“Same.”
“Screw the alarm. We sleep!”
They woke up at dawn.
“Well, we still got all our arms and legs,” Willingham said. “Glad we stayed.”
“Me, too.”
Their return to Patrol Base Murray brought no respite. Murray had recently become a target for mortars and rockets. Sometimes bombs would hit one after another for hours. The rise of these insurgent attacks had happened quickly. So far there had been no injuries from the blasts, but they knew that if something wasn’t done . . . it was like playing Russian roulette—only with larger-caliber ammo.
One morning, Willingham and Wiens were called to attend a meeting at the former Hussein house that was now HQ for the outpost. The purpose of the meeting was to figure out what to do about the indirect fire the outpost had been receiving. The handlers realized they must have made something of a name for themselves to be called into a meeting like this. Some officers and a few platoon leaders had gathered in a room with a large map of the Patrol Base Murray area on the wall. After a little discussion, the handlers were asked if they had any ideas based on their specialty.
“There’s no way that an insurgent’s going to walk or drive up with mortar, carry it to where he needs to launch it, leave, and do it again later,” Willingham told them. “It’s got to be buried out there somewhere.” And Willingham knew who could find it.
Together, based on the trajectories of previous mortars, they figured out the approximate location a stash must be from the base, and they asked Willingham and Wiens to help set up the mission.
“If you used both dogs, how would you do it?” someone asked.
They came up with a plan to find the caches.
The next day at about 0400, they briefed the platoon and set out on foot. They quickly found themselves in forests of grass that grew up past their heads. It was a surprising contrast to the dry, lifeless landscape of Patrol Base Murray, just a few minutes away. The platoon passed a line of what looked in the dark like deciduous trees of some sort and came to a clearing of scrub and low grass. They stopped there and waited until dawn. It was only half a klick from the northern edge of Patrol Base Murray, but it felt worlds removed. Willingham and Wiens took off their packs and sat next to each other on a long slab of concrete to wait for sunrise. The dogs lay down at their feet.
The quiet struck Willingham. There was no sound other than dogs barking in the distance and some low radio chatter. He and Wiens talked in hushed tones about the mission, BS’d a little, and just sat, taking in the scene. It was a bright night, and they could see the Tigris—flanked by healthy-looking medium-size palm trees—snaking by a hundred feet away. As darkness faded into light, a voice singing on a loudspeaker burst into the tranquility. It was the call to morning prayer, Fajr, from a nearby village. Willingham recognized only the word Allah. But this Muslim prayer song, combined with the view of the Tigris at dawn, the palm trees, the amazing dogs and handler beside him, and the fact that he and Wiens had proven themselves and were asked to lead this mission—it all settled into him. It was a memory in the making. “At that moment, it was all of Iraq in one scene,” he would later recount.
Sunrise. Time to move out. He put on his pack, called Lucca, fist-bumped Wiens.
“Good luck, man.”
They each took two squads. Dogs off leash in front, then handlers, then soldiers with metal detectors, then guys pulling security—everyone vigilant, looking for visual signs of where caches could be hidden, while the dogs led with their noses. The best senses of man and dog working together.
Wiens and his squads went off to the left, Willingham’s squads to the right. They moved through their sections in a serpentine pattern that let them cover the area most efficiently. It would be easy to hide something in here. Left and right they looped, into clearings and back into grasses.
No finds. Nothing.
Willingham wondered if they could have been wrong. But he couldn’t fathom terrorists lugging heavy mortars through this area when stealth was everything. They pushed on.
The two groups looped left, right, always moving forward. Sometimes they met in the middle when their patterns converged. About forty-five minutes into the mission, they happened to come together at a point that was clear, with a ditch, a natural drop-off of dirt about three feet deep. The two handlers both felt something was different here. It looked easier to access. They agreed to break down this area more carefully, each taking half of it.
