Having gotten some in Iraq myself, I can offer direct testimony to the power that IEDs have on the psyche of any soldier. “Inside the wire,” on base, life in an active battle zone is still fraught with threats. You may be watching a movie, catching up on e-mail, or trying to enjoy a meal, but the sounds of air-raid sirens, mortar fire, and the general mayhem that surrounds wartime activity in a particularly hot zone are constant reminders that “safety” is a relative term and that its parameters are very, very fluid. Outside the wire, to borrow a phrase from another war, that sense that no place is truly safe is among “the things we carry.” Every step you take, one question is on your mind: Am I going to blow up?
The only thing I can compare to that feeling of being on the ground hustling during those operations goes back to my childhood in Iowa. In the winter, we used to play a lot of pond hockey. Our “rinks” weren’t any kind of Zamboni-ed surface. We were so eager to play that we often went out when better sense would have told us to stay home. You’d place a skate on the edges of those ponds and hear that zinging, cracking sound as the ice settled, and a spiderweb of fractures moved out from your position. Still, you took another step forward, got both skates on the surface and headed out, wondering the whole time if you were going to fall through. Obviously, the stakes were much higher in Iraq, the impending sense of doom magnified, the gut-churning disquiet more persistent. For days on end, as they turned into weeks and months, that anxiety was your constant companion. Though I never was operational with a canine team, from what I’ve been told by those who were, nothing can eliminate that feeling entirely, but having a dog doing detection work in advance of your steps makes it a hell of lot easier to plant your feet firmly and move forward with that question a whisper and not a shout.
So far, the stories that you’ve read in this book are from handlers who deployed downrange with dogs that I have trained and known for several years. Because of the timing of my departure from the SEAL Teams and the time it took to get dogs that met the SOF standards we had in mind, as well as the navy’s attempts to source dogs from other canine units, it wasn’t until 2007 that our first dog went into Iraq. This next incredible story is that of a dog named Poncho, which was a throwback to one of the author’s favorite dogs. He had been picked up from a breeder overseas, and he was a little more than three years old when he was first brought in. Poncho was one of the more laid-back dogs, definitely not a spinner or a prodigious barker when kenneled, and that suited him to this particular operation.
Poncho and his handler, who is still on active duty, were assigned to an SOF unit operating just outside of Fallujah in early 2007. During the first three months prior to their arrival, 257 Coalition soldiers had been killed by IEDs, and another 1,485 had been wounded. Those are the highest numbers for that year, and the monthly totals of 76, 98, and 83 are the three highest KIA numbers reported in Iraq. Tensions were obviously high, the insurgents were incredibly active (in all of Iraq, the reported number of insurgent attacks rose to their highest levels), and the operational tempo was essentially nonstop. In addition to the IED factor, ambushes were prevalent, but between 62 and 64 percent of U.S. losses in that span were IED related, while enemy fire accounted for between 12 and 4 percent of the combat deaths in those three months.3
Simply put, Poncho and his handler entered into a shit storm of nonstop, tit-for-tat action. As a community, counter-IED operations were of primary importance. I’ve already cited some of the detection statistics, but that’s only one prong of the attack. Apprehending or neutralizing insurgents, dismantling IED bomb-factory networks, and disrupting funding for those explosive-making operations were also part of the all-encompassing approach to stopping IEDs. Poncho and his handler, along with six other SOF unit operators, were inserted into an area to do Recon and Surveillance (R&S) of an area considered to have a high potential for IED placement. This was not, then, in the strictest sense, the kind of clearing operation you’ve read about from the other handlers.
