Eyes of the Emperor (12 page)

Something blew inside me.

Bait? We were nothing but
bait
?

In the dead silence I staggered.

“They're not going to hurt you, of course,” Major Parrish went on. “We're going to simulate it, but rest assured, no one's going to get hurt.”

It was the
Red Hibiscus
all over again. Take it out on the Japs.

A muscle in Cobra's cheek twitched, his unblinking eyes fixed on Major Parrish.

Pop
. What should I do?

Then I thought, No, I could
never
tell him. Dog bait.

What was worse was, the news was coming from Major Parrish, who I had trusted.

“Listen,” Major Parrish said. “It's not as bad as it sounds.
At first, all you're going to do is hide in the jungle and let dogs find you. Those of you working with the attack dogs and sentry dogs may have to wear some protective gear after a while, but that's about it.”

Cobra glanced at me, jaw tight, muscles working.

I shook my head slightly.

“The important thing,” Major Parrish went on, “is that if these dogs can be trained to smell the enemy, and to attack them on command, they might save our soldiers' lives.”

Our
soldiers? Who were we? Nothing but raw meat?

Franz stood with his chin on his chest and his arms crossed.

Major Parrish went on. “This program has been authorized by President Roosevelt, and I expect you as U.S. Army soldiers to do your job and do it well. I know you will, and that's why I handpicked each one of you for this assignment.”

Mr. Parrish! I shouted in my head. I thought you respected us!

“Follow me,” he said. “I'll show you the dogs.”

Waist-high grass reached in over a sandy trail that took us toward the interior.

Bait
.

The word banged around inside me trying to find a place to settle. Fire brewed in my veins. I knew Cobra felt it, too, heat fanned by wild winds.

Between the pines and scrub bushes, palmetto trees
sprouted like bursting fireworks. Wiry gray oaks wore branches bearded with moss.

We came to a pond. Long marsh grasses crowded the edges. The water was so still and clear, you could see the shadows of surface bugs on the bottom.

Major Parrish stopped. “Be careful in bayous and waterways like this. There's alligators on this island. They like to hide in the long grass.”

We edged the pond carefully.

The trail ended at the Quartermaster camp, where hundreds of tidy dog kennels lined up on cleared ground, wooden boxes with chicken-wire doors.

Men tending the dogs stopped and looked up as we approached. To the left, tents sprawled into the trees.

For the first time, the Swiss guy spoke to us.

“On the days we need you, that same boat will pick you up and drop you off where it did today. You will hike in and wait here. Your handlers will meet you and tell you what to do. But this is as close as you will ever get to the kennels. Everything beyond this point is off-limits. To these dogs you will never be a friend. You are the enemy.”

He let those words hang in the air.

“We want them to hate you, you see. That's the goal.”

It took me a day or two to settle with the idea of being dog bait. Cobra wouldn't talk to anyone. Chik wrote letters that he stashed under his pillow, not ready to let Golden Boy censor them.

“How can we be dog bait, PeeWee?” I said, the two of us sitting on a small hill of sand, watching Shig and Golden Boy pound each other in a sandball fight. “I mean, we supposed to be soldiers. Right?”

“All I know is it's orders, so we gotta do it.”

I squinted at Shig and Golden Boy, so easily having fun, not even thinking about it.

“If we don't do it,” PeeWee added, “then we going see the inside of some lousy brig, ah? Have a court-martial. Take away our stripes.”

I laughed. “Stripes?”

“Well, we got one.”

“They can have it.”

But the brig would be even worse shame than dog bait. Pop would never be able to lift his head again. Me, either.

“Listen,” PeeWee said. “Don't think about it. Just do it. That's what I going do. Ain't no big deal. So we the bait. Why fight it? Only bring trouble.”

“Yeah.”

Right then I decided, I'm a U.S. Army soldier. I'll do my duty just as I said I would. But who said I had to like it?

“How come they think we smell different from white guys?” I said.

PeeWee shook his head. “Beats me.”

Three days later Leroy took us back to Cat Island. We walked through the jungle to the dog camp. The Swiss was there with ten handlers and ten dogs. Waiting.

We eyed each other.

None of the handlers looked much older than us in their khaki pants and olive T-shirts.

The dogs were all kinds of breeds, mostly big dogs. When they sat, their heads came up to just below their handlers' waists.

The Swiss walked down the line.

“Shepherd, boxer, bloodhound, pit bull,” he said. “Here's your Irish setter, Labrador, and Bouvier. These two are a mix. Some of these animals will be better than others, of course, so we'll be weeding out the timid ones. No one but
the handlers will touch, feed, groom, encourage, reward, or command the dogs, is that clear?”

The dogs were on silver choke chains. Each sat quietly on the left side of its handler. Nice, I thought. Handsome animals.

The Swiss assigned ten of us to the ten handlers. “The rest of you follow me,” he said.

I got assigned to a handler named Smith. His dog was Kooch, a German shepherd.

Cobra got hooked up with King, a Labrador.

Chik got the Bouvier, Bingo.

Shig got Spit, a pit bull.

My dog was the biggest. He held his head high and looked smart.

Smith seemed about eighteen, nineteen at the most. Hard to tell with haoles. He stood about four inches taller than me, with a head that seemed too small for his body. He didn't look ugly, just different. He had a canvas bag slung over one shoulder and didn't offer to shake hands.

