One Dog at a Time (12 page)

We washed up the big cooking pots and cleaned away the utensils in silence as it slowly dawned on us what we had let ourselves in for. Running a kitchen was fun once, but every night would just be a nightmare.

‘What are we going to cook tomorrow?’ I asked as I dried the last pot.

‘God knows,’ Dutchy replied.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Jena

IT WAS THE
barking that roused me from my sleep. It was 1 a.m. and I wasn’t on duty for another three hours. The noise was coming from the direction of Nowzad and RPG’s run. I dressed quickly and grabbed my gear. I bumped into Dave as I stumbled out of my cell.

‘What’s all the noise?’

‘Don’t know,’ he replied.

We rounded the corner towards the run at a jog as I had a horrible feeling it was another dogfight.

‘Oh shit,’ I said as I saw the rear gate was wide open and the area directly surrounding it was swarming with dogs of all sizes and shapes, running around and snapping at each other among the small clouds of dust they were kicking up as they leapt all over the place.

Nowzad and RPG were going berserk locked in their run. I breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn’t a dogfight and that they were safe.

Dave grabbed my arm and pointed to the middle of the mass of dogs.

‘Oh no, what the hell are they trying to do?’ The sight in front of me was just a picture of despair.

There, tied to a lone post by a wire around her neck, was a small terrified dog. She was obviously a bitch as behind her the large male dogs were snapping and baring their teeth at
each
other for the opportunity to mate with her. It was a scene from doggie hell.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ was all Dave could say.

The moment I had stepped down from the plane on to Afghan soil I knew I had entered a different world, but this was lunacy. Now that I had bought Nowzad’s safety, for the time being at least, the Afghans had obviously decided to have a go at breeding their own supply of fighting dogs. This poor dog was going to produce them.

‘As if there aren’t enough strays already,’ Dave shouted above the barking and growling as we both waded into the fray, waving our arms and generally shouting at the dogs. We hadn’t thought about being bitten, we were both too consumed by anger and total disbelief to worry about that.

We chased away the male dogs, trying to push them through the open gate and back out of our compound. When the biggest dogs decided they weren’t going to leave that easily, Dave picked up a large piece of discarded wood and started to wave it at them. Even that wasn’t enough. He had to smash the wood into the ground to scare them in the general direction of the open entrance.

With all the commotion I was surprised that nobody else had come out to see what was happening. I later found out that the lads in the nearest sangar were about to radio the ops room but had heard my voice shouting in the still night air and assumed I had things under control!

Between us, Dave and I managed to close the rear gate and lock the dead bolt bar into place. As silence returned to the compound we just looked at each other.

‘Unbelievable,’ was all I could say as I tried to catch my breath.

I walked back over to the small dog tied to the stake. She was shivering in the cool night air.

‘Are you all right, little one?’ I asked her as I reached out towards her small round head.

She sniffed my hand and then immediately started to lick
it
as I played with her long oval-shaped ears. She looked much darker in colour than Nowzad and at least half his size. I had no idea what breed she resembled.

‘What do we do with you, eh?’ I asked, knowing the answer was clearly reflected in her sad eyes.

I reached down to untie her from the wooden stake, holding on to the section of the wire that was bound tightly around her neck. I didn’t want her running off around the compound.

I needn’t have worried. She happily trotted alongside me as I walked her over to where Nowzad and RPG were waiting desperately to get out. Both of them were jumping up at the gate in anticipation.

I held the young female in one hand while I untied the latch. Both Nowzad and RPG raced out of the run, only briefly stopping to sniff the new arrival before wandering off to continue sniffing and smelling the spots where minutes earlier the pack had been running wild. I guessed they were looking for old friends.

The little female dog’s long tail was wagging around, making small whooshing noises. I let her enter the run and slipped off the wire noose from around her neck.

‘Guess that’s another one then?’ Dave said a few minutes later, as he dragged an excited RPG back towards the run by his front legs, the dog’s long-haired tail beating madly against the ground as he went.

‘What else do we do?’ I said. ‘We can’t just throw her outside; what happens to any puppies?’

