"Good boy, Wolfie. Good dog." John Watson of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers rubbed his German Shepherd's head affectionately. Deep in the Afghanistan war, it was the service dogs that kept the soldiers sane and, most oftenly, out of the way of the mines.
"Let's see here. Can you sit?"
The dog, hearing the command, sat down on his haunches.
"Stand at attention!" John commanded, and the dog stood up on all fours. "Good dog, Wolfie. Now, can you salute?" Wolfie did a half-hop and put his paws on John's stomach. "Good dog, good boy," John laughed. He rubbed the dog's head and handed him a treat, which Wolfie gobbled ravenously.
Lieutenant Daniel laughed and strode over to the pair. "Making a new friend there, Captain?"
"Yes, Lieutenant, and if you weren't such a prick you would have a few yourself."
Daniel chuckled and punched John's arm. "I'm here to tell you that it is lunchtime," he announced.
"Already? It is only 11:00!" John exclaimed, checking his watch.
"We have a long day ahead of us. Remember that enemy camp we are keeping an eye on?"
"Sure."
"They are packing up today and aiding the fight in the North. We are supposed to move ahead of them and ambush the caravan. We don't want those reinforcements reaching the battlefront."
John groaned inwardly. No matter how many times he has experienced it, combat never seemed to be any better. More killing, more watching friends die. The best thing to do was to forget about it afterwards. Focus instead on the next meal, or the next hand of cards, or the next chapter in your book. Anything instead of how you could have saved that man if you had just had more bandages, or if you had just ran across the crossfire instead of saving your own neck.
The meal had sort of a forced atmosphere, some men making half-hearted attempts at a joke and some men trying to make conversation. Everyone was wondering which one of them would be alive at their next meal.
The commander told them that the attack wouldn't be hard, just camp on either side of the caravan and blow up the front trucks with rockets. Then it will just be a matter of keeping machine gun fire concentrated on the center mass until they surrendered. John almost believed it.
Either way, John shouldered his L92A1 submachine gun and checked his Glock 17 "browning" pistol. He then took inventory of his medical supplies. Disinfectant, bandages, a needle and thread if it came to that, and pain relievers. He did have more before, but eight weeks of skirmishing and trading gunfire with enemy soldiers depleted his medical supplies.
Half an hour later, they were on the march. Their vantage point was just two miles from their camp, with plenty of cover and a clear view at the road. The enemy wouldn't even know what hit them.
"I am going away, OK?" John told Wolfie. "You be a good dog when I'm gone, and if anyone tries to invade the camp, I want you to rip their jugulars out, ok? Good boy!"
"WATSON! MOVE YOUR ASS IN FORMATION!"
John ran to where he was supposed to and began his march. Half an hour of marching later, he and the rest of his boys made it to their vantage point.
One hour of long waiting and the first of the trucks rounded the corners. The men with the rocket launchers were already locking on to the front trucks. John turned the safety off of his submachine gun.
The caravan never knew what hit it. The trucks in the front had their engines blown out, and then got smashed by the trucks behind it. John saved his ammo and waited until someone required a medic. He was not needed.
The survivors of the caravan were rounded up and taken as prisoners. A good one hundred men were stopped from reaching the battles in the North, which could have tipped the scales ultimately. This day was a victory. Until, that is, they reached camp.
"Oh, shit," John exclaimed under his breath. "Oh, holy shit."
The camp was in ruins. The tents were pocked with bullet holes, blood splattered the ground. A small pile of dead bodies was on the ground. It looked like someone had taken a chainsaw to them.
The Major ordered them to fan out and search the area. The attackers could not have gotten far. But John's mind wasn't on that. John's mind was somewhere else entirely.
"I SEE THEM! HOLY SHIT I SEE THEM!" cried the radio, just as gunshots rang across the countryside. This wasn't just a slaughterhouse. This was an ambush.
All hell broke loose. The enemies poured out on all sides, guns blazing. Lieutenant Daniel was on his truck, manning the machine gun after the previous officer was shot down. John hit the ground behind what cover he could find, which happened to be the body of his friend and tent mate, Lance Corporal Dean Fox.
Don't think about him now, John, he ordered himself. He isn't your friend anymore. He is a sandbag, and he is doing a bloody awful job at that.
John fired off a burst at his attackers. He saw one of them fall in a pool of blood. The wall of lead that returned almost tore through Dean. John waited for any minute one of them to hit him, but by some miracle he survived.
Daniel took a bullet to the head. John watched him fall, off the truck and into the dust. Without that machine gun fire, John thought, we are not worth the bullets it takes to kill us.
The Brit's numbers were decreasing rapidly. The bullets tore through them as if they were paper. A man called for a medic, but John knew that he wouldn't make it in time.
John emptied the rest of his magazine into the enemy. A few of them died, but there were more. Many, many more. Knowing that his cover wouldn't last for long, John reloaded his submachine gun. Steeling his nerves, he looked at his cover he wanted to run to, a foxhole not fifty yards from him. Big enough for one, maybe two men. Should suffice.
He broke off into a run, praying that he wouldn't take a bullet. A few whizzed by his ear. A grenade exploded somewhere, and that gave him the distraction he needed to finish off his dash into the foxhole. He caught his breath, adrenaline pumping through his veins.
A small whimper caught his ear through the gunshots and screams. "What the hell?" he asked, before he felt something move by his leg. "Who is that?"
