No Buddy Left Behind: Bringing U.S. Troops' Dogs and Cats Safely Home From the Combat Zone (28 page)

A sign that definitely gets your attention Bev Westerman

old red letters on the large white sign facing our vehicle read, "All Weapons Red at This Point. Lock and Load." This was no place to stop for a picnic.

Although Bev and I had been doing our best to see out the windows of our armored vehicle, after we entered the Red Zone we decided the floor looked pretty darn attractive. When your senses are on high alert, mortality becomes your only concern and time becomes distorted. The trip from BIAP to the SLG compound took less than twenty minutes, but it seemed as if an hour had passed before Harry announced we'd reached our destination.

Surrounded by fifteen-foot cement blast walls, miles of razor wire, and dozens of well-armed men, the block-long SLG compound was a dimly lit fortress. Four men stood with guns at the ready as we drove through the main gate. When we parked, I could just make out a garden courtyard to our left that led to the front door of a massive house. A single light bulb illuminated the entryway.

"We have a total of five villas," Harry explained as we followed him to the house. "They belonged to government ministers who worked for Saddam Hussein. When the war began, they either fled Iraq or were captured. The furnishings you'll see are what they left behind. If your taste leans toward ornate and oversized, you'll feel right at home."

Harry wasn't exaggerating. We entered a huge foyer with shining marble floors, walls, and a sweeping marble staircase outlined with gorgeous carved railings. The scale of everything symbolized the wealth of a chosen few who overindulged at the expense of less fortunate people during Saddam's regime. We followed Harry up to the third floor, where our room was located at the end the hall. We were relieved to discover that it came with air conditioning and had a modern bathroom right across the hall.

"Just a heads-up," Harry cautioned. "Don't drink the water out of the tap, and keep your mouths shut when you shower. When you brush your teeth or need a drink, we have plenty of bottled water downstairs, so help yourself."

Dropping our suitcases onto the beds, I asked Harry if we could see Tom, the sick cat. The last e-mail I had received from Doug said that Tom still wasn't well and had no appetite.

While Bev and Harry checked on Tom, I poked my head through the adjoining door to the operations center where Doug was communicating with one of the teams out on the road. He motioned for me to come in. As soon as Doug got off the phone, he jumped up from his desk and greeted me with a big hug.

"You made it!"

"Of course! Why would anyone pass up the opportunity to hang out in Baghdad for a few days? I've heard it's a great place to work on a

"You ladies better keep your skin covered," Doug laughed. "We've got enough to worry about here without you two getting arrested for immodesty."

"Darn! And I just bought a skimpy new bikini, too." In a war zone, sharing a few laughs is just as important as getting down to business.

"If you need to check your e-mails," Doug offered, "feel free to set up your computer in here. In fact, you can have that desk in the corner." He stood up and cleared some things from the dust-covered surface. "Heads up, though; the Internet here is slower than a onewinged mosquito. Between that and the power going on and off all day, you'll be doing good to get one e-mail sent. That's what happens when you pick a war zone for your vacation."

Before I could make a comeback comment, Bev called me from the other room.

"How's he doing?" I asked. Doug followed me through the door looking just as concerned as Bev and I felt. Bev was seated with a very sorry-looking Tom on her lap.

"He's really dehydrated," she said. "Harry just went to get some IV fluids."

After Harry got the IV drip going, Bev coaxed Tom into eating several bites of tuna that Doug had fetched from the kitchen. This seemed to perk him up, giving us hope that our patient would be okay. Bev stayed with Tom while I retrieved my computer and returned to the ops center. While the Internet took its time, I took in the layout of the all the equipment Doug used to communicate with the teams while they were out on missions.

So this is where all the planning happens.

As I sat waiting for my Outlook e-mail program to open, Doug maintained radio contact with the men on the road. In the midst of a sentence he said to the guy, "Hold on," then reached for the wastepaper basket and proceeded to throw up. He put the basket down and carried on with his conversation as if nothing was amiss.

When he finished that call, I asked, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, it's nothing. I just picked up the stomach flu. I'll live," he said, then grabbed the waste basket and puked again.

"Don't you think you should be in bed?"

"There's only one person to sit in this seat at any given time," Doug explained patiently. "And the guys out on the road depend on whoever is here. It's the difference between them coming back in one piece or not showing up at all. Don't worry, Terri. One day and a wakeup, and I'll be on R&R; I'll get a chance to rest up then."

Talk about dedication, I thought.

When Outlook finally opened, I began scanning e-mails that had come in since I had left Kuwait. I stopped at one from Dave Lusk that he'd tagged as "urgent."

May 30, 2008

Terri,

I hate to hit you with this, but the list of requirements for transitioning animals through Paris is attached, and frankly, it's a bureaucratic nightmare. Please correspond with Lynda Baumann, our bilingual coordinator at FedEx, ASAP. It is better if you work directly with her so she can pass the requested information on to the French veterinary officials. In the meantime, I don't think we should move the animals until we get this latest hurdle resolved.

- Dave

That last line of his e-mail stopped me in my tracks. As I read through the list of questions and requirements, my heart began to pound. One of the items-an Iraqi sanitary certificate-I'd never heard of. I researched it on the Internet, and when I learned the purpose of this document, I couldn't believe the French were asking us to submit it. This requirement made no sense.

