Mortar. Of course.
The voice on the loudspeaker would have told him so a second later.
“Incoming! Incoming! Incoming!”
He bolted up in his cot, ready to run with Lucca to the nearest bunker—the one they’d showed him yesterday with comments like, “You’ll definitely need to know where this is.” Only minutes before that part of the tour of the Falcon grounds, he had been told the price of admission to the chow hall: Everyone who entered had to fill a two-gallon sandbag that would be used to fortify the building, which had been rocketed more than once. Grabbing a shovel and digging into the pile of sand near the entrance seemed like a small price to pay for added safety.
The sirens on FOB Falcon were wailing now. You never knew how many mortars would come in once they started. Strange as it seemed, sometimes it was just one. Sometimes it would be a barrage lasting several minutes, multiple times a day. Willingham was just about convinced it was time to beat a hasty path to the bunker, but Lucca did not share his sense of urgency. She remained lying on a blanket next to his cot and lifted her head only when she saw him move toward her food bowl. Willingham hoped her calm foretold the end of the mortaring for the morning. He slid his feet into his running shoes without bothering to lace them, just in case.
Streeeeek, BOOM!
The ground shook with this one. Lucca didn’t startle. She just looked at Willingham to see what was up. He knew from experience in Baghdad that mortars make that little whining sound just before impact if they’re close. Farther away it’s usually just the explosion.
He grabbed Lucca’s leash. “Come on, girl, let’s take a walk!”
They hustled over to the bunker and squeezed in with the soldiers who were already there. It was tight but felt secure. A room with thick concrete walls, more like a small hallway, no door to shut, but a wall of sandbags just outside the entrance.
“Hey, a dog!”
“Check it out! A dog!”
Boom!
“Damn!”
“What’s his name?”
“This here’s Lucca; she’s a specialized search dog; she finds IEDs off leash. We just got here yesterday from Slayer.”
“I miss my dog. OK if I pet her?”
“Sure you can pet her. She loves people.”
Before Willingham could get the words out, the soldier was stroking Lucca’s head, bending down, and talking to her.
“I got a dog back home. Oscar,” another soldier said. “He’s s’posed to be a shepherd mix.”
“Great dogs,” Willingham said. “Lucca is half shepherd herself.”
“How old is he? He don’t bite, do he?” the lanky soldier next to him inquired.
Another soldier toward the back lit a cigarette. Crowded, smoky, friendly. It reminded Willingham of this one bar back in Tel Aviv.
“You going down on the big op?”
“I believe so. I’m going to a briefing later to find out more.”
“She finds bombs? I hope she comes with our platoon!”
“That’d be great, man.”
As everyone talked, Lucca sat there, looking for all the world like she was simply meeting people at a small party—maybe one of the poker games in someone’s garage back home—and enjoying their attentions and the closeness of the space. The men appeared equally at ease. Lucca seemed to have that effect on everyone. Willingham looked at her and smiled, proud that she tended to bring calmness everywhere she went.
About fifteen minutes after the last mortar hit, the all clear was given. The men filed out slowly, with Lucca leading the way. Last in, first out.
“Nice meeting you, Lucca! You, too, dog guy!”
“See you ’round, OK?”
Willingham and Lucca walked back to the tent to start their day again.
“Good morning, Iraq!” Willingham said to no one in particular, but Lucca looked up at him anyway.
A PETRI DISH for al-Qaeda to grow.
As Willingham turned in that night, he thought about the briefing he had just attended and how Lieutenant Colonel Ken Adgie, commander of the First Battalion, Thirtieth Infantry Regiment (1/30th) of the Third Infantry Division, had described the Arab Jabour region. Any day now, Willingham and Lucca and hundreds of others would be heading straight into that petri dish—part of the so-called Triangle of Death.
Arab Jabour, southeast of Baghdad, was known as one of the most dangerous areas in Iraq. There was no government structure, no police, and it had been too long since coalition forces had made their presence known. Most al-Qaeda members there appeared to be not so much hard-line Islamists as simply local thugs. They worked for al-Qaeda because of the money, not because of the ideology. For more than a year, they’d been using “ultraviolence” to bring locals under their control through fear. To further control behavior, they severely limited essential resources such as water, food, and electricity.
