A former West Texas high school athlete, Johnston had joined the Army with a sense of duty instilled by his upbringing -- his father served in the Navy -- and with an overload of television coverage of the Gulf War. Today, at 31, he's almost five years out of the military, but he still proudly jingles the dog tags he wears all the time and talks about how everyone should serve while they're young.

Johnston says he performed well in the Army, due in part to his extensive previous experience working on aircraft. His father owned a small airstrip in Shallowater, Texas, and Johnston talks about sneaking out in his father's plane the way most people recollect sneaking out in their parents' car. After college he attended a small Christian university for a year before enrolling in Rice Aviation, an aircraft maintenance trade school where Johnston earned his Airframe and Powerplant certificate.

He enlisted in the Army, and for the next six years, Johnston worked on helicopters -- first on Black Hawks and Hueys, later on Apaches. He finished his term with the 2/6 Cavalry in Illesheim, Germany. That's where he first heard of DynCorp, a company largely owned by employees that today boasts an income of almost $2 billion a year, according to its Web site. Over 95 percent of this income is derived from government contracts, according to DynCorp spokeswoman Anne Crecraft, and of that, approximately 40 percent comes from government-contracted IT and computer systems work. The other 60 percent, she says, comes from logistics support, aviation maintenance and similar services.

Johnston worked near such a maintenance team when he was stationed at Stork Barracks in Illesheim. As an enlisted mechanic, Johnston heard stories about the large amounts of money being made by DynCorp's people for doing essentially the same job he was doing. When DynCorp employees working at the base virtually guaranteed him a job, Johnston says he was intrigued. In late 1998, as he was finishing his hitch in the Army, he landed a job working on aircraft at Camp Comanche in Dubrave, Bosnia, the same base he'd been stationed at while briefly deployed with the Army's 2/6 Cav. Within days of being discharged from the Army, Johnston was on a flight to Bosnia, now making what he claims amounted to a six-figure income as a DynCorp employee.

When he took the job, he expected it to be similar to his time in the Army, and at first, much of it was. In the Army, Johnston spent his days working on Black Hawk or Apache helicopters. In Bosnia it was the same. He was even issued a Kevlar vest and helmet when he arrived, just as if he were part of a regular Army unit. He earned hazard pay and ate at the base mess hall.

But by Johnston's description, the early days were lonely and the work environment far different from the one he'd known in military life.

His wife didn't come with him and his marriage dissolved. His contracting crew was older then his crews in the Army had been -- and far less motivated, Johnston says. A task such as changing tires on a Black Hawk should've taken 45 minutes, but at Camp Comanche, it took all day. The camaraderie Johnston had enjoyed while he was in the Army was all but absent. And he was revolted by the stories he was hearing about local prostitution, especially the use of young girls as sex slaves.

One day, while waiting for the DynCorp van to pick him up for work, he met a young Bosnian woman. Denisa, who is now 23, had spent her early teens in what she calls "life in the basement," hiding from the shelling in the surrounding hills, often going without electricity, and sometimes without food and water. After that initial meeting, Denisa's brother Sam invited Johnston to the family's house for coffee. He struck up a friendship with Sam, and through it got to know Denisa's family. Eventually Denisa and Johnston started a courtship that adhered to the conservative customs of local Muslims, and in September 1999, they married.

Life got better for a while. His home life was better, and he had made some friends at work. But soon Johnston began to realize that the unsubtle brand of Balkan prostitution he saw all around him was going to force him to do something -- and the consequences couldn't help but unsettle the peaceful life he was trying to build for himself in Bosnia.

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