5

Triangle of Death

LUCCA KNEW. SHE just knew. Something down this gravel walkway, something she had to find. She was leashed now, because Willingham always leashed up when there were lots of people around.

She pulled Willingham forward.

“Whoa, ma’am, what’s up?”

Her nose tracked along the ground as they crunched down the path. He could hear the rapid inhalations, sometimes stacked on top of one another with one quick exhale to clear the nose and start again. Ears up, tail straight out with an occasional quick wag, she trotted ahead in the heat. A dog on a mission.

She turned a corner, never looking up, just following her nose. She arrived at the entrance to their tent, pawing to get in, tail wagging like an out-of-control metronome.

She looked up at Willingham and burst in, with Willingham right behind.

“Kory! Cooper!”

Two barks from Cooper, happy greetings between handlers, and tent number thirteen instantly filled with the sounds of old friendships renewed. It had been only about three weeks since they saw each other at Slayer, before Wiens and Cooper flew down to FOB Kalsu, and less than a week since Willingham had set out from this place for Marne Torch. It felt like much longer.

Lucca and Cooper play-danced around the tent, nails clicking on the plywood floor as they chased each other around the cots, banging into supplies, sending food bowls skidding. Cooper barked a single bark again and lifted a paw onto the side of Lucca’s neck. She pulled away and butted him with her flank, sending him flying forward. He came back at her. Lucca spun out of his way and Cooper skidded to a stop and returned for more.

Willingham and Wiens laughed at the antics. They were eager to catch up but happy to watch their dogs, reunited and having a ball. Wiens told him he’d been sent here for a couple of weeks or so and then would return to FOB Kalsu. Willingham filled him in on Marne Torch, the missions so far, what they were finding.

“You got way more going on up this way,” Wiens said.

Willingham had come back to FOB Falcon to send after-action reports to Roche in Baghdad. He was looking forward to a couple of days here. After a week pretty much devoid of personal hygiene, he needed a trip to the shower trailer. And food. Food at the chow hall—still with the mandatory admission of a filled sandbag—was going to taste like gourmet cuisine after a week of eating out of pouches. The folding steel cot would be a welcome luxury, too.

Now he understood why the FOB was a good place to come back to, mortars and all.

For the next two days, they talked and ate. Wiens hadn’t lost his appetite in the heat. They also waited out a mortar attack in a bunker. Willingham noticed that everything was more fun when Wiens was around—even avoiding mortar.

At night, he watched, amused, as Wiens stretched out on top of his sleeping bag on his cot and called Cooper to come to bed. Wiens scooched all the way to the side, and Cooper hopped on and settled right into all the spots that weren’t filled with his handler.

Lucca looked at the two on the cot and at Willingham. It wasn’t a look of longing to be close. If anything, she was thinking the same thing he was: I love you, but don’t even think about getting that close to me in this heat.

In the early mornings and again in the evenings, when it wasn’t too hot, they trained the dogs on explosives odors unique to the Triangle of Death. Willingham had obtained the materials from an EOD technician who understood that it was important for dogs to be fluent in the local scent language. He and Wiens paired the scent of explosives with a Kong. The dogs sniffed the strange new smell, reacted, and got rewarded with a Kong and praise. Positive association—the core of military dog training—creates eager learners. Voilà! Before long, the dogs had added a few more explosives to their olfactory repertoire.

HE WISHED HE could be in two places at once. Jill was his first crush, at age eight, the only girl on the Badgers community baseball team. She was from the less rural area of Tuscaloosa. One day he came to a game with his sleeves rolled up a little higher than usual, hoping she would notice the Statue of Liberty tattoo he had bought and applied to his upper arm, just for her. He thought it was a most patriotic design and was very proud. Jill smiled politely when he finally pointed it out to her. They met again when they were sixteen, at a youth group in the church Willingham’s family had begun attending. The two started dating in 1996. He was well into his career in the marines when they married on March 23, 2002. She had become more than a crush, more than cute. He had come to admire her—to adore her.

Still did, more than ever.

He also loved his job. He hadn’t been planning on staying in the marines very long. He wanted to be a narcotics officer, like his dad, out there saving lives and having big adventures while putting bad guys behind bars. But when he found out that military police (MPs) could become military dog handlers, he was hooked. He’d grown up with dogs on the farm, and he couldn’t imagine a better fit for what he loved doing.

“Best job in the world,” he told anyone who asked. “I absolutely love it.” There was only one thing better in the military dog world than training dogs and teaching students: deploying with a dog—really doing it firsthand—keeping troops from blowing up. And here he was.

