Terminal Impact

by Charles Henderson

  “Took out a carload of Hajis with AKs trying to run the blockade. Two weeks’ time he killed thirty-two enemy fighters. Got the Silver Star medal,” Jack said. “Well earned.”

  “We finally got that shit pile cleaned out in Fallujah Two six months later,” Barkley said. “That’s when I gutted me a second Haji with my Bowie knife. Not as spectacular as Afghanistan, but no less a close call. Gun jammed and all.”

  “I recall it.” Jack nodded. “Legendary piece of work, my friend.”

  “Fallujah. That’s when the Hajis started calling you, what was it? Ghost of Anbar?” Alvin said.

  “Ash’abah al-Anbar,” Jack said.

  “Right.” Barkley smiled. “What was it, two thousand enemy dead at the end of it, all told?”

  “Something like it. I thought more. Us hunting Zarqawi,” Jack added. “A real zombie land.”

  “That rat bastard’s smart-ass mouth,” Barkley said. “I hear he’s up here somewhere.”

  “We’ve had a standing mission to find and kill the motherfucker,” Jack said.

  “Good luck with that,” Alvin said. “He’s downright elusive. One asshole says he’s up by Mosul. Another one says Ramadi and Fallujah. Now, we got some raghead goat fucker saying he saw Zarqawi at an al-Qaeda powwow out east of Haditha.”

  “My bet, out west of Haditha,” Jack said.

  “I guess you can find out. From what I read in the op plan, you’re headed that way?” Barkley said.

  “When Colonel Roberts drafted things up, he asked me where I thought we might find Zarqawi,” Jack said. “I told him on the opposite side of the river from the main body of the operation. If we sweep the east side, he’ll go on the west side. And vice versa.”

  “Cheating motherfucker, we’ll hit both sides. See what he does,” the first sergeant said, and spit in the dirt.

  “Zarqawi might not even be in Iraq,” Jack said. “One of the intel wizards who’s supposed to know this shit says Zarqawi likely operates in and out of Syria. Him being Palestinian, he’s got lots of cousins out there.”

  Jack squinted his eyes and looked again. In the distance, toward the landing area, through a boiling mirage, he watched a gigantic human being ambling toward them.

  “I think that’s about the biggest Marine I’ve ever seen,” Jack commented, and pointed toward the man.

  Barkley looked over his shoulder.

  “My staff sergeant, who’s still in the shitter,” Jack went on, then with an interrupting thought, looked at Cochise Quinlan, who had stretched out on the dirt. “Sergeant Quinlan, come to think of it, you might check on Cotton.”

  Then he looked back at First Sergeant Barkley. “Like I said, my staff sergeant, Cotton Martin, stands six-foot-six, but that dude’s got to be pushing seven feet.”

  “Staff Sergeant Marcellus Jupiter,” Alvin Barkley said.

  “No shit?” Jack said. “Like Marcus Claudius Marcellus, the Consul of Rome? One of the greatest military leaders to ever live?”

  “Shit, I guess so,” Barkley said. “I wouldn’t have a clue. You’re always full of oddball information.”

  “I got my bachelor of arts degree in humanities,” Jack said. “Art, history, government, languages, philosophy. All that nonessential school- teacher-type bullshit.”

  “Hey, a college degree’s a college degree, dude,” Barkley said. “I’ve done good to get my associate degree in business.”

  “Better than most Marine knuckleheads,” Jack commented.

  “With that BA, why aren’t you an officer?” Alvin asked. “That or running for Congress.”

  Both Marines laughed.

  “I did put in for warrant officer,” Jack said. “Selection board should announce the list in a few weeks.”

  “I thought they wanted younger guys than you and me,” Barkley said. “You know, like closer to ten years in service than pushing twenty.”

  “They do,” Jack said. “Colonel Snow has nagged me for the past five or six years to get it done, he says, before it’s too late. You think anyone in their right mind would pick an outlaw with my reputation to put on the gentleman’s green suit and lipstick lieutenant bars?”

  Barkley laughed. “You never know. Some of the guys on that board are gunners and generals. Those old crusty dudes tend to like a little outlaw in a guy. They just might pick you. Best wipe your feet and wash your face. That tiger-stripe recon war paint won’t let you in the officers’ club.”

