One Dog at a Time (27 page)

He placed the suitcase on to the floor of the minivan as Tali looked on.

As I was tying Jena, Tin Tin returned with the commander’s old wooden birdcage. The delicately made top part of the hand-crafted cage was connected to the wooden base by three small catches. It easily came apart so we could carefully place Jena’s eight pups on to the base before replacing the frame. I secured it with the string as well, as I doubted very much that it had been built for the weight it now carried.

Luckily the pups were still in the clingy puppy stage of life and I hoped they weren’t going to be too bothered about being stuck in a birdcage. The only problem I could see was that they would not be able to feed until they eventually made it to the rescue.

There was nothing I could do about that. Our original dog crates would have allowed Tali and Jena to travel with their respective pups but obviously we hadn’t contemplated Taliban interference.

I placed the wooden birdcage with its fragile cargo down next to the suitcase containing Tali’s puppies.

RPG knew something was up and it took me and Dave a few minutes to corner him in his run as he ducked and dived as we went to grab him. Once caught though he gave in like Tali and Jena and let us tie his paws together.

We didn’t need to talk about it. I knew from the look on Dave and John’s faces that they were as unhappy about tying up the dogs as I was but it was a means to an end. Either we
did
this or we threw them out on the streets of Now Zad to face a bleak future. There was no choice.

We put RPG, Jena and AK on the back seat of the van. All three huddled uncomfortably together. It hurt to see the total confusion in their eyes as I closed the rear door. But I didn’t have time to make a fuss of them and it hadn’t really sunk in that I would probably never see them again. I was working on automatic pilot. The constant sound of the countdown clock echoed in my mind as I quickly jogged round to the run to get Nowzad.

I wondered briefly what the driver thought of dogs sitting on his plastic-covered passenger seats but he didn’t protest. I guessed the ANP commander was paying him enough for the journey.

‘Come on, then, Dave, give me a hand with Nowzad,’ I urged him as I untied the gate to Nowzad’s run.

‘Get real; he doesn’t like me at the best of times. You tie him up,’ Dave said, standing outside the fence with John.

‘Don’t be soft,’ I replied as I turned and looked at Nowzad as he bounded over to see me, his tail stump in a constant state of motion.

I felt guilty at what I was about to do.

‘All right buddy, it is time to go.’

I quickly fed him two biscuits and made him sit as I tied his front legs together. He was too big and heavy to roll over and I knew he would put up a fight. We knew each other but not that well.

I tied his rear legs together and forced him to hobble over to the gate. He was as happy to be getting out of the run as I was that we had found finally found a vehicle.

As I struggled around the corner carrying a tied-up Nowzad, the driver began shouting and pointing at Nowzad, sheer terror in his eyes.

‘What is he saying, Harry?’ I asked.

‘Fighting dog no good,’ Harry replied.

‘Tell him it is okay. I will tie his mouth shut, okay?’

Harry and the driver carried on debating the matter for another minute before the driver eventually backed down and agreed. The piercing looks he was being given by the ANP commander may have played their part in persuading him.

I hated myself for doing it and I knew I wouldn’t be winning any RSPCA prizes for animal welfare, but I slipped a strip of black masking tape around Nowzad’s muzzle, leaving it loose enough so that he could breathe and drink water. If anybody bothered to offer him some on the long journey, that was.

‘Sorry, Nowzad,’ I said, as I carefully lifted him into the rear of the van and placed him alone on the middle seats. I made a loose-fitting collar from the remainder of the string and secured it to the rail inside the minivan. At least he would not be able to bound over the seats and go for the driver.

‘Please hurry, Penny Dai,’ Harry said, tapping me on the shoulder. ‘The driver wants to leave now.’

‘Okay.’

I looked at the dogs one more time, all of them bizarrely staring out the windows like something out of a Walt Disney kids’ cartoon about animals on a bus ride.

‘Tell him to look after the dogs. Do not leave the doors open if he stops. They will escape if he does,’ I told Harry.

To reinforce this, the commander jumped in with his own orders for the driver. The commander knew that I wouldn’t pay until the driver had delivered the dogs. I got the impression he was making this clear to the driver, just in case he had any other ideas.

I stood with John and Dave as the driver slammed the side door shut and jumped in behind the steering wheel. A cloud of diesel fumes exploded from the exhaust of the van as he turned the ignition.

The van lurched its way out of the compound as the commander led the driver out through the gates. Through
the
mud-spattered rear window I could just make out the narrow head of RPG darting from side to side as I am sure he wondered what the hell was going on.

In all it had taken just 20 minutes to load all the dogs onboard.

I turned to face the two lads who for the last three months had given up their time and energy to help me.

