Caesar the War Dog 2

by Stephen Dando-Collins

  ‘No one would know you were wearing Zoomers, Charlie,’ said Nan. ‘How do they feel on?’

  ‘Amazing!’ Charlie replied. Hoisting a trouser leg, he showed off an elegantly curved black blade. ‘They’re so light I can run like the wind in them.’

  Ben noticed that Caesar was looking at the Zoomers with his head cocked to one side, as if to say, What are those things where your legs should be, Charlie? ‘I think our Caesar’s a bit mystified by the Zoomers,’ said Ben, giving Caesar a pat.

  Smiling, Charlie gave Caesar a farewell cuddle. ‘Bye, mate. You and Ben are a great team. Do good work together and keep safe, do you hear?’

  Caesar, tail wagging, licked him on the cheek.

  Charlie gave Nan and Maddie cuddles, and gave Josh a firm, manly handshake.

  ‘You’ll let us know how you go on the selection course?’ said Josh, handing Charlie his khaki travel bag.

  ‘Don’t worry, Josh, you’ll all be the first to know when I pass,’ replied Charlie.

  Josh and Maddie watched from the window, waving as the pair drove off to Richmond air base. Caesar was at the window, too, with his front paws up on the glass, watching the car depart.

  ‘Once Charlie passes the test,’ Maddie said to Josh, ‘will the army send him to do more humungatarian stuff, do you think?’

  Josh frowned at her. ‘Do what?’

  ‘Humungatarian. You know – helping people. That’s what Nan said humungatarian means.’

  It dawned on Josh what his little sister was talking about. ‘Humanitarian, Maddie,’ corrected Josh, rolling his eyes. ‘You can be so silly sometimes.’

  ‘Yes, but will he? Help people, I mean. Like Daddy and Caesar do.’

  ‘Well, Charlie’s a soldier. He goes where he’s needed.’

  That seemed to satisfy Maddie. ‘Good. Then Charlie is a humungatarian.’

  Ping! Josh looked over at his computer. To his surprise, he’d just received a message from Hanna Park.

  Hi from New York City, Josh,

  How are things with you? Is there anything exciting happening in your world? Has your dog, Caesar, saved any more lives lately? I’m back at school, which now seems really boring after our trip. What’s school like there? I wish I was back in Australia. Hope to hear from you soon!

  Your friend, Hanna

  ‘Woop!’ Josh exclaimed. He’d wanted to contact Hanna ever since they’d exchanged email addresses, but he could never think what to say to the daughter of the UN secretary-general. He replied immediately.

  Hi Hanna,

  It’s great to hear from you. Caesar is good. He and Dad are stationed nearby at Holsworthy, so Caesar gets to come home at weekends.

  My school is at Holsworthy, too. It’s cool. I really like it there. But there’s this kid in my class called Kelvin Corbett who’s been making my life hard. Nan says I should ignore bullies. She doesn’t know about Kelvin, though. Otherwise, not much is happening here.

  Oh, and Dad’s best friend, Charlie, has cool new Zoomers instead of prosthetic legs that will help him get back into the Special Forces – I’ll send you a link to check them out! That’s it for now.

  Your Aussie friend, Josh

  Minutes after he had sent the message, there was a reply. Curious, Josh looked up the time in New York. It was early Friday evening on Hanna’s side of the world.

  I Googled Zoomers. OMG, they look awesome!!! That Kelvin guy sounds like a loser. I’m here to talk if you need …

  Josh smiled and started typing.

  Thanks, Hanna. I know I’ve got to do something about Kelvin but I’m not sure what just yet …

  He sat looking at Hanna’s message for a long time, reading and rereading the last line.

  ‘On your marks!’

  On the running track at Campbell Barracks, six men hunched over their hands in the starting position. All wore shorts and khaki T-shirts. Charlie Grover, in his Zoomers, was one of the six. Tensing every muscle in his body, Charlie was ready to launch himself forward and run like he had never run before. This was his chance to really test his Zoomers.

  ‘Get set!’ the lieutenant called. ‘GO!’

  The six men rose up in unison. Down the 100-metre track they sprinted, toward a group of SAS men waiting at the finishing line. Charlie started a little slower than the others and, ten metres into the race, was coming last. But as he ran, Charlie’s slender black Zoomer blades flashed through the air. Pace by pace, he steadily gained on the others. A taller, more powerfully built runner was in the lead. Metres from the line, Charlie drew level with him, the other four runners trailing behind, and finished in front by half a metre.