They stopped to water the dogs. Lucca didn’t pay much attention to Cooper. She’d been with him on and off for hours, and besides, she had her harness on. Cooper approached her in play mode, but all it took to stop him was a not now look. He drank up dutifully and set to work with Wiens.
Ten minutes later, Willingham heard radios going off. He heard his security guy talking. Something about Wiens.
“The other dog has responded positively to something.”
They walked over quickly and Wiens filled him in, showing him what Cooper had bracketed and wagged about. It was a four-foot-tall, ten-foot-wide erosion on the side of a natural drop-off in the land. Like a cave, but short and shallow. Potentially a good hiding place for bombs. Dirt on the bottom was loose, as if it had been recently disturbed. Several soldiers set up a large perimeter, eyes focused, weapons set to protect anyone within the circle. The two soldiers with metal detectors came over and swiftly narrowed in on the same small area. Willingham imagined their headphones must have been filled with beeps, because they converged quickly at the same spot.
Two more soldiers dug in—carefully, just in case. Six inches down, they hit something hard. They swept away the dirt with their hands. A curved, darkened metal surface emerged. A mortar round. They kept digging. Several more. Enough to do some serious damage. As a soldier walked around looking for signs of other caches, his boot pushed through the ground. The guys with the metal detectors checked it out. Others dug and discovered a drum containing a cache of about eight mortars.
After that, there were no more finds.
“I think we wiped out those suckers!” the platoon sergeant said.
“They’ll have to go shopping for more at the mortar store,” a young soldier said, laughing.
While they hadn’t unearthed a treasure trove of bombs, they’d probably found all there was. They did the math and came up with a rough estimate of how many lives they may have saved by finding the mortars. None of the figures agreed with the others, but they were all more than one. It had been a worthwhile expedition.
For the rest of the day, Lucca and Cooper were happy recipients of high fives, head rubs, and firm side pats. The soldiers told them that if they had steaks, they’d give them some. But they had only MREs.
“YOU AND COOPER need to go up and celebrate in style,” Willingham told Wiens. “Why don’t you take off for Falcon for the Fourth? I’ll hold down the fort with Lucca; then she and I’ll head up when you come back.”
Wiens couldn’t say no. The idea of a big barbecue on the Fourth of July was too appealing to turn down. He’d grown up celebrating the Fourth in the small-town traditional way. It would be a little piece of home at FOB Falcon. Of course, Wiens loved the idea of steak, or anything that wasn’t an MRE. A shower would be good, too. Mostly, he wanted to talk to his dad. It had been too long. He didn’t want him to worry. Having two out of three sons in a war couldn’t be easy. He’d reassure him, let him know how great Cooper was doing, that he had nothing to worry about.
Willingham was glad he accepted so readily. The Fourth of July didn’t seem like the best holiday to spend at an outpost like Murray, which was a magnet for mortars. Their recent mission had quashed mortar attacks for the last day or so, but insurgents were sure to be making new plans. He didn’t let Wiens know that this was the main reason he suggested he go up, or the kid probably wouldn’t have left.
On July 4, the soldiers
at Patrol Base Murray enjoyed a surprise barbecue. No MREs that afternoon. Command had sent for a couple of grills, and everyone lined up for burgers and bags of chips. Lucca’s nostrils sniffed the air, her nose moving rapidly left and right as they passed one soldier after another with their burgers. Several threw her bits of meat, and she didn’t miss one.
It was a fine Independence Day of life’s simple pleasures: eating, relaxing, talking, and downing Rip Its. That’s all anyone wanted to do, with the highs that day reaching more than 120 degrees. The men were just happy that al-Qaeda didn’t contribute any fireworks.
Late in the morning of July 6, Willingham and Lucca returned from a mission and found Wiens and Cooper had arrived back from their getaway. He looked well rested and seemed especially happy.
“I talked to my dad,” Wiens told Willingham. “He was in his cement truck.”
“How’s he doing?”
“Good! I think he really misses me. I gotta call him more often.”