But it was hard not to miss Jill, who was now about six months along in her pregnancy.

Willingham used the DSN line at FOB Falcon to talk to Jill. He tried not to phone her while she was on her nursing shift since it was hard for her to get away. During their conversations, he’d give her the big picture of what was going on in their part of Iraq and how Lucca was doing. He always tried to keep it positive, regardless of the danger.

Jill updated him on the latest home news—a barbecue across the street at their good friends’, the Rotenberrys’, how she and their future baby girl were thriving with only three months to go before the due date, her pregnancy cravings for Chipotle salad bowls with a side of guacamole and chips. Like her husband, she tried to keep the conversation upbeat and light. No sense burdening him with day-to-day civilian problems he could do nothing about.

“I love you, babe.”

“I love you, too, babe. Take good care of you and our little girl, ’K?”

“Of course. Be safe out there.”

He finished writing the after-action reports he’d been working on during his short time at Falcon and sent them to Roche via a Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet) on what was referred to as the “secret computer.” Before heading to the tent to get ready for the ride back to Patrol Base Murray, he called Roche to check in and to tell her how happy he was that Wiens was there.

“Those two make anywhere they go a better place,” he told her.

“Very true. You take good care of those boys, OK?”

WIENS STASHED HIS gear next to Willingham’s on the concrete slab of the open stables at Patrol Base Murray. There were dozens of cots now, and it seemed more crowded with soldiers than it had before. Willingham wondered how the dogs were going to be able to sprawl out at night and not trip anyone who needed to get up in the dark.

They claimed a couple of cots and sat down. They got their dogs in some shade behind them, and Lucca and Cooper lay in it, side by side, until the shade shrank into a thin line and disappeared.

“Let’s find these dogs a better place,” Willingham said.

Shade was a rare commodity at midday. But Lucca and Cooper scouted out the potential for some pretty quickly, between a couple of Humvees parked next to each other. There weren’t a lot of Hummers being used in this operation, and Willingham figured they’d probably stay parked there for a while. He and Wiens grabbed their gear and their cots and set up a little home there, stretching some cammy netting from one vehicle to the other for shade. A couple of small woven rugs Willingham had found outside an abandoned compound served as the dog beds. The dogs took advantage of them as soon as they’d had some water.

There was plenty of time before evening ops. While the dogs rested, the soldier and the marine talked about dogs, football, and family.

Willingham wasn’t surprised to learn that Wiens had been working since he was twelve, getting up every day at 2 A.M. with his father and brothers to deliver newspapers. It explained his work ethic. His father, Kevin, had raised his three sons by himself, working full-time as a concrete truck driver and holding down whatever extra gigs he could get in the Independence, Oregon, area to keep his boys fed and clothed. They lived in a few different mobile homes over the years—the last one a double-wide where no one had to sleep in the living room.

Wiens had always loved dogs, but they couldn’t afford to keep one. Plus there was all that moving they were doing. He hoped he’d get a dog when he got a real career going one day, and maybe he could help his dad out, too. He was going to be a civilian cop, just like his older brother, Kevin Jr., wanted to be. His brother had joined the army right after high school and became an MP. He was serving somewhere in Iraq right now. When Wiens joined, he ended up in the world of combat engineers instead. When he heard he’d been recommended to become a specialized search dog handler—something non-MPs didn’t get to do—he couldn’t believe his luck.

“Someone up there likes me,” he told his dad.

The tie to his grandfather struck Wiens at that moment. He knew he was named after his grandfather but had forgotten that his grandfather was a dog handler in the Korean War. It felt as though fate had reached through the generations and settled him into a career that he not only loved, but that ran in his blood.

There was another dog Wiens had almost brought to Iraq, a big German shepherd. He sent his dad photos of both the shepherd and Cooper. His dad was rooting for the shepherd because he looked like he’d take care of his son. But that dog didn’t certify in time for deployment, so Cooper became his partner. Wiens had secretly been pulling for him ever since he met him.

“I loved him right from the start,” Wiens told Willingham. “There’s no son like him!”

“Ha, speak of the devil!” Willingham said.

Wiens turned around and saw Cooper, refreshed from his nap, standing behind him carrying a deflated football and wagging his tail expectantly. It was Cooper’s favorite non-Kong toy from the arsenal of toys Wiens had brought to Iraq for him.

