by Craig Grossi
Jim, the corpsman who had helped remove Fred’s bugs, had a slightly better idea.
“I can give him Benadryl. It’ll knock him out, then you can put him right in and he won’t know the difference.”
I figured it was worth a shot. Jim stuck the little pink pill on the back of Fred’s tongue and closed his hands around his snout till he swallowed. Fred settled down and closed his eyes, but it was hard to tell if it was the Benadryl or if Fred just got tired and decided to take a nap. We sat in the shade, Fred sleeping next to me, and the guys took turns coming over to ask if I had a plan or to tell me to “just do it.” “Grossi, you gotta do it, man,” they pressed. Fed up with the pressure mounting, I told them to fuck off. “Relax. I’m working on it,” I said.
It wasn’t long before Fred was up and moseying around the compound again. With the marines off my back for a minute, I decided to make a deal with Fred. Gently, I pulled him toward me.
“Okay, buddy,” I said, looking into his light brown eyes. “If you really want to get out of here, you’re gonna have to show me one more thing. Okay?”
I told myself, and I told Fred, that if he followed me toward the helicopter when it came—if he wasn’t afraid of the noise and the dust—then I’d do it. I’d take him with me. The whole undertaking still wracked me with anxiety—I didn’t want to feel like I was stealing this dog, and I didn’t want to put him or anyone else in danger. To go through with it, I needed one last sign.
I stuffed my duffel bag into my cargo pocket so it’d be easy to reach. If the time came, one way or another, I’d get Fred inside.
I started making calls with my sat phone. I was close with my commanding officer, Gomez, back at Leatherneck. He managed me and about six other intel guys doing similar jobs, so I knew he was busy. I also trusted him. I liked the fact that he didn’t micromanage me. He was a good boss. I decided to call him and feel him out.
With our extract just hours away, I got to the point.
“Gomez, I might be bringing a dog back with me,” I told him.
I don’t remember if he laughed or sighed. But he was pretty clear in his response: “I’m not gonna tell you you can’t,” he said. “But if you get caught, you’re on your own.”
It was probably the best I could have hoped for, given the circumstances. I asked Gomez to pass the phone to Sergio, an analyst we worked with and one of my close buddies at Leatherneck. Sergio was a smart, fast-talking Puerto Rican–Italian guy who wore big thick glasses. We called him the Tactical Rain Man because he seemed to see numbers everywhere and speak in math. He was the kind of person who was so smart that he had trouble communicating with the rest of us—we couldn’t keep up. Without knowing where he was going, he’d start down a sentence, then stop and say it a different way, barely stopping to take a breath. For as much as we teased him about his verbal similarity to Porky Pig, he had the biggest heart of anyone I’d met in the marines. I knew I could trust Sergio to help me.
On Leatherneck, we were lucky enough to have a few Toyota HiLux pickup trucks at our disposal, which we used to get to and from meetings across base. If someone could bring one of those trucks to meet us when we landed, I knew we could whisk Fred away as fast as possible before anyone realized what was going on.
“Hey, man,” I said when Sergio came on the line. “I need you and McGuire to bring the truck to the flight line when we land. I might have a dog with me.”
Sergio didn’t even hesitate before promising to be there with McGuire. McGuire—Mac, we called him—was a radio guy from Wyoming. He was an Iraq veteran and a solid marine with a great sense of humor. He was itching to get out of Leatherneck on a mission, but most of the RECON marines had their own radio operators, so Mac was stuck back at the base in an office with Sergio. It drove him nuts. Eventually he went out on a few missions, but they weren’t with me.
Next, I called my big sister, Sarah, back in Virginia. In her work as a special education teacher and school counselor, she’d seen her way around tough situations. But she always kept a cool head and wasn’t afraid to take action.
I told her what had happened, about how Fred had followed us and how I was trying to bring him back with me. I also briefed her on the risks and how screwed I’d be if I got caught. Sarah was unfazed and already a step ahead of me. I’d mentioned Fred to Sarah on a call a couple of weeks back; since then, she’d been e-mailing a few organizations to get an idea of how we’d be able to get Fred back to the States and through customs.
