Wardogs

Chapter 23

Chapter 23

I've barely set foot in the place when I realise it's hopeless trying to use the NVG. It's dark as death in there, and many times spookier. I turn to the two Marines I've got as security, and with hand gestures I signal that I'm switching to using the Maglite that I've got attached to my weapon. I'll have to be first through the door with the torch beam flashed around the room, groping in the darkness for the enemy.

Of course, it'll make me a sitting target. All the bad guys have to do is aim in on my torch beam and they've got me. But there's

no other way to go about getting this done. I let out a barely audible whistle, and Hunter's instantly by my side. I crouch down, place the butt of my weapon on the dirty, uneven concrete, and flick on the torch. A beam of light pierces the darkness like a laser, and I let Hunter see it and get used to it before we move again.

Then I'm up, butt pulled hard and tense into my shoulder, the flashlight piercing the gloom. Door one lies to the right of me, with a dozen similar doorways stretching off towards the dark corridor's end. It strikes me that this is going to be just like that game: So, what's behind Door Number One? Yes, it's Mr Taliban with his AK-47! And what's behind Door Two? Yes, it's a monster IED

We move up to the first room. The door itself is made of cheap, bare plywood. The whole feel of this place is as if they'd got it 90 per cent finished just as the war began. It's been frozen in time ever since, and very likely it's been taken over by the worst of the bad guys. Or so I can't help thinking.

My pulse feels like it's pounding through the ceiling above, as I reach out a hand to grasp that first door handle. I need to open this thing painfully slowly, in case it's been rigged with a tripwire or other booby-trap device. I've just closed my fingers around the handle when I stop myself. There's another, much better way of doing this, but it's only just occurred to me.

Using silent hand gestures, I indicate to Hunter I want him to sniff all around the doorframe, or at least as high as he can reach. My dog can detect explosives underground, or from incredible distances away. Sniffing out any devices hidden behind this door should be child's play. Hunter understands instantly what I want of him. I see his nostrils flaring, and he's slurping in the air around the doorframe in great heaving gasps.

His intakes of breath sound deafeningly loud in the crushing quiet of this ghostly shell of a place. If there are any enemy fighters in here I can't help but think they'll hear my dog. He stops snuffling, glances up at me and I swear he does this doggy kind of a shrug: What's the big deal? It's just a door. There's nothing there-nothing that'll get me a play with my ball, anyway.

I twist the handle and the door swings open with a faint creak. I step inside, sweeping the room with my weapon and the flash light. As far as I can tell, it's an empty concrete shell. I signal Hunter forward, he gives the place a quick once-over and he's back at my side. He rolls his eyes at me: See, I told you there was nothing in there, but you still had to have me check.

We exit the room, and I close the door as softly as I can. Hunter pauses for an instant, and I can tell what he's after. Dad, he's saying, I'll have a bit of a drink now, if I can. The interior of this place is filthy and dusty as hell, and it reeks to high heaven of human waste. Down at Hunter height it must be even worse, and I'm not surprised that he's parched.

I've got a couple of three-litre Camelbak water carriers stuffed in my rucksack. I've got one with its drinking tube poking out and clipped through a D-ring on the shoulder strap of my pack. I crouch down, Hunter opens his mouth a little, I press the end of the tube to open it, and give the backpack a good squeeze.

A fine jet of water goes spurting out and into Hunter's open jaws. That done I stand still for a moment, listening. There's a new noise about the place now, and I'm straining my ears to catch it. I hear it again - a faint, eerie, hollow wailing. I figure it's nothing more than the night breeze whistling through the empty window frames, but there's this creepy feeling about the place, as if the very essence of the building is laughing at me and my dog, and mocking us.

We check through a second and a third room, and find nothing more than we did in the first. But there's a new sound rising now, and as it grows in volume it starts to reverberate all around us. I have no idea how, but somehow the locals must have realised that we're here. They've started this weird, horrible howling, like a pack of wolves calling to each other in the dark ness.

One household picks up the wolf-howl and passes it onto another, until the sound is rippling backwards and forwards all around. Those howls are one of the most unearthly sounds that I have ever heard. Usually, the enemy does them to get the village dogs barking, so as to cover any noise they make as they move around. But tonight they are doing it all for us, to freak us out.

The spine-chilling chorus goes from one place to another, on and on and on. The howls go circling around and around the darkened building, echoing ghost-like through deserted corri dors. I feel the hair on the back of my neck go up, and I can only imagine how Hunter is feeling. Those voices sound close, like spitting-distance close, and they must sound a whole lot louder to him.

We set out to seize the high ground here, but somehow the enemy has managed to encircle us. I feel like the hunters have become the hunted, or at least we're in danger of becoming so. We flick off our torches so as to make ourselves invisible.

There's a sudden sharp thud. It sounds deafening in the tense, suffocating darkness. It's probably just a door smashing shut in the wind on one of the floors above, but my mind can't help thinking it's the bad guys. Over all of this I can hear the deaf ening beat of my heart, plus my pulse thumping through my veins.

We push on. We know there's a back-up force out there, consisting of the rest of the Bravo Company platoon that brought us in. They've supposedly thrown a security cordon around the entire building to prevent anyone coming in after us.

