And so her and I left because they terminated us. So I didn't sign the contract with them before they got that big deal. And so we left out, her and I left out a couple days later. Where'd you go? Did you go home? Yeah. Yeah. We were planning on flying home. And so it was just her and I. And Abdul is going to take us to the airport. Right. And on our way to the airport, Abdul's like, hey, like, I want you guys to help me. I was like with what? Because I want you to help me build a camp just like this one. I have one. Like, what do you mean you have one? He's like, yeah, me and my brother-in-law, we have a camp just like this. We're trying to build. And I want

you to run it because I know your background and everything like that. We run it for me. And I was like, are you serious? It goes, yeah, we'll take you guys right now to go see it. And I was like, okay, let's go see it. So before we leave, we're like, okay, let's go see it. So he takes us and it's not far from the airport. It's literally around the corner from the airport. Like the airport's here. It's next to the airport. He takes us to this massive property, huge walls and everything. And there's the three buildings that are there that are like just the shells of buildings. Literally, he's about to build a camp. Like, there's very little I know about Abdul, but like there's a lot to find out about Abdul after that. Right. Like he's a major player.

We don't know it. He's not just like some local fixer guy. Right. Like he's a major dude. And we didn't know it the whole time. So it says, yeah, I want you to do this with me. And I was like, holy shit, man. I'm like, okay, well, we're getting ready to leave. And we're going to fly home for a little bit. And we'll talk about it. But I'm not going to do it without her because we're together at the time, her and I. And so I'm like, yeah, let's talk about it. So we flew home for a little bit. And he agreed that she would do it. And at the time, I took less of a salad because he had only so much he could pay us a month. So I took a little less. of a salary to augment her being on board as well. And then we did that to come back.

So you you guys left. You came back. Now you're running his, his thing. Yeah. You get a contract. You get what? Yeah. So I ended up actually writing our contracts because I wanted us to have all these options and parachute clauses, all these various things. And basically the way it was structured was we had it was kind of a limited pay while it was under. construction, and then once the facility would become operational, then obviously all these other things would kick in, it would be like bigger salaries and bonuses and all those other stuff. Now, we had no, and we didn't want to have any kind of ownership in it. It was just, we were just going to have bigger salaries, basically, and stuff like that. But we had no idea how long

it was going to take to construct it. We, because we had some estimates, but it's Afghanistan. There's There's just no way to estimate anything there. Right. And we were going to have to build and figure out every single thing of this from the ground up. And so we literally worked on everything. So we designed all the rooms. We designed what bed sheets there were. We designed the furniture.

She's got a really great taste. Like, so, I mean, we, we, everything was like real modern. So we actually had to, like, design the furniture, like, This table, the beds, everything was custom made. Her parents were chefs at the Dorchester in London. So we actually had to design the whole menu for everybody. And then even which way the doors swang on the entire facility. And I have a question.

This is going to be another military base? Essentially. Yeah. So for contractors. So basically the base would be built for some military people would stay on there. Some contractors would stay on there. Like some NGOs. So sometimes like the UN has people there and various like non-governmental organizations.

some classified elements. So all these various groups would stay there. And so we have to like make every single element of this thing. So kind of like if you think, again, think about a hotel, what it takes to run that, all the logistics behind that. So how's the kitchen work? How's the trash work? You got to come up with schedules for every single person that does that. So whether it's the cleaning schedules, whether it's the security shift schedules, what are the standards for the guards, like even to hire everybody?

So we got to write all the job descriptions. Every single thing it takes to build a facility. Now, the best part of it, though, was it was kind of like the ultimate guys, like treehouse that I got to build. So I got to put in every single guard tower, every single machine gun nest. I got to build the vehicle search area. I got to build the personnel search area. Put interlocking fields of fire, like where every single window was in the, like the guard towers, all these other things.

So that was the fun part, is thinking all these things through, right? And where all these various fighting positions were going to be, where the cameras were going to be mounted at. So they overlap and all these different things. We were putting up all the razor wire, all this, like, cool shit. And then we had a couple of secret rooms and stuff like that.

So in certain situations, like myself and her or other people, go hide in these other places. Like a panic room. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So that was kind of cool. And then we also had other contingencies we had planned for. Like we were going to build. Like there's these three main buildings. And we were going to build like a galley or like a plank or something like that that would go from one to the other. So in case you can move to those and things. So it was just really cool to build all this stuff. And so over time as we built these things and this is getting ahead of it a bit. But we would bring various visitors on as construction progressed. So whether they were the United Nations, or various groups, but ultimately we brought the U.S. Embassy, various groups in the Embassy on there, and to include the Ambassador's personal security detail, because the biggest thing was we wanted the Embassy to have a lot of visibility on this as we built it, because we would

eventually end up having a lot of coordination with the tactical operations that are at the embassy. And that's what we wanted is to have coordination with the military, coordination with the embassy, and those various commands. But the Ambassador's Protective Details said, this is the most secure facility in all of Afghanistan outside of the U.S. embassy by the time it was done. Okay. And so that was like a huge like like accolade that we got for building that. And the funniest thing was as we built this thing, they had blueprints. And the blueprint sucked, whoever came up with it because it was unworkable. Like it wouldn't have made sense for the type of customers

and things we did. And I ended up drawing and remaking everything on PowerPoint and like Microsoft Vizio. and they built it on Microsoft, like my drawings. Right. Like I printed it out and they would build an, like, because it was an entire floor that was, these were shells of buildings. And so there's an entire floor. I give them this like Vizio drawing.

And like I had it kind of to scale. And they would like replicate like where the rooms were and the walls. And they would go back over there and sometimes they say, oh, this doesn't work. This doesn't make sense. And I was like, yes, it does. We had to go back and we lay chalk lines down and measure it. And they would snap it and just start putting bricks down.

And they would make it from these drawings, which is insane. There's no like real standards there. Right. But there's no code enforcement. You're not getting inspections or anything. Yeah. No. No.

So yeah, so that's kind of how that went. But we didn't live there for a long time. So gosh, we were there for, we worked on this thing for about a year and a half, but almost two years, I think. think, but for most of the time that we worked for Abdul, and it was like we were friends, me, him, Abdul, and Claire, we lived in safe houses in the city in Kabul, which is, again, that's insane. So her and I lived in a safe house where we were the only English speakers, basically. So it was just her and I, and Abdul would usually live in the same house.

He'd come there sometimes, but he was married, so he had his own family and stuff, and there'd be like a guard or two there and, like, the cook. And so we were really our own security. Right. Which is, again, that's kind of unheard of to have like just two expats by themselves in this house alone. So it's like that's highly uncommon. Right. So does it do you actually get the facility up and running? Well, that takes a lot longer to get to that point.

So as we're as we're off site trying to get that going and we're living in these safe houses for a long time, we would come on and off the base on and off the camp while he was getting ready, but we couldn't live there for a long time because it just, it wasn't ready. And so we would have to come on and off to like check things out, meet with contractors, get them on and stuff like that. And so it was really towards the last, like, I think we only lived there for about three months. The last three months we were there is when we finally moved on to it. And that last three months, it was getting close to opening. And we negotiated contracts with major companies. And these major companies, like I negotiated the contracts and solicited these bids out and contracts

with major suppliers that would normally supply major military bases. And they would never, they would never supply a small company like this had it not been such a professional solicitation that we put out. And they basically all said that. And we got them to even give us like equipment and stuff like that is part of our contract. And so we were getting really close to opening. And as we're like probably maybe like a month out from opening or something like that, maybe a month and a half, Abdul, I mean, Abdul starts running out of money the last couple of months.

And he's not even paying us towards the end. And in fact, I'm like kind of loaning him some money and we're not getting paid. I'm kind of floating just a little bit of money. And Claire's got no money. I so I'm taking care of her and I. and things start going like really shady because we'd come on and off the property to go do things and we would come back and there would be we'd show up and there'd be all these vehicles there like all these armored vehicles all of a sudden we'd come back there'd be like 20 30 armored

vehicles and I'm like whoa abdul what are these? Armored vehicles are usually like $100,000 dollars, $120,000 each like all these armored land cruisers and I'm like where did these come from you can't afford this? No no no buddy it's okay I got a special deal I'm like what do you mean And he's like, no, no, no, I don't have to pay the guy now. So I have a deal that I pay him in like six months, but instead of, because they're like $100,000 each, I'm going to pay him $150,000 for each of them. But I don't have to give it to him for six months, but I'm going to sell him right now to

somebody for $50,000 because he's giving me $50,000, but I have no attention to paying the first guy. It sounds like a mortgage scam. I was going to say, so we're going to get this influx of cash in the, We're just postponing the inevitable of this guy coming to look for his vehicles. Yeah. We'll worry about it then. Yeah.

