From Baghdad with Love Read online

  As the center’s PR manager, John played an instrumental role in Home 4 the Holidays. The theory of the event was that more families brought pets into their homes during the holidays than at any other time of year, so Iams, the center, and eighteen hundred animal shelters across the world marketed the idea with: “What greater gift can there be than to save the life of an orphan?”

  John knew there was no greater gift than to be useful, but convincing people who use well-trained purebred dogs as status symbols to adopt untrained ill-bred mutts was about as easy as convincing lemmings to fight for independence. It was his toughest project of the year, and he had to concentrate.

  “John?”

  He straightened in his chair as he recognized Mike Arms’s voice on the other end of the phone.

  “Hmm? Yes?”

  “Why don’t you tell these folks the story about the puppy in Iraq.”

  Even now, in the middle of the brainstorming session, nine-tenths of John’s mind remained burrowed in Fallujah.

  “John?”

  “Yes?”

  “The story about the puppy?”

  He had no choice. He launched into the story—“. . . and he finds this puppy . . . horrible fighting . . . can’t keep pets . . .”—sure that no one in on this conference call would care. He didn’t even pause to catch his breath, just sped through the events as fast as he could to get the whole thing over with.

  “You can understand why there’s an order banning pets, because the Marines are supposed to be concentrating on one thing and one thing only, and I mean we understand why there are rules about this, and I know we need to focus on this pet adoption project, but, but you should read the e-mails, like, I can’t imagine what is going on around them over there, and here’s a man who was one of our neighbors who is in the middle of a war zone and discovered a life that needed saving and I mean, no matter how you feel about the war, in the middle of this, this horrible battle in Fallujah . . .”

  He paused and caught his breath.

  “. . . life still matters.”

  When he finished, John sat back in his chair and searched for air.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  December 2004

  Camp Fallujah

  ONCE I DECIDE to save Lava, it becomes an unprogrammable mission I don’t have the smarts to reassign or the guts to walk away from. Only problem is, the enemy doesn’t hide out in abandoned buildings whispering Jihad; it hangs on the wall of the command center and ticks.

  I have forty-eight hours before I leave for Balad, which means I have exactly 2,880 minutes to get approval from brass to transport a puppy on a military flight with Buck, find a veterinarian who will give Lava vaccinations, and then find a way to get Lava to the vet and back in one piece.

  I’ve been exchanging e-mails with this guy named John Van Zante who works for an outfit called the Helen Woodward Animal Center in Rancho Santa Fe. He seems like a nice enough guy and claims the center will try to help Lava and me out. Why? I don’t know and don’t have time to ask.

  During the next two days I grab a computer wherever I can, either in one of the offices or in the command center—a huge, high-ceilinged room with dimmed lights and projectors that are on all the time, showing where our troops are by displaying images from the unmanned drones flying around Fallujah. There’s also this big clock on the wall.

  The Command Center: John Van Zante e-mails me that Iams pet food company wants to help me in any way it can. John and Iams’s external relations manager, Kris Parlett, are contacting everyone they can think of—including the entire California congressional delegation—to find the name of an Iraqi veterinarian for me. “We’re doing everything we can to bring your puppy home,” John writes.

  The Officers’ Building: I shove some gear around, pretending I’m packing. Cammies: check. Ammo: check. Socks: check.

  I look at my watch. If I run at my best speed, I can get across base, see Lava, and be back at the computer within thirty minutes. Soap: check. Razor: check. More ammo: check.

  But I can’t spare thirty minutes just to feed the emotional weakness that’s surfaced in my life. Three pictures of Lava: check, check, check.

  The Command Center: John Van Zante and Kris Parlett have found an Iraqi veterinarian. Corks unpop in my head. This vet, Dr. Farah Murrani, is well known for helping stray animals. She worked with US military in Baghdad when the city’s zoo was bombed and, with the help of the US Army, formed the Iraqi Society for Animal Welfare in January 2004.