The sun was giving way to late afternoon, and it wasn’t quite as oven hot as it had been when Cooper went to sleep. His dog tried to push past the cot to take his football out for a run, but he couldn’t get by. Wiens adjusted the cot and ran off with Cooper to the open area right next to their little outpost within an outpost. Cooper dropped the flabby football in front of Wiens, and Wiens, the dutiful dad, threw it out for a pass. It didn’t go far, and when Cooper caught it, Wiens whooped it up.

“Coooopaloooooop!”

Lucca perked up from her nap, ears doing their radar pivot action to find out where the sound had come from.

“Lucca, you wanna play some football with your boyfriend?” Willingham asked. She ran to the field and plowed into Cooper.

“Tackle football! That’s my girlll!” Willingham shouted.

Cooper abandoned the ball and for the next few minutes, he and Lucca chased and skidded and played. Wiens and Willingham cheered, proud dads at a football game. The moondust at Murray was so fine that it poofed up in big clouds as the dogs galloped over it. Before the dogs got too tired—they had an evening of work ahead—Willingham and Wiens called them back. Two chalky white apparitions came running, shook at almost the same time, and became Lucca and Cooper again.

Wiens tapped his chest. Cooper jumped up and rested his paws near his handler’s shoulders. They danced together to their own music as Lucca looked and wagged.

“You cut quite the rug there, Kory!”

The afternoon flew by. Willingham and Wiens would be supporting different route-clearing platoons that evening, so they enjoyed the downtime together. They hoped they’d meet up again soon down Route Gnat, or back at Murray. Before heading off on separate missions, they bumped fists and wished each other luck.

“Be safe out there, brother,” Willingham told him. Then he looked at Cooper. “Watch after him, Coopaloop.”

THE “BIRD DOG” led the way. The man’s entire head and face, except for his eyes and a little slit over his mouth, were wrapped in white turban material. The rest of him was covered in army cammies. No one could tell who he was, and that was the point. He was local, and he was helping the Americans. If an al-Qaeda member recognized him, he could be as good as dead. His family, too.

After Operation Marne Torch got under way, there had been a surge of al-Qaeda violence against anyone caught cooperating with the Americans. Days after the Americans arrived, al-Qaeda operatives sent a clear message to the local community. They stopped a bus carrying workers for the coalition, drove it to the Tigris River, shot to death twenty-three workers, including women—all pleading for their lives—and dumped the bodies in the river.

“The enemy is very talented out here,” Adgie told The Washington Post about a week into Marne Torch. “It’s going to be a long summer.”

Willingham wasn’t sure exactly how bird dogs got their name. He imagined that, like their canine counterparts, they pointed out things that weren’t obvious to others—IEDs and al-Qaeda members, mostly. In theory, bird dogs are aware of who is planting what, and where, and can spot situations that aren’t normal.

The routine with this bird dog was that he would look down the road, move ahead, and then move back. If he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, Willingham would send Lucca down in their usual manner to sniff out explosives on the sides of the road, and then the Buffalo mine-protected clearance vehicle would roll through, scanning for bombs on the road itself.

Willingham and Lucca had just joined back up with the route-clearance team after spending the morning searching compounds with another platoon. Lucca had searched about forty meters down the road and was coming back. The bird dog had gone off to some side path to have a look or a smoke. This put him behind Willingham.

Suddenly the bird dog let out a frightened shriek, followed by several more in rapid succession. Willingham spun around and saw wires from a partly buried cylindrical IED. He’d later learn that the bird dog had come in from the side path—one Lucca had not yet checked—kicking the ground as he walked. His foot caught the IED just right. Willingham stopped Lucca where she was and looked in disbelief at what was going on behind him.

Closest to him was the IED. A few feet back from the IED, the bird dog had gone from screams to petrified-sounding Arabic, maybe prayers. And twenty yards beyond him was the hulking Buffalo mine-protected vehicle. Behind it, the rest of the patrol.

He and Lucca were now separated from his entire team by an IED. Ahead lay who knows what kind of danger. And he stood there with no cover. A sniper could take him out easy. Or the IED could go off. He called Lucca back to him along the side of the road she’d already inspected. He needed to have her ready at his side for whatever action he’d take next. As she trotted back to him, he walked toward her and assessed the situation. It took only seconds, and he knew what he had to do.

On the left side of the dirt road was thick vegetation, which would make a good place for a sniper to hide and aim at a clearing about twenty yards down the road. About forty yards to the left of the road, the Tigris River flowed by, and Willingham could see ample areas where snipers could take cover on the other side of it. A mound of sand here, a clump of weeds there—it was textbook sniper strategy. On the right side of the road, a palm grove, also perfect for snipers.