Yeah. And he does this like flip more than once because like more things keep showing up like that. Right. And I'm like, oh my God, you got to be fucking kidding me. And then like he starts doing the same thing with fuel. Like I mean, this is like the movie Goodfellas or something. Like fuel trucks would show up one day. Right.

Next thing behind that. Another fuel truck would just come and unload. Like we have these massive fuel tanks that are like like 20. 30,000 gallons or something, like a field truck would fill it up. Probably like a couple hours later, some other truck would like like probably unloaded or whatever, you know, like, and take it somewhere else. He was just selling it, you know? And that one sucked because that was like one of the contracts like I had negotiated, you know, like that we had a probably a legitimate contract for but like, yeah, so all this stuff starts happening and then people do start looking for him.

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did once. Now, he's got a lot of connections. He was highly connected. He was highly connected to the first vice president's office, other political connections, his brother-in-law, all this stuff. So he had a little bit of cover for a while until he didn't. Right. And then when it really got shady, it was when we'd come on and off the camp and there'd be militias there looking for him.

Like, I mean, like armed militias and warlords. Right. So that's when the warlords were looking for him, Claire was like, we got to go. Yeah, this is all right. Yeah. And so that's when we were like, okay, this is going to get too dangerous because we're going to get kidnapped next. They're going to probably take us because he owes them and likely we're probably going to be in danger at this point. And so we started planning our exit.

And the first thing we needed to do was there was a guy that worked for us, this kid Ernie, he was a Filipino guy. He worked with me on the prison program. And he was like our assistant. I was like, we got to get Ernie out of here first before we can bounce, right? And so we tried to get Ernie off the camp. And so the first time I tried to get Ernie off the camp, I gave him like a bunch of cash that I had on me. I gave him like a bunch of like other stuff. Like I had a couple balls of booze or something he could sell to like the other Filipino dudes when he got to the next camp.

or something, just try to give as much as whatever he could, because he hadn't been paid for a long time, too. And so we wanted to get Ernie out of there, and we had a plan for somebody to come pick him up from another camp, and the guards weren't going to let him leave. And so we take him out to the vehicle search area, which is like the exit to get out as well, and they weren't letting him leave. and so instantly we're like, okay, this is not cool, or this is not kosher, that they weren't going to let him leave. And it started getting a pretty contentious, and I was like, who are the guards? So there's a guard force there, even though the camp isn't open, there's probably like 10 to 12 guards at any given time on the whole camp. But who are the guards working for?

Abdul. Yeah, and they're loyal to him. And so these are like, are these Afghani? Afghans, yeah. Okay. Yeah, they're Afghans and they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, boiled to him specifically. Right.

Because he's handpicked these guys. He's trained them. He knows them pretty well. And yeah, they're, and they're very, they're very temperamental. At one point, I had, I had hired a guy that I knew for Triple Canopy and he'd come out there for a while to train the guard force. He was a former seal. And they actually almost killed him.

They were going to kill him. And, and Claire had to, like, send him home. So he didn't get killed because, like, he was trying to train them. And like sometimes they're just almost untrainable. And he's trying to instill standards in them. Like, like, Claire's like, like, I got to send them home because they're going to kill them, you know? Like, did you ever see that video of the Americans trying to train jumping jacks? They couldn't do jumping jacks.

They don't have like physical egg classes. And these are kids that they've never done like normal just activities like American kids. So they literally, and these guys, it's, it's. It's not like a 20-second video where it was the, this is literally like, this is a five-minute video, 10-minute videos where they're trying to explain how to do jumping jacks. They just can't do it. They can't. And it's not like two guys.

This is like 40 fucking guys that just cannot do jumping jacks. Yeah, the whole class. That's legit. Yeah. It's ridiculous. I'm watching it right now. I was I going to say. I dated a girl that was in, she was in Afghanistan.

and she used to talk about how they would go through. She's like, they'd take the Afghanis and they'd train them for three weeks, four weeks on shooting, on everything. She said, and then you take them out into the field. She says, and they literally, it was pray and spray. Oh, yeah, 100%. She's like, like, when you're standing there next to them, you could get them to where they were aiming. They would keep it in their eyes open. They were firing.

She's like, you could get them to that point. She has the moment you took them out. outside of that and put them in the field. They're just firing the gun. They're closing their eyes. They're not aiming. It's like, what just happened? We just trained for three weeks. You were doing fine. They just reverted right back to it's horrible. That's what she was saying. I don't know if that's, yeah, yeah, no. If that's your experience. They do because they believe Allah is going to guide the bullets. That's what they say. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. And in fact, again, like about the training and they're really susceptible to they can't take criticism. So one of my good friends,

he was the country manager for, I think, Dyncore. And he had the contract, which I think what it was. I can't remember exactly what the contract was, but they were training Afghan military officers. And Colonel Gould was the Afghan officer that, because his American trainers were pretty hard on this officer, this Afghan officer, I think it was an Air Force officer. And Colonel Gould came back in one day

and shot four or five of his people, killed four or five of his Americans, I think it was. Four or five of the Americans. Americans that were, what, hard on him? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's probably, you could probably like research that incident or whatever. But yeah, that was like around that time frame of like 2010 or something like that.

So, yeah. So they're not good with criticism. No, no, no. And that's why, again, like, we sent this guy. Yeah, send him home. Yeah. And he's a good guy too. So what happens?

So, I mean, you're stuck in that. So now are you kind of like, are you kind of a captive in this facility at this point? because I thought you guys were able to leave and come back. Yeah, I mean, I mean, you think. You two are, but they've got this kid kind of, you can't leave. So Ernie can't leave, right? And I'm, and that's the thing is so, so I'm armed. I got my Glock on me.

They're not letting Ernie out. And so these guards are all around there. And in the vehicle search area, there's probably like, I think there's about like four guards at this point, like four, maybe four or five guards in this little area right here. And I'm thinking like, this is, this is going to get fucked. Like,

this is, this is kind of getting kind of weird. And I don't know where this is going to go because it is starting to make me nervous. Like, why aren't they going to let Ernie leave? And if this starts to escalate, like, is this going to turn into like a shootout or something?

And, and again, like, just like you said, like, are we going to be held captive? And we built this place. And suddenly I kind of,

it was actually by that same time, I realized that like, fuck, man, did I build my own coffin? Yeah, I was going to say, I built this, but I'm going to die here. Yeah, this is literally what I thought. Because it was so secure, like, not only can you, like, not get in, it's hard to get out. Right.

Now, there was, like, one vulnerability that we had because, again, Afghans are known for, at the time, there was a lot of incidents where, like, there would be troops out there, and their Afghan can't, I should say a lot, but there were known incidents of, like, U.S. forces on patrol, and sometimes their Afghan counterpart had turned and turned fire on them, right? So like their interpreter or something like that had shot them, right? And again, that's not common, but those incidents had happened. And so Abdul and I had actually planned for that in case any of our guards had done that to us while the facility was going.

And so our guard towers, at the top of our guard towers, we had a hatch there. And the hatch, you could open the hatch from the top, and it was like, we didn't have the past. padlocks then, but only like, I think it was like myself and Abdul and one of the security, like a U.S. security manager who we hired would have the key to the padlock. Because the idea was if our Afghans in the tower had gone rogue, we were going to drop grenades down there.

Okay. You had to take out the towers. And so the guard towers, I knew that one of the things was if we're going to try to get out of here, was that try to climb up the guard tower, get in a way that, the guy on the inside couldn't shoot us, but try to get down there, shoot him that way or whatever. And I was thinking about that with Ernie, too. It was like to move out of that vehicle search area, to come back to that tower back over here, because he may not know what's going on, but try to get to the top of his tower and get him.

