Caesar the War Dog

by Stephen Dando-Collins

  ‘Evil infidel dog. I will teach you who is master here!’ Abdul raised the wooden butt of the AK-47 to crash it down on Caesar’s skull. Caesar, seeing the blow coming, ducked out of the way, then leapt to the attack and nipped Abdul on the ankle. Abdul went hopping away, holding his ankle and yelling with pain, ‘Devil of a dog! Devil of a dog!’

  Furious now, Abdul turned the barrel of his AK-47 toward Caesar. Pulling the trigger, and without taking proper aim, Abdul let off a burst of fire. Bullets kicked the stony ground in front of Caesar, sending him reeling back.

  Summoned by the noise of gunshots, sixteen-year-old Omar, a new Taliban recruit, came running, fumbling with an AK-47 he had never fired in anger. ‘What is it, Abdul?’ he anxiously asked. ‘Why did you shoot?’

  ‘This devil dog bit me!’ Abdul exclaimed, balancing on one foot to relieve the pressure on his paining ankle, and grimacing at the sight of his bleeding hand. ‘Twice!’

  ‘But you cannot kill this dog,’ said Omar. ‘Commander Baradar has plans for it.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Abdul conceded. ‘You try tying that vest around the devil dog.’

  Putting aside his rifle, Omar slowly approached Caesar. Omar didn’t want to be a Taliban fighter. His father had sent him to fight for Commander Baradar’s band. ‘Good dog,’ he said to Caesar. ‘I will not harm you.’

  There was a scent of innocence about this youth that Caesar associated with his friend Haji. Feeling little threat from Omar, Caesar allowed him to fasten the vest beneath his chest.

  ‘There,’ said Omar to Abdul. ‘What was the problem, Abdul Razah?’

  Abdul glared at the youth, then at the dog, but did not reply. Both had made him look a fool.

  The next day, Commander Baradar and a party of Taliban fighters returned to the camp after staging a raid in which several of their members had been wounded. But Baradar wasn’t interested in the wounded – he was most interested in the infidel soldier dog. Going over to where Caesar was tied up and wearing the suicide vest, he stood there looking admiringly at it.

  ‘A worthy effort, Abdul Razah,’ Baradar said approvingly, smiling as he surveyed the dog vest. ‘It is good. Now show me how it appears with explosives.’

  Abdul went away, soon returning with packages of plastic explosives, which he handed to Omar. Abdul had made pockets on the sides of Caesar’s vest large enough to snugly hold packets of explosives and a mobile phone that would be used to detonate them from a distance. Once Omar had slid the explosives into the pockets, Abdul stood back with Commander Baradar to study his handiwork. Meanwhile, Caesar was made restless by the scent of explosives right beside him, and he alternated uneasily between sitting and lying down.

  ‘Observe, brothers,’ said Baradar proudly, as other fighters crowded around to see. ‘Our band will be the first to use this new weapon, the suicide dog. Our children and our children’s children will speak of us with awe in times to come.’

  ‘Where shall we use this new weapon, Commander?’ asked one of his men.

  ‘At Tarin Kowt,’ Baradar revealed. ‘This animal came from the infidel base there. And there, too, my poor father was killed in prison by our enemies. At Tarin Kowt we shall return the infidel soldier dog to his masters – and kill them. This act will strike terror into the hearts of soft-headed infidels who hold the life of a dog equal to that of a man. All of you, prepare to break camp at dawn tomorrow. We will move south to Tarin Kowt, staying at friendly kals along the way.’

  For several days, Baradar’s Taliban band moved south, walking by night, sleeping by day in the kals of farmers who were either sympathetic to the Taliban or were too afraid to turn them away. All the way, Caesar was tugged along at the end of a rope by Abdul, who would kick him if he attempted to pull back.

  The insurgent band was fifty kilometres from Tarin Kowt, their destination, when they arrived in the early hours of the morning at their next stop, a kal. It was like many kals that Caesar had been in before, with low buildings and courtyards surrounded by a high mud wall. Abdul locked Caesar in a small shed several metres wide and built against the kal’s western outer wall. For travelling, Abdul had removed the suicide vest he had made for Caesar. As he had done whenever they’d halted on the march, Abdul put Caesar in an outbuilding, throwing the suicide vest in with him, complete with explosives in its pockets.

