War Dogs by Rebecca Frankel Read Free Book Online Page A

pocked and colored with dog-bite scars.
    Jakubin retired from the Air Force in 2005, so he’s free to wear civilian clothes while he works. On his head is either a Cubs baseball hat or a blackwool skullcap that reveals the poke of a smooth ponytail just above his shirt collar. The long hair is a personal grooming choice that he takes shit for, constantly. An avid hiker, much of his spare time is spent tackling trails and peaks, knocking out the list of 14ers that he scales with three longtime hiking buddies. He walks with a slow, sometimes uneven gait. It’s not hard to see how, on a military base with some 4,000 cadets, someone might mistake him for a wayward backpacker.
    One afternoon, as we drive back into the Springs from a day of training, the mountains rise up ahead of us, cutting across the sky, impossibly large. He looks over at me, his face brightening as if he’s just spotted old friends. “See that?” he says, nodding to the range as if there was any way I could miss it. “When I first saw those mountains I knew I was home.”
    The Academy kennels are set back away from the road on the widespread campus, nestled against the outline of more Colorado mountains. Two mesh wire sculptures contoured in the shape of dogs guard the front door, flanking the walkway. A worn, black leather couch takes up room in the hallway, the walls of which are lined with framed photographs of each dog who has called this kennel home. Underneath each photo are rectangular pieces of wood, plaques listing the dog’s individual achievements: Taint’s drug find in May 2003 (five grams of marijuana); Ginger’s 115 individual bomb searches in August 2003 alone; and Agbhar’s second-place finish in bomb detection at the Tucson K-9 trials in 2003. This wall of colorful photos and the kennel’s modest, fenced-in training yard out back, with its seesaw plank of wood and cement tunnel, are reminiscent of a nursery school playground.
    Just to the left is the door leading to the kennels themselves, and before that a clean and organized kitchen area. On the counter is a hand-written reminder not to feed Benga because he has a vet appointment the following day. Plastic specimen containers are lined up above the kitchen cabinets; inside, ghostly white, cocoon-shaped orbs float in a yellowish liquid, some kind of preservative. They are dog testicles. An homage of sorts, however bizarre, to the kennel’s dogs.
    At the other end of the hall, Jakubin’s office is comfortable but cluttered. His desk is a mess of papers; equipment and gear are lumped inpiles on the floor. Shelves and file cabinets are crowded with awards etched with achievements Jakubin has never mentioned. Across the hall, in what appears to be a little-used conference room, an old-fashioned mantelpiece hangs on the wall. The antique polished wood looks out of place, a relic in a room outfitted with more modern amenities—a large-screen television and plastic office chairs. It is the only thing Jakubin took from the original kennel, and on it sits a row of decorative tin boxes. Their sweetly curled pastel ribbons belie their contents: the ashes of the dogs the kennel has lost to illness and old age.
    Jakubin is always affable, quick to make jokes and easy with his self-deprecating humor. “If there were no dogs,” he likes to say, “I don’t know what I’d be doing. I’d be working in a video store.” Still, he somehow manages to remain at arm’s length even when he’s talking about his wife and their two sons or describing the day that Taint died. If you ask him how he won Taint over, he’ll just kind of shrug and tell you he did it with a pocketful of hot dogs.
    One afternoon as we walk through the campus, Jakubin runs into one of his handlers who has Benga, a German shepherd, in tow. The dog had banged his head, which caused a hematoma, the third on this ear. Now his left ear drooped, maybe