Just then Bev walked into the ops center. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"The French have sent a list of requirements in order to get the animals through Paris."

"What are they?"

"Each animal has to have an Iraqi sanitary certificate, written in French, a vaccination certificate, a tattoo or microchip, and a rabies antibody test, completed by a certified laboratory. Here is the clincher-they want to unload the animals in Paris and take them to the animal holding area for veterinary inspection, which will take several hours and means our flight would have to leave without us."

Bev was speechless.

"Not only that, but the Iraqi sanitary certificate turns out to be a process for verifying that the animals have been raised in sanitary conditions, making them suitable for human consumption."

"But we aren't using them for food! That's ridiculous."

"I know. I'm not even going to waste my time on that one. Luckily FedEx has Lynda Baumann liaising on our behalf with the French. I'm sure she'll make them see how unnecessary that demand is."

"What about the microchips?" Bev asked.

"Some of the animals already have them. For the ones that don't, I'll call Linette to see if she can deliver microchips to the Kuwait airport in time for tomorrow night's Gryphon flight." Linette had come to my rescue before when the problem with my debit card had left me stranded with two dogs at the Kuwait airport.

"When the SLG team goes to process passengers on tomorrow night's incoming flight from Kuwait, the Gryphon flight attendant can hand over the microchips, and the SLG men could bring them back to us. All we'll need to do then is find someone to inject them."

"How are you going to handle the antibody test?" Bev asked. "If I'm not mistaken, in the States, it takes as long as twenty-one days to get the results back. Should we have to stay in Iraq for that long, it will be too hot to move animals by the time we get the results."

"That's why we need to go to Dubai," I said. "We have a much greater chance of getting the test done there, and if we do have to stay in the Middle East through the summer, there are more resources at our disposal in Dubai than here in Iraq."

"That makes sense."

"Let's just hope everyone at FedEx agrees and lets us go."

I put aside thoughts of French demands while Bev gave a report on all the animals she had just been introduced to. So far eight dogs and Tom the cat had arrived at the SLG compound. When Bev finished her update, she asked about Mama Leesa's history.

"Never have I seen a dog as beaten down and ready to give up as she is. It breaks my heart to imagine what she must have been through. I wonder what happened to her."

"I've got some of her story here," I said and searched on my computer for the e-mail that Mama Leesa's owner had sent. A Captain had submitted one of the most riveting appeals I had ever received. "Here it is, Bev. Read this."

In March 2008 I was assigned to be an advisor at the Iraqi Police Training Center. Outside the employee housing units and the nearby dining facility, a river of waste runs from the drains and flows through a junkyard situated beyond the compound. That junkyard was where I came upon a filthy, emaciated Saluki-mix dog that had given birth to beautiful puppies. Over the next few days, my interpreter and I managed to sneak food from our dining facility and left it for her. He named our new friend "Mama Leesa."

She had a hard job taking care of those pups. On no less than five occasions, I witnessed her wading chest-deep into that watery effluence to retrieve a puppy before it drowned. Each time I went out with a tub of clean water to wash the disgusting filth off her and the pups. Finally I located some fencing material and built a barrier to keep the pups confined until I could devise a plan to get Mama Leesa and her family somewhere safe.

A vet tech at the K-9 center suggested giving the pups to various farmers he had become acquainted with while treating their livestock. A few of them expressed interest in acquiring a pup and training it to protect their livestock. Unfortunately, no one was interested in taking an adult female dog. When I told my wife about Mama Leesa, she agreed without hesitation to keep her if we could find a way to transport her home.

Because of the no-strays policy at the training facility, once word got out about what I was doing, a privately contracted animal-kill team was dispatched to the camp. I couldn't let the vector control group kill Mama Leesa and her pups. With the help of a former British Special Forces Sergeant nicknamed "Rocky," I devised a plan to save them. Rocky supervised the gate guards, so he knew when the contracted killers were expected to arrive.

As soon as he saw the vector control trucks approaching, Rocky called my cell phone. The vet tech, my interpreter, and I grabbed the pups and loaded them into cardboard boxes. We had just enough time to hide them in the bushes, and Mama Leesa stood guard over them until the kill-team passed through the gate. On Rocky's signal, we each picked up a box of pups and casually strolled out the security checkpoint and down toward the vet tech's waiting vehicle, with Mama Leesa bringing up the rear of our fugitive party.

Something caused the kill-team supervisor to turn around before we got out of sight. He called out and ordered us to stop, but Rocky told us to keep going and turned to ask the supervisor what the problem was. We stepped up our pace, but Mama Leesa kept looking over her shoulder at the ensuing argument with a worried look on her face.

Suddenly, without warning, Mama Leesa galloped back through the gate, past the kill-team on a dead run, barking all the way. The kill-team forgot about us and pursued the decoy mother, giving us time to run down to the vet tech's vehicle and whisk the pups off to safety.

After we delivered all but one of her pups to their new homes, we returned to the training facility, expecting to hear bad news about Mama Leesa. When we got back, however, Rocky told us she had escaped the kill team. I searched all her old haunts, but there was no sign of her. By now the temperature had risen to one hundred-plus degrees. I had to go to the K-9 facility, some five miles away, to check on the police dogs' water, so I took the last remaining puppy and drove off.