“Stay,” I commanded. “Stay.”
I stood and spun, moving into the darkness. The light behind me stretched my shadow deep inside the cave, making my silhouette too easy a target. I moved closer to the wall, pressing myself into the shadows, the barrel of my gun pointed forward, my finger on the trigger.
The cave wasn’t deep. It was more like an alcove in the rocks. There were old ashes in a burned-out fire pit, but no other evidence that told me when the cave was last used. It could have been the night before; it could have been years.
The terrorist was leaning against the rear wall, half in shadow, half in light. I saw his dirty gray robe and ripped pants, stained with blood. One hand clutched a wound on his leg. I moved my gun barrel up his body, my eyes moving with it, and I saw his face. His lips moved as he murmured softly to himself.
He was young, my age or maybe a little younger. He had just the first wisps of a beard. His hair was matted and tangled, his lips cracked and chapped. And he was praying. I didn’t know what he was saying, but I’d heard the words enough in movies and on TV. Something about Allah, which was the Arabic word for God. His free hand was shaking. He was terrified.
“Come on,” I ordered him. “Hands up. I’m not going to hurt you.”
He kept praying.
“Hands! Up!” I yelled and tried to demonstrate with one hand, still gripping my gun in the other.
He looked up at me, eyes going wide, and prayed faster, louder.
That’s when I saw the detonator switch in his hand. A wire ran from it into his sleeve. I could make out the bulge under his robe where he was obviously wearing a belt filled with explosives. We’d been trained to identify the signs of hidden bombs strapped to a person, called a “suicide belt” or “suicide vest.”
I never thought I’d be face-to-face with one.
His fist was clenched tight on a dead man’s switch. It was designed so that if he let go, the bomb would go off. That way, if I shot him, his hand would open and he would explode, taking me with him.
I thought about Mom at that moment, and about Zach and his elves and dragons. At least now I knew. This is what the dragon looked like: a scared guy in a cave, a guy my age who probably thought about girls and laughed at dirty jokes and wanted to be a hero in someone’s eyes. I guess this is what he thought he had to do to be a man. Maybe he had a little brother. Maybe his little brother was the kid with the goats who Chang gave the stick of gum.
“You don’t have to do this,” I whispered.
He kept praying.
Then Loki charged into the cave, rushing past me.
“No!” I shouted. “Out! Out!” But Loki was stubborn, and he smelled the smell he’d been trained to find, the smell of explosives. Or maybe he just sensed I was in danger, maybe he could smell my fear. He had no way of knowing what would come next.
The guy’s eyes went wide. He shouted something, and I saw his hand open as I stumbled backward, reaching for Loki, hoping to pull him away before it was too late, before the flash and the blast and the end.
The last sound I heard was Loki’s gleeful bark, telling me he’d found something, hoping it was now time to play.
I came to with my ears ringing, gasping for air, desperate for air. I inhaled a sharp breath that tasted of metal. I was dizzy and my face stung. My leg hurt. The pain told me I was still alive.
“Loki,” I croaked out, unsure if my voice made any sound at all. It felt as if a great weight was pressing on me. I pushed with all the strength I had and rolled out from underneath a heap of jagged rock. The earth around me smoked. There was little left of the cave or of the bomber.
As my eyes adjusted, I scanned the ground for Loki. I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious. The sun was low in the sky, though, so I’d lost most of the day. I was thirsty, but my canteen was split, my rucksack and my CamelBak torn to shreds.
I stood on shaky legs and moved rocks aside carefully, looking for any sign of Loki. I tried to listen for whimpering or panting, but I heard nothing but a loud ringing. I probably wouldn’t have heard him even if he were barking. I wondered if my eardrums had burst.
“Loki,” my voice creaked out, triggering a fit of coughing that pushed me back down onto my hands and knees. In the distance, across the valley, I saw tracer fire tickling the sky. Operation Hunting Dog was underway and my dog and I were nowhere near it. I’d screwed up big time. I’d lost control of Loki just when it mattered most.