  ‘Charlie won!’ yelled his good friend Corporal Lucky Mertz, punching the air.

  ‘Told you he would,’ said a short trooper who was known to everyone in the SAS simply as Bendigo Baz. ‘Those blades did the trick.’

  Lucky and Baz were Charlie’s best mates in the SAS. In Afghanistan, the three of them served in the same unit, and all three had been wounded in the Taliban ambush from which Charlie had earned his Victoria Cross. Charlie jogged over to the pair, beaming.

  ‘Nice work, mate,’ said Lucky, giving him a high five.

  ‘Pretty good, huh?’ said Charlie, pleased with himself and his Zoomers. ‘What are you two blokes doing here?’

  ‘General Jones sent us over with this,’ said Lucky, handing Charlie a letter.

  Charlie quickly opened the envelope, took out the single sheet of paper and read its contents. Then, nodding to himself, he returned the letter to its envelope.

  ‘Well?’ Lucky demanded. ‘What’d he say?’

  ‘A new SAS selection course starts next week, and I’m on it. He says it’s my last chance.’

  ‘Good for you, cobber,’ said Baz, clapping him on the back. ‘You’ll romp it in now. I wouldn’t mind having a pair of them magic Zoomers myself!’

  Two weeks later, Ben, perspiring heavily, was locking the gate to Caesar’s kennel at Holsworthy Army Barracks after the pair had been out on a long training run. Caesar, equally spent, was already busy eating his dinner when Ben answered a call from Charlie.

  ‘Mate,’ said Charlie matter-of-factly, ‘just wanted to let you know that I’ve completed the latest selection course.’

  ‘And?’ Ben prompted impatiently, nervous for his friend. ‘How’d you go?’

  ‘Passed.’

  ‘You passed selection?!’

  ‘Yep. I’m getting my wish, Ben. I’m going back on ops. On Zoomers.’

  ‘You little ripper!’ Ben exclaimed. ‘I knew you’d come through, mate.’

  ‘You’ll let Josh and Maddie know? And Nan?’

  Ben smiled, imagining their reactions to Charlie’s news. ‘You bet I will.’

  Josh and Maddie, sitting with their father on the sofa, stared at the TV screen in disbelief.

  A female newsreader was delivering the leading item on the nightly news. ‘A helicopter carrying the secretary-general of the United Nations, Dr Park Chun Ho, has gone down in the far west of Uruzgan Province in Afghanistan, at the foot of the Hindu Kush mountain range. Late yesterday afternoon, the pilot of the helicopter sent out an emergency message saying his aircraft had been hit by ground fire. Dr Park was in Afghanistan as part of a UN attempt to bring the Taliban and other militias to the peace table with the government of the war-torn country. Nothing was heard from the helicopter following the pilot’s brief radio message.

  ‘Australian and US forces stationed in Uruzgan rushed to the area by air and located the downed helicopter, but no trace has been found of its crew or passengers. Grave fears are held for the safety of Secretary-General Park and the six UN officials travelling with him, who some sources suggest may have been taken prisoner by the Taliban.’

  Josh jumped up from the sofa and headed for his bedroom.

  Ben looked up. ‘Josh, where are you going?’

  ‘There’s something I have to do,’ Josh called back.

  Closing his bedroom door, Jo
sh went straight to his computer to send an urgent message.

  Hanna,

  I just heard that your dad has gone missing in Afghanis­tan. I’m so sorry. Are you okay?

  He paused for a moment then added:

  Don’t worry, I’ll ask Dad and Caesar to go over there and find him.

  Your friend, Josh

  When Josh returned to the living room, Ben was on the phone.

  ‘Yes, sir. On my way.’ Ben ended the call and stuffed the phone back in his pocket.

  ‘Dad,’ Josh said tentatively, ‘can you do me a big favour?’

  ‘What’s that, son?’ Ben replied, his mind still on the phone call.

  ‘Can you and Caesar go over to Afghanistan and find Dr Park?’

  ‘Yes!’ Maddie cried in agreement. ‘You have to, Daddy!’