And that'd be one of our ways out that corner. But, yeah, so I start getting kind of nervous about, like, what am I going to do in this vehicle search bay area? this is going to turn into a gunfight and can I kill these guys get out of here or where the fuck is Claire? All this is kind of going through my mind all the same time and I'm telling him, get Abdul on the radio, get Abdul on the radio.

I want him out of here. And it took about 10 minutes before Abdul finally relented and let Ernie out. And finally, Ernie, they let Ernie out and then Abdul comes up like shortly afterwards. And I was like, I tell him, I'm like, what the fuck was that, man? like you weren't going to let fucking Ernie leave, you know?

You know, like, what, what the fuck, right? Right. I'm like, Ernie's gone. Ernie's going. This is just too much shit. You got fucking warlords looking for you. You know, we haven't been paid in a long time, and we just don't feel safe anymore. And Claire and I are leaving, too, as well.

And that's when he turns to us, and I'll have to show you a picture. Abdul's a big guy. Right. Abdul's like 6-6. he's super wide he's a bodybuilder just huge imposing figure and he turns to me and he says i'm not going to let you guys leave and literally i mean i spent 12 years between iraq and afghanistan and that was the first time i'd ever been scared like absolutely scared why did you even say like to me i i would be thinking like to me while while i'm still not under suspicion of leaving

where it's like look ernie has an emergency at home his father's sick somebody's died, his mom, this. There was a tragic accident. He has to leave. What are you doing? He has to leave. He'll come back. He has to leave.

Okay, fine. Then say, hey, like, to me, I'd be acting like, I'm on board with everything that's going, we're good, bro. We're going to make this. It's going to be great. And then I'm going to call a base that's near us. Yeah. Explain the situation.

You guys need to drive over here and pick us up because these guys are not going to let us. You're going to have two Americans or whatever, two expats that are going to be killed in this base. You guys need to jump in a fucking Humvee. Come. over here pick us up you're only fucking 20 minutes away like you can do that like that's that's something you could arrange but to sit there and have a i'm not going to have a face but i'm i'm devious that's a good plan i know it's ever said that at this point yeah are you still coming to and from

the facility are you living in the facility we're living there we're living there oh yeah oh yeah you're fucked yeah yeah you got you got arranged but to me i'm not gonna have i'm not gonna have a showdown with a guy who's got everybody on this side i'm not in a what was sun sue the art of war right? Yeah. If your opponent is, if you're out matched, then you regroup. You say nothing. You do not fight.

You regroup. You're saying. You try and be nimble and quick and you scheme. Yeah. So I'm curious. Like, did you kind of find out all this kind of came to a head within like the 30 minutes? Oh, you're the right. It sounds like right.

At the Ernie thing, he realized at that moment where he kind of suspected before it, now he knows there's a fucking issue. Yeah. Like this is way worse than I thought. Am I right? Oh, 100%. Yeah. Okay, this isn't me thinking, boy, this could go bad.

No, no, I realize it's already gone bad. So I find out, and again, it's kind of like what you're saying is there's somebody that wrote a book, and I'm not going to name him, but, and he tells me this later that there's a chapter that actually starts off that you better time it to the second that the Afghan is going to betray you because he will. And so you better know when that is, because basically he's going to slit your throat. And Abdul had done that because he was like a brother to me right until that moment. Right.

And so he says that to me. And literally, it felt like everything in me. Like, I could just feel this going, like, for a second there. I was like, holy shit. And I could just think in my head of like those videos of like people getting beheaded. Yeah, yeah. I mean, all that stuff. Like I could think in Nick Berg, getting beheaded in Iraq and stuff.

Even like that video in Mexico with a chainsaw and stuff. Like I think about all that just instantly all that shit hit me. So my next very first thought, like, As soon as like, and this is all in milliseconds. In milliseconds, my next thought was like, and I think I probably even did it too. Like, I think my hand just went straight to my pistol. Like, I was going to shoot him in the face.

Right. Like, that was like, without question. Like, I was just going to shoot him in the face. Again, all in milliseconds. Again, the next thought was where's Claire? Where in the fuck is Claire? Because I had never, all the time I'd been over there,

I'd never worked or been around someone I loved or cared about. So this was the first time I'm with someone overseas that I care about. And we'd been in, like, bombings and shootouts. And there'd been other times where other instances had happened on, even when we were living there for the short amount of time, where there had been a couple of attacks that came by nearby. And in fact, there was a time, it could have been like a month before that or so where, and this was like where I knew I was going to be with her. I thought I was like, oh, this would probably be a chick that I should, I should I should be with or Mary or something.

There'd been an attack, and we had to go up to the roof, and we have a huge PKM machine gun, right? And I throw the PQM on the roof, and she's got the belt fed. She's feeding me the ammo to it. You know, she's got the, you know, it's like, you know, because we have a box of ammo. She's got this box, and she's linking up the box for me.

And I'm just like, it's probably a good chick to, like, have her around. And she's coolest shit under fire. And so, yeah, so like, in that millisecond, Again, I think I'm going to shoot him in the face, and I know what I'm going to do next. I'm probably going to head for that guard tower, get over that, and work my way out after that, but I don't know where she's at. I have no idea where she's at on the camp at that moment. So I've got to figure something out.

Now, to give you some idea, like you're talking about where the next base is and some other components to this, right next to where we're at on our base, which is right next to the airport, the base next to us is the U.S. Embassy's Guard Force. So the embassy isn't there, but the Guard Force, their base is. So they get transferred back and forth. Now, the guy that runs that base,

I worked with him in Triple Canopy years ago. So I know him. So that plays a factor into this later. So whoever I think I'm going to get over the wall, I try to run to him or whatever like that. So that plays a factor into this. So now Abdul says that Like I'm not gonna let you guys leave

And I'm just sitting there looking at him like You gotta be fucking kidding me And again so I look at him What the fuck does that mean? He's like you're not going anywhere You try and de-escalate the situation? Yeah yeah I do I do And I'm just looking at him like And he's serious

Like And I think he's thinking it through Like I think he goes I think he just realized he just doubled down on it Right He's owning it and I'm like, okay, man, I don't know what that fucking means, but, you know, if you're really not going to let us go, I don't know what you're going to do with that. But I'm going to, you know, and I'm just kind of like back it up,

you know, I'm like, I'm going to find her, you know, let's figure this out. But I don't know what you mean by that. But, you know, he's like, well, you're not going anywhere. I'm like, okay, I'm just like, just cool out, you know, let me find her, you know, and we'll just try to talk about this or something. And again, like you're saying, like, his old guard force is loyal. to him. I'm on this fucking camp. Like, what I don't want is for him to just grab me. Right. I mean, first off, he's a huge guy.

Yeah. I think I scared him, though. Like, I think he thought it was wiry because I remember he came to my door once and like, he saw me without my shirt on and he didn't know I was like all tattooed once. And I think that kind of put like that kind of, I think that kind of like unnerved him once. But yeah, I always think he, he always sort of feel me up. Yeah, he would have smashed me. He's fucking massive. But so I start working my way back to try to find her because I think she's probably in the room or something like that.

And I tell her what's going on. And as soon as we get to the room, I'm like just barricading everything. So our room is at the farthest building on the second story. We're like on this corner. So we just start barricading everything, right? And I'm just like, you got to be kidding me. And so that's when we start working on our escape plan. And so Nodder comes in the picture right away. way. So this is my guy from Iraq. Right. So I call him and I'm like, dude, I'm like, okay, so this is what happened. I need a plane. You know, can you get us out of here? What can you do? And he's like, okay, like, I'll get you a plane. I'll figure out something, you know, because the airport's right next to us, you know, he's like, you just got to get to the airport. I'll figure this out, whatever.