  At that point Dr. Murrani was increasingly seen as a pro-US collaborator, and when two of her friends who acted as interpreters for the United States were shot and killed, she fled Iraq for the United States. She’s willing to help, according to the e-mail forwarded to me:

  This is Dr. Farah Murrani from Iraqi Society for Animal Welfare in Baghdad, I got the e-mail you sent to Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. If the puppy owner in Baghdad can take the puppy to ISAW, they will be able to provide all the needs including a health certificate. ISAW is based in: Baghdad, Zawra Park, across the road from Baghdad Zoo. Let them contact me for any questions on my e-mail address.

  A “milk run” is leaving Camp Fallujah for Baghdad tomorrow, and while theoretically I could get Lava on the convoy and be back in time to get him to Buck, milk runs to Baghdad are susceptible to all kinds of problems—hit and runs, mostly—and coordinating the trips doesn’t always go as planned. Besides, they’d have to hide Lava in one of the vehicles, and knowing him he’d make sure every commanding officer in the convoy knew he was there ready to protect against all enemies.

  If we can get Lava to Baghdad and if he gets his vaccinations and if he gets backs in time to get on Buck’s flight, John Van Zante says Iams will pay all the expenses.

  It’s a long, unfocused shot, but with time running out, it’s the only shot I have.

  The Command Center:

  Dr. Murrani, I am the Marine trying to get the puppy to a vet in Baghdad. I might have an opportunity to do so tomorrow (Wednesday) here in Iraq. I’d have to have them meet me somewhere in the International Zone, and would have to leave the puppy in their care for a month or so—I’ll gladly pay any expenses (medical care, food, etc) and make a donation to your clinic or the Baghdad Zoo as a token of my appreciation—until I can pick it up again after my next assignment. If this is suitable, please let me know, and please provide me with the e-mail address of the person I should contact in the morning. Thank you in advance for your assistance. All the Marines have become very fond of Lava, as we are calling him, and want him to have the best possible care.

  The Command Center: No response yet from Dr. Murrani.

  The Command Center: No response yet from Dr. Murrani.

  The Command Center: No response yet from Dr. Murrani.

  The Lava Dogs’ Building: Lava pees when I walk into the room where he’s stashed. He pees now whenever I see him. I think it’s because I usually wake him up, like tonight, and he’s just happy to see me, but one of the guys says it’s a dog’s sign of submission, which bothers me for reasons I don’t have time to pin down.

  The Command Center: No response yet from Dr. Murrani.

  The Command Center: No response yet from Dr. Murrani.

  The Command Center: She has to contact me. She has to. I have 4.2 hours left before I report to the helicopter landing pad, but all I can think about is getting over to the Lava Dogs’ building to see the little guy one more time. There isn’t any more time, though. I let it escape, and now all I have to show for myself is poorly packed gear and a sick feeling down in my gut.

  The Lava Dogs have promised to keep him as long as they can, but he’s such a little warrior, they’ll have trouble keeping him quiet when the wrong people are around. He senses enemies right away, and even though you beg him to shut up, try to give him a treat, tell him the person he’s rooing at is a commander who can have him shot, which will hurt, hurt a lot, he gets so worked up, it doesn’t get through.

  The landing zone: We lea
ve for Balad at night to avoid detection. But the chopper—a ninety-nine-foot-long Stallion that can travel 180 miles per hour and carry sixteen tons of cargo—makes this whomp whomp whomp so heavy and loud that anyone within ten miles will hear you coming. If you’re smart and don’t want to collect disability pay for hearing loss the rest of your life, you wear earplugs.

  As the whomping starts overhead, everyone on board moves around doing things, shifting things, preparing for things. Me, I sit here in the open door and see Lava peeing. A sign of submission. Jeez. I want him to be loyal, but I don’t want him to be submissive to anyone. I want him to survive.