“Oh, hush,” she told me now. “If anyone can do it, it’s you, Craig. If you get him out of the field, I’ll take care of the rest.”
The calls gave me hope, but they didn’t exactly calm my nerves. As the extract time approached, I paced around, checking my gear, checking on Fred, thinking, overthinking. Then we got a call informing us that our extract had been rolled by eight hours. Instead of getting picked up in the darkness of night, the helicopters would come in at daybreak. It was unsettling news. The Taliban had recently shot down a helicopter in the north; if we left in the light of day, what was going to stop the same thing from happening to us? If I was having a tough time getting Fred into the duffel bag, that delay in our departure could be critical. As much as I loved Fred, this wasn’t a game, and when it came to it, I knew I wasn’t going to risk the lives of marines for the sake of a dog.
I didn’t sleep much that night. In the morning, everyone was quiet as we packed up. Three birds were coming in, and I’d be on the first one. We assembled along the wall, and I stood toward the back of the line with Dave and Top. The guys were jittery, shifting from foot to foot. Fred, sensing something was about to happen, bopped around, weaving between our legs and looking up at us with anticipation, tail wagging, eyebrows twitching, just like he used to do when he joined us on patrols. Looking at Fred, I felt a tightness in my chest. This might be it.
The low thump of the rotors in the distance broke the morning quiet. The CH-53 helicopters we used to get in and out of the field were huge—they looked like giant flying coffee cans, as if the barrels of their dull gray bodies defied every law of physics to hover in the air. Two would land and load up first while the third hovered for cover. Once the first two were back in the air, the third would come down for the last of the guys.
As the first giant machine began to descend just outside the compound wall, a wave of sand and dust erupted into the air like a fog. Shit, I thought. It was a brownout. When a helicopter flies toward you, it kicks up a wave of dust. That wave washes over you once, then clears. When a helicopter comes in at a different angle, though, descending straight down in a hover instead, the dust comes up and lingers. It makes a relatively simple thing—boarding the helicopter—complicated and dangerous. With poor visibility, marines have been killed in brownouts, accidentally running into tail rotors.
As the rotor wash blanketed us, I caught sight of Fred, who was pacing nervously. Then the line began moving forward. I ducked through the doorway of the compound, following Dave ahead of me, only to be immediately pelted by dust and rocks. I coughed and squinted my eyes, stepping through the brown cloud toward the deafening sound of the whirring rotors. All I could see was Dave’s rucksack ahead of me, but no Fred.
Then, I felt a poke at my heel and looked down. Through the grit and grime, there was Fred’s face—that long white snout, black nose, and squinting eyes—looking up at me. He was blinking in the dust, barely able to open his eyes. His ears were pinned back and he looked terrified. But there it was. My sign.
I pulled the duffel bag from my cargo pocket. From behind us, Top’s hand emerged through the dust and clutched Fred by the scruff. He lifted him like a jug of milk.
“We’re doing this!” Top shouted. In one fluid motion, I yanked open the mouth of the bag and Top dropped Fred inside. I zipped it, and we each picked it up by a handle, rushing forward.
A young air winger stood at the back of the chopper, rifle up, scanning the horizon and watching us board. I remember how clean he loo
ked: a washed face, no beard, perfect uniform. I swear I got a whiff of his Axe body spray.
He looked at Top and me, lowered his gaze to the bag between us, and scowled. He reached his arm out to stop us, parting his lips to say something, but Top lifted his forearm, elbow bent, and blocked him.
“Don’t worry about it!” he barked, and we stepped up onto the ramp.
We were the last to board. As soon as our feet touched the floor of the chopper, the air winger ducked in behind us, resuming his position at the .50-caliber machine gun on the ramp, and the helicopter lifted back into the air.
I sat on the floor, leaning back into my pack with Fred in the duffel between my legs. The RECON guys all looked at me with huge grins, and Top extended his beer can of a fist for a congratulatory bump.