Maybe it's tomorrow. It's the next day. I don't know. But I'll figure out something for you. Okay, cool. And so now it's like, we just got to figure out, stay alive, work on some escape plan, figure out something. I call, after calling Nodder, I call the U.S. Embassy Tactical Operations Center, which is, they're supposed to be like the guys if there's an emergency or something like that. And I tell them, hey, there's two expats. We're on camp, Camp Camelot, that's the name of our camp. You know, two expats, we've been taken hostage.

you know, you guys, you guys know, we've given you the grid, blah, blah, blah, you guys have been here, all this other stuff talking to, like, one of the deputy RSOs or something. And so I give him all the info and he's basically they're like, sorry there's nothing we can do because we're not on an active U.S. government contract. That's not good. No, no. What about your buddy next door? Well, I get to him.

But yeah, I'm thinking like, and I'm telling them like over and over, they're like, you're going to have to like, for the embassy, I'm just like, they're like, you're going to have to, like, call the Afghans. Like, and I'm just like, yeah, exactly. This guy's plugged in with the Afghans. Exactly. Like, 100%. Because he knows all the police and stuff like that. He knows a district commander. Exactly. There's no calling the Afghan police. Like, exactly. I know I'm fucked with that. So, exactly. So I call next door. I call my guy. I tell him, I'm like, hey, look, man, I don't know what's going to happen. But this. is what I need you to do. I need you to advise your guard force for until this thing is over, be advised that there may be two expats coming over our wall, running to your wall at any given time. And we're not hostile. We may or may not be able to signal you before we do. We'll do

our best to signal you. But we may be coming towards your wall. So just make sure all your shifts know this. So your guards don't shoot us as we do this. But if you have to, please engage, like engage their guards or give us cover fire if it turns into that or whatever. But how long after that initial conversation are these phone calls happening? Is that same day? Immediately. Yeah. I go straight into this.

Okay. So this is straight. They barricade themselves in their room. And you're making the phone calls. Oh yeah. This is how my mind works. I love this stuff. So like even like when we were like on like missions or like if we're doing like a vehicle

movement or something and there's like some kind of like action happening out there. Like my mind can see it real quick. And like I just, I get into. that. I could see like, hey, move the cars this way or reverse out, whatever. Like, I love that stuff. Yeah, so we start trying to make all these plans that we can to just come up with every single option that we have. And then, yeah, so I'm trying to think what else. So, yeah, so Nodder calls me back almost instantly. And he's like, okay, I'm sending you plane tickets. And I was like, plane tickets. Yeah, yeah, plane tickets. Well, not the plane that I thought. I thought he was right. Charter as a

plane. And so he just sends me plane tickets. And I was like, okay. But at least here's the good thing with that was he sent me plane tickets that he purchased out in Jordan for us instead of us getting plane tickets from our usual sources in Afghanistan. So it wasn't traceable basically. Like, because Abdul, usually when we buy tickets, we had a like a travel agency we used normally. Right. And so Abdul could have like found out our information, blah, blah, blah. But he purchased them from his people. So at least that gave us like one level. of coverage, which better, not the best. I mean, yeah, you're still, I'm still trapped in this fucking facility.

Yeah, yeah. And so that wasn't like the optimal solution, but it was still better. And it wasn't like the first plane that left, by the way, too. It was like the next day, but like the later plane. So it wasn't like the earliest flight. So what we ended up doing was, or I ended up doing, was I had. So I actually contacted our travel agency and I purchased tickets, like purchased them myself. And then I also bought like additional tickets for different days.

And then like I canceled those, but bought them. And then I like printed them out. And then like I crumbled it up. I put them in the trash. So like I just like made all this like pilferage and everything. Disinformation so that he thinks you're planning on leaving three days from now. But really you're planning on leaving today. Yeah.

Yeah. Right. So if he does find him, he thinks, oh, there's three or four. the three he's going to they do plan on leaving but it was like which one from now right yeah yeah so then finally he comes and wants to talk to me and he he's like he wants to talk and i'm like okay like i'll talk and so he wants to talk but the thing that he wants most now mind you hasn't paid me is he wants control of our website now the funny thing that about Afghans is they don't have like a normal banking system, they don't have credit cards.

And because the facility was likely going to open up soon, I owned the website because it was under my credit card. It was like, Go Daddy or whatever. And I paid for it. And he wanted to control the website. And since it was under my name, I wasn't going to give it to him because I knew that was one of our Trump cards to get out of there. And I was like, okay, well, I'll give it to you once we're safely out of here.

And he's like, well, you can give it to me now. I was like, no, like, clearly not. I need this together. And you owe us money and stuff like that. So you always a few different things. And then while we're also doing this, I called back the embassy a couple of times and kept trying to try with them

while all this is happening. And so not just calling the embassy, but while I was talking to him and we're doing this negotiations and stuff, I told him that the U.S. embassy said that I had to maintain proof of life with them like every half hour. Otherwise, they were going to come in here and get us.

And so what I was doing was I was also calling on my phone, just calling the number, not letting it go through and hang up. And I go, look it, I have to call the embassy every half hour or they're fucking storming this place. So I just showed him the call log, which actually I wasn't talking to him every half hour. And he believed that. So that was like the biggest thing of Sutterfuge that I'd done the whole time. And so that was probably the key that kept us alive was that most of all. So that and then him wanted the website. And so that was like our negotiation points to get out of there basically at that point.

So, I mean, well, what's the negotiation? Does he buy into that? Does he say, okay, I'll let you go. But when you get to the airport, you have to hand this over to me. Yeah, that was kind of the first deal. And then I told him, we'll do it in Dubai. And then he was like, you know, he kind of started like him in and hawing. And it was like kind of going back and forth, you know, what we're going to do. Because like the thing about the tactical operations center and like calling them, the proof of life thing, that that's the one that threw. him off. What were you going to do on that? And then, yeah, then there was this whole point, too, where he wanted to meet with us separately and talk about stuff. And then I didn't want to do that. Claire did. And that was, like, really odd. And like, that's still to me, was, like, suspicious on her part. She wanted to do that. And, and so I didn't want to go along with that. She did. and so and at this point too he yeah okay so he wanted to like make this deal with her to get her to stay and she's thinking she can run the whole place for him yeah yeah and she's like oh it doesn't seem so

bad and and by the way so when we go to do this thing where we go meet separately and everything I'm like look when you come back we had this whole like code set up like when you come back you got to knock a certain way on the door because I don't know if like you're under duress or not and I don't know if they're holding you hostage. So if you got a knock, you're going to do this knock. And if you don't do that knock, I'm going to fucking shoot through the door, basically. Right. So if you do this knock this way, you're fine.

But if you don't do the knock this way, I'm just going to shoot through the door. So after you do that knock, you've got to drop to the ground. So I'm fucking shooting like a second later. Right. So we had this whole like thing set up. And then when she went into the meeting with him, she was supposed to have kept her phone on. So I could try to hear. Right.

Which she didn't do, by the way. Okay. So that was like odd. She didn't do that. So she goes to this meeting. Yeah. And then she comes back and she's like, oh, well, I don't know. Maybe I might stay.

And I was like, no, you're not fucking staying. Fucking staying with them. I don't know. It doesn't seem so bad. And I was like, you got to be fucking kidding me. Like, what the fuck are you thinking? Like, I'm not going to let you stay here because who knows what they're going to do to you. Like, like, she's made her choice.

Great. You can stay here. I'm like, because they got you. I'm good. I'm good to go. I mean, you just made your choice. Like, I'm already thinking something ain't right there. Something's not right there.

This is my first experience with deceitful women, by the way. Okay. Yeah. Well, we've had different experiences. Well, then it progresses after that. Yeah. Yeah. See, you're already, like, I tell this story, and like, so many women are like, boom,

they're on that right away. Yeah. Like, good to go. Walk. I'm going to miss you. Yeah. Give her a big hug. Pack up some stuff.

Hey, let's get a selfie together while we walk. You walk me in the front and, hey, good luck. Yeah. And at this point. You don't have to tell me what if you find anything later on. But at this point, their main reason for wanting to keep all there is they need somebody to run this whole facility. Is that what you're thinking?

Yeah, I think so. Are they trying to hold us hostas for ransom money or something? Don't you guys kind of give it, get it, give it legitimacy? I mean, you're your, your, your foreigners have a experience like, 100%. These are these foreign countries and the Americans. Yeah, yeah. different companies that they're not going to they're not going to be shipping their people to an Afghan run with no American.

