There is a low buzz on the horizon, somewhere behind the buildings surrounding the tiny FOB, insectile at first, barely audible, but quickly rising on the morning breeze. At first note, you might think that it was a lawn mower, albeit one running at very high RPM, as if fueled by some lethal nitro-methane mixture. 

The high tone rises steadily, fades for a moment, then soars back again, higher now, faster, and that's when we start to move outdoors, coffee cans and cigarettes in our hand, eager for the morning show. We cluster on the sandbagged patio in front of the dilapidated barracks, necks craning skyward, heads turning, looking and listening for their approach, figures around us stopped and frozen for a second on top and clustered around their HMMWVs, everybody eager.

The sound fades again for a second -- they must be behind another building -- and then increases expectantly, louder now, and I feel the anticipation in the noise, like the sound of an huge audience applauding before a show, and WROOOOOOOMMMM!!!, the tiny helicopters burst upon the stage above us, a roar and a black flash of motion 50 feet above our heads, and they're past, instantly, the sound quickly fading with the sudden doppler effect of something very loud, moving very fast. 

My heart leaps into my throat as the helicopter carves a sudden, graceful arc above the compound, heeled over on it's side at an impossible 90 degree angle, roaring past the concrete edifice of the MOI building, it's stiff landing skids seemingly only a few feet from the office windows.  The tiny craft pulls out of the turn and pitches straight upward, soaring into the golden blue cocktail of another Iraq morning, a children's toy rocket, heading skyward.  I'm cheering now, both arms outstretched in the timeless display of victory and strength, as I do every time I see them, and I am not alone.  The Rock Stars of Baghdad are here again, and another show begins!

The helicopters are Hughes Defender 500s, and they belong to Blackwater, the premier private security company in Iraq.  Nobody calls them Defender 500s, though. We call them Little Birds, after the virtually identical helos flown by the Army's Night Stalkers, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.  Little Birds are the sole purview of Special Forces, and particularly the legendary SFOD-D -- better known by the media's ridiculous tag -- Delta Force. CAG. The Knights Templar of American special operations. 

Little Birds became famous in movies like "Black Hawk Down", and just about anything you saw them do in the movie, Blackwater's can do, too.  Blackwater is, for all intents and purposes, your very own little Special Forces, available anywhere, anytime, for the low low price of a couple of million dollars. These Birds are used to fly recon and air support for various security contracts, usually with federal government agencies. Based out of the Green Zone, just a couple blocks west of here, we are fortunate enough to see them often.

None of the names or details we really care about. What matters to us is the grace and style they show in their flying, which is absolutely insane.  To watch them wheel and spin, carving magnificient turns at tree top level above us, is like being treated to an air show every day.  Another one buzzes toward us, that glorious whine exploding around us as it bursts from over an adjacent building, and everyone throws their heads back to watch. 

Again, it is heeled over completely on it's side, and we stare in wonder at the men inside and out of it. Yes, there are guys hanging outside of it, their boots resting on the spindly skids, standing upright, their assault rifles pointing outwards.  The helicopters have no doors on them, and the pilots are clearly visible, sitting back like you or I in our Laz-e-boys, while flying at God-knows-what speed and at roof top level.  We always wave at them, and sometimes the new gods of the air deign to wave back at us mere  mortals.  The Little Bird careens wildly across the base, first jinking left, then right, and then pulling up into a sharp climbing arc, the white circle on it's rotors a blurred halo, the pitch of the wasp changing and rising as it climbs into another crazy hammerhead. 

More important than the security they provide for it's convoy, the Little Birds bring a precious sense of elan, of esprit de corps, of being something elite, to our usual morning grind.  You can't help but feel like you are in a really good action movie every time you see these guys, and how could you lose when you have guys and toys as cool as these on your team?  The soldiers around me always say the same thing whenever Blackwater is overhead -- "Man, I would do anything to have that job!"  Me, too. 

A couple of weeks ago I passed one of their convoys on the way to Baghdad International Air Port, or BIAP as we call it, in yet another inevitable Army acronym.  That miserable cloud-choked morning was the coldest day we've had here so far, but even with the rain and half-frozen mud, I looked at the guys huddling over the skids as they zipped overhead, and thought, "Y'know, I'd do that job for free!"  And love every second of it.

It's not without it's dangers, though.  Last week, one of the Blackwater Little Birds was shot down, just a few klicks north of here, in Adhamiyah, where we have had some of our own more interesting moments.   Some insurgent got in a lucky shot, but even then the pilot was a consumate professional, and managed to autorotate the bird into a survivable landing.  The story we heard was that they got tangled up in power lines, and came in really hard, although at least some of the pilots and crew survived the crash.

Blackwater launched their own recovery mission to rescue them, and a squad of Strykers rolled in to help, too.  I would have done anything to be on that mission, but was sitting at yet another IP station a few kilometers away, just north of Sadr City.  Tragically, some scumbag locals got to them first.  The rescue teams found them, still strapped into the helicopter.  Each man had been shot, executed without mercy, regardless of their wounds.

We all reacted the same way when we heard the tragic news.  Crestfallen faces, and an emphatic, disbelieving "No way!" on our tongues.  It wasn't just a machine that fell out of the sky that day, something made out of plastic and metal, a vehicle to ride in.  It was that glorious leap in my heart when they roared overhead, and that instant smile they brought to my face whenever I saw them above me, sunlight glinting off their visored helmets with that suddenly sparkling prism effect.  It was that sense of being part of something special. 

Maybe my gunner summed it up best one day, watching them buzz our barracks for the tenth time that day, amid the throaty cheers of teenage soldiers.  He shook his head, squinted up at them, and said in his Georgia drawl,  "That's some sexy ***, man.  That's some sexy ***."

We rode out this morning, into a daybreak that was an eery, off-world yellow.  There was a monster of a sandstorm raging down in Karbala, and Baghdad was getting it's cast-off remnants.  The visibility and blowing dust was so bad that our own Army helicopters were on "Red" status -- allowed to fly only in a life-or-death emergency.  We were skirting through an IP checkpoint, along one of those wide and blasted city streets near Baghdad University.  Cracked concrete, ancient sandbags.  Rusting hulks of forgotten car bombs.  Skittish dogs on the sidewalk, ribs showing.  Ragged Iraqi cops in mismatched uniforms, clutching the dull brown wooden handgrips of their AKs.  The usual smell of raw sewage and burning plastic. 

And somewhere above the crappy morning of yet another day spent on Iraqi roads, I could hear that delicious buzz again, even from inside the armored HMMWV.  Sure enough, here they came, appearing like black apparitions from the yellow muck above.  They were skimming along the avenue, right in front of us, just barely above the broken streetlights, that vulpine howl rising and then breaking like a wave as they flashed over our convoy.  

The rock stars were back, and the show would go on.  I smiled grimly, inside my helmet, and muttered to myself.  "Oh yeeaaaaah!"  

It was going to be good day after all.  

Sgt Roy Batty is a pseudonym for the writer formerly known as Anonymous MP.  He is a soldier in Baghdad.