The team was made up of the officer in charge (OIC) and his communications officer, two automatic weapons operators bearing M-60 auto machine guns firing 7.62 mm rounds. For extra security and to offer long-range protection for the point man and the handler and dog, two snipers rounded out the team. Unlike the other patrol operations that I’ve shared with you, these guys were tasked with holing up in a location where they could observe enemy action. These kinds of monitoring operations may sound far less taxing than a sweep covering dozens of kilometers, and that’s true in terms of footsteps walked, but for the dogs’ inactivity—sitting still and quiet so as not to reveal their position—it is often more exhausting or difficult for them. These are high-energy dogs, and being asked to sit patiently, especially when geared up and seeing their humans similarly action-ready, is not something they are accustomed to or like. Fortunately, Poncho, being one of the more laid-back dogs, was ideally suited to this kind of operation, which generally lasted anywhere from thirty-six to forty-eight hours. For some dogs, the assault or raid—the go-in, kick-ass, take-names, come-out activity—better suits their nature. Poncho was certainly capable of that, but also of this more measured kind of activity.
The team established 360-degree-perimeter security, everyone hunkered down and basically on watch. The insurgents used two methods primarily to detonate their IEDs. And those explosives ranged from antitank rounds and 105 mm artillery shells they’d buried and would remotely detonate, to homemade explosives, or HMEs, often made from ammonium nitrate. The other type of detonator was a pressure plate, sensitive enough that a human stepping on that plate could trigger the explosion.
With the first detonation method, a lookout has to be present to see the approaching vehicles and time the detonation to maximize the damage. Generally, the insurgents hid in a high, elevated place from which they had both a good view and the best chance of escaping to a safe location.
A day into their R&S operation, the team observed a NATO vehicle patrol moving through the area. The team also saw movement just beyond a rocky outcropping that dotted what more than one solider has described as something appearing very much like the surface of the moon. Anytime a vehicle was in motion, it was vulnerable to attack. Detecting that other movement, about two hundred yards from the SOF team’s position, wasn’t enough to prevent the lookout from detonating the IED. After the explosion, they did see the insurgent run to a nearby moped. He hopped aboard and started to speed off.
Once he was given the reviere command, Poncho lit out after the insurgent, who had a several-hundred-yard head start and was also on a moving vehicle—albeit a somewhat slow one. Due to the angle and elevation that the team was at, the insurgent was immediately out of weapons range. Another complicating factor was that as fluid as rules of engagement tended to be, and as much as the team wanted to adhere to them, their 99 percent certainty that the man on the moped was the same man who detonated the IED wasn’t sufficient enough to justify shooting him. Without Poncho being with them, this would have been another case of a bad guy getting away.
Poncho soon ate up the distance between his original position and the fleeing insurgent. Ignoring the moped and focusing solely on the fact that something was moving at a high rate of speed, which he had been commanded to go get, Poncho dipped down a knoll and out of sight. The team mobilized and did a hasty leapfrog patrol in pursuit of the man on the moped and the dog. They arrived at the top of the knoll just in time to see Poncho grab the insurgent by the back of the right calf, clamp on, put on his brakes, and pull the man from the moped, which cartwheeled a couple of times before coming to a stop. The team continued their pursuit while Poncho continued to hold on to and punish the screaming and dazed insurgent. The team rolled up on them and then apprehended and secured their prisoner after Poncho was released from his target to get his second reward of that day—a long tug-of-war session with Dad.
The humans’ reward was that the man being held did have a trigger on him, and he was detained, questioned, and gave u
p some valuable intelligence. He was also out of the conflict for the duration.
Poncho’s maturity and athleticism—he was indeed moving at thirty-plus miles per hour in order to catch a vehicle moving at somewhere around eighteen miles per hour—combined in this case for the best possible outcome, given that an IED was detonated. Obviously, the most desirable outcome would have been for that IED to have been detected prior to the convoy moving through the area, but with miles and miles of desolate roads and the threat of car bombs and sniper activity in the crowded urban areas, no one could be at the right place at the right time every time to prevent these incidents from happening.
