THE SUN WAS low, and the evening comfortable. The way the birds were singing, if you closed your eyes you could be in a lush English garden having tea. Palm trees rustled in the light breeze behind the concrete T-walls. But the memorial at FOB Kalsu on July 12 for Corporal Kory D. Wiens—he had received a posthumous promotion—brought little comfort to Willingham. He listened to officers and his kennel master from Slayer talk about what a great soldier, handler, and man Wiens was, and what a perfect team he made with Cooper. But as he sat in his folding chair, one thought would not leave him.
I’m the one who got him killed. This wonderful person everyone loved, I’m responsible for his death. I’m the reason they’re all here.
The firing of volleys, then “Taps” played from a recording—the ceremony brought tears almost all around.
Willingham sat by Knight—one of many handlers flown in for the memorial. They faced a little bench that held the usual heartbreaking downrange memorial arrangement—combat boots, a helmet, flags, a Purple Heart, and a photo of Wiens and Cooper. Willingham’s weight loss was noticeable to Knight. He was worried about him. After the memorial, Willingham told Knight about his guilt, how he couldn’t shake it and didn’t think he ever deserved to get rid of it—an albatross he tied to his own neck.
“You didn’t do anything wrong. You did not get him killed,” Knight tried his best to reassure him. “There’s nothing you can do about it. It was God’s will. Every person that was that perfect always dies. Like God comes and says, ‘OK, you pass, come on up!’”
Willingham looked at him and nodded.
“You know,” Knight continued, looking up to the darkening sky, “I’m always gonna keep some little part of me a sinner.”
OF THE THIRTY-SEVEN dogs lined up outside the Faith Evangelical Free Church in Dallas, Oregon, on July 18, not one barked, growled, or whined as they stood at their handlers’ sides during the ninety-minute service in Wiens’s hometown. To Danielle Roche, it seemed like the dogs—army, navy, air force, marines, and police—knew what they were here for and were paying their last respects to a fellow dog and his handler.
Roche had been back home on a short R & R break in Texas when she got the phone call. She felt as if someone had gut punched her, leaving her with no breath. She collapsed into a chair. The next days were a blur of phone calls, travel arrangements, and raw emptiness. She spoke at a memorial at Fort Leonard Wood, and now she was here, in front of this packed church, in her Class A uniform. She looked out at Wiens’s father and brothers—one brother could have been his twin—and had to pause to collect herself as she finished her eulogy.
“Corporal Wiens always consistently wanted to be a better soldier and person even if the road was long and narrow. I never discovered why he was so hungry. I never discovered what he was so hungry for, or why he pushed himself so hard, but this was Corporal Wiens. He pushed himself to be the best. He wanted to be the best. If you know Corporal Wiens and think about the way he was, you’d realize that this was the way he was in all aspects of his life. . . .
“It’s very reassuring to know that Wiens and Cooper are together, and continue to dance in heaven. May God bless Corporal Wiens and Cooper.”
THE CREMATED REMAINS of Wiens and Cooper were buried together at Salt Creek Cemetery after a last ride with a long police entourage and the Patriot Guard Riders escorting them on motorcycles. Wiens’s father was given a small box containing some of the ashes from his son and Cooper, mixed together as he requested, “because they were inseparable in life and in death,” he said. He brought them home with him and placed them in a special memorial cabinet in the living room of his double-wide trailer, so he could be with them every day.
FOB FALCON HAD never felt so lonely to Willingham, even back in those first days when he was the only dog handler. Wiens’s belongings had been inventoried and cleared out of the tent shortly after he died. Willingham happened to be there when the lieutenant came in to do the job. He helped out. As Willingham called out his friend’s personal belongings, the lieutenant documented them on a form.
“Three T-shirts.”
Check.
“Five pairs of socks.”
Check.
“Seven dog toys.”
He paused, took a breath.
Check.