On hands and knees I moved through the rubble of the cave, sweeping my arms over the rocks, trying to search in some kind of pattern, but I wasn’t trained in this. Loki would have crawled through hell to find me, so I kept crawling, through the pain and the ringing and the fear, looking for him.
I thought of our training, how I commanded Loki with hand gestures and with the order “seek, seek.” I felt his toy in my pocket, still tucked neatly where it was always tucked. All the search patterns we practiced, and now I was the one doing the searching. I touched the toy through the fabric of my pants. It was comforting, a reminder of what I was trained to do.
“Come on, Gus,” I told myself. “Seek. Seek. Get him. Go.”
I crept through the rocks. Without my ears, with my eyes stinging, I even tried to sniff at the air, hoping to catch a whiff of dog. I moved slowly, painfully slowly. I didn’t want to miss a spot. I imagined how Loki must have felt on all those searches, disappointed every moment that he hadn’t found anything, hopeful that the next moment he would.
I was starting to lose hope when I saw movement, a tiny rise and fall of dust. I scurried over to it, and it was Loki, breathing laboriously beneath a slab of rock. I heaved the debris off him and looked down. His eyes were closed. I felt around his head and legs, checking him for injuries. I carefully peeled off his body armor — it was burned and studded with holes where bits of shrapnel from the bomb had hit it. Loki had a wound, right in his belly. It was bleeding.
I hugged Loki close to me, rummaged in my pocket, and found a bandage. I packed the wound with it as best I could to stop the bleeding. I pressed my ear to his chest, but the ringing was still so bad, I couldn’t hear anything, certainly not the fading heartbeat of a wounded dog. I had to get him to a medic.
“You’re an original gangsta,” I quoted Chang. “Come on, dog. Stay with me. Stay with me, Marine.”
I lifted him up into a fireman’s carry over my shoulders, like I’d done a hundred times in training. Two hundred, maybe. He weighed less than an ammo can filled with concrete. I could do this. I could carry him out of here.
I started picking my way carefully down the slope, back toward the other side of the valley. My leg throbbed with pain. It was over a mile back to the medevac site, and I didn’t know how long I could carry my best friend like this. But I had to try. You never leave a marine behind.
The images came in fragments — marines shouting and the spinning blades of a helicopter, a gleam of sunset off the mountains, the shadow of a tail gunner against the ground below. I heard the whine of mortar fire, or maybe it was the screech of an aircraft’s wheels touching down.
I heard my name. I heard Loki’s name.
Bright lights shined in my eyes.
I saw the bomber and his terrified face, the wire in his hand, a flash of light, Loki leaping in front of it.
Chang’s face appeared and faded. He told a joke I couldn’t quite remember. I wanted to laugh.
I slept.
I felt the weight of a ton of rocks crushing my legs. I kicked free of them, and they fell away like paper. My eyes bolted open to the soft morning light. A pile of crumpled sheets lay on the floor next to my hospital bed.
I stared down at my bare feet, pale on the end of my burned legs, poking out of my hospital gown. Stitches ran like a nasty zipper up my thigh. I was alive, in a hospital. I had all my limbs. Something was beeping — a monitor next to my bed. My heart was racing.
A nurse came in, her hair tied back in the Navy bun, tight.
“Calm dow
n, Corporal,” she whispered. “You’re okay now. You’re in Germany.”
“Loki!” I screamed. “Help Loki!”
Her face tightened into a mask of worry. My mouth felt like it was full of cotton. My hand was gripping a button, like a detonator. I pressed the button. Relief washed over me, darkness.
“That’s okay.” The nurse sounded a million miles away. “You just rest.”
When I woke, the shades were drawn. Through a sliver of window, I saw only a reflection of the blinking lights in the room. It was night. The button I had pressed lay beside me. It was attached to a tube that led to a bag that led to another tube that was stuck into my arm. It must have been for a painkiller. If I pressed the button I’d get another dose. I let it sit there. I wanted a clear head.
I was in Germany. I didn’t know how I got there. I remembered fleeing with Loki. He was hurt. I was hurt. I remembered collapsing into the dirt in Afghanistan during Operation Hunting Dog. I remembered the marines came to get me. Vasquez. He was there. That’s all I remembered. But now I was in a military hospital in Germany. Where was Loki?