The conditions provided a perfect setting for al-Qaeda to proliferate. It grew, with members enforcing Islamic fundamentalist law, lining roads with IEDs, and transporting IEDs into Baghdad for lethal use there.
The situation in Arab Jabour was desperate for the Iraqis caught in the grips of a full-throated civil war. Preyed on by al-Qaeda terrorists and Shi‘a militiamen alike, ordinary Iraqis struggled to survive amid the daily horrors of car bombs, rocket and mortar attacks, and sectarian cleansing. Statistics gathered later in a CENTCOM update would reveal that during the week of Adgie’s briefing, there were nearly sixteen hundred violent incidents in Iraq. In the month of June alone, roughly two thousand Iraqi civilians would be killed due to ethnosectarian violence.
But there was a plan—part of the huge Iraq War troop surge announced in January by president George W. Bush to salvage an increasingly unpopular and to date largely unsuccessful war. Adgie and his team described it to the twenty or so key personnel—including Willingham and Lucca, the only marines assigned to ground forces there—who were gathered in a large tent. In attendance were company commanders, first sergeants, and section leaders, as well as enablers supporting the operation, such as explosive ordinance disposal (EOD) technicians, snipers, and engineers. Willingham, as the expert on military dogs, fit into the enablers category.
In the middle of the space, on the plywood floor, was a terrain model of the area of operation, showing roads, the river, villages. Those giving the brief referred to it frequently during their explanation. Those listening sat perched in chairs around it.
Willingham looked at the briefing paper he’d been given when he and Lucca entered the guarded area. Normally these documents are one page long. This one was ten pages. Typed across the top were the words Operation Marne Torch.
It would be an enormous operation involving coalition forces, including elements of the Third Infantry Division, bolstered by Iraqi Army soldiers. Their numbers could climb to three thousand. They would soon begin methodically and painstakingly clearing roads and buildings from north to south. U.S. forces would get out of the FOBs and move closer to the locals, where they’d provide security and gather intelligence on the enemy. The goal: to stop the flow of “accelerants of violence” into Baghdad, defeat sectarian violence, and secure the local population. It would be a hard-striking, fast-moving operation, from both the ground and the air.
Troops would maintain a presence, not abandoning a location once they’d cleared it of bombs and bad guys. A core piece of the operation was getting to know the local population, what the people wanted, what they needed—and what they knew. Sticking around and providing protection had obvious benefits for locals but also was advantageous for the operation’s goals. It was great for gathering intel on al-Qaeda. A secure area, where people are shielded from violent revenge—including beheadings, an al-Qaeda favorite—meant they might be more inclined to open up about operatives in their villages, and other information only locals would know. And it would make it mor
e difficult for insurgents to reenter and begin their game anew.
Headquarters for Marne Torch was to be in what had once been a weekend retreat home for Saddam Hussein’s sons, brothers Uday and Qusay, who had been killed in July 2003 by U.S. forces. Uday was notoriously cruel, known for his torture, murder, rape, and fraud. Younger brother Qusay had been accused of ordering the deaths of thousands of political prisoners. Their onetime getaway—a sprawling, one-story house overlooking the Tigris River—featured a swimming pool and a horse stable. Coalition forces would soon convert the whole vacation destination into Patrol Base Murray.
For the ground teams, the operation would involve a slow, arduous, door-to-door search. No one could predict just how long Marne Torch would last. There are plenty of unknown factors when disrupting deeply rooted insurgent operations, taking away the weapons caches that are the tools of their trade, and doing it along IED-laden roads.
The meeting broke up, and everyone turned in their ten-page briefs. On their way out of the tent, Willingham looked down at his dog. She walked with an easy, confident stride.
“Yup, Lucca,” he told her. “We got this covered.”