‘Am I dreaming or did that just happen?’ I said, offering my hand first to Dave and then John.

‘Talk about cutting it fine,’ Dave replied, smiling a big stupid grin of relief at what had just taken place.

‘You reckon they will make it?’ John asked.

‘They have to after all this,’ I said.

‘We need to pull the runs apart; I don’t want the ANP or anybody putting any more dogs in there,’ I said. I knew it would make an ideal place to keep a fighting dog in once we were gone. ‘Can you two start on that while I speak to Klaus a minute please?’

Klaus was putting away his camera. He had been snapping away while we had tied the dogs. ‘You are happy – yes?’ he said as I approached.

‘Oh yes, indeed,’ I replied. ‘Can you do me a favour, please?’

I knew that Klaus was staying for another two weeks when we had gone with the new company that was taking over.

‘If and when the dogs make it to the rescue, can you pay the commander for me?’

I took the $400 in crumpled notes from my pocket and offered them to him. ‘I will get a message to you over the radio net.’

‘It is a good thing you have done,’ he smiled as he slipped the money into his top pocket.

‘Thank you, it feels good that we have done something good here,’ I replied as I looked upwards towards the clear Afghan sky. I didn’t want to think about the wasted trip to the Barakzai school.

‘If this trip works can you put Dushka and Patches in the taxi for the next run?’

I hoped I wasn’t asking too much of him.

‘Of course I can; he won’t bite me will he?’ Klaus chuckled as we shook hands.

‘Not unless you poke him in the eye.’

The first swirl of smoke filled the air as Dave set alight the blankets and boxes that had once housed the dogs of Now Zad.

The next hour flew by as we saw to the last-minute preparations for the arrival of Lima Company.

Harry for once was quiet as I handed him the present that we had arranged to be sent out. It was a proper cricket bat signed by all the lads. Harry just nodded and shook our hands, a big smile on his face.

With minutes to spare we had said goodbye to the ANP lads, posing together for a group photograph. We had swapped weapons, the three of us kneeling in front of a seated ANP. We had all shaken hands and embraced as we stood up. We all knew we would never see each other again.

As darkness fell and I walked out of the compound gate that been my home for the last three months, I looked for Dushka and Patches.

They weren’t there; maybe there were still off playing.

I didn’t look back. There were too many memories, too many emotions tied up in those mud walls.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Over and Out

‘HERE WE GO
again,’ somebody yelled as we all looked towards the sky. ‘Incoming.’

All thoughts of drying out our wet uniforms in the early-morning February sun were instantly forgotten as we scrambled for the safety of the closest building.

‘Why the hell have we run inside this one to hide?’ Hutch yelled over the noise of the hideously close-sounding 107mm rocket.

It was a valid question. The building’s location, at the source of the Helmand River at the base of the Kajacki Dam, was undoubtedly spectacular. It was also within a compound that, apparently, had at one time served as a retreat for the Afghan royal family.

The problem was that it was also where we had stored nearly a month’s worth of ammunition. One direct hit and there would be no more royal holiday villa and, more importantly, no more Kilo Company.

The Taliban were firing at us from over eight kilometres away, well out of range for our mortars to be able to strike back. We had no option but to sit it out, waiting for the fast air to arrive while hoping at the same time that the Taliban didn’t get lucky.

The air around us vibrated as noise filled the compound, the boom echoing off the surrounding mountains.

‘Shit, that sounded like it was in the compound,’ Taff shouted, confirming what everybody hunched low against the walls had already gathered.

For some reason, I suddenly found myself thinking about the compound’s two resident stray camels. I wondered what they did while all this was going on.

I didn’t have time to consider their plight for long. The shriek of another rocket heading our way forced me to flatten myself even closer to the cold concrete floor.

Another 11 rockets landed nearby before the fast jets finally did their thing and we were given the all clear.

As things returned to normality, I stood up carefully. My right ankle was killing me, the throbbing building as the latest batch of painkillers wore off. There was no getting away from it. I would have to see the compound doctor.

It had now been 36 hours since I had gone over on my ankle during an operation to clear the deserted villages that surrounded the dam. I’d known something was badly wrong when I’d tripped as we ran across a hand-ploughed field in the dark. With the ludicrous weight of the kit I was carrying I had clearly heard the snap of something in my ankle as I hit the soft mud, face first.

Thanks to some quick strapping, a few very strong painkillers and Grant my mortar man’s kind offer to lighten my load, the pain had been bearable for a while. But the long operation that followed had overspilled into the night, which was the last thing I’d needed.