I looked back at the main gate. The dusty floor immediately in front of it was a mass of dog paw prints, fanning out in all directions. The wooden stake stood alone in the now empty area, except for Nowzad who cocked his rear left leg against it – admittedly there was a distinct lack of trees in our neighbourhood for him to use.

‘What the hell are these people on?’ I said out loud as we tried to comprehend what we had just witnessed. ‘Apart from
anything
else, who in their right mind would leave our rear gate open at night with the Taliban on the prowl?’

The fact that the ANP would tie a dog up like that shouldn’t have come as a surprise after what we had seen so far.

‘I’m going to make the ANP wish they were living with the Taliban tomorrow,’ I said, but I knew it would be useless confronting them. What could I do to them anyway?

I chased Nowzad around for a few minutes and then led him back into the run. He didn’t seem to mind the young female that was now being stroked by Dave.

‘We can’t just throw her out the gate, can we?’ I said, although I already knew what Dave would say. We could hear the pack still chasing each other around just on the other side of the firmly closed gate.

I had planned to get up early anyway to ring Lisa back home; there didn’t seem much point in going to sleep now. So I made use of the fact that the sat phone was sitting in its cradle with nobody booked to use it. I needed to phone her and somehow describe what I had just witnessed.

Before I could say anything Lisa’s excited voice bounced across the satellite connection.

‘You took your time ringing; I’ve been waiting ages!’ she said.

‘I was …’

She cut me off before I could finish. ‘I’ve found a rescue centre.’

I held the handset to my ear, as if I’d misheard her.

‘Pen, did you get what I said? I’ve found a rescue!’

I closed my eyes and breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Lisa was on a roll, however, and carried on talking. ‘This animal rescue in London, the Mayhew, helps to run an animal welfare organisation in Northern Afghanistan. They gave me a contact who will take the dogs in.’

‘Wow, happy days honey!’ was the only thing I could say. A huge weight was lifting off my shoulders.

‘How many dogs did they say they would take?’ I asked. I still hadn’t told Lisa about tonight’s shenanigans.

‘I told them that you had two dogs that needed rescuing,’ she said before pausing. ‘Oh no, you haven’t?’

Lisa had that pain in the arse knack of being able to read my mind.

‘I thought I’d seen it all, Lisa,’ I said as I started to explain as quickly as I could what we had seen out in the yard only a few minutes earlier. I doubted that we had got to the young female dog in time; I suspected that she would turn out to be pregnant. So if she was going to give birth then she wasn’t going to be on the streets of Now Zad. By the time I’d finished I could tell from Lisa’s shocked silence that I didn’t need to tell her this dog was going to the rescue as well.

‘Okay, how is the rescue going to collect the dogs then?’

‘You didn’t hear me properly,’ Lisa replied.

I didn’t guess what was coming.

‘I said the rescue would take the dogs, but you have to get them there.’

I took a second to reply, my mind working overtime to process the information.

The large weight was suddenly loading itself back on my shoulders again. ‘Where is “there”, exactly, honey?’ I asked.

‘Northern Afghanistan, on the map I found it looks a bit further than Kabul,’ she replied. I didn’t need a map of Afghanistan in front of me to know that Kabul, let alone anywhere further north, might as well be on the moon.

‘I have put it all in an e-bluey,’ she said.

The e-bluey was a typed letter that could be sent through cyberspace via the Internet and was printed out in Camp Bastion and then delivered with our normal mail. It meant I would wait probably around a week for it to arrive.

I managed to keep my promise and ask her about life back in the real world, although my mind was already trying to figure out how we could get the carrot that had just been dangled so tantalisingly close in front of us.

I returned the phone to its cradle outside the ops room and walked back outside into the moonlit early morning. My sleeping bag was calling to me. I suddenly felt really tired.

I stooped down to stroke our newest arrival. She had been with us for a few days now and seemed to be settling in well to the routine of compound life. All the attention she was getting helped.

She was sitting upright on her rear legs, her long thin tail swishing madly, on top of what had become her favourite spot on the sandbags that made up the mortar shelter. She almost shivered with excitement when she saw somebody approaching the run to make a fuss of her.

