Willingham and Knight were her first marines, and their arrival had taken her by surprise. She had needed more handlers and was assigned the marines with pretty much no heads-up. No one bothered to tell her when they were arriving or even their names. And here they were, a couple of top dog guys appearing seemingly out of the blue—like M*A*S*H’s pros from Dover, only with dogs instead of golf clubs.
When Willingham and Knight showed up at the dog handler housing area at Camp Slayer in the early morning of April 23, Roche was getting ready to head out for a run. She wore a standard-issue Army Physical Fitness Uniform—gray T-shirt with black shorts. She hadn’t yet slipped into her running shoes. Willingham noticed she was wearing faded pink flip-flops, and her toenails were coated with pink nail polish—a lone woman, clinging to the last vestiges of femininity from back home, in a sea of male dog handlers. Behind the always-closed door of her room in the house she shared with several handlers, a poster of a unicorn running to a rainbow in a pink sky was taped next to her windows—windows that faced a camp wall that saw earth-shaking mortars. The windows were almost entirely covered with sandbags for protection. Pink sheets and a few stuffed animals graced her single bed. So did her M4 assault rifle.
Roche had brought several of her own army dog teams over with her. She had recruited them as privates back at Fort Leonard Wood. They were all assigned to the Thirty-Fifth Engineer Battalion and had come highly recommended by their drill sergeants as top-notch soldiers, with excellent scores in their army physical fitness tests and showing promising leadership skills. After much careful vetting, Roche chose the soldiers she thought would make excellent dog handlers. She sent them to specialized search dog school at Lackland Air Force Base, where they spent months learning the canine trade.
Wiens was among her top picks. She could sense something special about this kid right away. He was passionate about life, positive about everything, mature beyond his years, and never without a smile. In their interview, when she asked if he had any work experience, he spoke with pride about his job as a junior shift manager at Burger King near his hometown of Independence, Oregon. He drew himself up like someone who’d won an award. That he could be so proud of something others might sweep away as a trivial experience left an impression on Roche. He was in.
At Camp Slayer, Wiens and some of the other newer handlers, mostly air force, spent as much time as they could learning from Willingham and Knight, who had become unofficial coaches and mentors. When they were stateside, the marines had been instructing young handlers in the art of dog handling for years, and they both loved their work. Why not help out here, where the stakes were going to be so high so soon for so many of these handlers?
Lucca didn’t like being left in the room when Willingham was out with the other dogs like that. The first time, she gave him the look. Head tilted, dark eyebrows drawn together as if very worried or sad, eyes extra big, her sitting body shrunken to three-quarters its normal size. He wondered how she made herself look so small at times like this.
He shut the door and felt the guilt he figured she had intended for him. On the way to the training area, he realized there was really no reason she couldn’t come out with him, and maybe she could even be of some help. Next time, as he was getting his gear ready for working with the handlers, Lucca became the tragic figure again. Willingham gave her the good news. “Lucca, you’re going to come with me this time.”
Lucca sprang up, magically becoming her own size again. She shook her whole body, ridding herself of any remnants of the pity costume that could still be clinging to her. Willingham buckled her harness, and as they left his room, she jogged out like a proud dressage horse entering the ring.
When Willingham wanted to show the handlers a tricky concept, he’d call on his canine assistant to help him do a demo. To his relief, there were no stumbles like the one at the dry creek bed demo at Yuma.
Her demo over, Lucca lay down and rested, looking with little interest at the goings-on, and then falling asleep. But when it was Cooper’s turn, she always seemed to be awake. She focused on her friend, her eyes following him, ears pivoting in his direction. When he was done, she went back to her repose.
After training, if there was time, Willingham and Wiens took off their dogs’ harnesses. “Woot! Go play, dogs!” Willingham told them. Lucca and Cooper ran and chased each other, giddy and fully engaged in the moment. Willingham loved that about dogs. They lived now. They didn’t worry about the future.
