From Baghdad with Love Read online

  The guys in the tent also process the remains of Iraqis—whether they’re our soldiers, civilians, or insurgents—the theory being that once they’re dead, they’re no longer an enemy.

  So they get the same treatment with identification and personal belongings, only they also get their picture taken, because they’ll be sent back to the outskirts of Fallujah where they will be placed in one of the hundred-foot-long trenches we’ve dug with backhoes and bulldozers facing east toward Mecca. Each of these trenches is recorded with global positioning system coordinates, so family members know where to look for them later, after we’re gone I guess.

  The guys in the tent respect your body whether you’re a Marine or an Iraqi. They never reach over it or lay anything on top of it, and they close your eyes and mouth if they’re still open, which makes me wonder, as I’m passing by the tent, what it’s like to die with your eyes open and, like, whether some computer engineer can come up with a way to read what’s on a dead person’s open eyeballs and play it back for the rest of us someday, because we all want to know what it’s like to die.

  When I get to the Lava Dogs’ building, Lava rushes up to me and starts peeing, so I pick him up and take him outside and remind him that good Marines only pee outside. Only by that time he’s finished, dribbled all over my uniform on the way out the door, so he’s hopping up and down ready to play.

  He’s like that. No matter what Lava does, he does it full throttle. When he eats, he inhales. When he’s lonely, he wails. When he’s tired, he drops and snores within seconds. When he wants to play, he hops up and down in front of you, bites at your bootlaces, doesn’t quit, doesn’t apologize, just throws everything he’s got into getting your attention.

  Only I don’t feel like playing. I sit on the ground and pull him onto my lap, where he rolls upside down with his paws up in the air. It’s warm, right? And there’s a lot of sun and as I’m sitting there rubbing his little belly and his legs stretch up, I start thinking about what will happen to him if I die.

  It’s kind of this noble thought wrapped up in selfishness, because I can’t imagine not being alive somewhere once I’m dead. Hopefully I’ll be up in Heaven looking down, only if I’m up there, and he’s down here getting shot or drowned or wandering around on his own trying to find food, it won’t matter that I’ve made it to Heaven and should be feeling eternally jubilant and healthy, because I’ll be feeling guilty as hell instead.

  Iraq has these unbelievable clouds. When you sit in the middle of the desert and look up, you’re in a painting. It’s too cool to be real, so I turn Lava upright and point toward the sky. He follows my fingers toward the tubes of white and blue.

  “Pick out your cloud, buddy. Pick out your cloud.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  February 2005

  The Syrian Border

  I FEEL PRETTY bad for John Van Zante right about now, because we’re starting to panic and look to him for any answers.

  First I e-mail him and tell him about how the Iraqi drivers are not allowed by law to cross into Kuwait to drop Lava off, and the people in Kuwait can’t come into Iraq.

  “It’s not looking good for Lava right now,” I write.

  Then Annie e-mails him and tells him she’s leaving for Cairo in a few days and asks if there’s anything else he can do from his end.

  “Unfortunately, time is running out. I am extremely attached to this animal . . . I am afraid of what will happen to him here once I leave.”

  Then I e-mail John again: “I’m running out of ideas . . .”

  But the guy is unstoppable. Even when I start feeling like maybe this is the end, like we’ve run out of chances (and this whole thing has been based on chance: Chances are that . . . There’s a slight chance that . . . If by chance we can . . .), John belts out pep talks—“Let’s all remember to take deep breaths. It’s going to happen”—and revs up his marketing strategy. He says he’s named Lava’s mission “Operation Get It Done” and is going to call the entire California congressional delegation again and write letters to Governor Schwarzenegger and President Bush and contact a kennel owner in Indiana who transports bomb dogs in and out of Baghdad.

