5 CHAPTER ONE On the night of May 1 2011 23 US Navy SEALs a Pakistani-American translator and a dog boarded two Blackhawk helicopters The stealth aircraft left Jalalabad Airfield in eastern Afghanistan The elite soldiers flew through the night sky making their way to Pakistan The SEALs were on a top secret mission The Central Intelligence Agency CIA believed that The Belgian Malinois is an intelligent and fearless breed of dog HUNTING TERRORISTS
Bomb-Sniffing Bees Bees are insects with a surprising military purpose Scientists are working to train honeybees to detect bombs Bees have a fantastic sense of smell Scientists are training the bees to find explosives by rewarding them with sugar water If trained successfully bees could be used to find mines Bees cost less than bomb-sniffing dogs They are also small enough to not set off the mines 6 the terrorist leader Osama bin Laden was hiding in a house in Abbottabad Pakistan On September 11 2001 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked airplanes and crashed them into the World Trade Center skyscrapers in New York City and the Pentagon the US military headquarters in Washington DC Another hijacked plane crashed near Shanksville Pennsylvania Almost 3,000 people were killed in the attacks As the leader of al-Qaeda bin Laden was responsible for the attacks The SEALs mission was to find bin Laden and capture or kill him One helicopter carried Cairo a highly trained military working dog Cairo was a Belgian Malinois
Military dogs like Cairo can be fitted with harnesses that allow them to be lowered from aircraft to the ground A Malinois is a lot like a German shepherd but slightly smaller They usually weigh about 55 to 65 pounds 25 to 29 5 kg Cairo’s Mission Like the other members of the SEAL team Cairo had been on many missions He could sniff a piece of clothing and find the person to whom it belonged Cairo could find someone who was hiding and 7