Invariably, Lucca would slam into Cooper at just the right time, or pounce on him a split second before he was about to do the same to her. Their handlers laughed and cheered their dogs on. “Yeah, Maaaa-mas!” Willingham yelled to Lucca when she “won.”
In time, Willingham and Wiens decided that their dogs had become an item—their courtship sealed with body slams rather than kisses. To celebrate, Wiens held out his hands, Cooper jumped onto his hind legs, and they waltzed around the room. Cooper’s eyes closed just slightly, and his mouth pulled back into a large grin. Willingham noticed that his smile looked like Wiens’s, just without the dimples. Lucca stood next to Willingham, watching, wagging, and clearly enjoying the show.
Cooper, aka Coopaloop, soon had another designation around the kennels: “Lucca’s boyfriend.” But Lucca wasn’t referred to as Cooper’s girlfriend very much. Probably had something to do with her brawn.
“Everyone thinks she’s a dude. Don’t worry about it,” Willingham would explain after anyone called her a he—almost a daily occurrence. “It’s just because she’s big, and she can kick ass.”
WILLINGHAM AND KNIGHT had their own training to do. Their test was coming up—a rigorous in-theater validation—and they had to pass it if they wanted to take their dogs outside the wire.
Willingham was excited. He told Knight at dinner in the chow hall, “Lucca is gonna get out there and find some bombs!”
“Al-Qaeda better watch out for her,” Knight said, chuckling. “Bram, too. At least Lucca won’t eat the bad guys.”
Bram wasn’t supposed to bite bad guys, or anyone. The job description for SSDs says nothing about bite work. But it was in Bram’s makeup to bite to protect. Or to bite just because. Knight couldn’t eliminate that instinct, although he had it under control, at least by day. Nighttime was another story. Knight had to hang a sign on his doorknob before he turned out the light—a DO NOT DISTURB sign, on steroids. It warned that anyone who came in would be risking their lives because Bram was a mean bastard who would try to murder them—this only partly in jest. The dog had teeth—those that he hadn’t worn to the gum line while chewing his kennel ceiling in Israel were good and sharp—and he wanted to use them.
At least once, as Knight was falling asleep, he saw the door crack a little. A soldier seeing if he was awake. “NOOOooooooooooooooo!” Knight shouted as he jumped out of bed and slammed the door shut just before Bram could burst out and put some serious hurt on the hapless kid.
Wiens usually joined Willingham and Knight at their table at the chow hall. Willingham had never seen anyone eat so much as Wiens yet be in such great shape. He watched with a mixture of disbelief and amusement as Wiens tanked up with burgers, fries, chicken fingers, salad, and the dessert of the day.
Wiens had been in-country a few months longer than the marines and had already passed the test and had gone on a few missions from Camp Slayer while waiting to be assigned elsewhere. Willingham and Knight picked his brain about things he had seen.
“Kory, you got some photos from that mission today?” Willingham asked. He knew that once he and Lucca passed their validation, they could go outside the wire anytime. He wanted to get the lay of the land where local missions were taking place.
“Absolutely! My camera’s in my room. I’ll get it after dinner and give you the grand tour.” Willingham noticed that Wiens had mastered the art of talking clearly while eating.
“You the man, Ko-ree!”<
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On the way out of the chow hall, Wiens stuffed miniature bottles of Rip It energy drinks into the roomy pockets of his cargo pants. He couldn’t get enough of the caffeinated, vitamin-infused stuff. Accounts for some of his energy, Willingham supposed.
As the two-day validation test drew near, Willingham and Knight spent hours every morning working their dogs on skills that would be vital to their missions. Wiens accompanied them on a couple of occasions. Lucca and Cooper no longer wasted time with traditional dog greetings when they saw each other. They just went straight into chase mode as soon as Lucca’s harness came off.
The marines trained their dogs on local odors—explosives scents they hadn’t necessarily encountered back home. They worked in scenarios that mimicked situations they might encounter downrange: roadway searches, building searches, vehicle searches. All skills these marines had practiced for years.