  I just got off the phone with Kris Parlett at Iams in Dayton. Kris says they are working with a guy who is shipping pet food and other supplies to Iraq all the time. He’s wondering if it would be possible to get Lava onto one of the transport planes. He’s also checking on other Iams personnel in that part of the world. They have a major corporate facility in Switzerland as well as Iams distributors in Kuwait, Iraq, and Jordan.

  Then he adds that if we can get Lava to Jordan somehow, Delta Air Lines might also be able to get him on a flight out from there, and John can pick him up wherever he lands in the United States.

  This feels like good progress! We’ll keep our paws crossed that we could still get him out on a commercial flight or transport plane . . . Mike Arms told me to keep a bag packed and be prepared to fly!

  And I start thinking about this, about the chances of getting Lava to Jordan and on a flight out of Amman. It would be tough, though, a thousand kilometers from Baghdad across the “Wild West” of Iraq, only to face more chance at the border itself.

  Here at Al Walid, the port of entry between Iraq and Syria, there is a congested one-lane checkpoint of sorts where we occasionally focus on “. . . so-and-so who will try to cross in an orange and white taxi . . .” or “such-and-such a truck smuggling oil out of Iraq” but mainly on vehicles with suspiciously low back ends and on any military-aged males trying to get through. For the most part, not much is happening at Al Walid.

  The border crossing at Jordan is something different. The highway between Baghdad and Amman is traveled by refugees, gasoline smugglers, explosives-strapped camels, and suicide bombers stalking valuable, vulnerable military convoys. So security is tight. While the border itself is a thin line on the map, the column of vehicles crossing over stretches for miles in either direction. People sleep in their cars for days at the border. You can’t even bribe your way into Jordan anymore.

  There’s another problem: Because of a rabies outbreak in Iraq, new laws restrict the flow of animals into Jordan. Lava has the paperwork, but I’ve heard that no animals are being let in at all.

  There’s a chance, though. If I can meet them at the border, I can probably help get him across. So I e-mail Annie and ask her for one more favor.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  February 2005

  The Jordanian Border

  ONE THING THAT scares even the most seasoned Iraqi driver is passing through checkpoints before crossing over borders. The insurgency hates the Iraqi soldiers and Iraqi civilians who work for us, and because both are so concentrated at the checkpoints, suicide bombers detonate there regularly.

  The other thing they’re afraid of is the US military and the Iraqi police who guard the checkpoints. It’s a tense situation when you pull up and they start checking your vehicle, because if you make one wrong move, like sneeze, they’re liable to think you’re triggering an explosive and take all kinds of proactive action.

  But Annie makes arrangements to get Lava on a flight out of Jordan to the States and then finds a driver who, even when she explains the job and the likely problems with the border crossing, shrugs and says in broken English, “Sure, no big deal. Everything can be solved with money”—implying that if he is paid well enough and has enough extra for bribes, he can help anyone sneak a little puppy through.

  So you don’t have to give your imagination much of a workout about what’s going through the driver’s head when Annie walks out of the compound with this puppy, bends down to say good-bye, and starts crying into his fur: Easiest money I’ll make for a long time to come.

  Only Lava isn’t so little anymore, twenty-two pounds to be exact, and when Annie walks him over to the SUV and he sees the driver open the back and unlatch a crate, Lava stops and raises his hackles. Annie thinks he’s going to start his roo-roo-rooing, right? Only he l
owers his head, keeping his eyes on the driver, and gives out this low, deep-down growl instead.

  The driver eyes him and smirks. He opens the crate. Lava shows his teeth.

  Annie can’t figure out what’s going on. “Lava?” She’s never seen him like this.

  The driver smirks again.

  Lava lunges.

  Annie tries to grab him, but he flies through her hands and goes for the guy, who steps back, widens his eyes, and then takes off running around the SUV with Lava in pursuit. They circle twice before Annie is able to intervene.

  By the time she grabs Lava and shoves him into the crate, the driver’s sweating, lobbing insults in Arabic, and trying to equate “easy money” and “vicious animal.”

  Lava’s in the crate, foaming at the mouth.