Just past where the vegetation cleared stood a small mud shed with three walls; its front wall was nonexistent, so it opened to the north, facing his supporting unit. It would be good cover for him and Lucca. The choice was to head there or go back toward the IED, which could have a companion. He opted for the shed. Lucca had already searched this strip the first time around, so Willingham was more concerned with snipers than IEDs.

“Come on, Lucca,” he said, and poised his rifle along his chest as his eyes swept his surroundings. She walked swiftly at his side, and within ten seconds they came to the shed. “Lucca, seek.” He had her do a quick search along the open north side, and they entered. He stood close to a sidewall. “Lie down, Lucca; take a rest.” She obliged, panting, at his feet.

They were now protected on three sides, and he was able to see his army guys at work. He watched the EOD techs as they approached the IED and checked it out. In about seven minutes, his team rolled up to the shed.

He got the postmortem. After careful examination, the techs had determined that when the bird dog kicked the IED, the wires connected. By some fateful sleight of hand, the battery was faulty. “You guys would have been a pink mist if the battery was good,” one of the techs told him, shaking his head.

“WE’VE GOT SOME intel about al-Qaeda down here. Tell Lucca to be on her toes,” the platoon sergeant told Willingham.

“Absolutely.”

“Mama Lucca,” he said to her quietly, “you’re always on your toes, aren’t you? He doesn’t know you well enough to know that yet.”

Willingham was heartened to see how quickly intel was coming in. They’d been making their way down Route Gnat for more than a week, and residents were opening up to them as they realized that their chance—possibly their only chance—to rid themselves of life under al-Qaeda had arrived.

After the first big find, Lucca had some small discoveries—a weapons cache here, some det cord there. “Nothing earthshaking lately, eh?” one young soldier said to Willingham over MRE dinners one night. “Ha-ha-ha!”

Word about Lucca had spread, and Willingham was fielding requests every day to walk point for one squad or another from the Alpha and Bravo companies. They often asked for her by name. Instead of “We need a dog, and there’s a dog,” it was, “We need to get Lucca on this mission.” He and Lucca were keeping soldiers out of harm’s way. Willingham felt good that they were getting them back to their girlfriends, wives, parents, and children in one piece.

Up ahead about a hundred meters, on the left side of the road, Willingham saw a small, crumbling shack. Its roof was made of long twigs that had seen better days. A rusty bathtub sat to its side, and beside it were two cars. They looked in decent shape and seemed out of place next to the dilapidated shack. It reminded him of people back home who lived in humble conditions but drove flashy cars they couldn’t afford. Since the Triangle of Death wasn’t populated with car dealerships offering low-cost financing, they caught his attention. The platoon sergeant caught up with Willingham and confirmed his suspicion.

“Hey, the bird dog tells us the men who own those cars are probably al-Qaeda,” the platoon sergeant told him. “Can you send Lucca in?”

“Sure thing. Lucca, forward.”

She trotted ahead, and he followed a little closer than usual, so he could direct her if need be. There were two cars—a green model with some obvious mileage and a silver BMW. The green car was closest, and when Lucca got near, her tail set to wagging as if the car were a giant Kong. She needed no direction from Willingham. She had practiced vehicle inspections so much that she was on autopilot. She sniffed the front bumper, then walked quickly to the driver’s side and sniffed the seam of the door, then the back door, and back and forth between the doors a couple more times. Her tail wagged harder now as she stared at the back door. She glanced at Willingham, and he read the message in her look.

We got something here. Send in EOD.

He called her back, praised her up, and gave her a Kong. She lay down in the shade and enjoyed her reward. Willingham told his security guy that Lucca had responded—something he figured was pretty obvious, but he had to make sure; not everyone spoke Lucca language. His spotter radioed the platoon leader. EOD was there quickly. The techs saw a white sack on the rear floor of the car. After making sure the door wasn’t booby-trapped, they opened it and checked the contents. It was full of IED components. The BMW contained a similar payload.

The techs carefully removed the rice sacks and placed them next to each other. They weren’t going to move them any farther. They didn’t know how unstable the stuff was, and it wasn’t worth losing body parts, or more.

By now, everyone had retreated to a position of safety at least forty meters away. The soldiers sat in their vehicles—Bradleys, mostly—and waited. Willingham and Lucca were sitting in the Humvee that had become their mode of transportation. Bradleys were too hot for this dog. Lucca stretched out on a bench seat and fell asleep in air-conditioned bliss.

