One Dog at a Time (22 page)

Unbelievably I discovered that she had been climbing the only tree in the compound that still had green leaves on it, coming down with a few random feathers hanging out of her now bloodstained mouth. I knew she was quick on the ground, but I hadn’t realised she was quick enough to catch one of the many small sparrow-like birds that hopped around on the gangly branches.

If I visited the run while Tali was off exploring I could spend hours mesmerised as the puppies slowly woke up, the small living mass of tiny paws scrabbling over each other. They would all then slowly peel away and explore their surroundings, looking for whatever puppies looked for, probably the familiar warmth of their mum.

One little dark brown and white fella was decidedly smaller than the others, his wrinkled face giving him the look of a little old man. I decided he was definitely the runt of the family. But could he move or what? He reminded me of Fizz Dog the first day we had seen her at the breeders when she had been no older than this. Lisa and I had watched her running buoyantly around the litter, always being forced out of the feeding queue by her bigger siblings.

I carefully lifted each puppy in turn so I could check them over. I had no idea what I was looking for but they all seemed
okay,
clinging to my hand as I rolled them over in my palm. Most were a mixture of tan or dark browns. Only one was a single colour and that was the biggest pup of the litter. She was perfectly white and looked like a miniature polar bear.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

In with the New

‘O THIS IS
20C. Nothing to report yet. Over.’ ‘0, roger. Out.’

I clicked off the radio and walked away from the run again, trying to generate some warmth. It was bloody freezing. My watch had recorded –12 centigrade the last time I could be bothered to take my glove off to have a look. I didn’t need to check the temperature to know it was not a good night to be giving birth to puppies.

As the cold weather had really started to bite during the past few days, Jena had retreated into the box we had provided for her. She had not come out since; she just lay there panting heavily.

The bottom of the box was lined with old clothes and I had covered her over with an old towel, but it was still freezing. It was New Year’s Eve: out with the old and in with the new.

If tonight was indeed the night that Jena became a new mum then it was also going to be the night that I really would start to panic.

The lads who were on duty in the sangars had asked to be kept informed. They were having a torrid time in the sub-zero conditions.

After leaving Jena, I took a brisk walk around to visit all of the sangars to check that the lads were doing okay and to wish them Happy New Year.

I had to muffle my laughter when I arrived at the sangar that Taff was manning. I thought he had looked an odd shape as I first glimpsed his silhouette against the crystal-clear night sky through the open gun port of the sangar. He was wearing two down jackets, one on top of the other.

‘A bowl of those chips would go down nicely now, eh Taff?’ I asked as I climbed into the sentry position next to him.

‘Bloody not wrong,’ he replied in his deep Welsh twang as we both remembered the moment.

A week or so ago I had been checking on the limited supply of fresh rations that we held in one of the empty ISO containers. The containers had been used to bring the initial supplies out to the compound in Now Zad well before we had ever arrived here.

As I wandered around the 20-foot-high metal containers I had caught a scent in the air that I couldn’t quite place.

I moved around to the back of the containers where their positioning had created a hidden, secluded area no bigger than a small room. To my surprise I found a figure crouched over a fair-sized pot on an open flame, occasionally stirring the contents with a spoon. There was an open newspaper and a tin of salt on the ground next to him.

‘So what’s going on here, then?’ I barked.

The marine shot up immediately and spun in the air. His face was a picture as he recognised he had been caught red-handed. It was Taff.

‘Oh Jesus, you sacred the living crap out of me,’ he said, holding his hand over his chest as if feigning a heart attack.

I stooped over the pot and noticed the potato peel lying on the ground. The smell made sense now. Taff was cooking chips.

I smiled at him. ‘And we are doing what, exactly?’

I was extremely curious to see how he was going to talk himself out of this. Taff was known as a master of waffle.

‘Missing home,’ was all he said as he continued to give the pan a stir. The small cooking pot contained probably four potatoes’ worth of cut chips gently bubbling away in the cooking oil that I knew we kept hidden in the back of the container along with the remainder of the fresh rations. Including the potatoes.

I sat down next to him. ‘Stealing fresh rations, I see then, Corporal?’ I teased him as he used the spoon to fish out a couple of neatly cut deep-fried chips and placed them down on an open sheet of the newspaper. He did it a few more times so there was a nicely draining pile of about ten thick-cut crispy brown chips. He picked up the salt container and lightly coated the chips before handing me a few.