Most of her extremely smooth short-haired coat was a darker brown than Nowzad’s, almost coffee-coloured. Yet along the underside of her belly and the front of her legs she was a light tan colour. She eagerly tried to lick me as I bent close to rub her belly. You couldn’t help but look into her big eyes that were an unusual brownish yellow; from a distance they looked so sad. But they sparked into life as she watched you approach. I shook my head as I watched her excited little face.

The lads had already named her but I wasn’t quite sure I was totally happy with their choice and reasoning. It was after their favourite American porn star, a young lady named Jena. When we had found her the situation had not been the least bit amusing, but I had to admit the lads’ sense of humour was.

‘So, what do you think to being called Jena, then?’ I asked her. ‘At least you are not getting named after a Russian weapon I suppose?’

RPG and Nowzad were getting on really well with Jena. Both dogs let her have her own space. Because of this I had the sneaking suspicion that they might have been puppies of Jena’s. I don’t know what it was but they just seemed to know that she was in charge.

‘Enjoy,’ I said, laying the food down with Nowzad’s bowl a good distance from RPG and Jena’s and adopting my own guard position as all three dogs devoured their breakfast with a passion.

Food was the only source of friction between Jena and Nowzad.

I had made a small sign out of the side of a ration box that asked the lads not to throw food into the run. With nobody to stand in between the dogs, Nowzad would gobble down what he could find and then attack RPG or Jena to get whatever they were munching on. Jena would fight back for a split second but then Nowzad would bite her hard and she would dart for the safety of any corner of the run while Nowzad was distracted by the food dropped on the floor. Whenever this happened Jena would squeal like a hurt child until I got into the run and calmed her down.

I needed to spend time with Nowzad getting him adjusted to his new surroundings and life but I didn’t have it.

The problem was that Jena enjoyed eating her food slowly. It was a wonder she had survived this long with dogs like Nowzad around. I was determined to keep him at bay today.

‘No, Nowzad,’ I said, specifically raising my voice and hoping that he would get the message as he finished his bowl and began looking around for more.

An added gentle nudge with my boot helped to steer him away from making a beeline to Jena’s half-eaten bowl of bacon and beans.

‘You don’t learn, do you, nightmare dog?’ I said, as yet again I pushed him back towards his empty bowl with my boot.

Nowzad was gradually getting the message; he just growled at me.

‘Grrrrrrrr,’ I growled back as I threw a handful of dust at him.

I quickly cleaned the run out and left them all lying against the whitewashed back wall, enjoying the first rays of
the
sun as it warmed their living area. I had the daily brief to attend.

‘I’ll pop back later and see you then, all right?’ I told them as I tied the gate. It would probably be after the promised resupply later in the afternoon.

The meeting revealed nothing new and the rest of the day dragged as it always did when we attended to the general housekeeping jobs that needed doing around the DC. The mid-November sun was still hot enough for beads of sweat to form along our foreheads as we toiled away, filling sandbags to renew the outer wall defences.

The promised resupply helo was half an hour late but within minutes of myself and John returning to the compound the lads were buzzing. A small group of lads eagerly sorted the 14 sacks of mail that we had only just dumped outside the HQ building.

I was still dusting myself down after the dust storm the helo had caused lifting off when the boss called me to one side; he had just finished talking to the HQ back at Camp Bastion. They had updated him on Tom and Matt’s condition. As he made small talk about the resupply I waited patiently, trying not to second guess what he had to say. The OC looked tired, but then I guess we all did.

‘They apparently drove off the top of a 70-foot-high cliff; we don’t why or how,’ he said, pausing before continuing, rubbing his hand over his face. ‘Matt has fractures of his legs and arms and a spinal injury but he should make a good recovery.’ A slight wave of relief washed over me but I knew that was the good news.

‘But although Tom is out of immediate danger the docs are still investigating the injuries to his skull and spinal cord; it doesn’t look that good.’

He looked me right in the eye as he said it. I imagined he was trying to put a brave face on the situation, as I’d expect of a senior officer. In return I did my best to remain the solid troop sergeant. I didn’t quite pull it off.