In all his time in the war, seeing people blown to bits, mutilated and torn apart, this had to be the ugliest thing he had ever seen. A throwing knife was stuck, hilt deep, in Wolfie's gut, and his rear left leg had been shot completely off. "Ohno. Oh hell no. Oh hell." John felt tears spring to his eyes. "Nonononono. This is not real."
But it was. Wolfie hardly had the strength to whimper. Through his tears, John saw himself feed Wolfie a triple dose of pain medications. With all of his medical training, John knew that the only thing he could do was to give Wolfie the most painless death possible. "I'm gonna kill them," John whispered through his choked-up throat, cradling his dog's head. "I'm gonna cut them open and make them pay for your blood sixty times over. I'm gonna rip their fucking heads off if that is what it takes."
In his last dying second, Wolfie strained forwards and meekly licked John's hand. Took more energy than John thought Wolfie had left. "Good boy. Good dog." Wolfie didn't have anything left to give. He died in John's arms.
John pulled the throwing knife out of Wolfie's stomach. Inside his head, he thought, this is probably going to kill me. But he acted in spite of himself.
John jumped out of his foxhole with his finger holding the trigger down with all his might. Running in the open, he was probably an easy target but he didn't care. A bullet to the head would be a welcome relief.
John realized that he didn't kill anyone with his spray of lead, but he didn't rightly care. All he needed was for them to keep their heads down until he could make it to where he wanted to.
Hearing his gun click empty, he tossed it to the side and pulled a grenade from his belt. The bullets started to fly his way, so he jumped behind a humvee and pulled the pin to his grenade. Popping the spoon out, he threw it as far as he could. He heard a line of explicits coming from the enemy lines before his grenade exploded. Judging by the sound of the screaming and yelling, it sounded like he got lucky with his wild throw. Good.
He sprinted the last twenty meters, with his pistol out and bullets flying around him. He felt something bite into the flesh of his thigh. That is going to hurt like a bitch later, he told himself. He made it to his target: the truck. Or, rather, the machine gun on top of it.
John had never used the heavy machine gun on the truck before. In anything except for video games, of course. The sheer power of it was almost overwhelming, each bullet sending out its own line of doom. The recoil in each shot felt like another punch, right from his fist to the face of Al-Qaeda himself.
But Wolfie!
He saw his eyes fill red, and he swept the fist of doom across the enemy ranks.
Wolfie is a good dog!
He vaguely noticed that the enemy forces were rushing in on him. Almost subconsciously, he turned his machine gun fire on their mass.
They blew his damn leg off!
The supply of ammunition in the chain turned to zero, and John dismounted the truck and picked up a shotgun from Daniel's dead fingers.
The sick bastards stuck a fucking KNIFE in him!
He blew two rounds off into the enemies through the wall of tears. A 9mm bullet struck his kevlar jacket, but he hardly felt the impact.
Who the fuck DOES that to a dog?
The enemy numbers almost seemed to be depleting. John felt like a war god, like Ares from Greece. Or was that Rome? But just MOST of them wasn't good enough. He had made a promise to Wolfie, after all.
You are going to see vengeance being done. I promise.
The enemy were terrified now. In just five minutes, John had reduced their numbers from sixty to twelve. All their bullets seemed to be flying by him. Some of them though reinforcements had come.
I will rip your motherfucking heads off if that is what it takes!
The broken remainders of the British troops poured out of the woodwork, hot on the pursuit with John at the lead.
These bastards did it for sport.
John pumped the remainders of his shells into the fleeing enemies, throwing down his shotgun when he finished.
Let's see how THEY like it!
The enemy were on an all-out sprint now. John terrified them, they thought he was a demon. John thought so too.
Let's see how THEY like being killed for sport!
Anger runs fast, yet fear runs faster. The enemies soon outdistanced him, but John Watson's work was not yet finished. Not with blood in his veins and another magazine left for his "browning".
He counted three targets down before the rest went out of range. Didn't stop John from emptying the rest of his magazine at them. Just in case his luck went a little bit farther.
He reached the fallen enemies. One of them had died, but two others had wounds to the stomach and shoulder. Flesh wounds, to be sure, but still enough to hurt. And their pain was all that John wanted right now.
He didn't remember producing the knife he had pulled from Wolfie. He didn't remember stabbing the wounded soldiers, over and over and over. All he remembered was the butt of the Major's rifle across his cheek, and his yelling, "I SAID ENOUGH!" so loud that it broke John's spell. John collapsed on the cold ground in tears.
"They used him as knife practice. What kind of sick bastard uses a dog as knife practice?"
John's therapist looked at him. John could tell that she was pitying him, and he hated it. He wanted to talk to someone who would understand what it was to be utterly, totally dependant on something, and have it ripped away from them.
"When I was in the war, all my friends would keep me at arm's distance. We would chat, we would play cards, we would put on a friendly face. That was all." John took a deep breath, fighting back the hot tears that pressed to break free. "This dog… Wolfie, he… he was the only honest person I met in the army. Those sick bastards killed him. They killed him for sport."
She was writing down his words, fighting to keep from looking at him condescendingly. John knew what it was to be looked down upon, and he hated it. Still, it felt good to talk about with someone.
"That dog, he… he was everything to me. When he was ripped away from me, I felt like I would never feel happiness again."
The therapist looked at him in a quizzical manner.
"What is it?"
"Nothing. It's just that, this is the second time someone has told me that today."