I pressed my palms onto Fred’s back, through the bag, trying to let him know he was okay. I could only imagine what must have been going through his mind. Here was a dog who had never even ridden in a car before, and now he was flying through the air in a helicopter. I felt him squirm, trying to get comfortable, then settle. “Good boy,” I whispered.
As we soared through the morning sky, somewhere over Helmand Province, Afghanistan, I realized this scrappy, short-legged, dusty dog was officially mine now. He’d put his trust in me. The real challenge still lay before us, but I was resolved. I knew I’d lie, steal, and cheat to protect Fred. My sister was right: if there was a person to do this, it was me. I’d have to find a way.
CHAPTER 9
California
After my fiancée and I split up, not long after we’d gone house hunting, I moved out and got a studio apartment in the city. It was small, with just enough room for a couch and a bed, but it was all I needed. I stocked the freezer with microwavable burritos and used my woobie—a thin, camouflage-print military-issue blanket—as my bedspread. Every night, Fred curled up between my legs, just as he had in Sangin. We had our bachelor pad, and we were happy.
I sold the shiny new Tacoma and bought a bike. I rode it everywhere, including to work every day. The job continued to be the wrong kind of challenge—I was often bored and felt like I wasn’t doing meaningful work—but coming home to Fred afterward was the best part of my day. Our first-floor apartment faced a courtyard, and as I walked through it every night, I’d sneak up on Fred to see what he was doing. Peering through the windows, which were all covered in “Fred tint”—my affectionate term for the snot Fred left on the glass from mashing his snout into it—I’d spot him asleep on the bed, curled up on the woobie. When I opened the door, he’d go nuts. Fred would scurry over to greet me, sliding across the hardwood floor and letting out joyful howls. He’d zip between my legs, then jump back onto the bed, then jump down and race back over. His tail wagged a mile a minute, and his whole body wiggled with glee. There was nothing better. His joy eclipsed my frustration at spending another day in the sausage factory that is our federal government.
Once we were thoroughly reacquainted with one another, I’d get out of my suit and tie as quick as I could, put on my running shoes, and we’d be out the door. We ran every day. I had always wanted to get out of the suburbs where I’d grown up and live in the city. Now that I was finally there, all I wanted to do was soak it up. We had a route: left out of the building, straight down to the Capitol, then a mile down the hill past the Washington Monument to the World War II memorial, then up past the White House and back home. I loved taking in the sights of the city with Fred. It felt like we were jogging through history.
The big problem continued to be work. I felt stuck. While I’d gotten close with my coworkers and loved working alongside them, the days were monotonous, and I didn’t feel like my work was making an impact. I started thinking about going back to school. I was in a contract position and my career opportunities seemed limited. If I got my degree, I could come back to the intelligence world as a government employee with more options available to me.
My commanding officer in Afghanistan, Gomez, had gone to Georgetown. For whatever reason, he had always nudged me to apply, even back when we were in Helmand Province. I’m not sure what gave him the confidence in me or in the idea that I should go there, but when I came home, he e-mailed me the contact information of the dean of the School of Continuing Studies.
When it felt like my career at the DIA was stalling out, I remembered that. Georgetown had a prestigious reputation, and I didn’t know if I could get in, but I liked the idea of trying. Just as my attraction to the Marine Corps and to the intelligence field had been about being challenged and pushed, I was drawn to Georgetown because I knew it wouldn’t be easy. In my experience, marines were commonly told how quickly and easily they could earn a degree once they finished serving. That never sat right with me. Don’t get me wrong—I had never been a great student and I was nervous about the idea of going back to school—but if I was going to do it, I wanted to do it right. You can’t have it good and fast at the same time; you have to pick one. I figured if I was going to get my degree, I wanted to get it from the best school I could.
I remember writing my application essay about what I’d learned in intelligence and from being a marine. I enjoyed writing it. As a kid, I was drawn to storytelling. At work, I wrote plenty, but it’d been ages since I did any creative writing, and I remembered how good it felt.