  Annie, who’s apologizing and explaining that the puppy will have to be let out several times during the trip, looks through her pockets for more money.

  I manage to work my way from the Syrian border to the Jordanian border on the day Lava is supposed to pass through. Annie describes the vehicle to me in an e-mail, so I figure I’ll be there when they arrive and help whisk them through.

  Only when I get there, I realize that there are two checkpoints they’ll have to cross: one between Iraq and no-man’s-land, which is a several-mile strip of desert that belongs to neither country, and then another checkpoint from no-man’s-land into Jordan. While I think I can probably get them through the first, I have no control over what happens at the second.

  On top of that, the borders have been closed for the previous four days because of the holiday, so the line of vehicles waiting to cross stretches back into the Iraqi desert for several miles. I know the vehicle I’m looking for is a black-and-white Chevy Suburban, but as I scan the line, there are black-and-white Suburbans as far as I can see.

  The Chevy Suburban is a popular vehicle here. It’s easily armored, so they sell like crazy these days. You can order them off the Internet, where the ads say things like “Optional Run-Flat tires increase survivability in case of an ambush” and “Floor of passenger compartment is armored to shield against fragmentation from 2 DM-51 German ordnance hand grenades or equivalent” and “Armor Level B6 with DM-51 hand grenade protected floors standard.” They even show before-and-after photos of their shot-up products with slogans like “No casualties!” and “Let us bite the bullet—not you!”

  So I start walking the line of Suburbans, and I look inside every one of them, and when I do, the people inside look back at me and none of them, not one, says a word. No one complains. No one glares. They’re as afraid of me as they are of getting blown up, and you know they’re seething inside and thinking Who do these people think they are coming into our country and searching our cars and telling us where we can and cannot go? Only they can’t say it out loud, can’t even look like the words are going through their heads, and that makes me feel like an asshole with a great big star-spangled A on my chest, which, unlike theirs, is fully armored.

  I walk up and down the line three times and start sweating about it, because I don’t see them. Maybe the driver didn’t make it or maybe he dropped Lava off in the desert and ran with the money or maybe he’s got Lava stashed in a trunk and because he doesn’t know who I am, he isn’t letting on, and while I’m pushing my head through windows saying, yelling after a while, “Dog? Do you have a dog?” the little guy is suffocating because the drivers are afraid of me, and I’m making them more afraid of me as I storm up and down yelling Dog? into their faces, making them targets and losing my cool.

  Then I see a cluster of Suburbans I hadn’t seen before, and even before I reach them I see a crate in the back of one of them and start running. I see the driver twitch, wipe the back of his neck, and look the other way, because like I said he doesn’t have a clue who I am. All he knows is that this US Marine is running toward him yelling something and the American lady’s dog in the backseat is going crazy and every person in line is now looking his way.

  Lava tries ripping through the crate when he sees me, and the first thing I notice is that he’s crapped all over the place. I yank the back of the Suburban open and let him out while I yell up at the driver for not taking proper care of my dog. But the guy doesn’t understand what’s going on. He thinks he’s in trouble, and the more I yell at him, the more he starts to sweat, and the more he starts to sweat, the more I yell, until I think he’s about to cry.

  My nerves are fried, so I try to calm down, because I can see he’s about to flee for his life.

  “Just back the vehicle up, and pull around,” I tell him, but he just keeps sweating and looking in his rearview mirror and mumbling stuff in Arabic to himself or God as Lava pees all over the Suburban’s optional run-flat tires.

  I tell him again and add sign language: “Back the vehicle up and pull a-round.”

  I want him to back up and then pull around to get to the front of the line, right? But he’s panicking and not following my English very well and starts to pull forward instead. That’s when I lose it, because if he draws attention to himself, he’s likely to get himself, Lava, and me killed.