A loud boom, a big cloud of smoke, and it was done. Lucca opened her eyes and fell right back to sleep.

The stuff that was going to become bombs or turn the cars into vehicle-borne IEDs that could have killed dozens of innocent people rained down in fine ashes.

Willingham laughed. “Look what you did, Lucca!” he said.

EOD gave the all clear. Willingham and the soldiers left their vehicles. He headed down to look closely at the damage. There wasn’t much left of the sacks, but the cars hadn’t been harmed.

“Hey, K-9, you want to destroy a vehicle?” the platoon leader asked him.

“Hell yeah!”

The squad leader handed him an incendiary grenade and told him what to do. Willingham shot out the back window of the green car. The squad leader did the same to the BMW. Willingham pulled the pin, walked up, and tossed in the grenade, and within seconds, there was a spattering hiss or two, and black smoke poured out of the cars. Part of him wanted to stay and watch, but it wasn’t an option. A gas tank or who knows what else could blow up. He and the squad leader walked quickly away, up the road, toward the waiting vehicles. But before they were out of sight, he turned around and could see orange-white flames mixing with the black smoke. The intense heat of the grenades was consuming everything it touched.

“Oh damn, look at those things go!” Willingham shouted.

Soldiers wooted and cheered again from their vehicles. It had been quite a day of pyrotechnics. He got into the Humvee where Lucca was waiting, and they drove on to the afternoon’s next objective.

They came back the next day to check out the damage. Tires were gone. Windows had disappeared. It was impossible for him to see if they’d melted, shattered, or both. The exteriors were charred beyond recognition, with the formerly green (now ash gray) car suffering significant structural melting.

“No insurgents gonna be driving these cars anymore,” he said. “Good job, girl.”

He wondered for a moment how many lives Lucca had saved. Could be dozens. Could be just one. It didn’t matter. They were putting it to the enemy.

YOU HAVE TO think like a terrorist to outsmart one. It was something Willingham had been telling his students for years. And out here, after a couple of weeks in 120-degree heat, carrying eighty pounds of gear, it was becoming easier to plumb the thought processes of the bad guy.

The mission was simple: Find caches while clearing south on Gnat. Local word had it that someone with al-Qaeda was stashing weapons somewhere, no idea where. That afternoon Willingham was in the platoon that took the left side of the road. Another platoon took the right. He didn’t think there would be much to find out on their side, with real estate limited by the Tigris, which was only about a hundred feet away. But he kept his eyes out for anything unusual—disrupted ground cover, stacks of branches, whatever didn’t fit. He couldn’t send Lucca out to cover the whole area. She’d be exhausted in no time. He had to use her senses wisely. So he ramped up his.

A klick or so down Route Gnat, in an empty field area dotted with litter, he spotted a tree with something white hanging off a branch. It could have been just a piece of trash. Or maybe something else. Willingham explained his suspicions to a soldier later that day.

“Imagine,” Willingham said, “an al-Qaeda guy says to his friend, ‘Hey, Bob, I buried a cache. If you go by Joe’s house you’ll see a white sack tied in a tree by the Tigris River. Go halfway between the tree and the river, and dig.’”

The rag or old rice sack or whatever was hanging from the branch could be an insurgent’s version of a treasure hunt. The tree was about a hundred feet away, only a few feet from the Tigris. Willingham broke off and walked to it with Lucca. It wasn’t a field where IEDs would typically be planted—there would be no reason to waste a good IED in a place troops would never walk. But he was glad Lucca was there to make sure.

When they got close, he let Lucca have free range. She walked to the tree, sniffed, went over a small bank down to the river, then moved back to another area near the tree. She searched for a couple of minutes, then turned toward Willingham, tail wagging. He hadn’t called her, but she walked right to his side, sat down, and looked up. If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought his dog was just happy to see him and wanted to be petted. But this wasn’t Lucca’s style out here. So he got out his e-tool shovel and dug into the area almost right under his feet. It was protocol to call in EOD, but he was 99 percent sure there wouldn’t be an IED. A few inches down, he came to something hard. He cleared away the dirt with his gloved hand. Black metal, and some sort of trigger mechanism.

“Score one for Lucca! Gooooood girl; that’s my Lucca Bear!” He radioed for assistance and tossed her a Kong.

