by Jay Kopelman
They examine the papers, they examine the dog, they examine the man’s face more closely.
You pace back and forth as fear shadows you like a stalker.
A Triple Canopy motorcade moves along the six-mile Road of Death to Baghdad International Airport at eighty miles per hour. The vehicles contain David Mack, Lava in a crate, people being taken to the airport, and Triple Canopy gunmen in bulletproof vests who point their weapons out of cracked doors and windows to keep other drivers from getting too close.
The vehicles zoom as a pack around slower vehicles, up onto the shoulder, and into oncoming traffic when necessary. Twelve people were killed by roadside bombs on this highway in the last month. They move as fast as they can.
Move on, the pamphlets tell you. Get some sleep, your friends say. You take vitamins, you ride your bike forty to fifty miles every day, you floss regularly, and none of it obliterates the faces or the missing parts or the eyes of stray dogs you left behind in the desert. The ones you never touched.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Do not operate heavy machinery. In case of accidental overdose, call 911 immediately.
The first thing Brad Ridenour sees when he steps off the plane is David Mack and Lava on the tarmac by a Bongo truck loaded with gear. Brad’s lost so much weight, though, David doesn’t recognize him.
And then the e-mail arrives. But instead of opening it, you sit there and stare at the computer. You think about things like whether you’d ever blow yourself up for your country and whether you’d feel better about things in general if you did.
No, you decide, you’d only feel dead.
“So this is Lava,” Brad says.
“This is Lava,” David says.
Then you open it.
Iraq closes its border with Jordan. Four Romanian journalists are kidnapped in Baghdad. A major US newspaper reports that “mental disorders” among Afghanistan and Iraq veterans are on the rise.
Then you read it.
Car bombs kill eleven more in Baghdad.
“As of 1600 hours Iraq time, Lava is out of the country . . .”
Twenty US troops are wounded at the Abu Ghraib prison attack.
And for the second time in your adult life, you break down and cry.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
April 2005
THE STORY OF how Lava made it back was covered in the media, but some of the details are mine alone.
Brad Ridenour flew with two other Vohne Liche dog handlers to Amman, Jordan, where they passed through customs without any questions. They spent the night in one of the few hotels in Amman that allowed dogs, but because the dogs had to be stashed in an underground parking garage the hotel didn’t use for parking anymore (to minimize the threat of car bombs), Brad spent most of the night down there.
Brad’s dog, Vischa, was seven years old and the mother of several litters, so she didn’t have much patience for the adolescent puppy with the weird collar and bad manners who wanted to play all the time. She was elite. She was Bomb Dog. She had orders she knew how to follow and a decent collar on top of it. As Lava bounced around and pulled on her ears and nipped at her ankles, she flattened her ears and gave Brad the eye: Where did this little pain in the ass come from?
In the morning the dog handlers were dropped off at Royal Jordanian, where extra-special fancy fees, magic fees, popped up like mushrooms after rain. First they were detained in a small room for some time where fees were demanded for allowing the dogs into the airport. Then they moved on to customs, where more fees were demanded for allowing the dogs to leave the country. By the time they boarded the plane for Chicago, there wasn’t much cash left among them.
Ken Licklider made his flight in time and landed at O’Hare. There he hooked up in the terminal with John Van Zante and Kris Parlett, who’d arrived the night before.
Standing with John and Kris were a reporter and cameraman for ABC’s Good Morning America, which would later show footage of Ken, John, and Kris greeting Brad Ridenour at the gate, then of the three guys waiting in the baggage area, and then of John’s face kind of scrunching up as Lava’s crate rolled through. Later, John would explain: “He comes up on this conveyer belt along with all of the other baggage, and that’s when the dam just broke, when we saw that crate.”
I’m thankful they didn’t get some of the rest on film or at least thought best not to air it. Like John trying to find out if Lava spoke English or Arabic; like John rushing Lava outside and then exclaiming, “His first pee on American soil!”; like Lava’s behavior once he got to the hotel room, which was described by John and confirmed by Kris as “Running and running and running around the room. In circles. Bouncing off the walls. Wow.”; or like my face when John finally called me in California and said: “He’s here, buddy. He’s safe now. He’s an American dog.”
I should have applied for an Academy Award for my performance the next day when John and Lava flew into San Diego and yours truly, surrounded by several dozen reporters, photographers, and camera operators, waited at the Helen Woodward Animal Center in Rancho Santa Fe for them to arrive.
Personally, I didn’t like the media there. I felt awkward, like I was supposed to be saying and doing things that were beyond me. But John Van Zante and the center deserved this for all they’d done for Lava and me, and if the story brought more attention to their mission, then it was the rock-bottom least I could do.
As we waited for the van from the airport to arrive, reporters stood around me in a semicircle asking questions:
“Colonel, when is the last time you saw your dog?”
“About two months ago, I guess.”
“Were you ever in any danger as you tried to rescue Lava?”
“Me? No. Others, though . . .”
“Can you describe what you’re feeling right now?”
“Feeling? Uh . . .”
“What would you tell people who might suggest your time would have been better spent saving people instead of a dog?”
I stayed cool. I smiled. My face, as blank as Oscar’s, betrayed nothing. There was really nothing to betray, because during the entire time I was in Iraq, I tried like hell not to think too much about it, and now at the crucial moment, when it all had to come together in front of the public and mean something that wouldn’t embarrass John Van Zante and the center, I had nothing to say.
I stared off into middle distance and tried to look like I was fashioning my profound answer in some profound way, but the only thing I could come up with for those who might question my time management in Iraq was that we’re not supposed to save anybody, it’s not our job, and if it was, we’d be shipping peace activists by the boatload over there to try to talk the insurgents into liking us.
But you can’t say that out loud and receive applause.