  See, I’ve been drilled my entire adult life to switch from fifth to automatic when fear tries to grab you and the tires start spinning. If it screams, you scream back louder. If it fires, you fire back and don’t miss. You can’t let fear kidnap you, can’t let that black bag anywhere near your head or it gets cut off, and if you don’t fight back, the black bag slips down over your eyes, and you start to panic and you start to pray, because you know you’ve just seen the last thing besides the inside of a black bag that you are ever going to see.

  We make it to the front of the line eventually. I manage to calm down and point the driver in the right direction, and I walk up the line with Lava.

  I can’t believe how much he’s grown, he’s like a real dog now, and I start to feel pretty cool as we’re walking and the Iraqis in line back away from us because they think he’s a bomb dog.

  Lava thinks it’s cool, too. You can just see it sinking in. At first he’s all puppy-like with me, jumping up and down trying to tell me how awful the ride was, but then, as the sea of people parts to let us through, he gets all serious and starts moving his head back and forth with an authoritative air calculated to let everyone know he’s got his eye on them.

  At one point, I can’t help it, I think of Annie’s e-mail and tell Lava to sit. He doesn’t even look up at me, just stops, sits, and continues his bomb-dog gaze at the crowd. I try to look all stern, like I suspect something’s up, but I have no idea what a military dog handler says to his dog at a time like this, so I say “Lava, search” and try to make it sound official, because everyone’s staring at us, and I’m feeling pretty cool.

  When we get to the front of the line, the driver is trying to explain to a small battalion of guards who’ve surrounded his vehicle and are pointing weapons at him that the crazy Marine with the dog—“That one there,” and he points to us with wide eyes—has told him to pull in front of everyone else.

  I’m still pretty pissed at him and consider for more than a fraction of a second shrugging and saying I’ve never seen him before. I’m also worried that he’s about to return every cent of the easiest money he’s ever made and go home, so I let him see it cross my mind. He gets the message.

  So do the guards when I wave the vaccination certificates around in their faces and tell them this vehicle is crossing.

  I walk to the driver’s side of the Suburban and give the guy a nod. It’s not his fault that this happened to him—this situation, this country, this whole war that’s so screwed up. He’s not a soldier. He’s not a suicide bomber. He probably worked at a dry cleaner before this all started.

  “Thanks, man.”

  I look down the miles of humanity waiting to escape into no-man’s-land, and at the Iraqi soldiers who, awkward with guns and swimming in US-issued cammies, are trying their best to act brave. None of them is at fault. They’re afraid. We all a
re. It’s just that some of us are too afraid to show how afraid we really are.

  “And, uh, sorry.”

  I clean out the crate and hate like hell putting Lava back in. I can see confusion cross his face—But I thought . . .—and I feel like a traitor.

  “It’s okay, Lava, everything’s going to be okay.”

  But I thought . . .

  “You be a good boy.”

  But . . .

  “Be nice to the driver. He’s okay. I’ll see you soon. I promise.”

  WAIT . . .

  I close the back of the Suburban, pound on the back to let the driver know to take off, and then I turn away.

  By the next morning I’m back at the Syrian border, where I open a new e-mail from Annie.

  The driver, she says, made it through no-man’s-land in one piece, but when he reached the Jordanian side of the checkpoint, he was turned away.

  “Lava,” she writes, “is back in Baghdad with me.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  February 2005

  The Syrian Border

  THERE ARE DOZENS of stray dogs where I’m stationed at the border. I have no idea where they came from, either. We’re in the middle of the desert.

  They’re all pretty skittish, but I feed a couple of them MREs and try to make friends. None of them lets me get close, so I put the food several dozen yards away from the building and watch them eat as the sun goes down.

  It’s funny, they all look the same from a distance except for this one, this black male with gold eyes who I figure is the leader of the group, because the others are watching him all the time. Like when I put the food out, they all pace and whine at the horizon, but the black male, he just sits and stares. When he estimates that I’m far enough from the food, he stands up and walks over while the others go still and just watch him.