A half hour later, five DShK Soviet heavy machine guns lay in the middle of Route Gnat, bent, flattened, the lives snuffed out of them, courtesy of a Bradley. Willingham looked at the machine guns and smiled. Bob would be in for some disappointment when he came a-calling for these weapons.

THE FIELD WAS so dry and dead looking that Willingham couldn’t imagine anything had ever been able to grow in it. There were no irrigation canals nearby, and the soil looked like it had formed into rocklike clumps. There wasn’t a sign of life as he and Lucca swept the field for weapons caches. A few minutes into the search, he thought he saw something moving out of the corner of his eye. He looked toward it, and in the distance, he saw three low figures moving. They got closer.

He could now see what was approaching: dogs. Two from the left, one head-on. They were all medium-size, tan, a little on the thin side, with a hungry look. They walked slowly, cautiously, stopping to sniff the air, to assess the situation. Clearly strays—alive only by intelligence and guile. This was no place to be a stray. But other than the occasional dog tied up in a courtyard to protect a compound, local dogs could be counted on to be strays. Willingham thought it wasn’t quite the right word. “Stray” implies that you’ve strayed from something or someone. These dogs had nothing to stray from. It was a rough life, usually a short life. The dogs were tough, or at least smart, or they would already be dead. He felt bad for them.

He figured Lucca, who was quite a bit larger than any of them, could hold her own if one of the strays tried anything. But she might not be a match for all three of them. More than that, he was concerned that they could pass on a disease or a parasite. Besides rabies, Willingham couldn’t remember the exact names of the transmissible diseases or what they did. But rabies was more than enough. He knew from veterinary briefings that rabies was far from rare in dogs in these rural areas. In the year 2007, there would be twenty-two cases of human rabies from dog bites in Iraq. Willingham realized dogs were in more danger than humans when it came to getting bitten by a dog, and he figured the incidence of rabies in dogs was probably a good deal higher.

You don’t have to get bitten to be in danger. Rabies is spread in saliva. An act as innocent as a lick from a rabid animal could transmit the deadly disease. Even though Lucca was vaccinated, the vaccines aren’t 100 percent effective. A vet would have to revaccinate her and monitor her for clinical signs. Willingham wanted to keep Lucca safe.

The dogs were within seventy feet now. Willingham yelled for them to go away and thrust his body forward for effect. The dogs stopped for a moment and proceeded more cautiously, their gaits a little slower, heads a little lower. Back at Lackland, he had been warned to be prepared to shoot some dogs. His reaction was simply, “I’m a dog handler. I ain’t going to shoot no dogs!” But now that he was out here, he realized some dogs were otherwise uncontrollable threats. He had to do whatever it took to protect Lucca.

Still, even now, he didn’t want to have to kill any of these dogs. Thus the load of rocks he’d tucked away in a large cargo pocket on his right leg. He hoped they’d take the hint. He figured that if he aimed well, he could drive the dogs away and that would be that. He reached in and took aim. He didn’t want to hit the dogs, just come close.

“Go away, dogs!” He threw half a dozen, one after the other. The dogs got the message. They turned and trotted away. They didn’t look scared. More like they decided it just wasn’t worth it. This guy was just too annoying.

As they retreated into the distance, one, a male, slowed and looked over his shoulder at Lucca, then joined the others. Lucca, who had been standing next to Willingham the whole time, watched until he disappeared.

“Do you like that guy, Mama Lucca? He’s no good for you.”

She studied him as he spoke. She seemed to take interest in new words directed at her, as if she was trying to learn the language.

“You miss your boyfriend? We’ll see Cooper soon—don’t worry.”

Her ears pivoted almost imperceptibly. That was a name embedded in her vocabulary.

THE NEXT MORNING, Lucca seemed especially anxious to get to work. She walked faster than usual, with a little more spring than was normal for her in this heat. They approached Route Gnat and she slowed. Willingham could see her looking at something in the distance. He followed her gaze. A dog. A yellow dog, drinking water from a bottle being held by a soldier.

“Korrrrryyyyyy! Coopaloop!”

Lucca ran over to them—it was a cleared area—and the two handlers exchanged man hugs and the two dogs did their do-si-do, tails wagging.

“Your boyfriend’s back, Lucca!”

The dogs played in their usual puppy fashion as Willingham and Wiens caught up in quick exchanges. They didn’t have much time. The platoons they were supporting were getting under way. Wiens and Cooper were going to be sweeping one side of Route Gnat, Willingham and Lucca the other. High fives, “See you down the road,” and they were off.