Yeah. The Americans are running it. Yes. No, no, no. Our administrators are these people right here who have a vast amount of experience. Okay, cool. But they're not going to have dual and, you know, Akbar are running it. Nah, we're good.

Yeah. And they've met with us so many times as well, like these companies that we've interfaced with that are about to sign contracts. Right. Plus one of that, what's he going to? As soon as he leaves, what's he going to tell these people? He could pick up the phone in 10 minutes and just destroy that entire. You got 15 contracts that are about to be signed. I make 15 phone calls. All those go away. Okay. Yeah, I was just curious.

Yeah. So I'm like, and I tell her, I'm like, fuck no. Like, I tell her, I'm like, look, I will club you over the head, put you in a sleeping bag, and I'm going to throw you over the wall with me. We're going to go to the other camp. Like, that's just not going to happen. And I was. I was prepared to do that, you know, because I was like, I am not leaving her behind. You know, I think they're going to do the worst to her. You know, like, it's like I feel like I'm saving her from herself. Like, you know, just like her train of thought on that. Just, you know, like, at the time, I didn't think she was duplicitous, but, you know, I would find out later, you know.

Like, yeah, so, so she relents, whatever, and we're going to make our plan to get out of there. Yeah, so anyway, so moving on from that, she comes back and we have our plans set up and everything. And, you know, I tell Abdul, we're leaving the next day or we're leaving the next day or whatever, and I want you to drive us. We're going to, it's going to be four of us. There's a driver who had been with us as well, like since we lived at the other house. And he's a really good guy. He's a good guy. And I didn't think he would be a threat in the car with us. Just a nice guy all the time. So I want him as the driver, Abdul, Claire and I. And I would obviously be armed and we got to go to the airport together. I'm like, it's going to be the four of us. I'm going to

maintain contact with the embassy and I'm going to be armed. You're not. I'm a fucking big point of my gun at you the whole time. What kind of thing? We're going to do this. We're going to go to the airport. And you're going to take us tomorrow and it's just going to be the four of us. And the thing is we're still kind of exposed this whole time. And this is the only plan we got, but you're going to get your website. If that's the biggest thing that matters to you, I want some of the money you owe us. he actually gave us a little bit of the money that he owed us and we end up leaving the next. He doesn't know what time our plane is too.

He thinks we're still on this early flight, which is kind of the shitty part because we end up getting to the airport. Now, the other thing is we have passes to get through the gates with our weapons because he's had that the whole time. So we can get to the final gate with the weapon. So once we get through the final gate is where I got to actually hand my weapon over and then leave. So that's the point where it's like the most like,

is this where something's going to fucking have? happen. Right. And then I'm on the other side and I'm like just like hoping at that point nothing's going to happen that my story would like, I'm like, I got the phone. I'm with the embassy. Like he's not going to like just try to rush me at that point. And we just fucking hook it into the embassy and, or I'm sorry, into the airport. And then the whole time I'm at the airport, we're at the airport. I'm worried as shit. Because like, you know, does he, I mean, he's got connections everywhere. So he's going to have somebody, these airport guards grab us, you know, anybody he knows in there grab us, you know, and what's going to happen to us there. So, and again, we have to wait for the later

flight. So, but we go sit in there, like with the people that are going to leave, just in case there's anybody that he knows that's there or sees us or whatever. So it looks like we're leaving and stuff like that. And we look like we're going to board the whole time, but we don't. And they got to wait for the next flight. So that was probably, like the sketchiest probably like six hours as well. I think I think we're there for almost like six hours of some shit like that until we finally left. We left and landed in Jordan with Nauter. So when you land in Jordan, do you sign over the? No, no, no, no. I keep that. I keep, I keep that. He still never pays us, by the way. Okay. So you got a little bit of money, but not, not what he owed you.

So you don't ever sign over the website. No, no, no. No, I never sign over the website, which again, the story gets even crazier. And by the way, Nodder puts me to work in Jordan for a little while and I have to do some crazy shit in Lebanon. So I go from like one frying pan to another for a little bit. And so I do this like three days of work in Lebanon. And this is at the time that Syria is a big deal going on, right? Like Syria kind of been kicking off and a bunch of stuff has to happen over there. And Nauter's doing work for the government and... What government? U.S. government. Okay. Yeah. So I got to go to Lebanon to do.

do some stuff. And I've been in Lebanon before. And Lebanon's like, it could be, it could be really cool, certain places of it. But other places, you can take a wrong turn and end up like in the wrong neighborhood. Because there's, there's, there's like Abdullah Zan brigades. There was, there's still like, what, like PLO presence. There's all these different terrorist organizations. It's like, it's like the mall of terrorist organizations that are there. And so, again, it's like, it's not something you can go in there and go arm to go do. So, you know, Claire's like the closest I have to a, you know, like a, you know, like a Overwatch because she's like, she's sitting in a hotel and I'm on Jordan, you know, with my phone link in case anything goes wrong. And like I literally have like a razor blade like in my, like in my stuff like in the heel of my shoe. And then like another one in my belt, like in case anything goes wrong because I get like kidnapped or something. So that's all I have there. And then I go. And then I go. do that, come back, finish that up, and then I'm working with not. I mean, her in Jordan for a couple of months before we go back to the U.S. Now, while I'm in the U.S., or sorry, right before we go,

right before we're in Jordan, right before we come back to the U.S., Claire tells me, since we hadn't been getting paid, I owe my parents money for the house that I lost. So she had had a house in South Africa, right? She's English, but had a house in South Africa. and she said she lost her house during this time frame because of us not getting paid, and that she owed her parents money because of that, right? Because they had, like, co-signed for her or something like that. And she needed money to pay her parents back. And so if I could loan her the money that if once we get married,

her parents would pay us back, give us like $100,000 or whatever to buy a house in the U.S. once we get married. And so, of course, I'm like, oh, yeah, like, I'll be the good guy. I'll do that, you know? Yeah, so I'll loan you the money because we're going to get married. and it's going to save your parents. And like, it's going to help us all and blah, blah, blah. It's the right thing to do.

Yeah, it's the right thing to do. So I do that and start loaning her this money. And we fly back to the U.S. And then we end up getting married, but her parents don't come to the wedding. I've never met her parents once. I've only seen them on Skype. And she's like, oh, don't worry. They're not going to come to this because it's just like a little wedding thing.

Because we do. We get married this little wedding. She's like, they'll come to our wedding if we have like a real ceremony sometime. And even after, like, as soon as we get, like, before, I think it was right before we get married or something like that. Or maybe an afterwards. She goes, it's not a big deal if I don't take your last name, right? It's like, I mean, it's just like, it's not like really matters, right? Okay.

Like, um, okay, whatever, right? And yeah, imagine like, like, you're, you're with this person. Now you've dated her for years and you've never met their parents either. Even when we were in Afghanistan, like, I used to send her home all the time for like Christmas and I would stay there. and then she'd never let me even talk to them on the phone during Christmas. So, like, I would call her house and she'd be like, oh, no, they're busy, or, oh, they're going to bed soon. They're watching a movie, but she'd never actually let me talk to them. So everything was always, like, there was red flags, and I'd always be, like, I'd be suspect of those.