‘Want to make yourself an accessory to theft?’ he asked.

I grinned back and accepted the bribe. No way was I able to resist.

‘Just don’t let Steve know you have been in his store, all right?’ I winked at him as I picked out a chip and slowly let my tastebuds enjoy themselves. ‘Oh yeah, these are good,’ I said as I closed my eyes and imagined I was back home on the beach. A pint of lager popped into the picture as well.

Taff added a handful of freshly cut potato to the pan. We sat there quietly, each wrapped in our own thoughts, while the next batch gradually cooked.

The memory fled my mind as the northerly wind that was whistling in through the narrow open slit of the gun port maximised the wind chill. It was probably the equivalent of –19 degrees centigrade at the moment.

‘How bloody cold is it?’ Taff asked.

Nothing that I could see was moving out there. Strangely, even the dog pack was quiet. I couldn’t see or hear any of them out in the open ground that they normally roamed and played in. It really was cold.

‘Cold enough to freeze your skinny arse off,’ I replied sarcastically.

‘I lost all feeling in my feet hours ago,’ he shot back. ‘I
should
be tucked up with a good woman. There should be a law against sitting out here on New Year’s Eve.’

‘Taff, there are no good women who would sleep with you, not even drunk ones, so don’t kid yourself. ’ I giggled away at my own joke as Taff gave me the finger.

‘Happy New Year,’ I said as I climbed back out of the sangar and walked around to the next one.

There were no fireworks to signal the turning of the year, just the quiet whistling of the cold wind and the crunching of the crisp covering of frost underfoot as I walked around the compound, blowing crystallised clouds of warm air into the freezing moonlight. But it didn’t really matter here; Afghanistan wasn’t a place much interested in this kind of ceremony.

When I had completed my New Year call on all the sangars I checked in to the ops room. Even the signaller manning the radio was wrapped up tight in all the warm clothing he could lay his hands on. In his thick woollen mitts he was struggling to turn over the pages of the book he was reading.

‘All right, Pen?’ Jimmy asked as I quickly checked the log. The doctor was next to him engrossed in writing a letter while wearing thick gloves. ‘Any sign yet?’

‘Not yet, mate. I’m going back to check again a bit later on,’ I replied.

After making a cup of tea, I headed back out in the empty quiet night. The wind, if anything, had picked up as I tried to walk over the frozen ground as quietly as possible.

‘You picked the night all right, Jena,’ I said to myself as I pulled the zip on my jacket even further up around my neck. It was bloody freezing.

The dog runs were perfectly quiet. If I hadn’t known better I would have said there weren’t any dogs living there any more. I called out Nowzad’s name and waited. But he didn’t appear from the darkened storeroom and the semi-cosy warmth of his cardboard box. ‘Fair enough, I wouldn’t come out either,’ I said into the darkness.

I carefully untied the gate fencing and slid into the run we had given to Jena. I removed my gloves so I could untie the fiddly string that held it shut. The metalled gate was icy cold to the touch.

I crept like a mouse into the small storeroom. If anything it felt even colder inside than it did out. My head torch cut a swathe of light through the gloom. I wasn’t going to step on any newborn puppies.

I had placed the cardboard box down on top of an old piece of carpet we had scavenged from one of the older buildings. We had lined the base of the box with newspaper and then filled the rest of it up with scrunched-up paper for extra insulation. I had no idea whether that was what dogs about to give birth needed or not. I was making it up as I went along; there wasn’t much else I could do.

I knelt down and shone the torch into the box.

‘Way to go Jena,’ I said quietly as the beam revealed two small newborn puppies snuggled together next to Jena’s belly. I placed the torch down so that the beam filled the box and Jena could see it was me. I reached in and stroked her head. She licked my hand before nudging the two puppies and slowly licking each in turn just as if she was showing them off.

I held half of a broken biscuit, one of Jena’s favourites, military-grade cardboard flavour. She reached for it and took it gently from my outstretched hand and nibbled away.

‘Good girl. Can I have a closer look?’ I asked her before reaching in and ever so carefully scooping up the closest small soft black pup.