On our journey back towards the dam, the latest torrential rain had turned the dry
wadi
we had passed through on our way out into an almost waist-deep flood. Dave and I had spent almost four hours ferrying our heavy equipment back across the
wadi
to our temporary compound. We’d used the company’s quad bikes to do the job, leaving the rest of the lads to carry the ammunition by hand back across the
wadi
and back to the former royal retreat.

I had not had a chance to get my boot off during the
entire
operation. Which had probably been for the best. I doubted very much that I would have been able to put it back on afterwards.

I found the doctor sitting on the steps to the makeshift surgery. He was actually probably one of the fittest blokes in the unit, but, his being in the Navy, we weren’t ever going to tell him that.

‘Need you to take a look at my foot please, Boss,’ I said.

I had to remove the laces completely just to be able to pull the boot off. Without even removing my sock we could both see my foot was swollen big time. The doctor prodded and poked it, coming extremely close to being punched in the process.

‘Nasty,’ the doc said.

I bloody knew that; it was my foot.

‘Probably broken, I’d say,’ he said, prodding the puffed-up ankle some more. ‘Yup, Sergeant, you need an X-ray.’

‘When?’ I asked, although I knew the answer.

‘As soon as possible; back to Bastion for you I’m afraid.’

There was an eerie silence as I sat on the LS waiting for the helicopter.

Apart from the sound of the light breeze rustling the row of trees along the nearby dirt track, all you could hear was the gently flowing waters of the Helmand River. In the background the jagged cliffs of the surrounding mountains soared into the grey-blue sky. I could have been taking two minutes out from a chilled walking holiday.

The reality, of course, was that I was still in the middle of a war zone. And I had no choice but to leave my lads in the thick of it.

I had just about managed to say goodbye to most of them as I hobbled around the compound. Putting my boot back on had been extremely painful but I wasn’t going to be carried to the LS.

Dave had been still hanging his kit out to dry when I had found him.

‘Hear you have got an appointment with some nurses,’ he said before I could say anything.

News travelled fast.

‘I may have,’ I offered, smiling.

‘Well you’re married so give ’em my number,’ he said as we shook hands.

‘Keep your stupid big head down, all right?’ I told him. ‘I’ll see you when we get back for a beer.’

‘Roger that.’

I hadn’t seen John; he was around the compound somewhere doing his thing. I had asked Dave to say goodbye for me.

Most of my lads were around in the sangars on duty and would probably find out I had left during the evening meal, I guessed. As always time was short. I had to hobble to the LS.

As I sat against my rucksack I felt my eyelids growing heavy as the tension and stress of the last few days faded. For some reason the image that filled my head was of RPG, sitting on the sand-filled boxes waiting for his breakfast; I smiled to myself as it brought back happy memories.

I thought about the last few days; they had gone by in a blur. It was now six days since we’d left Now Zad, six days since we’d put the dogs in the taxi. There had been no news.

I’d managed to have a good talk with Lisa when we’d arrived at Bastion. It was good to hear her voice again but she had heard nothing from Afghanistan either. It was going to take at least three to four days to get to the north of the country. There were going to be changes of car and three drivers in all. In reality the dogs had only just begun their long journey.

Within two days of landing at Bastion we had been turned around and redeployed here to Kajacki. We had been given just enough time to grab our cleaned washing from the laundry, pack our bags and form up for the departure for this
operation.
But within days I was already on my way back, perhaps for good.

At least my trip back to the hospital at Bastion would give me a chance to find an Internet terminal. I figured that I might be able to find out any updates on the dogs’ progress. I kept my fingers crossed.

As the sound of the river filled the air, that was my last thought as I drifted off. I have no idea how long I had been dozing when the roar of the helo landing woke me up.

As Lisa read me the email for the second time, it seemed even more brief and to the point than it had been the first time.

‘It says: “Hi, we have two brown dogs and a white dog with 13 puppies from Helmand.”’

‘That’s definitely all it says?’ I asked again.

‘Yes, there was nothing else attached to the email. I told you,’ Lisa said, the impatience in her voice clear.

Communications between the UK and Afghanistan were never great. I had got used to it, just about.

As I said goodbye to Lisa and absorbed the raw information within the email a million questions were flying around my head.

The white dog, without doubt, that was Tali. She was the only white dog that we had tied up and placed in the taxi. But which dogs were the brown dogs?

Nowzad, RPG, Jena and AK were all a shade of brown in colour. That meant two of them had made it. And two of them hadn’t.

The email hadn’t said which litter the missing puppy had been from. I figured I probably wouldn’t find out either.

As Lisa’s words sunk in I felt a mix of emotions brewing up inside me. I wanted to shout for joy and cry all at the same time.

In the week since we’d left Now Zad I’d played the possible scenarios a million times over and over in my mind. What if they all made it? Could the rescue centre cope with them all?
What
if none of them had made it? What would happen to Nowzad if he did make it?

