For Abducted Guards, Iraq Wasn't Just About Money

"I want to have a normal life -- I always have -- but I've always known that I'm not that kind of person," Young said.

"I've spent an entire lifetime trying to explain it to myself. I mean, my children are a big thing to me. I'm not saying I'm the best dad in the world, but I love my children. I want to see my daughter get married. I want to see my son graduate. I want normal things in life. But I'm not normal."

The conversations took place in the cabs of the Crescent gun trucks as the guards drove through the Iraqi desert; during long waits before they crossed the sand-choked Kuwait-Iraq border; at Popeyes, T.G.I. Friday's and other Kuwait City restaurants that reminded them of home; and in their spare, dormitory-style rooms, filled with video game players and televisions and family pictures, where they passed time between missions.

At the time of the kidnapping, Crescent had 17 Western employees, from the United States, Britain, Chile, Austria and New Zealand, according to Franco Picco, the company's managing partner. Paul Chapman, Picco's deputy, said Crescent received roughly 600 job applications from abroad each month.

The company closed down within months of the attack.

"To me, this is a prestigious job," Cote said before the ambush and seizure.

"There's only a certain percentage of people who are doing this. It's like a hidden, secret part of the war, and if I could be part of that hidden, secret thing, it would be cool, you know? It's kind of like being part of history. People are gonna be like, 'Oh, man, remember the war? Where were you?' I was here. I was here."

'It's Not the Getting Hit Part That Bothers Me'

Crescent operated out of a quiet sandstone villa in Kuwait City, across the street from a mosque. The guards lived in rooms with wireless Internet, twin beds, wooden desks and concrete floors. Before dawn, as the Muslim call to prayer echoed through the courtyard, the men, clad in khakis and black shirts with a white Crescent logo, climbed into their trucks to make the one-hour drive to Iraq.

After reaching Camp Navistar, a border staging base, the men fueled their vehicles, then waited in a dirt lot in the heat for clearance to cross into Iraq. The constant rumble of Humvees, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and tractor-trailers filled the air with dust and the stench of diesel fumes. The wait could last for hours.

"I haven't been home in four months," said Paul Reuben, a former Marine, as he waited at the border one morning.

Reuben turned 40 eight days after he was seized. He stands 6-foot-4, weighs 260 pounds and smiles almost continuously, his beard and gentle manner giving him the look of an overstuffed teddy bear. Reuben has a twin brother, Patrick, a Minneapolis police officer, twin 16-old-daughters, Bree Anne and Casey Nicole, and a 16-year-old stepson, Terrell. He resigned from the St. Louis Park, Minn., police department in 2003 after a drunk-driving arrest. Reuben said he applied online for private security jobs and was hired immediately.

Waiting at the staging base, Reuben said he was exhausted from having worked "72 or 73 days straight" and jittery from fending off constant attacks. Two weeks earlier, he'd thought he heard fireworks while driving through Basra, a city racked by militia-fueled violence, but quickly realized the explosions were a volley of rocket-propelled grenades aimed at his convoy.