A FEW DAYS later, June 16, was moving day. Hundreds of soldiers from the 1/30th gathered around Adgie as he stood on a Humvee and gave a motivational mission speech. The lieutenant colonel told the men that they’d be out there making split-second decisions and that their leaders had their backs. Willingham, age twenty-seven, liked how Adgie seemed to understand the stress of combat for these younger soldiers. The average age of the soldiers on their first deployment looked to him to be about twenty, if that. This was a large operation in a dangerous area, and Adgie didn’t hide the fact that they were expecting casualties.
In his speech he acknowledged that these young men were well trained and that many of them were going to face combat for the first time. Going through compounds, coping with IED threats, dealing with an enemy that doesn’t dress like the enemy, possibly losing a friend in battle—it’s a lot of pressure on anyone, much less a twenty-year-old. Adgie assured them that those in leadership positions understood the challenges to the troops and were there to support them.
Willingham had packed his weapons, essential gear, enough dog food for a couple of weeks, and a sleeping bag. He left most of their belongings in the tent, since they’d be coming back to FOB Falcon fairly frequently to send after-action reports to Roche and to rest up a bit. He wondered what kind of place they were headed into that would make this mortar-prone FOB seem like a relaxing retreat.
Dozens of vehicles were readying to head out of the compound as a convoy. The parade south would be made up of tanks—Bradley fighting vehicles and M1 Abrams—as well as a variety of vehicles vital for route clearance, including RG31 mine-protected armored personnel carriers, a couple of big six-wheeled Buffalos, and other mine-clearance vehicles. The Humvees in the rugged lineup looked diminutive in comparison.
The soldiers were wrapping up their precombat checks, making sure they had everything they needed and that it was in good working order. Some were already climbing into their assigned vehicles—heavy-duty tanks, usually. It was only about fifteen miles to the future Patrol Base Murray, and the route had been cleared of IEDs, but this wasn’t going to be a fast ride. Probably at least an hour to their destination, with everyone in tow.
Streeeeek, BOOM! BOOM!
Soldiers jumped; some hit the ground. A couple of mortar rounds landed inside the compound wall, in an open area about fifty yards from where Willingham and Lucca were loading into the Humvee. No one hurt, but close call. Smoke spread and Lucca calmly sniffed the familiar scent. Even Willingham could smell the explosive and its aftermath—a mix of gunpowder, burned plastic, and charred weeds—but he figured Lucca had analyzed it down to the molecule.
“Well, that’s a fine send-off!” the Hummer driver said to his passengers as they jumped in. “No need for coffee this morning!”
And they set off down the dusty road to the outskirts of the Triangle of Death.
UDAY AND QUSAY HUSSEIN’S former riverside getaway property was larger than Willingham had expected. It looked to be about 450 yards long by 150 yards wide and extended to the banks of the Tigris River. If he used his imagination, he could see that it had once been a decent place, but during the four years since the brothers’ deaths, the sun and the heat had taken their toll, making it a faded, ghost-town version of its former self.
Despite its proximity to the river, there was almost no vegetation. The fronds on the dozen or so palm trees next to one of the outbuildings were now dry and a dead shade of gray. It looked to Willingham like they’d tried to stay alive for a while after the caretakers left but had just about lost the battle against the brutal heat. Even weeds didn’t seem to stand a chance, and the few that had emerged from the ground were long dead. Everything—the horse stables, the large main house, the smaller buildings, and all the roadways—was covered in powdery sand that reminded him of moondust.
Willingham and Lucca linked up with a squad whose job was to sweep the area for explosives. They started in the horse stables. They searched the two rooms attached to the stables, then the stables themselves. It was a concrete open-air stable building, and Willingham thought it didn’t seem like it would protect horses from the harsh heat. Then he realized being nice to horses was probably not a top priority for the Hussein brothers.
They searched the drained pool and then the house. Marble floors, thick sandy dust on every surface, empty rooms. Lucca nosed her way through, snuffling up dust here and there. Willingham wondered if the scent of the Hussein brothers still lingered, if their skin cells—humans shed about 50 million a minute—were still detectable, if Lucca was taking a private tour of the microscopic body flakes called scurf.