  Ben broke into a gentle, reassuring smile. ‘It just so happens,’ he said, putting an arm around each of them, ‘that I’ve been called into a meeting with the generals, to discuss doing that very thing.’

  ‘Yay!’ Maddie cheered, jumping up on the couch.

  ‘Awesome!’ Josh couldn’t wait to tell Hanna.

  ‘Where’s Caesar, Mum?’ Ben called to Nan, who was busy in the kitchen. ‘We have to fly to Sydney.’

  Nan stuck her head around the corner. ‘Maddie left him out in the garden,’ she said, then paused. ‘Actually, he’s been out there for quite a while. I hope he hasn’t been digging up my roses again!’

  A Black Hawk roared through the night sky, heading for Sydney from the airstrip at Holsworthy army base. Ben was aboard, with Caesar asleep at his feet. Other soldiers sitting around Ben were also nodding off to sleep as, under the dull red glow of the cabin’s interior lights, Ben surveyed a white shoebox that sat on his lap. It had a hand-drawn red cross on the front, together with the words ‘Daddy’s Survival Pack’. Maddie had made this for him at school and had pushed it into his hands as he was leaving home just a few hours earlier.

  Ben lifted the lid of the box and took out the contents one item at a time. A packet of bandaids. A roll of bandages. A packet of headache tablets. A travel pack of tissues. Maddie’s latest school photograph, with the words ‘In case you forget what I look like’ scrawled on the back in felt pen. A street map of Holsworthy, with 3 Kokoda Crescent circled in red. A packet of dog biscuits for Caesar. And half a dozen bags of jelly beans.

  Maddie knew that her father was about to go off on another mission, perhaps for a few months. Like Josh, she had learned not to complain when Ben went away. But Maddie had wanted Ben to know that she would be missing him. Ben opened one of the bags of sweets and popped a jellybean into his mouth, then lay his head back against the cabin wall.

  In his mind’s eye he could see Josh running with a kite and Maddie in the arms of their mother. Maddie would have been about three then. It was only shortly after that day when they had received the news that Marie had breast cancer. Marie, the love of Ben’s life and mother of his children, had died before two more years had passed. Jellybeans had been Marie’s favourite sweets. Maddie hadn’t forgotten.

  Ben cleared his throat and took another jellybean from the bag.

  Behind the facades of ordinary-looking office buildings, Australian Special Operations Command worked from a Sydney facility in Potts Point. It was there that a top-secret, late night meeting was convened by Major General Jones to discuss the missing secretary-general of the United Nations. On a large electronic screen behind a conference table, a map of Afghanistan was on display, with a pulsing red dot indicating where the secretary-general’s helicopter had gone down.

  Apart from Major General Jones, the meeting was attended by Australian Army and Air Force officers, as well as US Army officers from the American Embassy in Canberra. Although Ben was just a sergeant, the lowest-ranked man present, General Jones introduced him right off the bat.

  ‘Gentlemen, I’ve invited Sergeant Fulton here for several reasons. First, he and Caesar are our best EDD team, and they have experience operating in Uruzgan against the Taliban. Second, Fulton and Caesar have met Secretary-General Park. They will be part of any rescue mission we mount in Afghanistan.’

  ‘And I do believe, General,’ said an American colonel, ‘Caesar has spent time with the Taliban. That should uniquely qualify him for a rescue mission in Afghan­istan if, as we believe, the Taliban have snatched the secretary-general.’

  ‘Yes, if only dogs could talk,’ General Jones returned with a chortle. ‘Caesar could tell us a lot about the Taliban in that case.’ There was a round of good-natured laughter from the room before the general continued. ‘So, gentlemen, this is the situation. Because Australian and US forces are supporting the Afghan National Army in Uruzgan Province, it falls to us to locate and, if necessary, rescue Secretary-General Park and his colleagues.’ There were nodding heads around the table. ‘Our forces on the ground are searching for them in very difficult terrain, but we feel there’s a strong possibility Dr Park and his party are being held by the Taliban in the mountains of the Hindu Kush.’ He pointed to the area on the map. ‘Once we locate the secretary-general, we will need to mount a Special Forces mission to extract him.’

  ‘You got that right,’ said the American colonel. ‘As we speak, the US is putting together a Special Forces team with that very objective.’