Other than Cooper’s toys, the rest of the items could have been almost anyone’s, so he tried not to think about whose they were. All the photos and videos Willingham had taken were on disks, so he didn’t have to face them. The belongings inventoried, they were locked up, tagged, and prepared to ship home.
And now there were two new handlers here. Good guys, but they weren’t Wiens and Cooper. He had to help the handlers get up to speed. He had them train on local odors, gave them tips on the best search techniques for what lay ahead. He checked out how they worked in real scenarios.
He was lonelier than ever.
One handler froze when he ventured outside the wire with Willingham, not far from where Wiens had been killed. His dog waited for him, but the guy couldn’t move. It was as if his boots were made of iron and the earth under him was a strong magnet. The only way he could proceed was if Willingham led the way to the objective, telling him to step where he was stepping. And even then, the handler was sweating.
He had passed the validation process at Baghdad, but that was a controlled situation, no real IEDs, no chance of death. The ultimate test was outside the wire. Most handlers couldn’t wait to get out. Every handler was supposed to be ready. But it wasn’t for everyone. Willingham was glad that FOBs also needed handlers inside the gate checking vehicles.
The other dog team was strong, ready to go. But Willingham didn’t want that dog or handler going out, either. He was driven by the idea that he would not let anyone get hurt again.
Knight had told him, “It’s not your fault. You did nothing wrong.” He repeated the sentences in his head, but they were just words. They didn’t change emotional realities. Instead of sending the strong dog team off on missions they were fully capable of handling, he tried to take many of them himself. There was always a reason. He had to get Lucca back up to speed after being idle for a while. Or there was some stuff on this mission he’d seen before and he needed to be the one to deal with it. He sent them out on a few easy missions, with trepidation, and was relieved when they came back unscathed.
After Wiens died, Willingham wanted to put it to al-Qaeda more than ever, and this section of the Triangle of Death was providing plenty of opportunity. It felt good to keep busy. Focusing on bombs prevented him from going to dark places, at least while he was out there. On missions, he was like Lucca, completely attuned to the surroundings. He was one with the mission, one with Lucca.
But then the orders came in. He was to leave FOB Falcon for a month and go to FOB Kalsu, where Wiens had been based before coming up to FOB Falcon and Patrol Base Murray. They had been counting on Wiens coming back and needed another handler. From what Wiens had told him, the action down there had been nothing compared to what was going on with Operation Marne Torch. Willingham felt like someone was taking pity on him, giving him an easy rotation. It was the opposite of what he wanted.
As he packed up his and Lucca’s gear, anger welled up in him. He didn’t want a break. He wanted to be where the action was, where he and Lucca could do what they needed to do. As if reading his thoughts, Lucca came and sat down next to the cot, where he was folding the Marine Corps flag into a small square so it wouldn’t get wrinkled in his duffel. She stared at him, eyes calm and steady. He relaxed a little.
“OK, Lucca. Got it, ma’am. Charlie Mike—continue mission.”
7
The Way Back
ONE MINUTE OUT!” the Chinook pilot yelled to the crewman above the engine noise and whop-whop-whop of the twin rotors.
“One minute out!” the crewman shouted to the two soldiers closest to him. The soldiers, sitting in two ro
ws facing each other along the sides of the bird, shouted the time alert down the line. The helicopter was flying blacked out, no lights inside or out, so the soldiers could see each other only through their night-vision goggles (NVGs), making everyone look bright green.
“Ten seconds!” the crewman yelled. No time for anyone else to yell. The closest soldier put his hand on the knee of the next, who put his hand on the knee of the next, and the chain reaction went to the end within a few seconds.
The Chinook touched down hard in the farm field. Thirty soldiers from the 501st Airborne Infantry Regiment jolted, got their legs, and poured out into the night.
This was the first air assault mission for Willingham and Lucca. He adjusted her Doggles over her eyes, held her leather leash looped in his hand, and tried to keep her out of everyone’s way while holding his M4, running down the ramp, and bolting over the uneven field through the dust and debris kicked up by the rotors. He and Lucca fanned out to their position. They had practiced this dozens of times. He’d lie down quickly on his stomach and keep his weapon at the ready, and she’d lie low right beside him.