Can she smell evil?
WILLINGHAM AWOKE BEFORE dawn the next day on the roof of a compound a klick or so down the road. Most of the soldiers from the platoon crammed into rooms and hallways inside. The only guys on the roof with him were pulling security. At least up here there was plenty of real estate for him and Lucca, and it didn’t reek of bad Iraqi plumbing and soldier sweat.
No time had been wasted. They had already started pushing south, clearing roadsides and compounds as engineers and workers set about transforming the Hussein estate into the shored-up, walled-off Patrol Base Murray. Compound rooftops were likely to be Willingham’s bedroom for at least the next few days. He didn’t mind. The moon had set hours ago, and the sky was brilliant with stars. He enjoyed waking up under the gauzy stripe of the Milky Way.
They had a long day of clearing ahead, and he was hoping the platoon leader would ask them to go first into situations where a dog’s nose could be useful—to walk and point on the way through potentially dangerous areas. This is what he and Lucca were here for, after all, to keep these guys safe. But the platoon leader didn’t put them in any forward positions.
Willingham didn’t like it, but he understood. Most of these men had probably never worked with a dog team. Besides, those guys were soldiers; he and Lucca were marines. Trusting their lives to a stranger and his dog from another service wasn’t a decision to be made lightly. He knew he had to be patient, to show them what they could do, and wait for their chance.
The previous day during a break, he had put on a demo of Lucca’s capabilities, as he had done several times at FOB Falcon. He hid a couple of explosives scents and let her find them off leash with the quietest of commands.
“She’s like remote control,” one of the soldiers observed.
“That’s what dogs like her do. You all do everything you normally do. I’m just going to be an added asset to you,” Willingham told them. “I’m here to support you. I got the ability to walk on point, so we have the chance to detect an IED before we get to it. We can help search for caches. Lucca is a force multiplier. She can search a lot bigger area than soldiers can, in a faster time. She’s tr
ained to search roadways and buildings, vehicles and open areas. I’ve also got her trained up on some local odors, you know, explosives odors.
“She’s a great dog,” he finished. Then he remembered to add his rehearsed line, “But like all dogs, she’s proven, not perfect.”
That first day, there had been no caches, no IEDs, nothing to add to Lucca’s CV. But Willingham figured that in a place called the Triangle of Death, something was bound to show up sooner or later.
At 0600 the platoon linked up with another and continued south on “Route Gnat,” the main road from Arab Jabour to Baghdad, paved in places, but around here mostly compact dirt and rocks. They searched four or five compounds and the surrounding areas. When it started getting too hot—it was supposed to get up to 120 degrees—they firmed up in an abandoned compound until evening. Willingham stayed inside with Lucca for a couple of hours so she could rest and cool off from the morning’s search. Only the soldiers who were pulling security on the roof were outside.
Willingham chatted with soldiers in the house while Lucca lay on her side and enjoyed a steady stream of belly and side rubs from her admirers. It was too stifling to eat lunch, but Willingham forced himself to down the peanut butter and crackers from his MRE. He drank some water—warm and not refreshing—and offered Lucca more water in her portable bowl. He took her outside for a minute because she gave him the look that said it wouldn’t be a bad idea to take care of business now.
Back inside, she followed him up two short flights of stairs to the concrete compound’s flat roof. Willingham asked the five soldiers if they could use help pulling security. It wasn’t anything dog handlers were expected to do, but he wanted to be useful, to pull his own weight.
They were happy to have another set of eyes, and he set up a sector of fire that wasn’t as well covered by the others. They all faced different directions, keeping watch for trouble, weapons ready.
Lucca stretched downward-dog fashion, circled once, and settled herself in the shade of the three-foot wall that encircled the roof, lying on a mat Willingham had found in the compound. She put her head on her paws but didn’t sleep. For the next hour, she ticked her eyes from one soldier to the other, but mostly looked at the marine standing right next to her.
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