  The chopper lifts off. We’ll be flying low. The lights of Camp Fallujah disappear.

  PART II

  “And to dust you shall return.”

  Genesis 3:19

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  May 2005

  Baghdad

  DAVID MACK LOOKED over the paperwork again. It couldn’t be legitimate. But Ken Licklider had already given the go-ahead and Brad Ridenour was already on his way in from Kirkurk, so it would have to do.

  David had been Ken’s overseas manager in Afghanistan and Iraq for the past three years, which meant he knew how to engineer bridges across the rules as well as anyone. Not that there were many rules to follow around here, which made you crazy sometimes, because a lot of rules got made up along the way, like how much in “fees” you had to pay for certain paperwork, for instance, so you never knew what to expect. You never thought you wanted to follow the rules until there weren’t any to follow.

  It wasn’t that the Coalition Provisional Authority didn’t challenge the country with rules; it just hadn’t developed the biceps to enforce them. With the military busy hunting down insurgents and employing every available noninsurgent Iraqi male to do so, too, it was left to the private security companies like Triple Canopy Security to do most of the police work. Only they had other jobs to do. They were hired to protect, not enforce.

  On top of that, there were two sets of rules you had to know about: those in Baghdad’s Red Zone and those in the Green Zone.

  In the Red Zone the rules were simple—(1) Move fast; (2) Stay alive—and were enforced by whoever possessed the best pyrotechnic talents or drove the fastest armored vehicles.

  In the Green Zone, where David stayed at the Triple Canopy compound, the rules took on a more ceremonious air. They had to, because that’s where the center of the universe most recently planted its flag.

  The Green Zone of Baghdad—surrounded by reinforced, blast- proof concrete slabs, coils of barbed wire, earthen berms, chain-link fences, and dozens of armed checkpoints, and guarded by helicopters, Abrams tanks, armored Humvees, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and foot patrols—was the ultimate gated community. It was a well-protected bubble, a private club that admitted only the new Iraqi elite, including members of the vague ruling authority, coalition partners of one kind or another, and employees of major US consulting companies.

  Located in the center of the city, the Green Zone consisted of much former glamour—Saddam Hussein’s former presidential palaces, villas built for former royal family members, stately homes of former Ba’ath party members, former convention centers, former museums, former parks, former parade routes, and former pens for Saddam Hussein’s man-eating lions. There was taxi service within its boundaries, a hospital, barbershops, and two Chinese restaurants run by Iraqis.

  If you weren’t lucky enough to get lodging in one of the palaces, you usually stayed in a single-wide trailer surrounded by sandbags. But that was still better than living in the Red Zone, because at least in the Green Zone, everyone spoke English and had access to CNN, so you knew what was going on outside the perimeter.

  The Triple Canopy complex David Mack stayed in was a self-contained, walled compound within the self-contained, walled Green Zone. It had its own guard towers inhabited day and night by a foreign security force that watched over the individual housing units, the dining hall, the laundry, the gym, the kennels, and the shipping containers full of ammunition. If you had to stay in Baghdad, this was the place to be.

  But things were still dangerous. Mortars came across the Green Zone wall all the time, so the rules, the ones that existed anyway, went with the flow.

  There was an e-mail making the rounds of private contractors that kind of summed things up:

  You’ve Been in Iraq Too Long If . . .

  You start to think, It’s not so bad here.

  You don’t jump when a door slams or someone drops something.

  A Glock or 9mm on a lady’s hip is considered sexy.

  Mortars and rocket sounds are okay compared with vehicle bombs.

  You can measure distances based on explosive sounds.

  You know the difference between “incoming” and “outgoing.”

  Sitting around with your co-workers talking about different ways to be killed is considered “watercooler talk.”

  Bullet holes in cars are no longer alarming.

  Driving on the sidewalk is normal.

  Driving on the wrong side of a divided four-lane street is considered normal.

  Hit-and-run fender benders are treated as mere warnings.

