Terminal Impact

by Charles Henderson

  For the next four days, they pressed Alosi. Let him sit it out in the little white room with the one-way glass window. They cooked him to stew the first twenty-four hours with the heat up and no restroom privileges until he finally went to the corner and urinated on the wall. When he took a shit there, they locked him to the hard bottom metal chair bolted to the floor, where he slept sitting up, if he slept. No restroom privileges.

  Chris Gray played a repeating loop of his recorded telephone conversations with his pipe-hitting enforcers and with Ray-Dean Blevins on an overhead sound system. During breaks, Liberty came in the room with Hartley or Towler or Runyan at her side and questioned him. He sat cuffed to his chair, glared at her, and said zilch.

  Then Cesare spent the next day in total silence, with bare fluorescent tubes overhead burning a pale dismal green hue against the white walls and gray floor. Bob Hartley brought him a meal of bread and water. Alosi ate it, drank the water, and smiled defiantly.

  After that, Chris Gray turned on thirty straight hours of Norwegian black metal rock over the room’s embedded surround-sound system. Tsjuder, Mayhem, and Immortal roared out their apocalyptic rage, mixed with random selections from Marilyn Manson, turned up full blast. A nonstop loop with the lights shut off. The sealed room, blacked out, left Alosi in utter darkness, smelling his shit and hearing without relief the raspy voices of what Satan and his demons must sound like.

  Alosi endured it all and still said nothing. Not one word. He felt proud, powerful. Fouled drawers and all. He showed them.

  Then on the fourth day, CNN reported the findings of the Iraqi police that the Americans guilty of killing the thirty-five civilians had died from an al-Qaeda attack. Zarqawi had issued a statement: Retribution for the innocent lives the Americans took. He gave credit for the bombing and sharpshooting to none other than the legendary Phantom of Baghdad, Juba the sniper, and his sidekick, Hasan.

  Two Russian sniper rifle rimmed shell casings were conveniently found in an open floor of a nearby building, and the ballistics on the bullets taken from the bodies matched, proving that they were fired from a Dragunov rifle. American and Iraqi bomb experts also determined that the bomb had all the earmarks of al-Qaeda Iraq.

  “It was fun, Cesare,” Liberty said, as the disheveled, red-eyed, and exhausted Alosi walked out of the small white room. “We’ll have to do it again real soon.”

  “You fuckers,” Cesare said as he gathered his cell phone, wallet, watch, pocket trinkets, and keys. “I won’t forget this. You don’t fuck with me and not get fucked back. I know people. You should have killed me. Your asses are mine now.”

  “We can always help you out there, ass-wipe,” Bob Hartley said. “Got a black bag in the back, just your size.”

  “Fuck you!” Cesare snapped at the smiling FBI man. “Fuck all of you!”

  Chris Gray took a lean against the wall by the outer door to the white modular building where they had worked over Alosi’s mind for four and a half days. Runyan and Towler sat out front in the FBI Denali, waiting to take the Malone-Leyva boss to the airport, where a company gun crew and driver waited for him.

  The CIA operator took out a green packet of Doublemint chewing gum, unwrapped a piece, and folded it in his mouth. Then he pushed out a piece toward Cesare as he departed.

  “Go ahead. Take one.” Gray smiled. “Helps the breath.”

  —

  When Elmore Snow finally reached Baghdad, he found Captain Mike Burkehart dozing in an airport lobby chair with Corporal Ralph Butler zeed out beside him. They had waited in front of one of the lobby flat-screen televisions since eight o’clock that morning, four hours ago.

  Elmore’s flight leg from RAF Mildenhall, in Suffolk, England, to Baghdad had been delayed while US Air Force mechanics repaired a hydraulic-system issue. Something to do with the rear ramp fully closing on the C-17 Globemaster. He had caught a ride on a retiring C-141 Starlifter at Dover Air Force Base, making its final flight, after a choppy ride out of Cherry Point the day before on a Marine Corps UC-12W, known among the civilian world as a Beechcraft King Air 350 turboprop.

  He had managed to sleep most of the transatlantic hop, two good nights in the BOQ at Mildenhall, then part of the way from England to Iraq. So when he arrived in Baghdad, he came off the plane well rested and ready to work.