They passed each other a few times during the missions. There was no time for conversation, but they jammed a fist to the air whenever they crossed paths.

“K-9!”

“All the way!”

“Better believe it!”

Willingham liked the soldiers he was supporting. They had fun together and had formed friendships. But when you’re K-9, there’s nothing like being with another dog team on a mission. Dog teams don’t often get to go on missions with each other. They head off with strangers. Some will become friends over time, but not much holds a candle to being with someone who speaks dog. The K-9 experience was so integral to Willingham that even after he graduated from Wayland Baptist University in 2005 with a bachelor’s degree in management, he didn’t try to become an officer. That would have meant leaving any kind of hands-on K-9 work, and he couldn’t imagine that. It was the same for Knight, who graduated alongside him with a bachelor’s in education.

Handlers in some areas can go weeks without seeing other handlers. It can be lonely for those who are better with dogs than with people and find it hard to make new friends. That wasn’t the case for Willingham or Wiens, but just running into each other was a bright spot.

Lucca seemed equally pleased to see Cooper. She wagged at him across the road when they passed. But she was wearing her harness, so she didn’t linger.

“WILLINGHAM, COULD YOU come over here and sweep?”

He looked up. An eight-foot-deep, eight-foot-wide canal separated him from the platoon sergeant who asked for his help. The canal had about two feet of murky water in it. Nothing he wanted to touch if he didn’t have to.

He’d been sweeping for caches on one side of the canal and wouldn’t be surprised if there were some weapons stashed on the other side. But how to get from Point A to Point B? It would be a good klick away to the next crossing point. Too far. He was getting used to canals but wasn’t a fan. They were everywhere, transporting water to more arid areas. He and Lucca had crossed dozens. They walked across drier ones that weren’t too big. They leapt over smaller ones. Twice, at night, he miscalculated the distance and fell short. Lucca looked at him from dry land and wagged.

“Don’t laugh, Lucca. You could be next!” he said as he stood up, pant legs dripping, hands covered in mud.

But this was the daddy of all the canals he’d seen so far. His only chance of making this work was to walk on a ten-inch-wide corrugated metal pipe that crossed the canal. Its top was just an inch or so lower than the top of the canal. He was pretty surefooted, but he knew Lucca couldn’t walk on it herself. There was only one way to do it. He hoped that Lucca would be as gracious about being carried now as she had been in the past. A wiggle or squirm at the wrong time would send them plunging eight feet.

“Mama Lucca, you want to go for a little ride?”

She was panting, not too hard, but even the panting could throw him off if he wasn’t careful. He reached down and scooped her into his arms. As soon as he had her balanced in the crooks of his bent elbows, she relaxed. She reminded him of a sack of potatoes. A seventy-five-pound sack of potatoes.

“Good girl, Lucca. Hold steady,” he said.

He carefully sidestepped onto the pipe with his right boot and brought his left boot close to it.

Several soldiers on both sides had gathered to watch.

“C’mon, Marine!”

He inched out his right foot, then left, right, left. He felt the curve of the pipe move under his boot, and he swayed a little as he got his footing back.

He continued the slow sideways march. Right . . . left . . . right . . . left. . . . Lucca was so still he couldn’t even feel her panting. Right . . . left. . . . Right foot touched land, then left. He exhaled. He set Lucca down gently on terra firma, and she shook as she would after a bath. The soldiers on that side came over and petted her head, and praised her.

“That’s one calm dog you got there,” the platoon sergeant said. “You two ready to get to work?”

“Always.”

He had been working more than was called for—beyond helping out when Lucca needed to rest. He was starting to take chances that he knew she shouldn’t have been taking. Something in him had shifted at some point. He didn’t know when. It could have been the KIAs he’d heard about, where guys had gotten blown up so badly that nothing recognizable was left to send home. Or just seeing the destruction one IED can cause and knowing that he and Lucca could do something about it.

While sweeping an area on the banks of the Tigris a few days earlier, Willingham discovered some sinkholes, formed by the erosion and collapse of the upper layer of ground along the river, most likely during rainy season. The ground was a mixture of dirt and sand, and he could see how it would be easy for excess rain drainage to cause changes in this soft environment. A couple of the holes were large enough that a person could crawl in, and seemed pretty deep. When he looked into them with a flashlight, they appeared to go straight down at least ten feet, and then curve off in another direction. They reminded him of gopher tunnels, but a lot bigger.