  ‘With respect, Colonel, my Prime Minister has instructed me to organise an Australian Special Forces team for the job. After all, ISAF command in Uruzgan Province is held by the Australian military.’

  The colonel nodded slowly, thoughtfully. ‘Seems to me like we better join forces.’

  ‘I was hoping you’d say that,’ General Jones returned. ‘So, it will be a joint operation, like many others we’ve conducted before in Uruzgan.’

  ‘You got it. I suggest you get your people ready to move just as soon as we know where the Taliban are holding Dr Park. That is, if they are holding him.’

  ‘Then, let the planning begin!’

  As the officers filed out of the room, General Jones took Ben aside. ‘Fulton, I want you and Caesar over there in Uruzgan right away, ready to go into action the moment we locate the secretary-general.’

  Bed nodded solemnly. ‘Very good, sir.’

  ‘I’m sending a three-man SAS team with you. Anyone in particular you’d like to work with on this?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Ben then mentioned the names of Lucky Mertz and Bendigo Baz, before adding, ‘Charlie Grover should be the team leader.’

  The general frowned. ‘Grover?’

  ‘Charlie has passed the selection course, sir. He rang me last night with the good news. His Zoomers performed amazingly well, apparently.’

  ‘Yes, I know he’s passed the course. But to send him back to Afghanistan so soon, in charge of such a delicate and important mission?’ General Jones looked doubtful. ‘If we stuff this up, Fulton, and the secretary-general is killed, we will never live it down.’

  ‘Sir, Charlie’s physically ready for this, and I know he’s mentally up for it,’ Ben insisted. ‘I trust him with my life. And, with respect, sir, you should trust him with the secretary-general’s life.’

  General Jones sighed. ‘Okay, Grover will lead the team. But neither he nor you had better let me down.’ He prodded Ben in the chest with a bony index finger. ‘If you do, believe me, Fulton, both your careers will be down the toilet.’

  ‘We won’t let you down, sir,’ Ben assured him. ‘Trust me.’

  The huge International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) base in Tarin Kowt (pronounced ‘Tarin Kot’), the capital of Afghanistan’s Uruzgan Province, was just as Ben remembered it. Dry and dusty, it was surrounded by distant, barren yellow hills, with camp compounds and low buildings spread out as far as the eye could see. There was an endless stream of military vehicles coming and going, as well as flocks of fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters taking off and landing at the base’s airfield. This was the heart of ISAF operations in Uruzgan.

  As soon as Ben and Caesar st
epped off the plane and into the blazing heat of the northern summer, Ben led his four-legged mate on a walk. They worked their way through the camp streets to re-familiarise Caesar with the sights, sounds and smells of the base, and of Afghanistan and the Afghan people. Caesar was visibly happy in the fresh air and free of the cramped aircraft. His tail wagged as he received pats of greeting from Australian and American soldiers. He seemed curious about the Afghan National Army (ANA) troops they passed, as if they triggered memories of the last time he’d been in Afghanistan, but nothing seemed to dull Caesar’s joy at being back at work with Ben.

  And just like the old days, Caesar slept in the base kennels. He shared these quarters with other Australian explosive detection dogs and US Army dogs. The kennels had their own attendants and veterinary sur­geons to care for the war dogs, and the base cooks looked after their diet. Here, Caesar had dog friends, plenty of attention and the best food. It was like a five-star hotel for dogs! Caesar recognised the kennels from his last tour of duty in Afghanistan and knew that Ben would be back the next morning to take him out for a fun day looking for explosives.

  Ben was just heading back to his own quarters when he saw three familiar figures walking toward him – Charlie, Lucky and Baz.

  ‘Good to see you, Charlie,’ said a grinning Ben, shaking his best friend’s hand then pulling him into a hug. ‘When did you blokes land?’

  ‘An hour ago,’ replied Charlie, patting Ben on the back.

  ‘Looks like the old firm is back together again,’ said Lucky, shaking Ben’s hand.

  ‘Yeah, Caesar and Company,’ quipped Baz. ‘Our bite is worse than our bark!’

  The others laughed.

  ‘How’s Caesar settling in?’ Charlie asked as they all walked toward the mess. Charlie remembered that Caesar had taken a while to become accustomed to Afghanistan on his first tour. ‘No culture shock this time?’