  The colonel gave Mike Burkehart a nudge on the toe, and the captain popped open a blood-red eye. Then he shot an elbow into Sleeping Beauty Butler that sent the kid bolting out of the seat.

  “Sir!” the corporal stammered, snapping his heels together. Burkehart stood by him and reached a welcome handshake to Elmore Snow.

  “Sorry about the delay,” the colonel said. “You waited here the whole time?”

  “Yes, sir, just this morning,” Burkehart said. “Only information we could get was that your flight was delayed for a repair. We had no idea if it would be an hour or a day.”

  “How are you holding up, Mike?” Elmore asked, and gave Smedley a look, too. “And you, Corporal Butler?”

  Smedley shook his head. “I don’t know, sir. Pretty bad, I guess.”

  “Neither of us will go to jail.” Burkehart smiled, and put his arm over the poor, sad corporal. “Smedley won’t be reenlisting, and I’m retiring when we rotate out of here.”

  “I’m afraid it’s all out of my hands,” Elmore said. “I tried to intervene, but the general said we cannot make exceptions when it comes to national security. I have to agree. It is what it is.”

  “Sir, I know. There’s no heartburn here with either of us,” Burkehart said. “I should have logged in that op plan the minute First Sergeant Barkley handed it to me. When I signed his logbook, I just tossed it on the pile on your desk. I never thought about it again. A hectic day. Billy-C getting shot and all.”

  “How is Sir William Claybaugh?” Elmore smiled. “He sitting down okay?”

  “Doing fine, sir,” Burkehart said. “Out in the truck waiting for us.” Then he turned and looked at Corporal Butler. “If anyone took it in the shorts, it’s Smedley. I didn’t tell him about the op plan on your desk. Just too busy with the bullshit. You know how it gets.”

  “Sir,” Butler said, hanging his head. “I should have looked. My job, keeping track. I let crap pile up. I’m the one who let that piece of shit Ray-Dean Blevins come in and make himself at home. I should have thrown his ass out!”

  “What’s the story on the filthy traitor?” Elmore asked.

  “Got blown away,” Burkehart said. “He and his crew. Their vehicle bombed, killed one guy. An al-Qaeda sniper, they say Juba, took out Blevins and the other guy.”

  “I heard tell that police recovered shell casings from a Dragunov and matched them to bullets they took out of the bodies, both Russian,” Smedley added.

  “So, it was an al-Qaeda hit,” Elmore said.

  “Who else?” Burkehart shrugged.

  Elmore shrugged, too, then suddenly turned toward the television monitor overhead. He caught someone on CNN saying Jack Valentine’s name.

  “What did he say?” the colonel asked, and all three men watched the news broadcast.

  Behind the news anchor was a boot-camp head-and-shoulders photograph of a very boyish Jack Valentine wearing dress blues with an American flag behind him. Across the bottom of the screen, a banner of red with white lettering announcing, BREAKING NEWS. AMERICAN MISSING IN ACTION.

  A white-bearded news anchor said, “Marine Corps and Defense Department spokesmen have issued an official no comment on the report that Marine Special Operations Gunnery Sergeant John Arthur Valentine is missing in action.

  “United States Senator Cooper Carlson of Nevada had this to say about the official no comment from military leaders, following his announcement of the missing Marine.”

  The shot cut to Senator Carlson standing at a lectern on the grass outside the main entrance of Nellis Air Force Base, wh
ere he made a speech for campaign supporters and the national and Nevada news media. His staff had prepped the reporters before the event, letting them know that the senator would make an announcement of national importance. They had also rounded up every screaming bobblehead they could wrangle off the streets of Las Vegas to create the illusion for the press that the villagers had awakened, torches and pitchforks in hand, and now rallied around their champion, Cooper Carlson, for whom they chanted, “Coop,” from his days playing college football at Princeton.

  “I have railed against this abusive administration and its illegal war in Iraq,” Carlson bellowed over the lectern at the cheering crowd. “Our servicemen and -women deserve better. They deserve diligent representation and attention, from a government that cares greatly for their lives! Not the cold and callous leadership that we have today! But impassioned, caring leaders like me! I have always stood up for our military people and fought hard for them.”

