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

to provide protection for Afghanistan’s President Karzai, and as testament to how good Ken is, the president continues to live.

So when Ken gets a call from Iams and hears about how these Marines found this puppy in Fallujah and how this lieutenant colonel snuck him back to the base camp and how the camp general’s personal security detail and some navy Seabees hid him and how an American journalist now has him stashed in Baghdad and how we seem to fail at every turn to get him out—the political failure and the military-flight failure, the Kuwait failure, and the Jordanian failure—the guy doesn’t even blink.

“Sure I can do it. I can get a dog out.”

He and his crew and their dogs fly in and out of Iraq all the time.

“It just means putting Lava on a transport with their dogs and handlers and flying him back,” John tells me.

Ken also tells John that it’s probably better that Lava didn’t make it through Jordan, because most of their guys fly in and out of Baghdad anyway. All we have to do, it seems, is get Lava from the Red Zone to the military base in the Green Zone, and they’ll take it from there.

Sounds too simple.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

February 2005

Baghdad

Anne is in Baghdad getting ready to leave for Egypt and feeling as worried about Lava as I am and reporting one of her last stories about how out of the eighteen billion dollars set aside by the United States for Iraqi reconstruction, only three billion has been paid out so far.

“. . . a group of twelve US soldiers prepares to venture past the concrete blast wall, sandbags, and guard posts that separate them from the Red Zone—the rest of Baghdad,” she reports, adding that standing with them is a US civilian contractor whom the military convoy is assigned to protect.

The contractor, in a Kevlar helmet and flak jacket, has until October to hand out eleven million in US aid to help small businesses in Baghdad get back on their feet. But in the three months that he’s been here, he’s only gotten paperwork done for about five thousand dollars in grants, because every time he steps out of the Green Zone, someone tries to kill him.

Every day, the contractor climbs into an up-armored Humvee with a machine-gun turret on top and travels through the Red Zone trying to hand out money. If he finds a likely candidate, he figures he has about ten minutes to make his pitch before someone sees the candidate talking to a westerner and opens fire.

Before the convoy takes off, Anne records the commander’s briefing to his twelve soldiers: “When we’re out on the road, action on contact. We engage in small-arms fire when gunner can positively identify the source, then go ahead and engage . . .”

Anyway, I don’t know what she said, I don’t know what she threatened or promised during her last days in Baghdad, but she e-mails me at the last minute that her replacement, Anthony Kuhn, has agreed to watch Lava at the NPR compound for the next several weeks until he leaves in the middle of March.

Two weeks. We have two more weeks. I’m beginning to feel lucky. And fully bipolar.

I contact John and tell him the news and then write a note to Ken Licklider, the owner of Vohne Liche Kennels, to introduce myself and tell him Lava is ready to leave Iraq.

“Sir,” he responds, “we have people rotating back at the end of the month that may be able to help you. I am contacting my on-site supervisor there in the Green Zone, a Mr. David Mack, and asking him to do what he can . . . Just make sure the dog has a health certificate.”

That makes me cringe, because I don’t know exactly how legitimate Lava’s paperwork is, so when I first hear from David Mack, who’s worked for Vohne Liche for three years in Afghanistan and Iraq and manages the kennel’s dog teams in overseas missions, I forget to mention anything about it.

Meanwhile, Anne reports her last story from Baghdad, about how the US-funded, state-run television station is airing a series of confessions by insurgents who claim they were financed and trained by the Syrian government.

They say they were trained in explosives and beheadings. They say they were ordered to cause chaos in Iraq. They say they had to kill at least ten Iraqi soldiers each, and an additional ten dollars was thrown in for each one they beheaded as long as they caught it on film.

I don’t know if she’d admit it, but Annie needs to get out of this place for a while. You can only struggle in quicksand for so long before you get sucked under. I’m happy for her. I’m glad she’s getting out, but I’m still worried about Lava, because Annie’s known him as long as I have, and I never worried she’d do anything but her best.

Thank you, Annie. I know how hard it was for you to leave the little guy behind, and thank you.

John Van Zante, David Mack, Anthony Kuhn, and I begin a round of e-mails to figure out how to get Lava from one set of hands to the other.

David: “We will try to move Lava out at the end of the month. We have several dog guys going back on or around the 30th, so we will try to arrange for those guys to escort Lava at that time.”

Anthony: “I’m heading back to London on Friday the 18th. My colleague Lourdes ‘Lulu’ Garcia-Navarro will be here as of Thursday the 17th. Our producer, Ben Gilbert, is here, too. Lava’s in fine shape and we’ll do whatever is needed to get him to the Green Zone safe and sound.”

John: “. . . will it be possible for someone from Vohne Liche to reach Jay or the NPR people on cell phone in