For Abducted Guards, Iraq Wasn't Just About Money

'I'd Go Home and I'd Feel Empty'

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Jonathon Cote has a boy's face and cornerback's build, the result of weightlifting and a joyless diet of salads without dressing and canned peaches that he kept stacked in his closet. He wore T-shirts and extravagantly torn jeans as he strolled through Kuwait City's malls, drawing glances amid men in starched white robes and women in black abayas.

His older brother Christopher called Jonathon an "extrovert in the extreme," a sensitive thrill-seeker who craves speed and adventure. The son of a Marine, Jon Cote was born in Long Beach, Calif., and went to high school in suburban Buffalo, N.Y.; for kicks, he and his brother would tether a snowboard to a car and ride it through a foot of snow.

In Kuwait City, Cote exercised at a local gym, then spent hours in a backroom shop watching a jeweler painstakingly craft a ring for his mother's birthday. Driving through Baghdad, he'd roll down the windows and turn up the music on his stereo, rocking in his seat with some of Crescent's Iraqi guards. "You don't have to worry about much if you're having a good time," he said.

Cote's friends and family laughed when they heard he was majoring in accounting at Florida. "It was like an oxymoron: Jon the accountant," Chris said.

Cote said he hated most of his four years in the Army. He disdained authority. College life suited him better, at least at first. People were drawn to the freshman with combat experience; even the seniors looked up to him.

But Cote said he felt disoriented, caught between the disciplined world he had left behind in the military and a new one that seemed shallow in comparison. Cote had also done a tour in Afghanistan. He once remarked to Chris that it seemed as if he had lived two lifetimes compared with the students around him. "I was like this fun, energetic kid who made everybody laugh and made everybody have a good time," he said. "But on the inside I was torn apart. I didn't know how to deal with it. So I'd go out to a party and have an awesome time, and then I'd go home and I'd feel empty. And I'd be like, 'Why do I feel this way? What . . . is wrong with me?' "

The drunk-driving arrest was merely the last straw, Cote said. "I was ashamed of what I did. And I couldn't pay for school, I couldn't pay for my apartment. I didn't want to deal with not being able to drive. I had to get a job, and the job I was going to get was probably going to be working in a bar and dealing with all these college people and their bull."

Cote had kept in touch with Skora, his old squad leader in the 82nd Airborne. After leaving the military, Skora, 35, had applied online for private security jobs. Within a month, he was in Iraq with another now-defunct security firm. He later moved to Crescent.

Cote was reluctant to leave school, but he looked at the security job as a chance to straighten out his life.

"It basically gave me an opportunity to run away from my problems," he said. "So I just left."

'And the Screams. . . . It Rips Your Heart Out'

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Cote soon discovered there was no time for jet-skiing.

The work was constant, and he developed a love-hate relationship with his job. For the first time since entering college, he believed he was involved in something meaningful.