“Did you tell him about Coopaloop?”
“Oh yeah! I bragged, of course.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“He’s glad he’s watching out for me.”
Willingham filled him in on what he knew about the upcoming afternoon mission Wiens would be going on with Cooper. It was the usual, mostly looking for caches. There was no intel suggesting anything crazy. Willingham was glad. Wiens had only a few more days on this rotation before flying back to FOB Kalsu, where the situation wasn’t nearly as volatile. Not that it was a bed of roses, but it wasn’t a field of IEDs either. Much as Willingham would miss him, and Lucca might miss Cooper, he was relieved that they were going to make it out of here.
But this wasn’t the time for big good-byes. He and Lucca would be at FOB Falcon for only a couple of days and would return a day or two before Wiens was to leave on a helicopter to FOB Kalsu.
Willingham and Lucca loaded onto the Humvee.
“Catch you later, man.”
“K-9!”
“K-9!”
As they drove away, Willingham watched through the road dust as Wiens threw the flabby football for Cooper. The two running, joyous figures faded into the distance and disappeared.
6
KIA Together
SERGEANT!” THE BREATHLESS soldier called to Willingham as he was entering his tent at Falcon after dinner that evening and about to let Lucca out of her kennel. “The patrol Kory was on was hit by an IED. It doesn’t look good.”
A sense of numb panic, a sick surge, gripped Willingham.
“They’re missing two right now, and there’s some guys wounded. We don’t know anything else.”
Willingham hurried to the ops center behind the soldier. He was surprised he could move. His limbs felt like lead.
The soldiers manning the ops center filled him in.
“We got two missing. Wiens and Salazar, the security guy.”
He maintained his composure, solemn, strong, tough, as they waited for more news. Nothing got in his way of being a marine on the outside. Especially as the only marine at this whole damned FOB. He was glad they couldn’t see what was going on inside him.
The soldier monitoring the secure line between Patrol Base Murray and FOB Falcon kept them up-to-date as he got word on the situation.
“They’ve sent out a helicopter.”
I should have stayed. I should have been the one out there.
Ten minutes that seemed like hours later, more news.
“They’ve found what was left of the dog.”
Cooper, no . . .
“They’ve located the victims. PFC Bruce Salazar. PFC Kory Wiens. They were KIA immediately, during a mission near Muhammad Sath.”
“I’m sorry, Staff Sergeant.”
Willingham walked back to his tent. Their tent. Wiens had just been here a few hours ago.
He let Lucca out of her kennel as he looked around the tent. Wiens’s belongings were everywhere. Freshly folded clothing lay across his cot. His well-worn running shoes peeked out from under his cot. Cooper’s “extra” toys lay in the last spot the dog had been playing with them.
The force of the blow hit him, and he couldn’t stand anymore. He sat on the plywood floor and broke down. Silent weeping, building up inside for the last hour, now still silent—he didn’t want anyone to hear him.
Lucca’s eyes fixed on him, and her dark brows pushed together. She walked over, lay down close to him, and put her head on his lap. She had never seen him or anyone like this before, and her ears sank low.
“Lucca, it should have been me out there. Not him. I had only one dog team to bring home safely, and I couldn’t even do that.”
Lucca, the devoted marine, stayed at his side the rest of the afternoon.
EARLIER THAT DAY, at a Department of Defense news briefing, Major General Rick Lynch, commander, Multinational Division Center and Third Infantry Division, updated media on Operation Marne Torch via a teleconference from Iraq.
At the end of questioning by reporters from NBC, CNN, Reuters, and other news outlets, he thanked them for what they do to keep the public informed about the war. And then he digressed slightly.