My legs itched and ached. My head was pounding, like someone was driving nails in just behind my eyes. I looked over at the button, tempted to press it, to go back to sleep.
But I had to find Loki. I had to talk to someone who could tell me what happened to him. I tried to sit up. I got so that my back was resting against the wall behind me and my knees were up. It took all the strength I had.
“Gus!” my little brother Zach burst into the room, clutching some sort of purple candy bar. Was this another crazy dream? “You’re awake!” He turned back into the hallway. “Mom! Gus is awake!”
My mother came scurrying into the room after my brother. She looked about a million years older than when I’d last seen her, but her face broke into a wide smile and she crossed the room in two steps, locking me in a powerful hug. It hurt like crazy, but she was crying and laughing, and I just gritted my teeth and let her hug me. Zach joined in, and even though it hurt, it also felt great to let my family hug me. I guess feeling two opposite feelings at once wasn’t just something that happened in war. It could happen in a bed in a hospital room.
“Looks like you fought some dragons,” Zach said.
“I guess I did,” I told him. “No treasure, though.”
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” my mother said. “When they called and told us to fly to Germany … I thought the worst.” She started crying again.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I …” A lump formed in my throat. I didn’t know what to tell her. I’d volunteered to go on the mission that almost killed me. I’d volunteered to put my mother through hell. What words could make that better?
She just hugged me again. And I hugged her back.
There was a tap on the door to the room. We all glanced over at the doorway. A uniformed marine, a guy about my age, stood there, looking grim. He had an MP’s insignia on his sleeve. MP. Elf talk for military police. Was I under arrest for running off on my unit during an operation?
“I’m here about Military Working Dog Loki,” the grim-faced MP said.
Then I remembered. The MPs ran the military dog kennels here in Germany. And if he was coming to see me about Loki …
My mom squeezed my arm and stood. “I’ll be right back.” She went into the hall to talk to the MP.
“Loki,” I groaned. I turned to my brother. “What happened to him?”
He looked away from me. “I’m not supposed to say.”
“But you know?”
He didn’t answer. He chewed his lip, like he always did when he was fighting to keep a secret.
My eyes shot over to the door. I saw my mom take a clipboard and sign something.
“Mom!” I shouted. “Where’s Loki? Where is he?”
My mom came back in, looking serious.
“He saved my life,” I told her. I felt tears streaming down my face. “He jumped in front of me when the bomb went off. I need to know” — Pain sliced through my leg like a knife. I clenched my teeth. I was not about to press the button and fall into a hazy sleep again. I needed answers — “what happened to him.”
“Loki had serious wounds,” my mother said. “They said he was unfit to return to service, so …”
My breathing came faster. The pain was terrible. I had to hold on. I had to hear what she was telling me.
“So, I just signed the forms …”
I clenched my fists. I knew his injuries were bad when I’d carried him. What if they had to put Loki down? To end his pain? What if my mom had just made that decision without me? What if I never got to say good-bye?
“… to adopt him,” she finished. “I hope that’s okay?”
Her eyebrows raised; her lips formed a curious smile.
“I know I should have asked you first, but —”
“He’s alive?” I winced as I sat up straighter in bed. “He’s … he’s … You adopted him?” All thoughts of pain vanished. The heart-rate monitor beeped wildly.
“Well, I thought you might —” she started, but that’s when a bark in the hallway interrupted her.
“Where are his therapy dog papers?” I heard the nurse objecting. “You can’t just let any old dog run around here. This is a hospital!”
“Ma’am, this dog is a sergeant in the United States Marine Corps,” the MP replied. “And I’m just following his orders.”
With a bandage wrapped around his belly and a clunky cast on his front leg, Loki dragged the MP behind him into the room, stubborn as ever. His tail wagged furiously and his eyes shined.
“You can let him off the leash,” I told the MP.
My crazy dog bounded across the room, his cast clunking on the floor, and he leaped, like he wasn’t hurt at all. He landed smack-dab on top of me in the bed.