  The crowd erupted and chanted, “Coop! Coop! Coop!”

  “Today, we have a heroic Marine missing in action, Gunnery Sergeant John Arthur Valentine, who selflessly sacrificed himself, saving his platoon. Allowing them to retreat to safety while he held off the enemy single-handedly,” Carlson bellowed. “He deserves a medal and undying gratitude from his nation. Not the cold shoulder! Our military leadership cares so little about this one man that they turned their backs on him. Cut him adrift in the Iraqi desert. He wasn’t even worth one airplane to search for him! As of this minute, we have no idea if Gunny Valentine is dead or alive, or worse yet, captured! Will we soon see him beheaded on video?”

  The people cheered more, and the CNN cameras zoomed tight on the grandstanding politician.

  “Now,” Carlson shouted, his voice hoarse from yelling. “Our president and our military leaders have shut the door in our faces. No comment, they say. After we have found them out in this cover-up! What can they say?

  “Well, here’s what I say. One word for them: Busted!”

  The whole crowd went crazy.

  “We have reached out to Sergeant Valentine’s mother and father in his hometown of El Paso, Texas, where he was a high school football star, loved by the whole city,” the CNN news anchor said as the shot cut back to him in the Atlanta studios. “Here is our correspondent Gustav Cisneros with Harry and Elaine Valentine.”

  The shot cut to a father wearing a Vietnam veteran baseball cap, his face drawn, overwhelmed with sadness, and a mother in tears, holding a framed photograph of their missing son. While they talked, the camera took close-up shots of the many pictures of Jack Valentine, from his days in high school, in his football uniform, to a more recent shot of him with gunnery-sergeant stripes on his Marine Corps dress green uniform and a chest filled with ribbons topped with gold jump wings and a silver SCUBA/UBA head. A photo his mother had taken of him when he came home on leave following his tour in Iraq the prior year.

  “Has anyone from the Marine Corps contacted you, Mr. Valentine?” the reporter asked.

  “First thing we heard about Jackie missing was when that senator from Las Vegas called us last night,” Harry Valentine said. “Nobody from the government has said a word to us, except for him.”

  Elaine Valentine held up the picture of Jack and pled in the camera, “Please, Mr. President. Go find our son! Bring our Jackie home.”

  “Do you think he may have been captured, and the government is just not saying anything?” Gustav Cisneros asked Harry Valentine.

  “Jack Valentine will never be taken alive!” the gray-headed man snarled in the camera, his face red with anger. “I’ll tell you this! He’ll send one hell of a bunch of those al-Qaeda sons of bitches to hell with their seventy-two virgins before they kill him. They won’t take my boy easy! Not my Jackie! No, sir!”

  The camera panned to Elaine Valentine, who wailed and cried, “Please come home, Mijo!”

  “So, Mr. Valentine, you think your son could be alive and not captured?” Cisneros asked, as the camera shot reversed to the reporter, then to Harry Valentine.

  “I know my son’s alive!” the old man said. “As smart as he is, I’ll put money on him out there in that desert, avoiding capture and putting in the ground every al-Qaeda bastard that gets in his way.”

  Harry put his arms around his wife and hugged her. Then he said at the camera, “My boy’s coming home. I’ll put money on it! And he’ll be real pissed that anybody had the nerve to make his mama cry.”

  “You think that the government has kept this a secret because they believe Sergeant Valentine is alive and avoiding capture?” the reporter followed up.

  “Probably so. They’ve got their reasons,” Harry said. “They could have told us about it, though. It wasn’t right, us hearing about Jackie gone missing from some politician.”

  Cisneros looked at the camera. “Gustav Cisneros reporting from the Valentine home in El Paso, Texas. Back to you in Atlanta.”

  A scene of the shooting that took place outside the embassy came on the screen, and the news anchor said, “In other news from Iraq, Senator Jim Wells of Virginia has called for a full Senate investigation of the conduct of security contractors in Iraq, following the tragic gunfire that claimed the lives of thirty-five civilian bystanders. Wells is calling for the president to order that all contractor companies operating in any combat zone come under State Department and Department of Defense jurisdiction, in light of the deadly shooting by Malone-Leyva security agents on the street outside the United States embassy in Baghdad.”