  “Fuck!” Jack said, looking up at Staff Sergeant Marcellus Jupiter towering over him. “This dude’s even bigger up close. Like Shaquille O’Neal in MARPAT brown.”

  The massive dark green Marine didn’t smile. He’d heard the jokes before, especially the Shaq comparisons. In fact, he did greatly favor the NBA All-Star now playing for the Miami Heat.

  “I thought there was like a height limit in the Marine Corps,” Jack said. “Something like six-foot-seven, because Cotton, my staff sergeant, said he just slipped under the wire at six-six.”

  “Read the regs, Marine Corps Order 6110,” Staff Sergeant Jupiter spoke up, before First Sergeant Barkley could say anything. “The height-weight chart stops at eighty inches tall. The order itself does not specify a limit. It says that height and weight must fit the appropriate ratio and body mass index, and present a positive appearance in uniform. I have nearly zero body fat, and I max the physical fitness test. Gunny, my personal appearance ratios are just fine.”

  “You got that down pat, staff sergeant.” Jack laughed, and Barkley just grinned.

  “Every new officer I run into quizzes me on the appearance regulations,” Jupiter said. “I stay well versed, Gunny. A guy big as me? It’s survival.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Cotton Martin said, walking up to the big man and shaking his hand.

  Cochise Quinlan squatted in the dirt and looked up at the Shaq look-alike.

  “Fuck, you’re big!” the sergeant said without thinking.

  “So they tell me,” Jupiter responded.

  “Staff Sergeant Jupiter is a machine gunner in my company,” Barkley said.

  “That makes sense,” Jaws said, getting to his feet after snoozing, and lifting his Barrett .50 sniper rifle. “Big guys get big guns.”

  “Got big dicks, too,” Bronco said, standing up and chiming in.

  Sammy LaSage, Petey Preston, and Randy Powell got to their feet, too, seeing the team about ready to leave.

  Jaws looked at Bronco Starr. “And sawed-off little fuckers like you got stumps.”

  “But thick stumps,” Bronco came back, laughing. “Length don’t matter, it’s the girth that brings on the moans.”

  Marcellus Jupiter had enough of it and gave both Bronco and Jaws a look that would sour milk.

  “First Sergeant,” he said, “I came over to let you know that we’ll be launching as soon as we finish loading the Osprey. Pilot asked me to convey to the MARSOC team that he will take a couple of vectors along the river, per your instructions, drop low, and travel west to your tactical point of departure, drop you off, vector south, then east, across the river, then move north to the dam. Probably a good idea to beat feet over to the LZ.”

  “Since my reinforced rifle company’s operating units will probably be your closest friendly forces, up by the dam,” the first sergeant added, “we’ll be the ones come running if you hit the shit. I’ve got your rally points, reporting points, targets, and patrol route on my maps.”

  “Cool,” Jack said, falling in along the left side of Alvin Barkley. “You guys really are tight. Glad to have you covering our six. Hopefully, we won’t need you, except when maybe we haul ass at the end of the hunt.”

  “That’s the way we want it,” Barkley said.

  Bronco and Jaws walked behind Jack and the first sergeant. Preston, Powell, Quinlan, and Sage followed them. Staff Sergeant Jupiter led the way, ahead o
f the group, with Cotton Martin alongside him, talking basketball.

  “Those dudes are big as fuck,” Bronco said.

  “Maybe to you,” Jaws said.

  “I bet Jupiter’s dick’s so big he scares horses,” Bronco said, and laughed. “Probably carries two machine guns. One in each pocket.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Jaws grumbled.

  “Alex,” Cortez complained. “You’re one unhappy soul. Did your mother hate you as a child? Make you stay inside and practice the accordion while the other boys played baseball? Did your daddy piss in your Post Toasties?”

  “Keep it up, you little shit,” Gomez said, his big .50 caliber rifle riding over his shoulder while a semiautomatic Vigilance .338 Lapua Magnum support rifle rocked atop his hundred-pound pack, stuffed mostly full of ammo.

  Each of the other Marine Scout-Snipers carried similar kits on their backs, loaded for a long-range patrol, facing a virtually unknown enemy, miles from any friendly support or rescue. While all four two-man teams used the Marine Corps M40A3 sniper rifle as their primary bolt guns, they carried models chambered to .338 Lapua Magnum, so that it shot the same ammo as the highly accurate EDM-Vigilance semiautomatic support gun that also doubled as a backup sniper rifle.