At the height of Operation Iraqi Freedom, more than 163,000 troops had boots on the ground. Originally, our troop level commitment in Afghanistan was much lower until March of 2009, when it hovered around 30,000 and even at its height, in May of 2011, there were approximately 100,000 U.S. soldiers there. Though fewer soldiers were in country, as you might expect, as troop levels rose, so did the number of IED incidents reported. For example, as we committed more troops throughout the period from May 2009 to May 2010, the number of incidents in those two representative months went from 513 to 1,128 according to JIEDDO figures. August of 2009 was the worst month for casualties, with 55 killed and 333 injured by IEDs.4
It was during this period of heightened activity that a dog named Kwinto and his handler were downrange in Afghanistan in the Logar administrative district, between the cities of Kabul and Pul-e ‘Alam. Kabul had been among the first cities in Afghanistan to be freed from the Taliban’s grip in 2001. The Northern Alliance, U.S. special forces groups, and British and American air support, in a combined effort, routed them from the city. It became the capital of first the Afghan Transitional Administration and now the present government of Hamid Karzai. At the time of Kwinto and his handler’s deployment, a NATO-led force was in charge of security within the city, but in the transition, the control of that function was turned over to the Afghan National Security Force (ANSF).
As the seat of the government, Kabul obviously was of strategic importance, and though the Taliban no longer controlled the ancient city, they were actively attempting to disrupt governmental and economic activity through the use of acts of terrorism. That continues to be the case, as Kabul International Airport, the U.S. embassy, NATO headquarters, and many other sites have been targeted by suicide bombs and car bombs.
Kwinto and the team he was assigned to had an area of operation that was not densely populated and not in a mountainous region. Instead, it was a mix of scattered palm groves, agricultural fields, and small villages. The Taliban and its supporters, along with suspected members of Al-Qaeda, had reestablished themselves within various compounds. Based on recent intelligence, Kwinto’s team was to conduct a nighttime assault on one such compound.
Kwinto was only three and half years old at the time of the raid. That’s relatively young, but he was also a veteran of one other deployment prior to this. Whereas Poncho was ideally suited to the kind of sit-and-wait tempo of the R&S operation, Kwinto damn sure was not. A high-energy dog with an ear-piercing bark an octave or more higher than you’d expect from a dog his size—something that nearly everyone commented on, comparing him to an enormous linebacker in football with a high-pitched squeak of a voice—he had started out to be a real handful. Initially, he’d had some trouble going after his handler and our training staff, but he’d gotten over that and proved to be a very capable dog.
This was, of course, not Kwinto’s first time on an operation like this. He had earned some distinction with another SEAL element on his first deployment. Under similar circumstances, he’d lead a nighttime raid when his handler noticed him responding to human odor and released him. Kwinto proceeded to charge through an area of heavy foliage. Two enemy soldiers, who had been secreted in a grape-field trench, began moving toward a position where fifteen other SEAL Team members were. They were carrying AK-47s and were likely about to ambush the other SEALs. The handler immediately engaged the first armed enemy from a range of approximately three feet and then the second from another ten feet. Both were killed. Throughout that engagement, the handler was in verbal contact with both his dog and his fellow team members. After that brief engagement, they investigated more fully and saw that the two dead Taliban members’ weapons were off safety and that they were carrying communications radios. Prior to this, this SEAL element had already apprehended more than a dozen Taliban possibles as they were infiltrating the area via motorcycles. Kwinto and that SEAL element had clearly been very busy.
After having been deployed before, Kwinto had developed a sense of when he was going to be asked to get into the game. Like that football player before kickoff sitting at his locker with his leg bouncing in nervous anticipation, Kwinto was a pacer. A “circler” might be a better way to describe his preferred method of moving around. Five steps forward, right-hand turn, five steps, and another right-hand turn. Repeat as necessary. Whenever his handler brought out Kwinto’s tactical vest, that was the routine. That Kwinto did just that in the hours before the operation began was a good sign. As other handlers do, Kwinto’s handler was on the lookout for any changes in his dog’s behavior that might signal some kind of anxiety. As it turned out, Kwinto was good to go, mentally.
Before he put the vest on Kwinto, his handler did another kind of pre-op check, as he did before and after every mission. Though in the minds of the handlers a dog is not a piece of equipment, they do pay the same kind attention to its operational functionality and maintenance of parts as they would a weapon or a vehicle.