  Then a picture of Ray-Dean Blevins in a Marine Corps uniform came on the screen. “The American contractor reported responsible for the shooting died just days later in a car bombing and sniper attack in Baghdad. Ray-Dean Blevins, a security supervisor for Malone-Leyva Executive Security and Investigations, along with his two-man crew, Frederick Stein and Gary Frank, were killed in an apparent attack by al-Qaeda Iraq in retaliation for the shootings of the civilians.”

  Elmore Snow looked at his two Marines. “I don’t know why I bother even asking you two what’s new. All I have to do these days is turn on CNN or Fox News.”

  Smedley Butler took Colonel Snow’s luggage from his hands. “Let me get that, sir.”

  Captain Burkehart said as they headed for the Hummer, parked outside with Billy-C standing guard, “Colonel, to be honest. I’m ready to retire. My brother’s got a gun shop in Loveland, Colorado. I’m going there to work. Fix guns. Teach people to shoot. Live the dream. I’m done with bullshit.”

  —

  L iberty Cruz sat on the end of her bed in her Green Zone apartment, combing out her wet hair, crying. She had a small picture of her and Jack Valentine, taken during a lovers’ weekend at Nags Head, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, out front of Nestle’s Nook, a little beachfront motel where they stayed. The owner, Herman Nestle, and his wife, Charlotte, ran the little place, each cottage personally decorated by Charlie, as they called Charlotte, who also baked key lime pies that drew nightly crowds that filled their little Cedar Post Barbecue Kitchen, where the motel office and front desk sat at one end.

  She and Jack had planned to get married that weekend. But a fight took the air out of that balloon. Liberty wanted to wait on having children, until after they had accumulated some wealth and success, from the business that her attorney background and FBI training, experience, and connections would open, once she launched her own security and investigations company. Her lifelong dream. She wanted a summer villa in the mountains overlooking Milan, Italy, or near Saint Tropez, France. They could rent it out when they weren’t using it, she had rationalized with Jack.

  They would build their primary home someplace safe, away from the Mexican border. Perhaps Colorado, she suggested.

  Jack, however, loved Mexico. His father had no family to speak of, a brother somewhere in Minnesota he hadn’t seen in years. But his mother had a wonderful family down in the heart of beautiful
mountains down south. Clear streams ran into crystal lakes teeming with fish. They could just disappear, he told Liberty. Live a simple, happy life with lots of children. His Marine Corps retired pay and money she could earn doing legal work for surrounding villages would have them living in style.

  “It’s Mexico, Jack!” Liberty blew up. “Drug cartels run the place nowadays. Don’t you read the papers?”

  “No.” Jack shrugged. He could only remember the beautiful times he spent with his parents, visiting his mother’s family. How he and his father had spent peaceful, beautiful days sitting in a small boat on Lake Santa Maria, looking in the clear water and catching more fish than they could ever eat.

  Liberty cried more as she thought of Jack, alone in the desert. Iraqi insurgents wanting to kill him. She cried more, too, because she knew that neither of them could commit nor compromise to the other’s vision of what a good life would be for them together.

  She wanted nice homes, wealth, and luxury, and Jack wanted simplicity. Money never interested him. He got a Bachelor of Arts degree in Literature and Art, for crying out loud. He didn’t pursue something that would enable him to climb a ladder of success. He read Victor Hugo and Herman Melville, and dreamed of a world painted by Salvador Dali. Completely unrealistic!

  “Oh, Jack!” she wept, and kissed the picture, just as someone knocked on her door.

  Her cheeks streaked with tears and her hair hanging straight and wet. Not a smudge of makeup on her face, she started not to answer it, but then the voice outside changed her mind.

  “Liberty!” he said. “It’s Elmore. I know you’re in there, so open up.”

  She ran to the door, and opened it. When Colonel Snow started to step inside, she threw her arms around him and kissed his cheek.

  “Finally!” she cried. “Someone who loves me! Elmore, I need a hug so bad!”

  The bristly gray old warrior smiled and gave her a big, long hug, and kissed her cheeks, tasting her tears. Then he looked into her eyes. “I’m so sorry about everything. I spoke to Jason Kendrick and he told me what happened. What he had to do. Girl, what got into your head?”