From Baghdad with Love by Jay Kopelman (a court of thorns and roses ebook free .TXT) 📕

push my feet to the end. It’s Lava, who managed to crawl in during the middle of the night and curl up at the bottom in a ball.

“Oh man. This has got to stop.”

He snores away, and I don’t want to disturb him because it’s still too early to get up, so as I lie there enjoying the warmth of his breath on my feet, General Order 1-A starts tangoing around in my head.

Prohibited activities for service members under General Order 1-A include adopting as pets or mascots, caring for or feeding any type of domestic or wild animals. While most of the Marines sleeping around me would admit that it feels good to finally do what they’ve been trained to do, they don’t feel so good about it feeling so good. All the rules and training prove valuable out here, but what the hell do you do with yourself later?

I know what will happen to them later. They won’t sleep much, they’ll experience panic attacks, they’ll avoid their neighbors, they’ll drink, they’ll snort, they’ll shoot, they’ll binge on emotional numbness, and that’s only if they find some kind of counseling that talks them out of feeling so different from everybody else even though they are different from everybody else.

I tried. I tried breaking the rules once by leaving the fold, when the adrenaline rushes of carrier-arrested landings, airborne operations, and rappelling from helicopters faded and left me itching from the inside out. All the training was fine, all the discipline was great, but what did I do with myself at the end of the day?

When I left active duty, I joined the civilian world working counternarcotics with the US Attorney’s office in San Diego, then wandered into an Internet start-up in Newport Beach as an officer of the company, and then into Salomon Smith Barney as a financial consultant.

But it never felt normal. It was like There has to be more than this. What’s the point? What are the objectives? What in the hell are the rules?

Then the attacks on 9/11 kickboxed being normal to a pulp, and I returned to active duty as soon as I could. I deployed with the Eleventh Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable) to Kuwait and Jordan. Then I deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom in February 2003 and, by August, found myself assigned as the Special Forces liaison officer for the First Marine Expeditionary Force in Qatar. My third deployment in two years swept me into Camp Fallujah, where I trained the Iraqi Special Forces who are now out here on the streets of this godforsaken ghost town watching stray dogs eat their dead countrymen.

But it feels normal. Despite the bombs and the insurgents and the rubble, it feels like I belong here. And how screwed up is that?

I reach down into the sleeping bag and pull Lava up under my chin. He snorts and snuffles around, and I start scratching his ears.

“What’s going to happen to you once we leave, little guy?”

The puppy opens one eye and stares up at me, and I start thinking the stuff we’re not supposed to think—about how we’re either going to have to shoot him or abandon him on the streets here in Fallujah where for dogs, eating human flesh is normal.

Lava’s eyes lower to half-mast as his head drops slowly backward. I blow lightly on his face, because I don’t want to be awake alone. His eyes pop open. He looks annoyed.

“What, am I invading your personal space?”

He thumps his tail on my chest.

“Well, you are invading mine.”

CHAPTER SIX

May 2005

In flight from Kirkuk to Baghdad

Brad Ridenour figured he owed Ken Licklider this favor. Helping Ken help a Marine wasn’t the only reason he was flying from the US/British embassy in Kirkuk to Baghdad International Airport, but it was up at the top of the list. That and going home.

After four months in Iraq working as a dog handler for Triple Canopy Security, Brad was ready for the break—all the guys were—and while any of them would have helped Ken out on this, Brad was the obvious volunteer. After all, this was only his first tour of Iraq, so he didn’t need to get home as much as the guys who’d been at this for a while.

But he did need a break. Home seemed like another story, where once upon a time he’d been a police officer in the small town of Portland, Indiana, and where, before he became the department’s K9 handler after training under Ken at Vohne Liche Kennels, the plot sat as stagnant as a Midwest slough. But it wasn’t the need for more drama that cornered Brad into going to Iraq. And it wasn’t Ken’s last-minute call asking him if he wanted the job with Triple Canopy. It was the fact that once he’d teamed up with his dog, Vischa, at Vohne Liche Kennels and spent several months learning to communicate with ­another species, he’d decided that not even communicating with extraterrestrials could offer more reward. He loved working with dogs. Ken’s contract with Triple Canopy Security, which had a contract with the US State Department to guard high-risk embassies in Iraq, provided Brad the chance to do it for a living.

But it was a hell of a way to make a living. He’d lost fifty pounds in the past four months. The first ten came off from just getting into the country, when he’d learned how fidgety Iraqi customs officers could be. He traveled with another dog handler, and while Brad got Vischa through without a hitch, when the customs officials looked at the other handler’s papers and then at his dog’s health certificate, they demanded that the dog’s photograph be taken. The other handler had to pick up the ninety-pound German shepherd and hold him eye level with the camera. Brad didn’t understand what security measures were sealed by having the dog’s picture taken and didn’t ask, but it served notice of things