But it doesn't exactly feel that way from inside: it feels like we've walked into a trap.

I lose count of the times I ease open the door to a room as dark as a cave, and Hunter gets in there giving it the once-over. He's so good at this I'm all but convinced there's nothing in there by the time he's done sniffing the doorframe. But still we have to be certain.

We're an hour in by the time we're done with floor one. I pause to give my dog a cuddle and a few words of reassurance. Well done, lad. Good boy. Good boy. But here we go again,

next floor. Are you ready?"

I glance up the first stairwell and it's a choked jumble of rubble and debris. I've got no choice but to push ahead of Hunter stair by-careful-stair, checking for obstacles that might injure my dog, or places where he might take a fall. There are parts of the stair well that have half crumbled away, leaving a gaping hole down to the hard concrete below. In places I'm forced to physically carry my dog over the worst.

By the time we're nearing the roof itself, we're four hours into the search, and still there's no sign of Hunter flagging. What a dog. I pause at the last flight, a patch of starlit sky hanging above us impossibly bright at the far end of the stairwell. I flick down my NVG as the light's good enough here to use it, and no way can I afford to use my flashlight on the roof. That would be a dead giveaway.

We edge up those last few steps, my dog and I keeping careful pace with each other. Before we emerge, I drop onto all fours, until I'm crouched alongside Hunter. For a moment his head flicks towards me and he gives me this affectionate nudge with his muzzle: Come on, Dad, stop being silly. What you doing that for? I know you're not a dog!

We emerge into the night. It's blinding bright after the inte rior of the hotel, which was like being buried alive. I scan the rooftop for craters, or any bombs or booby traps that may have been set. I see nothing obvious, and we proceed to search the entire place, me on my belt buckle and Hunter on four paws. We find three further stairwells opening onto the roof, but other wise it's as we expected and all seems clear.

We radio Major Cheeseman. We tell him we've checked the entire, ghostly building with nothing found. We describe which route we've cleared, and warn him which stairwell to use to make it up here - the one that we've just secured. That done, the Bravo lads start filtering in and silently securing the rooftop. By the time the sniper team moves into position, Hunter and I are en route back to base, totally and utterly exhausted.

At first light the Bravo lads begin to stop and search every vehicle moving on the 611, but by then Hunter and I are in our kennel sleeping the sleep of the dead.

Bravo Company is almost finished with Sangin now. The boys from the Royal Irish Regiment are replacing the war-weary Commandos, platoon by platoon. The guys that Hunter and I have patrolled with and fought alongside will soon be gone, and we'll have five months with the newcomers. My dog and I have lost not a single Marine, and it's a great feeling to be sending them all home. No one's died on our watch: what more could we wish for?

The Ranger Company lads have heard of Hunter's reputation long before they get to meet my dog in person. Many of them grew up in Northern Ireland, so they've seen what search dogs can do. They seem to have a fantastic attitude towards working dogs. I know it's going to be a busy old time we'll have with them, but it feels right with the Rangers from the very start.

No sooner has the Ranger Company OC taken over command than he calls for a proper briefing with his dog team. I can sense the difference with Major Shannon from the get-go. He makes it clear to me that not only is he a dog lover by nature, but he also recognises what a dog like Hunter can do in a place like this. He explains that he doesn't want a single patrol going out without us being at the head of it, clearing the way.

'From what I hear of Hunter, I want him at the front of my blokes every time, he tells me.

I tell the major that's all well and good, but my dog needs a minimum of two hours' break between missions. The major says he's fine with that. He understands that a handler knows his dog best, and it's up to the rest to adapt. He tells me that I'm to speak up if something isn't quite right for my dog, and we'll adapt the plan accordingly. It's like a breath of fresh air.

There are four Ranger Platoons, and each has its own bomb detection element. They have an Electronic Counter Measures (ECM) operator - a guy who carries a box of tricks designed to jam any signal the enemy might use to trigger a remote controlled IED- plus they have an EBEX operator, the EBEX being a military-grade metal detector. Few bombs can be built without some form of metal component, and that's what the EBEX scans for.

When compared to the computerised wizardry of the EBEX and the ECM, a dog's nose tends to seem a little prehistoric and inexact. To the uninitiated. To those of us in the RAVC nothing could be further from the truth. Science has failed to design anything remotely as sophisticated as a dog's nose. No one knows for sure, but it's anything up to a thousand times more sensitive than our own. Dogs have millions more scent recep tors, and the part of their brain used for analysing smells is far larger. They can literally sniff out explosives.

We get out patrolling with Ranger Company on a daily basis. The lads need to familiarise themselves with the lie of the land. There's much to be done, and often Hunter and I are back-to-backing from one patrol to another. It's pretty much love at first sight between the dog team and those Ranger lads, all except for Lieu tenant Wilcock, this one bloke who has yet to fall for Hunter.

Late one afternoon we set out searching the 611 with the Ranger's Eight Platoon, commanded by Lieutenant Wilcock. It's last light, Hunter and I are bang out front and the nearest Rangers are a good few paces behind us, doing security. We're forty minutes into the patrol when I see something that strikes me as odd. To our left there's an old car parked in a garage. The car's got a red light flashing inside it, one that looks like a car alarm warning light.

What's strange about it is that the vehicle is too old to warrant