What It's Like to Run a Company in the Most Dangerous Places on Earth

Inside the deadly, controversial, highly secretive, and crucially important private warfare waged by Patriot Group.

- David Whitford

Greg Craddock was just sitting down to Christmas dinner at his mother-in-law’s when his phone rang. He glanced at the screen— one of his managers calling. Surely it could wait. Then, immediately, a second call. Then a text. “Very critical” is the only part he remembers.

Bad news can land at any moment—every CEO knows that.“Small business is the animal that never sleeps; it calls to you in the middle of the night,” Craddock says, and we all know what he means. But Craddock knows better than most. His company, Patriot Group International, a two-time Inc. 500 honoree with $33 million in annual revenue, is a government contractor. His customers include the Defense Department and various spy agencies. He has about 200 people on the payroll, most of whom go to work every day in places where they could very well get shot or blown up—Iraq, Afghanistan, Ghana, Djibouti, Somalia, and Libya, to name a few. They guard buildings, protect VIPs, train foreign soldiers, and do a lot of office work, too: “Our specialty,” says Patriot Group COO Rob Whitfield, “is providing sometimes common services in real crappy places.”

At 46, Craddock is a big man with clear eyes, a shaved head, a stubbly jaw, and a crushing grip, and he’s not naive. He’s a former Army Ranger and military security operative, after all, who spent years in conflict zones overseas. “Still,” he says, “nothing can prepare you for when you do in actuality receive that call.”