You know, on the 4th of July, I had the great opportunity to be involved in the re-enlistment ceremony and the citizenship ceremony for about 600 great Americans; 500-plus soldiers re-enlisted, almost 200 soldiers became American citizens, and by golly, I was so very proud to be part of that. And every day when I’m out and about wearing 60 pounds of body armor in 111-degree temperature, I re-enlist soldiers, and they raise their right hand and say, “I’ll support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” And they’re doing that between attacks, between memorial services, between mortar rounds coming in, so I just take such confidence in the fact that we got great Americans who have committed themselves to service to our nation, and I’d like you to have that same encouragement.
You know, it bothers me when people say the Army is on the verge of breaking. We’ll never break because we’ve got great soldiers.
The reports on the incident laid out the event in the dispassionate manner of such documents:
Wiens was assigned to Bravo 1/30th infantry for the mission. The staff sergeant that Wiens was attached to for the mission received instructions for the dog team to search a nearby farm, which consisted of a walled compound that had suspicious holes dug around it. The squad picked up Wiens and Cooper at a nearby school and briefed them on the situation. They were to search that building. The dog had a possible find, which Wiens noted, but they all believed it was residual odor left over from something previous. The team moved to an open inner corral. He provided the dog water and a rest break. A detonation cord approximately two feet in length was discovered and identified by Wiens as a Yugoslavian det cord.
Wiens and Cooper continued their search of the compound. There were no hits from that area. Wiens dropped a training aid so the dog wouldn’t get bored, and the dog played with a ball for a while. The staff sergeant told them to come back out. Wiens saw a haystack and sent Cooper to check it out, following him. That’s when the IED was detonated. Wiens and Cooper were killed instantly and four others were injured. PFC Bruce Salazar, who was working security for the team, was also KIA. They were all wearing protective gear. It is believed the IED was detonated from a truck that was passing by on the road. It was either a cell phone detonation or command trigger.
They are the first military dog team known to be killed together since the beginning of the war.
THE SMELL—SICKLY sweet and chemical—hit Willingham as he entered the morgue at FOB Falcon with Lucca. It had been three days since the IED killed Wiens, Cooper, and Salazar. He had barely slept or eaten since. Sleep came for only an hour or so when it did. When he ventured out of his tent, soldiers would come up to him to pat him on the back and say they w
ere so sorry. He wanted to keep upholding the image of a strong marine, but at the same time he wished there were other marines there, or another dog team. He might have opened up to them. Nice as everyone was being, no one asked him if he needed help, if he wanted to talk about it. He wouldn’t have told them he did, because at the time he didn’t realize it himself.
Lucca pulled on the leash to get out of the morgue. Unflappable in mortar attacks and firefights, she wanted to run out of this place. He didn’t know if it was the pungent smell of morgue, or if maybe she detected, through all the strange morgue odors, the scent of Cooper’s remains. He was zipped in a body bag on one of three nylon stretchers. Body bags containing Wiens and Salazar rested on the other two stretchers.
“It’s OK, Lucca,” Willingham told her in a gentle, weakened voice. “Hold on.”
They were here to help send their friends home. Eleven soldiers joined them in the morgue to begin the Fallen Hero Ceremony. Everyone wore simple cammies, no gear, no weapon, no covers. Four men were assigned to each stretcher. Willingham got Wiens’s. A nod of the head, and the first four lifted Salazar’s stretcher and exited the morgue. Willingham’s right hand gripped a metal handle in the front. He held Lucca’s leash in his left. He and three soldiers lifted the stretcher and followed. Cooper’s stretcher was carried out last.
This was the last time Willingham would walk with his friend. He tried not to feel anything as they made their way to the flight line—a hundred yards. Two Black Hawks were waiting. A chaplain said some words, and the soldiers were loaded on, Salazar in the first Black Hawk and Wiens and Cooper together in the second.
The men who had carried the stretchers walked back to a line of another dozen soldiers who had come out for the ceremony. They stood in formation. As the helicopters rose, Willingham stood at attention, per marine tradition. The soldiers saluted and stayed that way until the helicopters were out of sight. Lucca, calm again, just sat and took it all in.
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