Chapter 1

Hellchild

So there I lay, covered in a fucking building. Not as in “the enemy had our building covered” or “we took cover in a building.” As in a building had crumbled on top of me. A house, actually, or what remained of one. It was like hundreds of others in that ancient land of Iraq. This particular building had been obliterated by a terrorist we had been searching for prior to the detonation.

I remember that night vividly. February 7, 2008, in Baqubah—a particularly violent Iraqi city of about half a million, thirty miles northeast of Baghdad. The U.S. Navy had attached me, along with my dog, Digo, a sixty-five-pound lunatic hellchild Belgian Malinois, with a troop of SEALs. Digo definitely had a few screws loose but also had the tenacity of a pit bull, the loyalty of a retriever, the smarts of a show poodle, and the hunting instincts of a wolf. And he was all mine.

We had rolled out of Forward Operating Base Warhorse in the dead of the night and loaded into big, eight-wheeled armored fighting vehicles called Strykers, ready to kick some terrorist ass. I can’t get into exact numbers or details for operational security, but I can say that a SEAL troop consisted of four elements—three assault teams and one sniper team. Then, there was me and Digo, plus a number of other direct support personnel.

On the way in, I always had music from my iPod Nano going in one ear and comms going in the other. I’m a Christian, but I will say that, back then, my choice of music wasn’t entirely godly. Then again, I’m not sure how pumped I could be listening to worship music when I knew damn well what I was about to go do. The song I chose to play on repeat was “The Beautiful People”—only because of the beat. I had no idea who Marilyn Manson was. Was it my most shining moment? No, but the song did get me locked in.

Digo and I had the job of working up front with the SEAL snipers during the patrol so that the dog could sniff out any IEDs or hidden enemy fighters along the route. Then, once on target (at the target of the mission), we’d rotate between the three assault teams, designated Alpha, Bravo, and Kilo, remaining with whoever was assigned as the main assault force. Digo and I always wanted to work with the main assault team, and that’s where they wanted us, the dog up front and ready to root out the bad guys.

Typically, I’d want the dog twenty to thirty yards in front of the patrol in order to make sure that, if anything like an IED or hidden combatants looking to do us harm popped up, we’d have enough distance between us and harm’s way. That always made me a bit nervous because if I looked away for a couple of seconds, my dog would be off running, and then I’d have to locate him. I’m not saying I would lose my dog, but after glancing away for a brief moment while wearing a night optical/observation device (NODs), trying to find something that’s moving becomes difficult. I did have an easy way to locate him, however.                                                                                                                                                                                                  

That particular night’s mission called for us to capture or kill an Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) terrorist financier. It came three days