He ran his hands along the dog’s body, checking for any sign of cysts, knots, open sores, or any other kind of irregularity. He paid particular attention to Kwinto’s joints, especially his elbows (where the humerus, radius, and ulna intersect) and shoulders (the joint connecting the scapula and the humerus), checking for signs of wear and tear. A dog’s rear legs, especially ones as powerful as a dog like Kwinto’s, put a lot of pressure on the stifle, or knee. Their quadriceps muscles are especially well developed, but unlike in humans, who have fairly well-developed calves to establish some kind of muscular balance, dogs have little muscle from the bottom of the patella to the paw. The handler also examined Kwinto’s paws, making sure that he didn’t have any cracked nails and that his digital, metacarpal, and carpal pads were all in good condition. The carpal pads, the ones highest up on the dog’s foreleg, are especially important; they rarely make contact with the ground and don’t develop the same kind of callous-type hardness, because they are mostly used when negotiating very steep slopes. Kwinto showed no signs at all of any discomfort when being palpated and otherwise manipulated.
The briefing had been precise and the objective clear, coordinates for a specific set point once they were within the compound were laid out, as well as the route they would take into the area of operation. All that was left to do beforehand was to wait for night to fall. Kwinto paced briefly before settling down at his handler’s feet, where he sat wide-eyed and watching. One of the main concerns about the operation was that the soldiers’ egress into the compound required them to cover a lot of open ground. The advantage of that was the relative ease and speed with which they could negotiate the three-plus kilometers they would travel on foot. The disadvantage was that there was not a great deal of concealment. If they should encounter the enemy, they could potentially be in a more exposed position than any of them would like. They would have to employ a series of carefully orchestrated movements in radio silence in order to reach their target.
During nighttime operations, dogs have an advantage over humans, even when those humans are wearing night-vision apparatus, as this SEAL platoon was. Because compared to humans, dogs have more rods in their eyes—the more prevalent of the two photoreceptors in the retina that are more sensitive but don’t conduct color perception—they see better at night. In addition, another anatomical difference, the presence of the tapetum lucidum—a reflective surface behin
d the retina that redirects light back at that membrane and acts much like film in a camera—further enhances their nighttime vision capability. If you’ve ever seen your dog at night facing a light source and seen that glow coming from its eyes, that phenomenon is the result of the tapetum lucidum being present.
Like all dogs, Kwinto was equally comfortable operating at night as he was during the day. That night, his handler tactically lead the SEAL element into that large open area, using a boxing technique specific for these types of searches. When the element came to a channelized area, a sector where streams of water had been diverted, the patrol stopped and a patrol leader’s order was issued directing the SEALs to their positions in the event of contact. Despite Kwinto’s past tendency to vocalize quite a bit, he was over that, and with his handler out on point, the team moved forward silently and swiftly. Though there was a quarter moon, Kwinto’s tawny coat was less reflective than a dog’s with more black would have been.
As the patrol infiltrated farther, Kwinto frantically began to inhale and feather his tail, indicating that he was in odor. His handler stopped the patrol. All fifteen of the men ceased their forward movement. Based on Kwinto’s posture and orientation, the handler determined that the hit was directly in front of them, likely in a large culvert that directed the flow of water from one channel perpendicular to another. Because this was a raid and not a clearing operation, they didn’t take the time to substantiate that suspected explosive immediately. The decision was made to alter their route. No EOD personnel were there with them, and that further justified simply marking/noting that position and rerouting.
After the operation was completed, the EOD did investigate that suspected location. Kwinto was correct. A large IED, one capable of producing an explosion large enough to likely have killed or wounded all fifteen of that SEAL element, was hidden inside that culvert. If it weren’t for the presence of Kwinto and his handler, the operation could have become known more widely for the significant number of casualties it incurred. As it turns out, that was just the first of Kwinto’s hits that night.
Trident K9 Warriors: My Tale From the Training Ground to the Battlefield With Elite Navy SEAL Canines Page 22