But as he was going prone, he felt the smooth leather yank out of his hand. He realized the rotor wash must have spooked Lucca. He looked frantically around through the cloud of rapidly spiraling dirt and debris and caught sight of Lucca running away. He called to her, but the noise from the helicopter lifting off drowned him out. Within seconds all he could see was the infrared Cyalume ChemLight he’d attached to her harness. Its white-green glow was visible only through NVGs, and he watched it get smaller until it disappeared. His eyes desperately searched the green horizon for any clue of her whereabouts.
“All right, K-9, let’s go over here!” the squad leader called as some of the soldiers were forming up after the bird flew off.
Willingham couldn’t just go up to him and say, “I’m the new dog handler here, but funny thing—I don’t have a dog. She just ran off in the middle of Iraq on my first mission with you guys.” What to do?
“OK, K-9, you up?”
He didn’t want to think of what could happen to Lucca, alone in hostile territory. At least the enemy couldn’t see her ChemLight, as long as they weren’t wearing NVGs. But no way he was leaving her out there by herself. He jogged over to tell the squad leader what was going on, to admit his error, but the guy was busy talking to a couple of soldiers.
Willingham couldn’t take his eyes off the spot where he had last seen Lucca. He thought he saw something move. A speck, almost a mist, then a tiny white-green glow, now moving up and down. He held his breath. Under the glow of the ChemLight on top of her harness, he made out the shape of Lucca about two hundred feet away, nose down, tracking her way back to him.
“Lucca! Come!”
She lifted her head, looked toward where she heard his voice, and dashed straight to Willingham. As he bent down to hug her and stroke her head, she wagged so hard that her entire hind end wiggled, just like when they’d first met. She was panting hard.
“I feel exactly the same, Mama Lucca,” he said, and he praised her up for coming back. She briefly stopped panting, came close to his face, and seemed like she was going to plant one on his cheek. But not being a big kisser, she refrained and went back to panting.
He vowed that from then on, he would attach her leash to a carabiner on his vest before air assault missions. Chinooks for Dog Handlers 101. He’d have to pass that little tip to other handlers.
The whole incident had taken maybe two minutes. Two long, long minutes. No one else had even noticed what happened. He grabbed her leash and reported for duty.
WHEN WILLINGHAM ARRIVED at FOB Kalsu the previous day, he could see immediately that this was nothing like the “give the poor guy a break” venue he’d been dreading. The place was alive with missions coming and going.
A new operation—Marne Avalanche—was getting under way here. The area around FOB Kalsu was similar to Arab Jabour before Marne Torch: an al-Qaeda refuge laced with weapons caches, protected by IEDs, and with very little military intervention for months. And it was within the Triangle of Death.
Just the kind of territory Willingham wanted.
Instead of doing the kind of clearance ops they had done along Route Gnat, he learned that most of his and Lucca’s work would involve nighttime air assaults, targeting people or places intel showed to be important to al-Qaeda. Chinooks would do fast offloads a few klicks from an objective, and then he, Lucca, and the soldiers would walk in formation, usually through farm fields, to get there.
The fields had proven safe from IEDs, since they were far off the beaten path. So Willingham and Lucca would search roadways only at points where the soldiers would cross over, and other areas along the way where there could be a danger of explosives. They’d all arrive at the objective with an element of surprise, and dirty boots. Once there, he and Lucca would search exteriors and interiors of compounds and afterward make sure there were no newly planted IEDs on the way back to the Chinook pickup area—which was never the same as the drop-off, just in case.
There would be no tent mates here. No tent, even. He and Lucca had their own containerized housing unit, CHU. Four walls, a bed, and a little desk and chair. It was little more than a shipping container made livable, with a couple of small windows. But the living area felt absolutely luxurious compared with Patrol Base Murray and was a step up from FOB Falcon.