So anyway, so I transferred the money, and now we're living in the U.S. And so we moved back into, we moved into my parents' house, and we're living in, my old bedroom that I grew up in. And so we're in a tiny little room with all of our stuff. And we have like shit for money because Abdul had been paying us. We have just a little bit of money he gave us. And now I'm transferring money to her every month because she needs this to pay back her parents, right? And so we have like hardly anything for money, but I'm giving her this big chunk of change every single month. Like sometimes it's upwards of like $6,500 a month, right? Because she's got to pay back her parents. And we have a little bit of. And we have a little bit of a change every single month. Like, sometimes, sometimes it's

her parents and we have money for nothing. So I'm transferring this money to her and and then eventually like, because Abdul still wants his website. And he said, touch something's her story goes like fucking crazy, right? Right. So Abdul, like, I saw on the website. Abdual hasn't paid us what he owes us because he owes us a lot of back pay on stuff. I get sued in the U.S. by Abdul. Really? Yeah. 100, like literally, there's 100 claims on his. thing. They're all made up. They're fucking weird, right? I get sued in Arizona in Maricopa County Superior Court by Abdul. And mind you, at the time, I was actually a resident of Idaho, because I had a house in Idaho at the time. So I should have never been, I should have, it should have never been

held in Maricopa, or shouldn't, yeah, never been held in Maricopa County. They served my father, not even me. You know, these guys should have never been able to have a lawsuit in the United States because they're Afghan, right? And we argued from the very beginning. that their claims should have never been heard because if I win or I prevail on counterclaims, there's going to be no way for me to collect my counterclaims because Afghanistan, Afghanistan is not party to the Hague Convention for a process. So we said all this stuff, but literally I got the worst judge you can possibly get. She was like complete, like one of the few liberal judges in Arizona, but she'd been a fellow at the State Department. She worked for all these human rights organizations

beforehand. So all these things were just partial to her, like, all these poor Afghans. Like, there's probably American mercenary contractor. Like, so she hears all these claims. These guys, so this lawsuit goes on for two and a half years that I got a fight. I spend all this money doing this. It's such a strain. Claire's named as Jane Doe in it. And because we end up getting married and all this stuff, instantly, she's like, you got to get me

off of this. I can't be part. So I spend like so much money just getting her off of it to begin with. And there was no reason like to even worry about that. But we did for some reason. And we get her off of it. And as this case is progressing and finally like they like their lawyer like quits on them because like they never even participated in it. But their lawyer had like quit at some point. And he says like I ethically have to pull out of this case or something like that. right? So he pulls out and basically I have a default judgment coming to me. And even Claire, in our counterclaims, like, so I make all these counterclaims and for us not getting paid, all this other stuff. And she has the opportunity now as well to come back and her name to that.

And me and my lawyer are like, yeah, do you want in, you want to do this or whatever? And she's like, well, what does that mean? We tell her. And she's like, well, does that mean that like, do I have to like, do I have to give any of my information or anything like that? And we're like, well, not really, but what I ever have to, like, give my information? We're like, yeah, not, no. I mean, like, my lawyer's, like, the worst case is if they, like, appealed and they, they, they wanted to, like, like, subpoena your records or something like that, but they're, like, not even a party.

Like, they could subpoena your bank records or something. Like, if they appealed or something, like, but no, you're getting, like a free judgment. Like, they default. You have a free judgment. They're never going to see the records. They're never going to pay it. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. But she would have had a free judgment, right? And she's like, no, I don't want to ever like look at my stuff. Like, I'm just, I'm like, I'd just rather be quiet. Trust Claire. Yeah, sure.

Of course. That's where this goes. And so she doesn't want to do it. Well, I end up winning a $1.2 million judgment against them, right? Which I never get to collect. Yeah. I could have told you. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. So I never get to collect it. And so I never get to collect the judgment. But I won it. She could have had one too. And so time goes on. and stuff like that. Me and Clara are married. And then later down the road, how much money have you paid Claire at this point? It was, it was the loan that I paid her was $36,200. I was transferred.

Okay. But again, I paid everything though. So when we lived together and then we got an apartment, I paid for everything. So all the rent, all the food, every single thing, every single expense ever. So she never paid anything. What is she doing for work? So when she gets to the U.S., she ends up getting hired through a temp accounting agency. So she's a permanent temp. Okay. So she has a job. And then, I mean, she has health care, all those other stuff, but she doesn't even put me on her health care. What are you doing? I have no health care for the longest time. Even though I was a veteran, I didn't even know I had VA health care. So I have like state health care for a while there. So what are you, I mean, what are you doing for work? So finally I start my own company, but that I start my own company.

That doesn't come to later though. But yeah. So initially, what are you doing? Starbucks? No, no, no. I'm working on like, I start. like like working on weapons stuff like selling like like small arms and stuff like that and guns and stuff like you're a gun runner i get it yeah later later more but yeah but early yeah kind of like start flipping stuff and everything and and so i'm starting to do that and you get the judgment yeah it's uncollectable correct okay so where does it go where does it go from there i mean what does i mean claire's not here yeah yeah yeah Yeah, yeah. Claire didn't drive you here or flying.

Yeah, yeah, no, no. So this is where, but this is where it gets interesting, right? Our relationship progresses. And as time goes on, now, she's applied for citizenship, right? Because she's a British national. And then it gets to a point where in the citizenship process or whatever, me as the sponsor, I can say yay or nay. Like I go, oh, no, this isn't kosher or whatever.

But there's a point where you can't. And so as soon as it crosses that point, that's when she, like, becomes, like, frigid, like is not have a sexual relations, all those other stuff, and she, like, pulls back and all those other things, right? And, and then, like, we're supposed to buy a house together, and her parents are supposed to send over the money and buy this house. And we've always been house hunting this whole time, supposedly. And then she changes the plan from, like, instead of getting a house, let's get, let's get a condo. And instead of, like, let's get a condo. Let's get two condos, one to live in, one to rent out. Yeah. And then, but that also,

keeps changing all the time. And then she goes, oh, my parents aren't going to send the money unless we get divorced, because they just don't trust that with your business that you have, because you took out a business loan. And because we're divorced, they don't feel comfortable with that. And I was like, at the time, I was like, wait a second. Like, I have a house. And Idaho that was running out. I'm a veteran. Like, I can get a VA loan and all those other stuff. And she's like, well, no, I want to apply through the loan through me and all this stuff. It'll be in my name. But yeah, my parents don't feel comfortable unless we get a divorce. So let's just get a temp divorce.

So just be on paper. And then we'll get remarried again after they transfer the money over. And so I'm like... You seem like a bright guy. Thank you. Thank you. I mean, at no point did you sit there and say, the fuck are you doing? The fuck are you thinking?

Well, yeah, of course. I mean, I'm saying like, like... Oh, 100%. I was like, yeah, this is not cool. And there was a... I mean, part of it too is like, I'm kind of trauma bonded because going through all the shit that we went through. And I was like, no, I'm fucking Catholic as well. Like, I'm not going to do this and stuff. So, yeah, I push off on this for the longest time. And then there's a part of me that's

going, I knew it didn't feel right. I knew none of this felt right. And I'm like, oh, like, okay, this is supposed to be your wife. You're supposed to trust her. Like, no one's going to fuck you this bad. Like, she can't fuck me this bad. Like, like, like, like. Like, you can. Yeah, yeah. So I didn't think anybody could fuck you this bad. Because I'm not that kind of first. I'd be questioning I should have left her with Abdul. God knows what the Afghanis would have been doing to her right now. She'd be chained to a bed somewhere hooked on a hand.

Oh, probably. She'd made a better decision. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in the end, that probably would have worked out better. Yeah. Yeah. So again, I think I'm one of those people that, like, I would never do to someone what

someone would do to me. And that's always what's got me. me fucked in the end, right? And so I'm just like, I'm just like I'm fighting it the whole time. Finally, I relent and I do this. And so we do this divorce on paper or whatever. And as soon as we do this divorce on paper and we have to file our stuff, she's got 11 bank accounts. I don't even know she has 11 bank accounts, right? Oh, well, I was, remember I was like applying for like credit cards or other things or like accounts? Like, I'd open one because like you'd get like a bonus for this or that. and all this other shit.

And I'm like, okay, that's kind of weird. What, you're doing it for toasters? What, you get free toasters? Every time I open a bank account? Yeah, like, well, $200 for this, $200 for that or whatever. I've never opened a bank account where you get $200 for nothing. Like, I don't know. Any, yeah, I mean.

Yeah, so there's that. There's the, now the money I was transferring to her. I knew it was overseas. Oh, yeah, it's gone. But I knew it was overseas. That's an account in the aisle of man, by the way. She doesn't have parents, right? Like, these are not, these are, this is,

what sin people what do you call yeah i was going to say what are these these aren't real people right like this can't these can't or or at least they're her parents but they're clueless as to any of this is being is happening i'm sure like they probably don't know it all oh no she's promised no they're going to do this they're going to do that oh they have no no 100 percent okay 100 even if they are her parents which i don't know you right yeah so she's got 11 bank accounts the money's getting transferred to the aisle of man and then she yeah, and then like all this happens really quickly, the divorce and everything. And then she's going to close on this one apartment. I go to see it. Then she changes her mind.

