War Dogs by Rebecca Frankel

Forward Operating Base Shank in the Logar Province for very long; the dog team had only been on a few missions since they arrived from FOB Salerno in the Khwost Province.
    Anax had noticed the drag in Whittaker’s mood and, though the three-year-old German shepherd wasn’t prone to affection, he stayed close to his handler, nuzzling his head under Whittaker’s hand. In a matter of hours the storm cleared, leaving behind gusty winds, but the threat was gone. The mission was back on.
    By the time the sun made its entry into the sky and the temperature began its rapid climb, Whittaker’s unit had been walking for miles. He started to sweat. Anax wasn’t showing any signs of distress, taking the heat in stride. They made it through the village to their destination without disturbance; the roads were quiet and seemingly empty. All was clear and the resupply convoy got the okay to move ahead.
    At the outpost he, Anax, and the rest of their team—about 20 soldiers—
took a beat to catch their breath and rest in the shade, waiting for the convoy to catch up. They’d only been there a few minutes when a call came in from a neighboring village that another unit had stumbled onto what they thought was an unexploded ordinance. Whittaker and Anax walked over with a Czech EOD team. It turned out to be a simple detonation, and the Czech team made fast work of disposing of it.
    By the time they returned to the outpost the convoy had already made its drop-off and was ready for the return trip—the mission was nearly over.
    Whittaker’s team pulled their gear back on and headed toward the village, this time choosing an elevated path, an alleyway that ran high along the hillside giving them a clear, downward view of the main road and the convoy. By now civilians were bustling about, busy with their early-morning routines—getting to work, opening the shops, taking their children to school. Whittaker and Anax stuck to the center of the group as it spread out. He watched the first few convoy trucks roll along the road, and then he heard an RPG explode, followed by the sound of gunfire. The convoy was getting ambushed.
    Whittaker heard orders coming in loud over the radio, instructing the unit to move from their position on the hillside, to go into flanking maneuvers and to engage the enemy in an effort to draw the fire away from the convoy so it could make its way out of the village.
    Everyone began to run, moving fast down the hill over small rising walls and ditches, racing through the twisted alleys, closing the distance between Whittaker’s unit and the convoy. Whittaker had his hands on his weapon while Anax, still hooked to his side on the retractable, kept pace beside him. The dog was just as amped as the rest of them, feeding off their anxiety and adrenaline, but the dog didn’t make a sound, not a bark nor a whimper. The locals they passed were unfazed by the barrage of bullets and assault weapons, their faces serene and unafraid. A man rode by on his bike. It was as if they were operating on another plane of existence. The sounds of war had become so commonplace they were only background noises here, like the ringing of church bells.
    They continued to run, feet and paws pounding on the ground as Whittaker and Anax neared the wall, the final obstacle remaining between them and the road. Bullets ricocheted off of the houses, echoing throughout the valley, making it impossible to determine the enemy’s position. They jumped the four-foot drop to the road and into the line of fire.
    They say that when bullets make a whizzing noise, you know they’re close. When you can hear them cracking, they’re even closer. As soon as they hit the ground, the sound of cracking flooded Whittaker’s ears. He and Anax were stuck, pinned down in the wide-open middle of the road.
    Without his body armor, Anax was exposed, and Whittaker instinctively threw himself across the dog, using his own