Besides, Lava wasn’t a little Iraqi kid the guys found alone when they stormed the compound, and I mean, come on, does anyone really think we would have just left a little kid there to die? If Lava had been a child, he would have been scooped up, given desserts from a dozen MREs, handed off to some nice person in the Red Cross, and bang, the Lava Dogs would have been instant, just-add-hot-water heroes, exactly the way we Americans like them.
Instead he was a mangy little mutt, and I have to explain that while we Americans want heroes with clean underwear and want swelling music to accompany the word WAR! as it rises up on the screen with our boys whistling the national anthem in the background as they march through grain fields in France, it’s not that way. It never was, and it never will be.
Luckily, before I have to answer the question, the van from the airport with Lava pulls up.
I can see his face through the window and see how big he’s gotten in the last two months, but it’s the same face, the same goofy look in his eyes, the same crazy tongue hanging out sideways, and I hear cameras click behind me and wonder how I’m supposed to act at a time like this.
I sure as hell am not going to get choked up, so when Lava hops out of the van, stops
and stares at the reporters, then turns his gaze toward me, I look a little above his head so I don’t see the recognition cross his face, don’t see past and future connect in his eyes, don’t see Annie, don’t see Matt, don’t see the little wienie asleep with his nose in my boot, because if I do, if I see any of it, I’ll lose it then and there, and none of my comrades in the United States Marine Corps will ever speak to me again.
The next thing I do see is Lava headed my way. Fast. In that run of his he has trouble breaking. I bend down to deflect the crash, and that’s when I see it, the look in his eye that no one else sees, only it’s not a look that results from missing me or being lonely or being scared.
The look in Lava’s eyes as he bounds toward me as fast as his legs will carry him is an older version of the look he gave me when I first stomped my boot at him in the compound; an evolution of the look he gave me when I entered the Lava Dogs’ building and he peed in submission; Part II of the pathetic, pleading, please-don’t-do-this look he gave me when I betrayed him at the Jordanian border by shoving him back into the mean driver’s crate.
And what’s it saying that nobody but me can see?
I am going to kick your ass.
Film footage later shows a dog barreling toward a well-composed Marine in uniform who bends down, catches the dog in mid-leap, stands up and turns circles with his face buried in the dog’s fur, and all you have to do is add hot water, and bang, instant answer to the question.
Why wasn’t my time spent helping people instead of a puppy? I don’t know, and I don’t care, but at least I saved something.
EPILOGUE
THE PUBLICITY WAS good for the Helen Woodward Animal Center. John tells me that as a result of Lava’s part in the Home 4 the Holidays drive, thousands of orphaned animals got homes that year.
About a month after we got back, John Van Zante received an interesting letter in the mail, which I look at from time to time. It was dated May 5, 2005, and responded to the letter John sent to one of the California senators back in February:
Dear Mr. Van Zante:
Thank you for your request for assistance with a federal agency. Please be assured that your matter will receive serious attention, and that I will make every effort, consistent with federal law and ethics standards, to assist you. However, I will need to have your written consent on file before I can open a formal inquiry into your case.
Therefore, please send your written and signed request for assistance to [address]. In your statement, please include your name, your address, your phone number, any relevant identification numbers such as your social security or alien registration number, a brief description of your case, and your signature.
Once again, thank you for writing.
Annie ended up flying back to the States after her trip to Cairo, where she spent time refueling with her husband and their dogs. Soon, however, she was off reporting corruption and scandal in Russia. We still stay in touch, and I still worry about her, because now she’s back in Baghdad again.
Matt Hammond flew back to the States, where he spent a long time recuperating from the multiple surgeries performed on his back and legs. We both work at Camp Pendleton now and even have dinner together once in a while. He’s fully recovered from his wounds and says he wants to go back to Iraq for another tour.
Ken Licklider went back to Indiana, where the kennel flourishes. It is now the largest trainer of explosives detection, police service, cadaver, and narcotics dogs in the United States, and if you’re tough, brave, honest, and love dogs, give Ken a call; he can still use some help.
I don’t know what happened to everyone else, like the surviving Lava Dogs or Sam or the Iraqi soldiers I trained, but I think about them all the time. I want them to know that. I hear it’s been tough . . .
As for Lava, he’s happy, I think. He’s got a new collar and eats only expensive dog food these days. We climb mountains and roam the beach and sit in outdoor cafés on the waterfront and watch the waves and the people pass by. He’s made some four-legged friends in the park who don’t know how to play soccer, but that makes him exotic and cool.
Lava is still the product of his upbringing, though. He can’t sit quietly for any length of time, eats everything and then throws up, jumps at loud noises, and protects me from threats only he understands. Like we’ll be driving down the road and pass some guy on the sidewalk who’s minding his own business, but something about him gets Lava to thinking about Iraq, I guess, like maybe the way he walks or the way he’s dressed, and Lava goes absolutely, certifiably, straight-to-the-moon-and-back wild. Only he’s not bouncing up and down and rooing these days. He’s not even just barking at a stranger like a regular dog. He’s in full devil-dog attack mode, lunging and gnashing his teeth and getting so worked up as he tries to get through the window that he gets lost in that zone no one, not even me, can access.
Lava has been through several obedience classes and is making progress but has yet to graduate from one. That’s okay, though. I’m pretty much in the same boat in more ways than one, and we keep each other company as things straighten out.
Besides, I figure he’s still paying me back for what I did at the Jordanian border.
We have a new family now, Lava and me. On the summer solstice in June 2006, in a private ceremony on Catalina Island, I married the most wonderful woman I’ve ever known. She and her son have a dog about the same age and size as Lava, along with a cat and a white rat. The animals are all best friends and Lava’s taken to protecting my stepson in much the same way he protected me in Iraq—he sleeps with him every night.
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