  Besides the Barrett and its .50 caliber sniper rounds that Jaws carried, everyone fired the hard-hitting, far-reaching .338 Lapua Magnum as this mission’s primary round. Additionally, Jack and Cotton each carried an M249 light machine gun or SAW, along with as many canisters of 5.56-millimeter Black Hills seventy-seven-grain ammo for them as they and their sniper-team partners could haul in their packs, along with ample supplies of primary sniper rounds.

  “And you’ll do what, Jaws?” Bronco Starr sassed.

  “I’ll stuff your short ass under a rock and stand on it.” Jaws laughed. Then he put his hand on his partner’s shoulder and gave him a gentle push.

  Cochise Quinlan nudged his fellow sergeant, Sammy LaSage, as he smiled and shook his head at the two clowns ahead of them.

  “Ever notice how a sniper team that’s worked together a good while acts like an old married couple?” he asked Sage.

  “Good teams do, sure,” LaSage agreed.

  “You’re fucking gay,” Chico Powell crowed from behind. “Both you guys. Fruity-Loopy as three-dollar bills.”

  Sage lifted his leg and farted. “Ah, that felt so good. I wish I could do more.”

  “Dude!” Petey said, catching a full gust of the sour sausage gas.

  “That’s why they call those dogs I ate last night the Five Fingers of Death.” Sergeant LaSage laughed.

  Cochise Quinlan sniffed the air and caught a whiff. “Gunny V,” he called ahead, “you remember Blewis and Coop?”

  “Right,” Jack answered. “Lewis and Cooper? Great sniper team.”

  “Yeah, Blewis and Coop. Didn’t one of them like to eat Smoky Franks and chili dogs with lots of onions and shit like Sage does?” Cochise said.

  “I don’t have a clue,” Jack answered. “I know that Coop loves fishing. But chili dogs and smoky franks? Cochise, I think you’ve got them, and me, mixed up with someone who might give a shit.”

  Jaws laughed. “Right on, Gunny V. Burned your ass, didn’t he, Clarence.”

  “Fuck you, Jaws,” Quinlan said, as they walked under the wing of the V-22 tiltrotor aircraft.

  As his Marines climbed aboard, Jack stopped and gave a last look at the First Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment’s air base setup. All the comforts of home. For the next two weeks, he and his boys would live in the dirt and take turns sleeping on rocks in four-hour shifts.

  Deep in his gut, he had a bad feeling. Couldn’t shake it. Nagging, nagging, nagging.

  “Let me ask you something,” Jack said to Alvin Barkley, who waited to board the plane with him.

  “Sure,” the first sergeant said.

  “We hit that IED team a day before anyone should have known that heavy military traffic would be coming up MSR Bronze or ASR Phoenix,” Valentine said. “In the briefing, EOD said they took out two more on MSR Bronze, near the same spot on the other side of the river.”

  Alvin thought and nodded. “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Doesn’t that bother you?” Jack asked.

  “Now that you mention it.” Alvin nodded, his brow wrinkled in thought, and he bit his lip. “Like they got word we’d come up the road.”

  “Could have been that they had eyes on the battalion and saw the movement ahead of the operation,” Jack rationalized, trying hard to explain it.

  “Yeah, but both sides of the river? Up there in the same place? From where we set up, we could have gone anywhere. No. That didn’t tip them. Total crapshoot, unless they knew our plans,” Barkley said.

  “Does seem like I recall in the logistics section of the operations plan, we’ve got big convoys pushing up both supply routes on day one,” Jack said.

  Barkley added, “I can see the MSR, frequent military traffic. But they knew to set bombs over there, on that side of the river, in that culvert, where normally it’s mostly civilian traffic, when there’s traffic at all. Somebody told them, or they got a copy of the op plan.”

  “That bothers me,” Jack said.

  “Me, too,” Barkley agreed.

  “Lucky we got ’em,” Jack said, getting on the Osprey.

  “Real lucky,” Alvin Barkley said, following him.