  The vest confused and unsettled Caesar. Its scent of explosives was so powerful it almost blocked out every other scent. This was the scent that Ben had trained him to detect. And every time that he had found that scent, Ben had been pleased with him and had rewarded him. Caesar could not rest. Sometimes he lay down. Other times he sat. In between, he paced around the locked shed. A rope was still attached to his collar, although Abdul had not tied the other end to anything. He hadn’t thought it necessary as there was a padlock on the door, ensuring that Caesar could not get out. This meant that Caesar could roam around the earth floor of the shed, with the rope trailing across the dirt behind him. He went over to the explosives vest and nosed it time and again, before pacing restlessly around and around the shed once more.

  The sun rose and, with several of their men on watch, most of Baradar’s Taliban fighters lay down in the kal’s buildings to sleep through the day. The residents of the kal went about their usual daily routine, pretending that they did not have guests. The morning passed, and in the storage shed Caesar was still pacing. The presence of the explosives vest was playing on his mind, and he began to obsess about finding a way to escape from this place so he could rejoin Ben.

  One of his circuits of the earth floor brought Caesar to the western wall of the shed, which was actually the outer wall of the kal. When he made a closer inspection, Caesar’s nose detected that the earth floor at one point smelled different from the surrounding dirt. Caesar could not know it, but the owners of the kal had dug a short tunnel from that very spot inside the shed the previous year. The tunnel had been for Taliban fighters to use as an escape route when they were staying there, if Afghan Army or foreign soldiers paid the kal a visit. But when the US Army and Australian Army had begun to search every kal in the valley for signs of the Taliban later that year, the residents had quickly filled in their tunnel, fearing that the troops would recognise its purpose and arrest them as Taliban sympathisers.

  Now, Caesar’s acute nose could detect the difference between the disturbed earth of the tunnel and the packed earth around it. Caesar began to dig. As the replaced earth of the tunnel was not as compacted as the soil around it, Caesar’s scooping paws swiftly made an impression on it. Soon, he had created a hole a metre deep. Occasionally, he would take a break to lap up dirty water left for him in a bowl by Abdul. His front legs ached, but he would not stop, and he quickly resumed digging. Through the afternoon, Caesar continued to dig down, then, following the course of the old tunnel, he dug parallel to the ground and under the wall.

  Twilight was falling over the valley. At a town away in the distance, a Muslim mullah, or priest, was singing a wailing song into a microphone, calling local people to evening prayer at the town mosque. At a spot outside the western wall of the kal, the earth began to crumble and fall away. A hole appeared. And then Caesar’s snout emerged from the earth.

  Carefully, Caesar poked his head out and sniffed the air, studying all the scents on the evening breeze. Hearing the chatter of men and boys coming in from the fields, Caesar ducked back down into the hole and waited for them to pass. The next time he poked his head up, not a soul was to be seen or heard – or smelt. Satisfied that no Afghans were now close by, Caesar wriggled back down into the hole. With difficulty, on all fours, he backed his way through the tunnel, re-emerged inside the shed and went to where the explosives vest lay. Clamping his teeth around a corner of the vest, he carried it to the tunnel. Pushing the vest ahead of him with his nose, he again struggled through the tunnel. Ben, he was certain, would want this vest. At one point, a little earth fell from above and almost covered his head. With a snort and a supreme ef
fort, Caesar pushed on.

  By the time it was dark, Caesar was shoving the vest up through the hole under the wall and out into the open. With a flurry of legs and dirt, he dragged himself out of the tunnel. First, he gave himself a vigorous head-to-tail shake to remove the loose dirt clinging to his coat. Then, he listened intently and sniffed the air for sounds and scents of danger. Confident that all was clear, Caesar again picked up the vest, and, with it between his teeth, trotted away from the kal, the rope attached to his collar trailing behind him.

  About five hundred metres away from the kal’s western outer wall, Caesar stopped to gain his bearings, then turned south. Determined to find Ben, and to please him by bringing him the explosives vest, Caesar resumed the trek to Tarin Kowt that he had begun eight months before.

  It was several hours later that Abdul came to the outbuilding to feed Caesar. In one hand, he carried a burning oil lantern. In the other, he carried a little portion of cooked meat on a plate. Ever since the death of Commander Baradar’s father, Abdul had deliberately reduced Caesar’s meat ration. He himself had eaten most of the meat allocated by Commander Baradar to the dog. Setting down lantern and plate, Abdul took a key from his pocket and unlocked the door. Pushing it open, he entered the shed with lantern and plate.