Doesn't want to close on that one. She starts changing these closing dates, but never invites me to any of these. So I know she's like going wrong really quickly. Then we go to Aspen or Breckenridge, I'm sorry, for my birthday, right? This is a few years back. It's like 20, 2019. We go to Breckenridge for my birthday. And we come out of this bar or whatever. and we're like wasted or whatever, and we're like arguing over directions. And all of a sudden, like, she just fucking pops me in the face. And I'm like, whoa, did that just happen? Like, did she just fucking punch me in the face?

And I can hear the whole crowd around me go, oh! And I'm just like, yeah, that happened. That literally happened. I'm just looking at her like, you've got to be fucking kidding me. She just popped me straight again. And mind you, remember, she'd been like a bodyguard and stunt woman and all this other shit. So it's not.

above her not to do that. I hear the whole crowd do it again. Like, oh my God, she literally just punched me again. Like, that happened. Had the crowd not reacted, I would have thought this was like fake, right? A third time, start to straight. Now, mind you, I also had surgery for a deviated septum. Like, got out of that two weeks before that.

So she's punched me straight in the nose where I deviated septum. The third time, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, police lights. So a cop had seen it all happen. Right. cop walks up, a female cop, and she's like, seen it all happen. She goes, what's going on here? Claire's first words were, oh, his PTSD kicked off. I'm like, you bitch, like, you got to be, like, I can't believe she used that or said that to me.

Like, like, weaponized, like, something against me like that. I mean, first off, like, my PTSD is, like, benign. It's like, I have crowd avoidance issues. Right. Like, when I got back, it was, like, startle response. sleep issues, like, like, shit like that. I mean, you don't work 12 years in Afghanistan and have, like, major issues like that.

Like, things like, I had sleep issues. Stuff like that bother me. That's why I worked there for so long. So the police take her away. Yeah. Yeah, they arrest her. They arrest her. Good.

I thought you were going to say, I told him no, no. I'd be like, take this fucking bitch. I, hell, no. You did say no? Yeah, I get to that. Listen, so they arrest her for domestic violence. They're registered for domestic violence. And at first,

first, I don't want anything to happen to her because I've never been separated from her because we've been together this whole time, right? And then the cops are like, they pull us inside and everything like that. And they're like, dude, the supervisor comes. Sorry, supervisor comes. And the supervisor comes,

and I'm speaking with the officers, and they're like, dude, I know what you do for a living, blah, blah, blah. you got to understand her first words when they pulled up were like to incriminate you right she's going to be in here this is friday she's going to be in here till monday and she's going to be pissed but she's going to who knows what she's going to say between here and there she may just blame you um you know so are you sure you know that like you don't want to say anything and i'm like no no they're like dude you know like you can lose your licenses you can do all these different things

Are you sure? And I'm like, has this ever happened before? And I was like, yeah, it has. Because she has. She'd hit me more than once, like, when we were together. Because she would be violent. Like, we got an argument or something. She'd hit me.

My parents saw it. Neighbors had heard it before and stuff. Yeah, yeah. Jesus, bro. Yeah. She was hot as shit. I mean, she is, but she was violent. Still.

Yeah. So she hit, so, so, so, so, so, So cops do that, whatever. They take her away. They take her to jail. You know, and I'm like, I'm still kind of freaking out over it. I'm like, this sucks. And so I try to get her a lawyer right away.

We get her a lawyer. And then I give this like, you know, this big speech to the judge how, you know, she was helping me, you know, because I just started, for the very first time I just started, you know, seeing a therapist about PTSD. And she's my support. And I actually talked the judge into releasing her. And this was a judge that's so anti-domestic violence. and like he'd never released anybody. He'd never gone back on anything. Like I gave this rousing speech, right?

And even the prosecutor's like, good job, you know, and they release her to my custody. You know, like, yeah. So I see a shock on your face. Yeah, I am. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. So she gets released to my custody and we fly back to Arizona. And then we got to fight the case after that.

And so they tell her right off the bat, like, you can get deferred prosecution. And I'm like, oh, great. good for you. Like if you do no trouble for the next like six months or a year or whatever, like they'll drop the charges. She goes, I can't have that. I can't have that. I go, what do you mean? That's good. No, it needs to be dismissed right away. And I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. And so we have to end up working on getting her charges dismissed right away. So we end up doing that. So we end up fighting this thing to get her charges dismissed right away. And eventually, we end up getting her charges dismissed right away. And so we fight it to get that. Now in Colorado,

when you get the chart, like if you get it done properly, I don't know what they call it, but it's not just like exonerate or whatever, but, or what is it with expunged? Expunged. Yeah, it's where it's completely gone off the record. Right. Right. So the day, she gets noticed that is expunge in the mail. I remember, again, it's like I got a photographic memory.

We're in our apartment. She walks out to check the mailbox and I can literally hear it still. I can hear her opening it and closing it and coming back in and she's like, open the letter. and she reads it and she goes, I'm leaving. I'm like, what? She goes, yeah, I'm leaving. Like, what do you mean you're leaving? Yeah, I'm leaving.

And she hands me her cell phone. I go, what? I can't talk to you either. I'm like, you need your phone. And she goes, you got my email. You can email me. I'm like, what the fuck? I know?

And yeah, so she's just like, she just starts to leave. And she starts packing up her stuff. And what she'd been doing for like the few weeks before, that too. She was slowly moving her stuff out. And like, she'd go into the, to our shed out back. And she's like, oh, I'm going to clean. I'm going to clean out some of this stuff. And what she was actually doing was like, she was like moving stuff. So she'd actually already, she'd already closed on a condo without me knowing. And she was moving stuff into that. And then she'd say other things, like bigger things that were in the home. So like, like plants, these bigger plants. She'd be like, oh, this thing's been dying. I'm going to see if like so and so in the office can help like get this plant going. or so-and-so is having a baby shower. So I'm going to bring this thing to the baby shower to use. Like I bought her this big, huge, like a rubber duck thing that's like Massa.

I'm going to take to the baby shower. Things to get out of the apartment without noticing, right? I mean, she's duplicitous. I was doing that kind of stuff. So she'd been doing all this all along, like moving this stuff out. And then also she had been saying like how she was going to, oh, that was the other thing. she wanted to get a job somewhere else. And that was the other reason why she said she had to get the charges dismissed

because she'd been working as an accountant at this construction place for a long time. But she wanted a new job at this other place, right? And she's a temp higher. She's a permanent temp. But she couldn't pass the background check with pending charges. Right. Because this is also a company that works in law enforcement. Right.

So she couldn't work there if she was pending charges for domestic. violence, right? So she needed that pass or done. Well, then she tells me like, oh, like where I'm working, I'm going to, I'm going to change it up on them. I'm going to start coming in in different hours and stuff like that. I didn't piece it together to afterwards. She was actually already working at the new place while we lived together, but didn't tell me. Right. So she'd already quit the other place and then was living at this new place or working at this new place. So after she left, that's when I found out more about her in the first three weeks that she was gone in the seven years I laid next to her in bed. So she had actually set up

a secret trust in 2016. That what, that she'd been funneling money to or putting assets in? That's what she put her condo in. Okay. Yeah. Putting assets in it. Yeah. So, so instead of like the trust being, instead of the house being like titled to her name or whatever, it was named the Claire, blah, blah, blah, blah, trust. Right. Yeah. So it was named. It was named. named first and last name. It was named to her. Right. So, yeah, so she, yeah, so she had this secret trust set up while we were still together, like years before that. She had this this whole time. So she had this secret trust, a bank account in the Isle of Man, 11, 11, 11 bank accounts, all this secret shit this whole time. So when was this? When was the last time you,

did you, have you seen her since then? Yeah. So I tried to sewer, went back, went back the money and stuff. Last time I saw her was at the deposition she gave. And so I made my my accounts against her, which she never denied any of them, by the way, like even with her with her attorney, they never denied any of the accounts against her. And I had to fight that the whole time. And she actually, and that was a whole fuck case, by the way, too, because I ended up having to get rid of my attorney at one point, because my attorney had charged me like $20,000 or something for like one motion or something. So I had to fire him to get a new attorney,

but then the judge wouldn't allow me to have a new attorney. And I was like filing all these motions to be like, I need more time. I need to have a new attorney. They wouldn't let me have a new attorney. And like I ended up hiring attorneys to write the motions and everything. And they're like, this is like extremely odd. This is like a violation of your rights and stuff.