Only Lucca and his security guy were near. He sent Lucca forward. She sniffed around, and one hole drew her attention. She looked at it for a couple of seconds and wagged, although not in the usual enthusiastic “It’s right here!” manner. The wag had more of a slow, “I think I detect something but it’s not that strong” lilt to it. Finding nothing obvious around the hole, and seeing nothing when he shined his flashlight in, Willingham decided to check it out himself.

He knew it was crazy to go into the hole. He would have told his students never to do anything like this. But, as with the area where they’d found the weapons near the tree, this wasn’t a place where IEDs were prevalent. Digging gingerly around the dirt as he had done at the tree was one thing—bad enough. Going headfirst into a deep hole was another. Stupid, he knew. But . . . there might be weapons down there that would later be used to kill good people, and good dogs.

He got on his knees and made his way down the hole. The gritty sand and rock lining the sides allowed him to dig in with his gloves and boots. He slowly, methodically crawled his way down, bracing himself against the sides so he wouldn’t lose control and slip down. A few feet in, the sides of the hole became wetter, muddy, with less sand in the mix, making his grip more tenuous. He could feel the dampness as it soaked into his gloves. He had to be extra careful.

After about twelve feet of descent, the hole leveled off for a foot or two and ended. He was struck by the strong earthy smell. It reminded him of old dirt-floor basements back home. He pulled his flashlight from where he had tucked it into a hip pocket and looked around. The level area would have been a perfect hiding place for weapons, as long as they were wrapped in plastic. All he could think was that someone had already come and taken away the cache.

He slowly backed his way up the hole. A lot tougher than going down. He emerged, muddy and wet.

Lucca stayed sitting next to the hole, just watching him. He got the impression she did not approve.

“WHO OWNS THE house?” the interpreter asked the young Iraqi man standing outside a shack about the size of a trailer. Near him was a faded sign with a television on it. “TV repair,” Willingham heard someone say.

“My cousin. I’m just staying here, doing some work.”

Willingham and Lucca had been searching another compound and had arrived here after a squad had set up security and searched the place. There was nothing to do except wait until the squad had wrapped things up.

Willingham was not fond of being idle.

“Can my dog and I check it out?” he asked the platoon sergeant.

“No, we have it covered. We’ve searched. It’s clean.”

“I don’t mind,” Willingham said. “We’ll just do a quick sweep.”

“OK.”

They entered the one-room structure. It was tiny, worn-out looking. This wouldn’t take long. Lucca went to work. Down the left side was a bed, then a sort of workbench against the wall. The bench was covered with a blue tablecloth that draped onto the floor. Lucca sniffed past the bed, walked right up to the bench, stuck her nose under the tablecloth, and sat.

“Good girl, Lucca! Nice work!” He paid her with a Kong.

He went back outside to talk to the sergeant. “Lucca had a response in there, back on the left side under the bench with the tablecloth.”

A couple of soldiers came back in with them, lifted up the tablecloth, and found a cardboard box against the wall. They pulled it out and saw that it was packed full of IED-making materials. Cell phone pieces, wires, cords. Lots of them. This wasn’t stuff you repair TVs or cell phones with.

They went back outside with the soldiers. The man was still standing there with them. He looked at Lucca, then at the soldiers. He started to glisten. Actually, to sweat. Willingham wondered if word among insurgents was that even worse than seeing a military dog enter your house was seeing a military dog sit in your house.

“Sir, who owns the house?” the interpreter asked again.

“I don’t know whose house it is. I have no idea what they do in there. I’m just sleeping there.”

“Please hold out your hand.”

A soldier wiped a swab across his palm to check for explosives residue. Willingham wasn’t close enough to see the result on the swab kit, but since they restrained the man with Flex-Cuffs and surrounded him with soldiers, it was clear. Once again, Lucca had nailed the enemy.

BOOM! BOOM!

Not again. Willingham rolled over in his cot.

“Incoming, incoming, incoming!”

He opened his eyes and looked over at Wiens, who was just stirring in his cot several feet away. He could see him clearly in the light of the nearly full moon of oh dark-thirty. They were both back at FOB Falcon at the same time, overlapping there for a day, enjoying the relative comforts of “home.” Cooper stood up as the sirens wailed. He was used to the routine. Big booms, go to crowded bunker, smell sweaty soldiers, get lots of attention. Lucca lifted her head, looked around, and went back to sleep.

“What d’ya think? We go to the bunkers or we stay?” Wiens asked, sleep still clogging his voice.

“I’m worn out, man. I don’t wanna move. How ’bout you?”

“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.