“Ooph!” I grunted. Hot needles of pain shot through my whole body, but Loki’s giant tongue licked right up my face, and it was like the pain vanished. His tail wreaked havoc on the tubes and bottles around the bed, but I didn’t care. I grabbed Loki around the neck and squeezed him to me.
“You saved my life, pal,” I whispered to him as I scratched behind his ears. He panted and licked my face again.
Beside the bed, my mother and Zach watched with tearful smiles on their faces. I wanted to explain to them everything that had happened, about the shepherd boy Zach’s age, about Loki running off to find a sleeping bag, about Chang and his Chihuahua, about the colonel and the foul-mouthed sergeant and Lieutenant Schu and the frightened bomber in the cave, and about how this crazy, stubborn, goofball dog was the toughest guy I’d ever met, because tough guys know how to play.
I had so much I wanted to say, so many words ready to burst out of me after all this time … but I felt so tired. Loki lay down on the bed next to me, his nose resting against my armpit. I looked at him and felt my eyes drifting shut.
“You want me to take Loki down so you’re more comfortable in bed?” my mom asked gently.
“No,” I whispered. “He can stay up here with me.”
And he was still there when I woke up.
This is a work of fiction. The people and most of the places are products of my imagination. In fact, all kinds of details were invented, but it is based on research into the way military working dogs are deployed.
Dogs have been fighting in people’s wars for about as long as people have. Dogs fought with Alexander the Great and with the Roman soldiers in Caesar’s armies, and dogs have served as scouts, guards, messengers, and companions in just about every American war since the Revolution of 1776. Dogs are currently still classified as military equipment, but they are the only military equipment that lives and breathes and loves.
In the war in Afghanistan, military working dogs’ training and roles expanded a lot. German shepherds, Belgian Malinois, and Labrador retrievers deploy with all branches of the United States military. Bomb-sniffing dogs guard bases and convoys of trucks; dogs search for explosives and drugs as well
as weapons, and some are trained to track down suspected terrorists. There was even a dog on the Navy SEAL mission to get Osama Bin Laden. His name was Cairo. Afterward, he got to meet the president.
The IED detector dog program has greatly expanded the number of bomb-sniffing dogs able to serve with the United States Marines. When they first arrived in Afghanistan, the Marine Corps had less than one hundred dogs with them. By 2012, that number was over six hundred. The dogs’ able noses help protect soldiers and civilians alike from deadly hidden bombs, and it has also been shown that they have a positive effect on the morale of the marines they serve with. Just like Loki and Gus, dog handlers can now adopt their canine partners when the dog’s service is done.
If you want to learn more about military working dogs, the best overview I found was in Lisa Rogak’s The Dogs of War: The Courage, Love, and Loyalty of Military Working Dogs. I also learned a lot from Sergeant Rex: The Unbreakable Bond between a Marine and His Military Working Dog by Mike Dowling, who was one of the first Marine Corps dog handlers to deploy to combat in the Middle East in the twenty-first century. In fact, some of what he and Rex went through is a lot more exciting than the stuff I made up!
In order to research for this novel, I relied heavily on the work of others. Aside from Sergeant Rex, Alexandra Horowitz’s book Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know showed me a dog’s-eye view of the world, and Sebastian Junger’s harrowing book, War, gave me great insights into life on a remote military outpost in Afghanistan. I read countless newspaper and magazine articles, blog entries, and even Facebook posts, and I spoke with as many soldiers and marines as I could.
I am especially grateful to my editor, Nick Eliopulos, who dreamed up this project and guided me through it, and to David Levithan, who convinced me to do it in the first place. Alex Muñoz answered my dumb questions, and Rye Barcott gave me an encouraging early read (and his excellent book, It Happened on the Way to War: A Marine’s Path to Peace, certainly inspired!). Lars Dabney’s helpful dispatches from the field filled in some gaps, and a few fellows of the Truman National Security Project stepped up with insight when I needed it. However, any errors of fact or failures of imagination in this work are entirely my own.
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