  ‘Here is your ration, infidel dog,’ he growled. ‘I hope you choke on it!’

  Then Abdul froze. Nowhere could he see the dog. Setting down the plate, and frowning in disbelief, he searched the shed from top to bottom with lantern held high. He could not believe it – the dog had vanished. Once more, Abdul searched high and low. Only on his second search did he notice a dark patch in the floor beside the western outer wall. Walking closer, he dropped to his knees, and discovered the hole that Caesar had dug. Lowering the lantern into the hole, he could see that this was a tunnel that led out under the wall. The blood drained from Abdul’s face as he realised what this meant. Getting to his feet, he hurried from the shed and, with a waddling run, went to the room where Commander Baradar was dining with the men of the kal.

  Bursting in, Abdul breathlessly exclaimed, ‘Commander! Commander! The infidel soldier dog has escaped!’

  Baradar turned to him with a furious scowl. ‘How can the dog have escaped? How could you permit this, Abdul Razah!’

  Abdul, dreading punishment by his intolerant superior for allowing their prisoner to escape, gushed, ‘It is not my fault, Commander – there is a tunnel!’

  ‘A tunnel?’

  Abdul thought fast. Not in a million years would he have given the dog credit for digging his own way to freedom. ‘The infidel devil soldiers must have tunnelled into the kal to rescue their dog.’

  ‘Show me,’ Baradar snapped, pulling himself to his feet.

  Abdul led his commander to the outbuilding, as the other Taliban fighters came running to find out what the commotion was about. Inside the shed, Abdul showed Baradar the hole in the ground through which Caesar had made his escape.

  ‘See there, Commander. As I said, a tunnel dug by the infidels.’

  ‘Why would the infidels have gone to so much trouble to rescue their animal?’ said Baradar, accepting Abdul’s assumption that someone had tunnelled into the outbuilding to rescue Caesar. Baradar failed to notice that the earth from the tunnel was spread around the floor of the shed. If someone had dug their way in from outside, as Abdul suggested, earth removed from the tunnel would have to be on the outside. ‘Perhaps it was locals who helped the animal escape,’ Baradar mused, thinking back to the kal where he had been presented with the dog, and remembering how the headman’s youngest son had resisted parting with the animal. ‘Perhaps it was the family of Mohammad Haidari.’

  Abdul shook his head. ‘The devil soldiers came to rescue him. I’m sure of it, Commander.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘I have heard that Westerners place microchips beneath the skin of their dogs.’

  ‘Yes, I too have heard this,’ Baradar acknowledged. ‘What is the relevance to this dog and its escape?’

  ‘Could it be that the Americans have invented a new weapon – one that they bury beneath the skin of dogs?’ said Abdul, his imagination running wild.

  ‘Yes, that is the very thing that the evil Americans and their allies would do,’ Baradar agreed, stroking his beard as he thought. ‘They send unmanned drone aircraft against us. Why, indeed, would they not send unmanned dogs against us? This could be a new turning point of the war.’

  ‘Was the dog meant to explode among us?’ said Abdul, thinking aloud. ‘Did it have explosives implanted beneath its skin?’

  Baradar shook his head. ‘I think not. Why then did it not explode while it was among us? No, they have done something more sophisticated with this dog. They must have implanted a listening device and transmitter beneath its skin, allowing them to hear our every word for many months past. That animal was an infidel spy dog!’

  ‘No!’ Abdul gasped, horrified. ‘They must have heard all our plans for the spring campaign. Now that I think of it, Commander, that infidel dog raised its ears much too often for my liking. I think it must have an antenna implanted in its ears, and every time it raises them, it transmits to the infidels. I saw with my own eyes how it one day summoned an infidel helicopter.’

  Baradar was not listening to Abdul’s fanciful deduction. Intent on recapturing the four-legged escapee, he stormed out into the night. ‘All of you,’ he called to his men, ‘the infidel dog has escaped!’

  ‘With the help of infidel devil soldiers,’ Abdul added, coming behind Baradar.

