FALLUJAH, Iraq -- The mob had tired of thrashing the two scorched torsos. The body on the south side of the skeletal steel bridge was tied to the girders with electrical cord about five feet above the ground, dismembered and decapitated. The second body hung on the other side of the roadway, feet up, its limbs slack, its head little more than a blackened skull. A few blocks away, another crowd was beating two more burned bodies.

On the bridge, an Arab reporter would raise a camera and a man or boy would climb to pose beside a corpse. Some in the crowd would turn and flash a "V" for victory with their fingers.

Beneath the bridge, the patches of tall reeds along the Euphrates were motionless in the still midmorning air of March 31. On the far side, a water buffalo grazed at the river's edge. U.S.-trained Iraqi security troops loitered around their headquarters and ignored the crowd.

The four dead men were Americans, armed civilians working for a private contractor.

The Marines, in charge of the area, hadn't known the four were traveling that day into the cauldron of Fallujah. They wouldn't risk a riot by trying to stop the macabre show. Finding the killers later might be their problem, but for now, the corpses would just have to stay there.

Later that day, the radio played oldies inside the Zovko family's body shop in a gritty corner of Cleveland. The music stopped for news: four U.S. contractors had been killed in some city in Iraq.

Danica Zovko, doing the shop's accounts, thought of another ugly televised scene a decade earlier. She sent two e-mail messages to her son Jerry, in Iraq:

"They're killing people in Iraq just like Somalia."

"... remember tomorrow is April Fools Day. Please be careful ..."

It didn't occur to Danica Zovko, or the families of the other men, that those torn, scorched bodies -- the "contractors" -- could be their kin. They knew little, just that Jerko "Jerry" Zovko, Wesley Batalona, Michael Teague and Stephen "Scott" Helvenston were in Iraq. In the families' eyes, they were soldiers, not contractors.

So in Ohio, Tennessee, Florida, California and, as the sun climbed, on Hawaii's Big Island, the families heard the reports. They went on with their normal business.

Working for Blackwater

The four men had been brought together in Iraq to work for Blackwater USA, based in Moyock, in North Carolina's northeast corner. The company, and others like it, made money by doing work the military once handled on its own.

Blackwater had several jobs for the U.S. government in Iraq, including a $21 million contract to protect L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian who ran the country until June 28.

The company's owner -- a 35-year-old former Navy SEAL named Erik Prince -- had strong connections. His father, Edgar, owner of an auto parts manufacturer that sold for $1.35 billion, had donated tens of millions of dollars to conservative Christian organizations. Erik Prince interned in Congress and for the first President Bush, campaigned for presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan and gave heavily to conservative candidates.

Zovko, Batalona, Teague and Helvenston had signed short-term contracts with Prince's company, earning about $600 a day. They knew little about Prince, but they knew that the company was run mainly by former SEALs, people like them in many ways, men highly trained in military operations.

Helvenston, 38, of Oceanside, Calif., had been not just a SEAL but an instructor, teaching underwater techniques and advanced parachuting -- SEAL stands for the attack routes of sea, air and land. He had parlayed his 12 years with the commando unit into acting and consulting on Hollywood movies, selling a line of fitness videos and working as a fitness trainer and climbing guide.

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