  You have your own roll of toilet paper stashed in your car.

  You think the bullet holes in the roof of your trailer are just another form of ventilation.

  So whether the paperwork in David Mack’s hands was legitimate or not was really a matter of interpretation. Only there were lots of different interpreters around these days, and this one worried him.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  January 2005

  Balad

  BALAD ISN’T LIKE a super-secret mission or anything, but the group I work with—Task Force 6-26—is a special operations unit that pursues high-value individuals like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. We also work with Iraqi prisoners whom we suspect know the most important stuff, stuff that could help break the back of the insurgency, but who don’t want to tell us what they know.

  I have great accommodations, including a trailer with my own room, a real bed, a refrigerator, a closet, and a wall locker. There is a bathroom with a real sit-down, flushable toilet, a sink, and a shower. We have a gym that back home would have cost a five-hundred-dollar initiation fee and fifty bucks a month to join, plasma TVs in our command center, and a full PX complete with a Burger King.

  It might have been a great mission except this one thing that keeps pecking away at me, this thing I have to do that I don’t want to do.

  From the minute I get to Balad, I keep hoping that something will just happen magically behind my back to solve everything concerning Lava. He’s still safe with the Lava Dogs back at Camp Fallujah, but when I see John Van Zante’s e-mail, which looks like a note of encouragement but smells suspiciously like a note of condolence, I remember that nothing magical has occurred in Iraq since God took one of Adam’s ribs.

  Iams will help in any way they can. If there are any supplies that you need, please let me know. If you would like puppy food, please tell us where it can be shipped. I will mention that Iams attempted a large shipment to an Iraqi port last year. I was told that it was returned because Iams and Eukanuba dog food contains real animal products which are great for your puppy, but I was told there was an objection on the part of the Iraqi workers who were assigned to unload the food.

  But we’re standing by to get your puppy home to Rancho Santa Fe once he reaches the USA.

  After reading between the lines, I do what I dread doing. I write to Anne Garrels. She’s been back in the States for less than thirty days but is scheduled to return to Baghdad for the elections later this month. I hate writing to her, because she was fried when she left Fallujah, but I do it anyway and ask her if she can keep Lava in Baghdad with her when she returns, just until I figure something out.

  “Just for a little while,” I promise.

  In the meantime, I finally receive an e-mail from Dr. Murrani after several weeks of waiting.

  Dear
Sir, I’m so sorry but I only got to see you msg. today, I was so busy that I haven’t checked my box. I don’t know if this is still helpful or not . . .

  Dr. Murrani says that if I can get Lava to Baghdad, the people running the ISAW can give him vaccinations. The problem is, the clinic isn’t in the protected Green Zone, which means I’ll have a hell of a time finding someone to take him there, and even if I can, she informs me that Lava has to be at least four months old to get his rabies shot, and I figure him to be two months or less.

  “Do you know anyone in Baghdad who might watch him for a little while?” I write back. “I’m at a real loss because it would be terrible if we have to put him out of the base on his own. He’s really too young—and now too dependent—to survive on his own.”

  Dr. Murrani says she’ll contact some friends living in the Green Zone and see if they’ll take Lava in. “I can’t really guarantee anything,” she writes, “but I will try.”

  Then I hear from Anne, who promises to try to keep Lava in Baghdad for a few weeks until after the elections, when she’ll leave for Cairo. Lava has a few more weeks of borrowed time.

  I hear that traps have been set at Camp Fallujah to catch stray dogs and that the Lava Dogs’ executive officer has found out about Lava and started honking about GO 1-A in a very loud way.

  I learn that the guys sneak him over to the personal security detachment, which provides security for the commanding general at Camp Fallujah. I hiss at the computer screen when I read that message.

  The commanding general’s personal security detachment? They’re the guys who follow all the rules, because they’re protecting the most important person on campus whose job it is to make the rules in the first place. What in the hell are they thinking?