Now with the snippet of info that Lisa had given me I was really still none the wiser. I’d rather still be totally in the dark. At least I wouldn’t have to agonise over struggling to work out which dogs were safe and which weren’t. Before, ignorance had actually been bliss.

It was funny how things had worked out, I thought to myself. The one dog I knew was safe was Tali, the dog I knew the least. She’d been one of the last to arrive in the compound and had spent most of her time going off on her little hunting excursions. The dogs that I was closest to, RPG, AK, Jena and, most of all, Nowzad, were still effectively unaccounted for.

I guess deep down I knew one of the ones that hadn’t made it would turn out to be Nowzad. If any of the three drivers had been forced to ditch a dog I knew it would have been him. He wasn’t exactly the most tolerant of dogs to be transporting around.

Maybe I should have left him to his own fate in the alleys of Now Zad; at least he would have been at home.

I couldn’t work out why there were only 13 puppies. We had parcelled 14 up that day back in Now Zad. What had happened to the puppy that hadn’t made it? I hated to think.

As I waited for the results of my X-ray, the lack of information was killing me. Hobbling around Bastion on crutches, feeling a total fraud for having an injury just because I tripped over, was bad enough. But the gut-wrenching image of two of the dogs being abandoned to starve on the side of the road was tearing me apart. Especially when I didn’t know which dogs they were.

The military surgeon sat me down in the medical centre at Bastion. I had been chatting away to the marine in the bed next to me on the ward. He had driven over a landmine but had had a lucky escape as he only suffered a broken leg. His passenger
had
not been so lucky and had sustained more serious injuries that had required an immediate flight back to Britain.

Both of us were slightly bemused to be lying opposite Afghan civilians who needed medical treatment. We were both fairly laid-back about the situation but I knew some marines who would not have been.

The surgeon’s chat had been brief and to the point. I assumed he was having a busy day and I was just a minor blip he had to deal with.

‘It is not a bad break, six to eight weeks to heal, tops,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘If you do as you are told and don’t run around like an idiot,’ he added.

‘Great,’ was all I could reply.

‘I have booked you on a flight back to the UK in two days’ time. Nothing more you are going to do here.’

I didn’t argue with him; there was no point. We were meant to be going home in six weeks anyway. I wouldn’t be able to carry any form of weight on my back until then. My tour in Afghanistan was over.

I sat and stared at the flickering computer screen in the so-called Bastion Internet café, which was cunningly disguised as a Portakabin.

There were three emailed pictures in front of me, three very familiar-looking dogs staring at me from the screen.

The email attached to the pictures simply read:

Dear friends of the Helmand dogs and pups
,

Fahran send us two female dogs and one male dog, one of the females dog is white with five puppies and the second female dog is dark brown skinny with eight puppies and the male is with no ears and no tail
.

Thank you very much for saving them
.

Best regards

Koshan

So that was it, in black and white. The agonising wait was over.

Tali, Nowzad and Jena had made it to the rescue.

RPG and AK hadn’t.

I closed down the email and limped out into the heat of the day to find a quiet spot. My head was, once more, filled with a mixture of thoughts, some good, some not so good.

I looked away over the outer perimeter wall and towards the far distant mountains in the direction of the town of Now Zad. Somewhere out there were RPG and little AK.

We knew that if any of the dogs was going to take the chance to escape if offered it, RPG was the one who would make a run for it. I tried to imagine what must have happened. Perhaps the driver had hoped the dogs would follow him to the next van?

The puppies would have been carried in their containers, so Tali and Jena would have instinctively followed. Nowzad would have been attached still to the makeshift lead and wouldn’t have had a chance to break away.

But RPG and AK were a different matter. If the driver had left the vehicle door open even for a second they would have done their familiar ‘bomb burst’. They certainly would not have followed him.

I could only hope they had chewed the rope from around their paws so that they could run freely and escape.

The nightmare image of them abandoned on the side of the road still tied up filled my head. I tried desperately to shut it out.

I tried to console myself with the thoughts that at least the other dogs looked fairly well in the digital pictures.

In her photo Jena was sitting bolt upright in front of a wire fence and staring straight at the camera; she had a smart green collar around her neck. She looked confused more than anything.

An unknown rubber-gloved hand held a white puppy close
to
her. From the size of the puppy I guessed it was one of hers.

Tali was looking her normal self but this time sat looking chilled on top of a wooden kennel.

Nowzad didn’t look particularly happy in his photo. I wasn’t surprised. He was chained to a wall. The image left me feeling confused and disillusioned again. I’d freed him to what I thought would be a better life. But was it really any better? And what sort of future had I given him? Probably not much of one at all.