In the spring of 2013, I found out I was accepted. I was stunned at how much credit Georgetown was willing to award me from my time in the military. I’d submitted a transcript from the Department of Defense, which listed every training course I did in the marines, every class I completed, every correspondence course I took. The correspondence courses were like ongoing education classes you could take to help get promoted. There were a ton of them in all different subject areas, like land navigation, math for marines, desert ops, history of the Marine Corps, and so on. You register, and the corps sends you a textbook and a Scantron test. You read the book, take the test, then send it back. During my first enlistment, I took a bunch of them because I was so bored. I was expecting Georgetown to write off most of that work. For many schools, veterans are guaranteed paychecks; the G.I. Bill is government money, and they want to cash in by making us take unnecessary courses. But the school gave me sixty-two credits—enough that I could get my degree in less than three years if I wanted to. I really respected and appreciated that.
That fall, I started as a probationary student. If I earned a high-enough GPA my first semester, I’d be permitted to enroll full-time. Starting out part-time was a perfect way for me to test the water.
I started out taking a writing class and a poli-sci class (the one where Josh and I met). Within the first week, I knew I was in the right place. In the writing class, the professor was tough, and a lot of the students hated her assignments, but I loved them. I’d benefited from the time I’d had away from school. I was ready to dive back in, doing close reads of texts like To Kill a Mockingbird and All Quiet on the Western Front. I wrote an essay every week. At my job, I felt that I could do my work in my sleep, but at school it felt like I was really chewing on something substantial.
I did well in both classes and decided to leave my job at the DIA and enroll full-time. It was an easy decision. The only thing I liked about my job was the people I worked with. We had become close, and I knew that when I left, that wouldn’t change. Plus, working and going to school at the same time was tough, and I didn’t want to half-ass it. Now that I knew I could do the work, I wanted to devote all my energy to my degree. As an adult, going to school felt different. I was excited about going to class, reading the books, writing the essays, and completing assignments.
Along with my academic schedule, I had tried out for and made the club hockey team at Georgetown. I hadn’t played competitive hockey in more than ten years, but I’d started playing on a team of veterans the year before and I was still in good shape. I wasn’t sure I’d get along with the kids on the college team; I assumed that they’d all be bratty prep-school types. I was wrong.
They were hockey players. They accepted me with open arms, and before I knew it I was the starting left winger. We dominated the league, winning the championship that year. The team held the record for most titles in league history, and I was proud to be a part of the program. Playing competitive hockey with a great group of guys added to my renewed sense of purpose. I loved lining up for face-offs and looking at the kid on the other team right in the face. I was older than my opponents by ten years and I had twenty pounds on most of them. With my long beard and “old man strength,” I quickly developed a reputation in the league as a heavy-hitting power forward. I was alive again.
It was also a good feeling to meet new people through school, especially fellow vets like Josh. In joking about his prosthetic that first day of class, we became instant buddies. Every so often we hung out outside of class at a bar or Capitals game. Josh didn’t live too far from me, so occasionally we’d grab a few drinks at my favorite pub in the neighborhood, the Pug. A classic dive, the place felt more like somebody’s basement than a bar. It was small and narrow, with a long wooden bar on one side and walls covered in old framed photos and sports team banners.
After we were good and warm from a few rounds of drinks one night, Josh and I swapped our stories from over there, the way that beer and veteran camaraderie made it easier to do. Josh had been an infantryman in the army for about four years when he deployed to Zabul Province in southern Afghanistan, just northeast of Helmand, where I’d been. He described the beginning of his deployment as pretty routine. He was in a mounted vehicle unit, which meant the team could travel a lot farther than traditional infantry companies did on foot. The vehicles—called Strykers—looked like tanks, but with huge wheels instead of treads. Each one typically carried eleven guys. On their initial patrols, they engaged in some sporadic pockets of fighting with the Taliban, but it was “nothing like the movies,” Josh said.