  —

  When Chris Gray knocked on the door of Liberty Cruz’s apartment, he checked his breath. She must have been standing right behind it, because when she opened up the CIA operator still had his hand cupped in front of his mouth.

  Liberty laughed. “Checking just in case, huh?”

  “Old habits.” Gray shrugged.

  “Wishful thinking. However, I do appreciate clean breath.” Liberty smiled and gave him a peck on the cheek.

  “Well!” Gray brightened.

  “Come on, cowboy,” the good-looking woman dressed for casual war laughed, and took off, strutting her stuff down the hallway. “Let’s have fun.”

  Chris Gray couldn’t help but admire the show of swaying long hair, shapely boobs, and swinging hips as he walked alongside her.

  “Work, work, work. Work, work, work. Work, work, work. Hello boys, have a good night’s rest? I missed you . . .” Gray said, mimicking Mel Brooks’s lecherous character from Blazing Saddles, Governor William J. Lepetomane.

  Liberty flipped him the bird as she turned the corner and started down the stairwell.

  “Oh, you know that old movie,” Gray said, jogging the steps with her, enjoying the view and not hiding it.

  She smiled at Gray as she quickstepped. “Jack’s favorite Western. His most repeated line? ‘Mongo straight.’”

  Chris Gray laughed. “I’ll keep that one in mind.”

  Half an hour later, the two agents walked through the outer garden gates that hid the popular mercenary and media nightspot from the street, and went to the front door of the blue-stucco building with the big picture window that had the blue neon sign lit in it, BAGHDAD COUNTRY CLUB.

  Casey Runyan, Cliff Towler, and Bob Hartley had arrived long ago, and had already made a circle of friends, betting on how many bull’s-eyes Towler could hit on the dart board before missing. An old curved-top, neon-lit Wurlitzer jukebox filled with several hundred 45-rpm records blared out Little Eva singing “Loco Motion.”

  Blue light from the neon in the front window mixed with the red, blue, green, and yellow Christmas lights wrapping the shelves above the bar. Recessed orange lights hidden in deep sockets illuminated the mirror behind the bar, where all sorts of liquor stood on mirror-covered stair-step shelves, and gave the place that cheap dive look. All they needed was a handful of Eleventh Avenue hookers, and they’d have the total package, Liberty thought as she sized up the joint.

  “Meet your expectatio
ns?” Chris Gray asked the lady as he led her to a table that an anxious Iraqi barkeep hurriedly wiped clean for them.

  Every eye in the place caught sight of the striking woman and followed her as she and her CIA escort sat down.

  “Your usual, Chris?” their waiter asked in excellent English with a British lilt to it.

  “Sure thing, Ajax,” Gray answered. “James in tonight?”

  “He’s gone on a jaunt with Ahmed. Down to the coast at Basrah,” Ajax replied.

  “Supplies?” Chris asked.

  Ajax smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

  Gray looked at Liberty. “What’s your poison?”

  “You got Jack Daniel’s?” she asked the waiter.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ajax said. “Maker’s Mark if you prefer good Kentucky bourbon.”

  “Sure. Make it a double. Straight up. Neat,” she said.

  Gray looked at Ajax, and the Iraqi barkeep smiled back.

  Then Liberty reached inside the front slanted pocket of her 5.11 blouse and took out a four-tube leather case of cigars. She drew out a panatela, took a scissors-like gold clipper from a sheath on the side of the pack, and snipped off the tip.

  With the cigar clenched lightly in her teeth, Liberty smiled at the CIA man and his friend Ajax, both of them watching her with great fascination.

  She asked Chris as she lit up, “Care for a smoke, cowboy?”

  “Don’t mind if I do, ma’am,” Gray drawled out, taking a cigar from her case as she offered it, and clipped it with her nippers. He looked at the brown band on it and raised his eyebrows as he drew the roll of tobacco under his nose and sniffed. “Monte Cristo Especiales Numero Dos. Made in Havana. Not your run-of-the-mill Dominican replica, but the genuine article.”

  “My father, a defense lawyer in El Paso, has an old client in Juarez who keeps me supplied,” she explained, as the fragrance of her smoke spread in the barroom and drew more looks and a few wise-ass comments about coming rain because pigs had sticks in their mouths. Her disruption not only saw Cliff Towler miss the bull’s-eye, but he missed the dartboard entirely.