It was worse.

Instead of Newfoundland, Nils and Sultan were sent to Texas for four months of training. A look into Sultan’s past had revealed that he had started training to become a detection dog for the British military but had suffered a broken leg after which he refused to go out in the field with his trainer. So he had been adopted out to Mitchell with the understanding that Sultan would not work at finding drugs or explosives.

Now Sultan seemed to have no problems at all aside from a perfectly understandable aversion to gun fire. And although Nils was an experienced soldier, he didn’t blame Sultan one bit. If war was hell for humans, it had to be doubly awful for a creature whose hearing was so much better than human.

And then there was the search training. Sultan thought it was the best game ever. On the other hand, Nils wondered if he’d ever recover from 12 hours in a sweltering car under the Texas sun pretending to be a victim in need of rescuing, or rappelling down the side of a building. Most of the other trainees took the challenge with an easy grace. Nils had bruises on top of bruises from hitting the brick wall. At least nobody laughed at him and he didn’t have to crawl off the building.

Their return to Great Britain was uneventful. Nils and Sultan settled into a routine. They were assigned as security to various installations so that Sultan could get used to the equipment. Personnel had arranged Nils’ schedule so that he would have weekends and evenings free to work with the local Search and Rescue groups. Nils was afraid to ask why he and Sultan were being given special treatment.

Maybe Commander Straker simply wanted him and Sultan well away from HQ. Nils knew that didn’t make a lot of sense, but little about his situation was making sense.

Months passed. Nils and Sultan were called out by Search and Rescue on real searches a few times, but others found the missing persons first.

Now they had been called out by SHADO. No field assistant, no real support. Just Nils and Sultan waiting their turn to help.

Gunfire. An explosion – hopefully the UFO instead of one of the mobiles.

Sultan shivered but stayed down, dark head on his front paws.

“You have a go,” the mobile team leader called out.

“Sultan, find it,” Nils ordered. Sultan ran off in an easy lope, yellow vest and the glow-light on his collar shimmering like a will-o-wisp between the trees. Nils hurried after him, radio on, lamp and compass in hand.

Search and Rescue dogs were trained to find the victim then return to its handler to lead the way back to the victim. Nils had learned over the many past months that different dogs and handlers had different methods of searching and maintaining contact between them. Some dogs liked to run ahead and others liked to make sure their handler was close by at all times. Sultan was normally one of the later. He liked knowing that Nils was close by. “Support of the pack’ one of the trainers had called it.

But tonight Sultan was moving fast – too fast for Nils to keep up.  Then Nils heard a growl – Sultan’s growl. Nils ran toward the sound, underbrush tearing at his uniform pants. He called in that Sultan had found ‘something’.

“Hopefully not a rabbit,” the mobile leader grumbled back. Nils didn’t bother to respond. Sultan wouldn’t have stopped his search for a mere rabbit. And he wouldn’t growl at a victim.

Nils caught a glimmer of a yellow vest and headed toward it. Then he skidded to a stop. Sultan had found an alien and had it on the ground. An alien weapon was just out of reach of the creature. Nils un-holstered his own pistol and ordered Sultan to stand down. The dog backed off and the alien started to get to his feet. But almost before Nils could react, the alien grabbed for its weapon and swung it around toward Sultan.

Nils didn’t remember pulling the trigger but the alien’s weapon dropped to the ground, followed by the alien itself. Sultan’s growl was deep in his throat as he gazed at something hiding in the brush. Nils brought his lamp up to check it out and light reflected off another alien visor. The alien had his weapon up. A gout of flame erupted from the weapon’s muzzle as the alien got off a single shot. Nils took it down before it could fire a second time.

The SHADO operative looked around for his dog. Sultan was sitting beside a dark mass at the base of one of the large trees. Sultan barked and the mass began to make crying sounds as it revealed itself to be a school-age girl. One of the victims, alive and whole.

“Good boy,” Nils gushed, giving Sultan a treat and a scratch. He called in the location of the girl, but he also knew there were more victims.

“Find it.”

This time, Sultan let him keep up. Another victim found, this one alive but gravely injured. Apparently SHADO’s arrival had interrupted the aliens’ grisly chore of vivisecting this victim.

“Find it.”

Again Sultan loped away, making sure Nils was behind him. Fifteen minutes later, one more victim – this one dead. Sultan nudged the body as though to try to wake it up or figure out what was wrong.

The report was that three people were missing, but there was a chance the report was wrong.

“Find it.”

Sultan stopped to get his bearings, nose in the air as he tried to pick up any evidence that there was a human out there in the darkness. Nils followed as Sultan went through his search pattern, sniffing out the rafts of cells and oils that humans leave in their wake. A confusing eddy by a tree and a dark stain that might have been blood, then off again. Half an hour became an hour, then ninety minutes.

The mobile mission controller called twice to find out what the hold up was – the mobiles needed to head back to base. All Nils could say was that he didn’t want to leave until he was satisfied there were no more victims.

Sultan started barking – his ‘I found somebody’ bark. Nils hurried over to find Sultan licking the face of a small crying boy.

Epilogue
A small funerary urn was set on a pedestal. A silver star medal on a red ribbon hung over a framed photo of the individual being honored today – an Alsatian dog named Sultan. The photo wasn’t recent. It didn’t show the grayed muzzle or the cataracts that had left him nearly blind in his old age. It didn’t show his fierceness against the aliens, or his gentleness when dealing with traumatized victims of alien abductions. The photograph was simply of a handsome dog.

But the people attending the ceremony knew better.

It was a mixed group of SHADO operatives, mostly from the mobile unit teams, but some from SHADO headquarters as well. It wasn’t a quiet group by any means. Puppies yipped and scampered under the feet of their – slightly – more dignified canine elders. SHADO’s K-9 corps – puppy parents, trainers, and handlers. More and more of SHADO had gotten involved over the years. Outlying installations raised puppies for guard duty and for search and rescue.

Nils held the leash of his own newest trainee – a border collie called Suzy. She was still a half-grown puppy but was already promising to be a great search dog. But then, she had learned from the best – Sultan.

The noise level dropped and Commander Straker strode up to the podium next to the urn and photo. “We are gathered here to honor the memory of one of our own. He was a warrior. He was a searcher. He was a hero and the first of a long line of heroes. And above all, he was a friend in the way that only dogs know. His presence reminded all of us that our humanity is measured by how we treat those who cannot defend themselves. He reminded us that we must never lose sight that we are human and we defend humanity and all of Earth’s creatures against a threat we all know too well. But most of all, he reminded us that we aren’t alone in this fight. Thank you, Sultan, for being our friend.”