So they made all these motions for me. And I was never allowed to have another attorney. attorney. And so by, this is like 2021 by this point, I was actually overseas doing the Afghan evacuations. So after the embassy fell, I was doing the Afghan evacuations. And at the very, very last like hearing for this whole entire thing, my appeal to win this case, the case that day, you know, I appear online virtually. At that point, I was in Montenegro meeting with their government while the Afghan evacuations were going on. And I appear virtually, and I'm in the waiting room, says my name. Gino's there, whatever, like the little box. And the judge is like, okay, well,

it looks like he's not there. It looks like he's not ready to start. And her lawyer is like, yeah, well, we might as well start. She goes, yeah, it looks like he's not here. So we might as well just, okay, we'll just rule in your favor. And I'm like, you got to be fucking kidding me. So they ruled in my favor without me there. And then they award her like all of her attorney's fees, which were over $100,000. They ruled in her favor. In her favor. You just said my favor. Oh, sorry.

Yeah, in her favor. But they ruled in her favor, gave her all of her attorney's fees over $100,000 that she spent over $100,000 on this, you know, to defend against the $36 grand. She could have just paid me of the principal, right? And then I ended up, when we ended up fighting against the attorney's fees, I prevailed in the attorney's fees because they said, or the next case, they said that was too much that she'd spent or whatever. And so I won on that.

They reduced her attorney's fees down to like a quarter of that or something like that. And we told the judge we're like, we have the videotape evidence because it's all videotape. I was there, whatever, and Mr. Garsha was there.

So you could see that I was on the waiting room. You ruled against me when I was present, but they did nothing about that. So, yeah, it was just, it was all weird the whole time, even during the case, she was allowed multiple times to turn in her filings after the filing date. Right. But they didn't like, they should have just, that should have been awarded to me kind of thing or should have been defaulted, like more than once that was allowed.

So, yeah, it's been odd more than once. So this was what last year, no, a couple, two years ago? Yeah. But two years ago? So you haven't seen her since then? No. No. Jesus.

Yeah. And now, which is funny too, because like I said, she works for, a well-known kind of major law enforcement company, and she's the head of global accounting for them with no degree, by the way. You know, domestic violence charge. Whatever, they buried that or whatever. So, what are you doing now?

I still work in government contracting. Okay. Yeah. I was going to ask. You what happened? Some of the characters, Abdul, is there any? Oh, yeah. So I'll give you an update on that.

Yeah, yeah. during the Afghan evacuations and about the money. So the judgment I got against Abdul. So one day, Claire and I, we were at botanical gardens in Arizona, which is like this kind of cool place, like in Scottsdale or whatever. Maybe it's Phoenix, I don't know, but anyways, I had tried a lot of different avenues to collect the money from Abdul. And there's ways to collect it, like if he has clients, American clients, to kind of garnish

those and everything like that. And we tried that, but we were unsuccessful. and try to see if he had assets anywhere else around the world and everything like that, and we were unsuccessful in collecting those. Well, I had worked with a former CIA guy, very prominent guy, highly awarded individual with the agency. And I knew him quite well. It's that from working in Afghanistan, I was like, I'm going to see if he can collect this for me. He may be able to help.

So I call him up. And I tell him about the judgment and everything. And he's like, oh, he's got this grisly voice. Yeah, I can help you for sure, man. I got this for you. And I'm like, okay, cool. And he's like, I know just the guy. This guy used to fucking put people in shipping containers by the dozens.

Like this is the guy that everybody fucking fears. And we'll get him into this thing. Like, this is a perfect fucking guy. Like, we'll get this for you, man. And I was like, dude, if you can help with this, that would be awesome. I've had no other way of collecting it. I would be happy to give you like fucking half of it. I'd just be happy to collect anything.

I mean, obviously more than the normal finding fee, right? Finders fee for it. So, no, no, man, I do it for free. I really like you, man. I'll do it for free. I'm like, no, no, dude, bro, I will give you more than anything. Like, just trust me. So he's like, no, he's like, no, just give me, give me, you know, he's like, give me all the information, whatever.

And so I end up a little bit later, give him all the information that he needed, copied the award judgment, all the information on Abdul, his businesses, his associates, everything he needed to track it down, right? So he has all that. And then it wasn't long after that. He goes dark. Yeah. So he like literally like his, his, he goes dark,

his phones that I know of that he has go unanswered, his emails, everything like that. Like he disappears basically. And he goes off the grid for a long time. And and like no one I know had heard from him either, right? And I was like, that's weird.

And then like one day I'm having. breakfast with a good friend. And he knows a lot of people. And I tell him the story and I tell him what happened with this guy. We'll just, we'll call him Adam. Okay. I tell him and he's like, Adam's got the money, dude. I go, what? He goes, Adam's got the money. I go, no, come on. He goes, oh, yeah, of course he does. I go, you think so? He's like, of course he does. I'm like, hmm, maybe. I kind of started thinking about it more. Okay, whatever. So then the Afghan evacuations kick off. The embassy falls 2021, August 2021, and I can involve heavily in that. I start evacuating one of my guys that turns into me and a lot of people that I know.

We start evacuating more people and it just balloons in this big thing. Well, one of the first people that I reached out to was the owners of the camp that, one of the camps that I knew other people at, right? And so I find out that this guy, Adam, had worked at one of these. camps in a security capacity in a business deal, right? And he was supposed to be a partner in the security company. And then I find out that that didn't end well, right? That there was some unscrupulous, like, I don't want to get into it, but there was like some unscrupulous dealings in that business partnership and some misdirection of funds and all this other stuff. And that didn't go well.

And I'm like, oh, shit. I'm like, hmm, I didn't have. expect to hear that. And this was coming from somebody that I'm very good friends with and stuff. And I was like, okay, hmm, like, okay, so that happened. And then I didn't heard from him. And then he has all my information. And that sounds pretty valid. All those things line up. Okay. And then they're all gone. And then during the evacuation process, I got a soft heart. And I'm like, what? I'm going to see if I can find Abdul. And we're evacuated. evacuating people. I know you're like, fucker. So I'm like, I'm going to see if I can evacuate Abdul, you know, like, I feel bad for him and his brothers, because his brothers, like, they

didn't do anything to me, but I'm going to see if they want out. And I try everything I can to find Abdul from every single contact and source that I have and know of where Abdul's at. Nothing. Like, nothing. And I get one reply, or I get a couple replies from one of his, like, I don't remember what it was, if it was like an Instagram account or something, when I started getting contact with someone that pretends to be Abdul, but he can't, he can't provide bona fides to me, that is him. And so I'm going back and forth, and I'm like, look, what I need from you is to verify, because me and Claire had a pet over there, and I said, what kind of animal was it? And it died, and where's it buried? And he could not verify this,

because Abdul helped me bury. Right, so he would know. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, but by the, by the North Tower. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. 100%. And this guy couldn't do that. So basically, every single thing

that Abdul should have came up on the radar on, nothing. Or you think he's hiding or you think he just... He's dead. He's dead. He's said you got whacked.

Oh, yeah. But who would have done that? You think... Maybe Adam. You think Adam maybe went and... Yeah, from what everybody says, and everybody's other conclusions are, maybe Adam got the money.

Right. Maybe Adam found Abdul. gave him a little bit twisted twisted some or pulled out his fingernails until they gave up the money and then just dropped them in a hole somewhere. Maybe. Yeah. Did the...

Because real quick, Adam has a little bit of a presence and Adam was out of that spotlight for quite a long time too. So it's all kind of like maybe. Hey, you guys, if you like the video, do me a favor, hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you get notified of videos just like this. Also, please consider joining our Patreon.

It's $10 a month where we put Patreon exclusive content on the platform. It really does help. Colby and I make these videos. Thank you very much. See you. Rosen lasagna, medium power, 15 minutes. Sounds like Ojo time.

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