Lucca aced the first day of validation, but the toughest part of the test was yet to come. The second day started a little later, and the thermometer quickly rose to 110 degrees. To Willingham, geared up from head to toe—flak and Kevlar, weapons, heavy pack, boots—it felt like 140 degrees easy. He didn’t want to think about what it felt like for Lucca, in her ever-present fur coat. She was panting pretty hard, her tongue draped long from her open mouth. It wasn’t ideal for scent work. Who goes around smelling things with their mouths wide open? They had been going for a couple of hours now, and he hoped it would be over soon.
On a real-life mission, he just wouldn’t let Lucca work in this kind of heat. He would tell the platoon leader that the dog had to rest when temps got too hot. He would continue working alone, helping out however he could to keep his guys safe, and Lucca would get to chill in a mildly air-conditioned Humvee, or at least some shade.
But this was validation day, and he had to keep going. He stopped frequently to give Lucca water and let her rest in whatever shade he could find. Lucca’s youth was on her side, but her energy was fading as the sun blazed overhead. She walked more slowly than usual, and Willingham could see her focus wasn’t as sharp as it normally was.
He decided to make his dog a deal. He found some shade under a chunky palm tree no more than about ten feet tall. Its bottom fronds were straw dry, shaggy, and the color of shredded wheat. They cascaded almost to the ground along the thick trunk, which made the tree look like it sported an unkempt beard. But the top green fronds provided a little umbrella from the sun. Willingham took a bottle of water from his pack and poured it into the portable rubber bowl he kept in a pouch on his waist. Lucca drank up and lay in the shade, panting quietly. She watched as Willingham cleared away a couple of sharp rocks and a mound of palm bark that had peeled away from the crosshatched trunk, and then he sat down next to her on the flinty ground. He took off his gloves and was struck by how sweaty they were.
“Lucca,” he said, stroking the top of her head and feeling the heat of the day on the dark fur, “if you finish out for me strong, I’ll carry you all the way back to the kennels. I promise.”
Lucca stared at him as he talked to her. These were new words, and Willingham could see her trying to figure out if there was something new she should understand. When he had laid out the deal, her tail thumped once, creating a little cloud of dust that hung in the sweltering air. He took the tail sign as a yes.
They got up and continued down the dirt road. About a hundred feet ahead and a little to the left, Willingham saw something that didn’t seem quite right. He walked a little closer, drew in a deep breath, exhaled, and took a few seconds to survey the area. There were the usual rocks and rubble that dotted the route, but in this one spot, they looked like they’d been pushed around, piled up here and there, as if to hide something. It wasn’t a natural placement, but it wasn’t screaming out danger. Only a trained eye could see that something might be suspicious. He sent Lucca forward.
About fifteen feet away from one of the piles, she became a dog renewed. Her ears stood erect, and she trotted back and forth, back and forth, narrowing in on something that was leading her—as if beckoning with invisible fingers—to the source. She threw a quick look to Willingham and lay down.
“Good girl, Lucca!” he whooped as he jogged over to her. It was his high voice—the one all handlers use to praise their dogs. “Woot! Lucca Bearrr!”
He had no doubt she had found what she was supposed to, but he was happy to get the confirmation and congrats from the kennel master and Roche. Willingham bounced Lucca’s Kong on the packed earth. She grabbed it on the uptake. As she chomped it in his shadow, Willingham praised her up some more.
It was a full paycheck, and Lucca would have been perfectly happy to leave it at that. But Willingham didn’t forget the promise he’d made.
After they both drank enough water and Lucca spent some quality time with the Kong, he walked her up to a small berm and had her stand on it and stay. As she stood elevated about eighteen inches off the ground, Willingham bent down very low and stuck his head under her belly. Roche wondered what was next. She’d never seen anything like this before.
Slowly, Willingham stood up, putting one hand around Lucca’s front legs, the other around her back legs. As he unfurled, he looked like he was wearing a giant fur stole. She relaxed, tongue lolling out of her mouth. Willingham was grateful his dog was so good at being carried. This would come in handy if they had to traverse canals or walls.
As he began the mile-and-a-half walk back, he knew exactly what she was saying to him.