Since missions usually lasted several hours, not days, he was at the FOB more than he’d been at Falcon. He got to talk to Jill regularly and kept in touch with Knight. Part of him wanted to talk to them about how he continued to be haunted by the loss of Wiens and Cooper, how their deaths crept into his CHU at night and kept him awake, tormenting him with the what-ifs, causing him to imagine all the ways it could have ended differently, without sending them off in body bags.
He wanted to tell someone about the enormous guilt that clung to him. But he wouldn’t be convinced it wasn’t his fault, and Knight and Jill would try, so why bring it up?
He wondered if Lucca missed Cooper—if the scent in the morgue told her it was over, or if she was still waiting for him to come bounding through the door with a smile on his face and a flabby football in his mouth.
ANOTHER NIGHT OP starting. He was ready. Willingham and Lucca ran toward the compound door. She swiftly sniffed its seams. Nothing. They stepped to the side, and two soldiers behind them kicked down the door and entered the compound. Several soldiers followed, rifles drawn.
From outside, Willingham heard the commotion of the “hard knock” mission. He knew it well by now, after a couple of weeks of nighttime air assault missions for high-value targets, HVTs. The men they were seeking weren’t the former teenage delinquents who planted IEDs and terrorized the locals. They were more the brains behind the insurgent operations—some in charge of IED production, others funding it, some coming up with intricate plans to foil, or destroy, coalition forces.
He bent down to pet Lucca as he heard the now familiar sounds: The soldiers who knew some basic Arabic shouting instructions to the home’s occupants. The pounding footsteps of military-age males being separated from the others and led to an area outside the compound. The explanation of why they were here, the request to please cooperate. The women and children inside, some crying, the soldiers telling them in their limited Arabic—but mostly simply through a much gentler tone of voice—not to be scared. The interpreters helping with communications.
As soon as the people were secured in their areas, Lucca and Willingham set to work, searching each room for explosives. In these situations, the goods could be hidden in walls or even secret rooms. Tonight they found nothing, so they went back outside as others in his team started their detailed hand search of every room, looking for intel.
On this mission, they were after a man in his twenties who was responsible for the financial side of an IED-making operation. Willingham had been tol
d after his search that none of the men here matched the photos of the man they were seeking. That meant hours of questioning of the others and intel inspections to see if they could determine where he was. And that meant a long night of nothing to do for Lucca and Willingham, whose job was over until they headed to where the Chinook would pick up the squads at the end of the mission.
He didn’t like the waiting business. Never did, but especially not since Wiens had been killed. He wanted to keep busy, to use his and Lucca’s time to stop the enemy before they could hurt anyone else. It would be at least three hours before the soldiers were done with the intel gathering. He looked at Lucca, who was lying down at his feet.
“Lucca, you want to find some weapons?”
She sprang up, wagging at a mellow clip, eyes cast up to his.
It would be too dangerous to search for weapons on their own, at night, on the property of a man known to be in deep with al-Qaeda. So he put together a four-man fire team. The soldiers were also happy to have something to do. They’d have his back while he focused on watching Lucca and guiding her by voice through the dark.
They started at the back side of the property, which led to a large farm field. The fire team was spread out about ten steps behind him. Lucca, off leash now, walked in front.
“Lucca, left!” Willingham didn’t have to say it loudly. The sounds from the house had died down, and the night air was heavy and quiet. Lucca turned left and searched for about twenty yards.
“Lucca, right!” She changed directions. Her nose guided her through the rough, dry field, but she would have no problem seeing at night, since dogs have strong night vision. The humans on the mission had to wear NVGs to see. They all kept pushing ahead, angling across the field. Willingham doubted they’d find anything, but it was better than sitting around with nothing to do all night.
They were about twenty yards from a large canal when Willingham saw Lucca throw a change of behavior—and not the usual. Willingham didn’t know what to make of it at first. He watched as she stopped and lowered her head, staring in the direction of the canal. He could almost hear her think.
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