His dog, Kooch, gazed at me and wagged his tail. I couldn't help smiling—somebody's pet, like Leroy said, volunteered to serve in the army.

“Hey, boy,” I said, forgetting what the Swiss had just told us. I stuck out my hand for Kooch to smell.

Smith jerked back on the choke chain. “Don't touch or speak to the dog.”

“Sorry.”

“Follow me.”

Smith and Kooch headed into the trees.

The other handlers each took a separate path.

Ten minutes later Smith stopped in a clearing. He sat on a fallen tree and motioned for me to find a spot myself.

“Don't mind that old Swiss guy,” he said. “He sounds grumpy, but he's not as bad as he seems. What's your name?”

“Eddy Okubo, sir.”

“You don't have to call me sir. Just Smith.”

“Okay… Smith.”

“Now listen, Kubo. The first and most important thing you need to know is what the old man said—this dog is not your pet. He's not my pet, either, but we have a certain relationship.”

Smith ran his hand over Kooch's head.

The dog panted in the heat.

“He's a war dog. And that's a different kind of animal than somebody's house dog. He answers to me and only me. So get any notion you have about making friends with him out of your head. That's just not in the cards. Understood?”

“Understood.”

Smith studied me long enough to satisfy himself that I got it.

“What are all those other dogs doing?” I asked, thinking of the hundreds of kennels I saw. “I mean, we not going work with all of them, right?”

“No, we've got all kinds of work going on here. What you're doing is just part of it.”

I nodded. “All these dogs were somebody's pets?”

“Sure were. You know, most people think that if they have a vicious dog, he would be perfect for this kind of duty. But it's the exact opposite. What you want is a dog that
obeys. You got to have some aggressiveness, sure, but it's more important to have an animal that will do exactly what you tell him to do. And he has to have a keen sense of smell and hearing. You want smart, not vicious.”

Made sense to me.

Smith put his hands on his knees and pushed himself to his feet. “So let's get started.”

I heard voices not far off and glanced through the trees. Cobra and his handler were hiking parallel to us. I wondered how he was going to do this, because he hadn't settled with the dog bait idea like I had. But worse for him was that he didn't like dogs—unless they were tied up or behind some-body's fence. I grinned. A little rat dog like Sharky would probably seem pretty good to him right now.

Smith heard the voices, too, and headed away until we couldn't see or hear anyone else.

Finally, he stopped.

“All right, in a minute I'm going to send you off into the trees here.”

He glanced back to be sure no one else was nearby. “Everyone's doing the same exercise today, so we have to get some distance between us.”

Kooch stood patiently.

“Now, you…what's your name again?”

“Eddy Okubo.”

“Right. Okay, Kubo. You need to watch out for a few things on this island. First, we got some nasty snakes—copperheads, cottonmouths, and coral snakes. All poisonous, all deadly. I'll point them out if we see them. The important thing is that if you spot one, give it plenty of room. We got
some stuff for snakebites, but believe me, you don't want to get bit. Watch for gators, too. They pretty much don't want to be anywhere near you, but if you stumble onto one of 'em you might find yourself in a heap of trouble. I once saw a man get his leg took off by one. There's also boars, and they're dangerous, too, but we don't see those too much. And deer, but they ain't nothing to worry about. I seen a scorpion once or twice,” Smith said, wincing. “Man, I
hate
those things!”

Smith was a talker, all right.

I glanced around the jungle. It was hard to imagine that so many dangerous creatures could be on such a small island.

“So, here's the plan for today, Kubo. And probably for the next week or so. Depends on when the dog gets it. Some learn faster than others. Personally, I think the shepherd is the best breed we got in the K-9 Corps. So we're kind of lucky, you and me.”

He glanced down and rubbed Kooch's head. “Yeah. You're a smart dog, ain't ya, boy?”

Kooch looked up at Smith, his tongue dripping.

“Lucky dog, too,” Smith added.

“How come lucky?”

Smith hesitated.

“You heard of a suicide dog?”

I shook my head.

“Well, it's kind of hush-hush, but they're training those here, too. Boxers, mostly. What they are is dogs with explosives tied to their necks. They train them to leap into dugouts and foxholes. The explosives are set off by radio.”

“They blow up the
dog
?”

“Uh-huh.”

“But…”

Smith shook his head. “This is war.”

We sat in silence, thinking.

Smith sighed and reached into the canvas bag. He pulled out a jar. It was packed with something wet and red. He held it up and gazed into it, gleaming in the sunlight.

He tossed me the jar.

Looked like guts. “What is it?”

“Horsemeat in blood and water.”

He pulled a coil of string out of his bag. “That meat is for the scent.”

“Scent?”

“Uh-huh. Kooch's going to get a whiff of what's in that jar—and he'll want to eat it, but you're not going to give it to him. Not yet, anyway. You take a piece of meat out and tie it to this string. Then you drag it into the trees. Me and the dog will stay back here awhile and give you a chance to find a place to hide—not too close, now—go off a ways. Then he's going to find you.”

“That's it?”

“The minute he alerts me to where you are, I'm going to fire a shot with a small air gun. When you hear that shot, I want you to fall down, lie on your back, take the rest of that meat out of the jar, and put it on your throat. The dog's going to come up and eat it off you, right there under your chin.”