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

“Holy shit.”

The puppy turned at the sound of their voices and stared at them.

“What the hell?”

He cocked his head, trying to interpret their intent rather than their words.

“You gotta be kidding.”

Then he yipped, wagged his tail, and clicked his toenails on the floor as he pranced up and down in place, happy it seemed someone had found him at last.

PART I

“In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life.”

Genesis 3:17

CHAPTER ONE

November 2004

Fallujah

I don’t remember exactly when I got to the house that served as our command post in the northwest sector of Fallujah, and I don’t remember exactly how I got there. It was a couple of days after the Lava Dogs arrived and took over the compound, I do know that much, and I remember that after four days of dodging sniper fire, sleeping on the ground, and patrolling Fallujah with wide-eyed Iraqi soldiers in training who shot at anything that moved, including their own boots, I walked up to the building with a sense of having escaped an abstract rendition of the wrong hereafter.

I remember being exhausted, the tiredness weighing more heavily on me than the sixty-pound rucksack I lugged around, and as I walked through the front door and shrugged what I could off my back, all I could think about was sleep.

That’s when I saw Lava for the first time. Only it’s not as if I walked in and saw a chubby puppy cuddled up on a blanket undefiled by the world like an overstuffed lamb. There were no squeaky toys, no baby yips, no eyes looking up at me with an artless blue-gray innocence.

Instead a sudden flash of something rolls toward me out of nowhere, shooting so much adrenaline into my wiring that I jump back and slam into a wall. A ball of fur not much bigger than a grenade skids across the floor, screeches to a halt at my boots, and then whirls in circles around me with the torque of a windup toy. It scares me, right? Like I’m tired and wired and anything quick coming at me jerked at my nerves, so I peel back off the wall and reach for my rifle even though I can see it’s only a puppy.

Now, before you get all out of whack about me aiming a weapon at cute baby mammals, keep in mind that I just walked in from the streets. Out there, things were spooky, like a plague or a flood or dust from an atomic bomb had just rolled through. Most of the city fled before the US-led attack, and the quiet rang so loud after the bombardment, even windblown newspaper sent your nerves screaming for solid cover.

The day before the offensive started, we dropped leaflets over the city warning the few remaining citizens that we were on our way in, but insurgents inside spit back that they had hundreds of car bombs rigged, booby traps set, and suicide bombers with jittery fingers waiting to go. They’d already dug trenches in the city’s cemeteries for the expected martyrs.

In the days prior to our march into the city, our warplanes pounded Fallujah with cannon fire, rockets, and bombs. Because the skies were so crowded, attack jets had only a three-minute window to unload their cargo and clear out before another jet swooped in. Hundreds and hundreds of pounds of 105mm shells, 25mm rounds, and 40mm rounds blasted into Fallujah that night with the impact of meteors from several galaxies away. The aerial bombardment was so spectacular, I—along with ten thousand other Marines waiting to advance on the outskirts of the city—doubted anyone inside would live through it. But plenty managed, and now that we were here, sniper fire came at us from nowhere like the screams from ghosts.

So when this unexpected thing, this puppy, comes barreling toward me in this unexpected place, I reach for my gun. I must have yelled or something, because at the sound of my voice, the puppy looks up at me, raises his tail, and starts growling this baby-dog version of I am about to kick your ass.

The fur gets all puffy around his neck like he’s trying to make himself look big, and then he lets loose these wienie war cries—roo-roo-roo-rooo—as he bounces up and down on stiff legs.

I stomp my boot his way to quiet him down, but he doesn’t budge and intensifies the roo-roo-roo-roooos shooting in staccato from his lungs.

“Hey.”

I shove the rifle to my back and bend down. The puppy bounces backward in time to the roo-roo-roo-roooos but doesn’t take his eyes from my face.

“Hey. Calm down.”

He looks like a bloated panda bear, and when he howls the last rooooo of the roo-roo-rooooo, his snout stretches skyward until his fat front paws lift off the floor.

There’s fear in his eyes despite the bravado. He’s only a puppy, too young to know how to mask it, so I can see how bravery and terror trap him on all sides while testosterone and adrenaline compete in the meantime for every ounce of his attention. Recognize it right away.

I reach into my pocket, roo-roo-roo, pull out a bullet, roo-roo-roo-roo, and hold it out toward him in hopes he’ll think it’s food. The puppy stops barking and cocks his head, which makes me feel manipulative but wise.

“Thatta boy.”

He sniffs the air above his head, finds nothing, and then directs his nose toward the bullet. It interests him, and he leans forward for a better whiff of the metal, which surprises me until I notice how filthy my hands are, almost black from a week without washing, and I realize he’s smelling accumulated dirt and death on my skin.

I lean forward, but fear gets the better of him and he tears off down the hall.

“Hey, come back.”

I stand there and watch him careen into a wall. I wince, that’s got to hurt, but he gets up, shakes