  ‘It is a spy dog, and must be recaptured!’ Baradar told his men. ‘If indeed infidel devil soldiers were involved in its escape, we will track them down. If locals helped the dog escape, they will be made to suffer. But while that animal remains on the loose, it poses great danger to us. The dog is all-important. Normal operations are suspended until that brown dog is brought to me. I must discover the secrets that the spy dog carries.’

  ‘And if any of you see it raise its ears, beware,’ said Abdul. ‘It will probably be transmitting your location to the enemy and calling in a drone or helicopter strike.’

  ‘Go now, all of you!’ Baradar commanded. ‘You too, Abdul.’

  Unshouldering their weapons, Baradar’s men hurried out the kal gates. In the darkness, they began to search the surrounding countryside for the escaped dog.

  All the talk of Caesar being equipped with a secret microphone and transmitter was fanciful, of course, although Caesar did carry a microchip. After he passed EDD school it had been implanted painlessly beneath the folds of skin at his neck. It contained his army identification details – and that was all. Otherwise, there was nothing special or threatening to the Taliban about EDD 556, apart from the fact that he had pluckily succeeded in escaping from them. And Caesar’s escape would go on to disrupt all Taliban offensive operations in Uruzgan Province, as Commander Baradar called in more and more Taliban fighters to join a frantic search for the fugitive labrador.

  With no word back from Afghanistan about whether Commander Baradar was willing to exchange Caesar for cash, Ben, Josh, Maddie and Nan Fulton had tried to get on with their lives and think about other things, hoping that good news would soon reach them. Ben’s biggest fear was that the Taliban had killed Caesar after learning of the death of Baradar’s father. Then, one day in late May, during a lunch break at the EDD school, Ben received a phone call from reporter Amanda Ritchie.

  ‘Ben,’ said Amanda, ‘I thought you’d like to know that there are two interesting rumours doing the rounds over in Uruzgan Province.’

  ‘Rumours involving Caesar?’ Ben asked anxiously.

  ‘One most definitely is. According to what the Americans are hearing on the ground, Caesar has escaped from the Taliban, and is on the run.’

  Ben whooped with joy. ‘This is fantastic!’ he exclaimed. ‘Do they know how he escaped?’

  ‘Something about our Special Forces digging a tunnel to reach him. But I�
�ve spoken to Major General Jones and he says that no Special Forces mission has been mounted to rescue Caesar. What have you heard?’

  ‘General Jones would’ve told me if there was a Special Forces mission to get Caesar out,’ Ben assured her. ‘What was the other rumour?’

  ‘It may not be connected with Caesar,’ Amanda replied. ‘Then again, it may be. According to the second rumour, the Taliban in Uruzgan Province have suspended their normal spring operations to conduct a manhunt.’

  ‘A manhunt … for who?’

  ‘Supposedly for some mysterious spy.’

  ‘A spy?’ Ben was intrigued. ‘Does this spy have a name?’

  ‘That’s the curious thing, Ben. According to the rumour, the Taliban are calling this spy ‘brown dog’. The Americans think that ‘brown dog’ must be a codename for the spy. But could it be that the Taliban are really referring to Caesar?’

  Ben smiled to himself. ‘Knowing that dog as I do, Amanda, I would have to say that anything is possible. It would be just like Caesar to totally disrupt the Taliban in Uruzgan.’

  That night, Ben was able to go home with the good news that Caesar had escaped from Taliban hands. This news meant that the Fulton family could again hope that Caesar would find his way back to Australian forces, and come home to them.

  Ahead, Caesar could see a river slicing across the flat valley plain. It was dawn, and he had been on the run for more than two days since escaping from his Taliban captors. Several times, he had seen and heard Afghan voices and civilian vehicles in the distance, and each time he had avoided them. Coming to the shaly riverbank, he set down the vest containing the explosives. Carrying the vest all this time had made his jaws ache, but Caesar was determined to take it to Ben – it was his driving quest. Giving his jaws a rest, he drank from the fast-flowing river of green water.

  Caesar’s ears pricked up. Hearing vehicles approach along the dirt road running beside the far riverbank, Caesar grabbed the vest and quickly ducked into the long grass to hide. From here, lying flat, he watched the road beyond the river. Before long, a convoy of heavy trucks and armoured vehicles lumbered into view and began to pass Caesar’s position. All the vehicles were sandy-coloured, and the uniforms and equipment of the soldiers riding in them looked familiar to Caesar. They were, in fact, US Marines.