Thank you, man. I’m tired.
WILLINGHAM NOTICED VAGUE creases in the army uniform as he buttoned the sleeves at his wrists. It was the first time anyone had worn it, but it didn’t scream new. Combat uniforms never look new unless you iron the hell out of them, and that’s just not something you do in the middle of a war zone. But it would be a long time before the uniform had that broken-in feeling he liked. He couldn’t call it “my uniform” just yet. He wondered if he’d ever be comfortable doing that. He glanced at himself in the small mirror on the back of his door.
“Lucca, you recognize me in an army uniform? I don’t!”
Dog handlers have a price on their heads. Someone offs a dog team, and that’s a lot more IEDs that won’t be discovered, at least until it’s too late. If handlers wear different uniforms from everyone else, they become even bigger targets. Willingham and Knight were the first marines to be embedded with soldiers there, and it was decided at Slayer that they were going to wear the uniform that would draw the least attention. Some folks back in D.C. chimed in that they didn’t like the idea, but they weren’t the ones walking point.
He grabbed his pack and Lucca’s leash, and they walked outside and jumped into a waiting Humvee that drove them to the landing zone at Slayer. Their first outside-the-wire mission, and right on the heels of the test. Four American soldiers had been captured by al-Qaeda insurgents who had attacked an outpost south of Baghdad—an attack that killed four U.S. soldiers and one Iraqi soldier. Willingham and Lucca’s job would be to look for explosives while the army platoon they were supporting sought the missing soldiers: Specialist Alex Ramon Jimenez, Private First Class Joseph John Anzack, Private Byron Wayne Fouty, and Sergeant Anthony Jason Schober.
The Black Hawk was waiting at the landing zone. Willingham, Lucca, and two other handlers—one with a tracking dog and one with a cadaver dog—ran through the rotor wash and onto the bird. The canines had it covered from every angle: one dog to keep them safe from IEDs, another to track down abducted soldiers (or the insurgents, if that’s where the scent tracks led), and the third in case they got there too late. Willingham hoped the cadaver dog’s talents would not be put to use.
He tried not to look too fired up. After all these years working with dogs, more than a year getting battle ready with Lucca, and now some bad guys to find and some Americans to save, it was hard not to feel the rush. Willingham glanced down at Lucca, who was lying on
the floor, chilling with her head on her paws. He smiled at her repose. Clearly his excitement hadn’t dumped down the leash to her.
They landed in an area that looked like everything else he’d seen so far. To the untrained eye, not much there. But there could be danger, or clues, anywhere—roadsides, lines of brush, the banks of the Tigris, compounds, fields.
The dog teams hooked up with a couple of platoons and got briefed on the mission. They spread out, looking for good guys, bad guys, hurt guys, dead guys, IEDs, any sign of what had happened, any clue about where these Americans could be. Willingham and Lucca led the way, Lucca off leash, out front, checking in with Willingham, not far behind, to make sure she was going where she needed to go, and Willingham directing her to areas they needed to traverse, always watching for signs that something wasn’t quite right.
Lucca was on: swift, alert, aware, confident. Willingham felt a deep sense of pride as he watched her on her first real day on the job. “Great soldier you have there,” a young soldier told him while they stopped for a break and another briefing. Willingham thanked him and decided not to correct him and tell him they were actually marines. Hell, he was wearing ACUs; how was the kid to know? He just went with it.
Willingham and Lucca worked a couple more hours, but there was no action. With no IEDs to find, no paycheck, Lucca could have easily lost interest. Without the reinforcement of finding something and getting a reward, her attention could be drawn to other things—a passing jewel beetle, a stray dog, the lingering scent of chow-hall bacon on a soldier’s hand. Focus was everything. So every so often, Willingham pulled out one of various small pieces of det cord he had packed along for just this reason. Willingham couldn’t smell it, but Lucca sure could. He hid one somewhere when she wasn’t looking, and when she found it, she got the full reward—Kong, big-time praise, lots of fur rubs. She never lost her focus.
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