Jena just carried on munching away on the biscuit as I lifted the little pup out through the opening. I held it in my hand and gave it the once over. It was hardly moving and its little eyes were scrunched up tight. I had heard somewhere a puppy wouldn’t open its eyes for a few days; I would have to check on that with Lisa next time I called.

The puppy was tiny; it was no longer than the palm of my hand, its tiny black-haired body felt velvety and warm as I gave its belly a few gentle rubs.

Carefully placing it back down next to the other one I nudged both puppies back towards each other and they both slowly wriggled in closer to Jena’s belly.

I covered them with a piece of an old T-shirt that we had put in the box. Judging by the size of Jena’s still swollen body, there were a few more deliveries on their way.

I rubbed her head again and then stood up.

‘0, this is 20C. We have two new mouths to feed so far, over.’

The radio static hissed for a second before: ‘20C, roger. Any more on the way? Over.’

‘20C, definitely. Over.’

‘20C, this is the Hill. Let me know when it’s five puppies, over.’

‘20C, roger. Out.’

Some of the lads had started a sweepstake on the number of puppies Jena would have. There was about £30 in the pot.

I had about an hour until I was on duty in the ops room myself. That meant I could spend just under an hour in the time accelerator. I couldn’t wait.

The crisp morning air took my breath away as I headed over to see Jena; I had left her alone now for nearly three hours. I was eager to see how many more puppies she’d had.

I had rifled a packet of pork stew from the ration store. I reckoned she could do with it; after just the two puppies she had looked thoroughly knackered.

As I knelt down and looked in the box, Jena was lying with her eyes closed. Her belly was nowhere near as swollen as before. The smell of crap and blood was pretty bad. I lifted the box up from around her.

‘Good effort, Jena,’ I said quietly as I counted the tiny
different-coloured
figures lying by her belly. All told we had eight new additions to our compound.

The task I had set myself in rescuing the compound’s population of dogs had been daunting enough. The odds seemed even more ridiculous now that our small compound contained five adult dogs: Nowzad, RPG, Tali, Jena and AK, plus 14 newborn puppies. I didn’t want to admit it but I had a serious problem. Rescuing them all was going to be a tall order.

I ditched the bloodstained paper and screwed up a few fresh sheets to cover the puppies, who were vying for the best position near Jena’s teats. I used a bit of the torn material to give Jena a bit of a clean. She opened her eyes as I worked but didn’t lift her head up. I gently stroked her head and offered her the open packet of food. She didn’t want it. Instead she slowly closed her eyes again.

‘No worries. I’ll leave it there for later, all right girl?’

I placed the box back over the huddled mass and backed out of the room. The sweepstake money would be added to the rescue fund that I was slowly putting together. Nobody had guessed that Jena would deliver a monster litter of eight puppies.

I had called Lisa to tell her the news. The silence on the other end of the phone had signalled that she was doing the mental arithmetic in her head.

‘That’s fourteen puppies.’

‘Yes, honey, I know,’ I replied, trying not to sound sarcastic.

‘How the hell are we going to get fourteen puppies to the rescue?’

‘Actually, it’s fourteen puppies and five adult dogs,’ I reminded her. ‘Can you speak to the rescue and make sure they are prepared for what we are sending them?’

‘Yeah, I will call them tomorrow. Any ideas on when you are leaving yet?’ Lisa asked.

‘Maybe a week after my mother’s birthday,’ I replied. We
couldn’t
openly discuss dates and places on the phone but we could use a little code. Even if they were listening, the Taliban would have no idea when my mum’s birthday was.

‘What about transport, have you spoken to anybody yet?’ she asked. I think she was now becoming as concerned as I was.

‘No, we haven’t seen any truck drivers to ask. I don’t know what we are going to do if I don’t find one.’

‘Oh yes, talking of your mum, she has put a little piece in your local paper about the dogs,’ Lisa said.

‘What?’ I asked, slightly worried about what might have been printed. I already had the military telling me not to rescue the dogs. Putting a story in the paper might not have been in my best interests.

‘No, it’s good; it says that you are trying to save some stray dogs that live in the compound and besides, your mum got it printed not you.’

‘Yeah, I suppose it can’t do any harm, can it?’ I replied.