Terminal Impact

by Charles Henderson

  Giti looked at her sisters. “Three days?”

  “Yes,” Miriam said. “But no more than three. Abu Omar may decide to take matters in his own hands, especially if he does not want to share the fame as the one who captured and now executes this man they call the Ghost of Anbar.”

  “My name is Jack,” the gunny said. “Jack Valentine.”

  “We never knew you by anything except Ash’abah al-Anbar, as the men call you,” Giti said. “Valentine you say? Like the celebrated day of love?”

  “That’s me.” Jack smiled.

  “What about Sabeen?” Amira asked Giti.

  “We must take her, too,” Giti said.

  “She is so slow and always afraid,” Miriam cautioned.

  “All the more reason she must come,” Giti said.

  “And Yasir?” Amira asked.

  “I have an idea, and Sabeen can help,” Giti said.

  “So today’s jihadi show is what?” Jack asked, looking at the blue medical scrubs that Amira had brought him.

  “A display, I suspect,” Giti said. “They want to draw attention to you, and themselves as such heroes, capturing the Ghost of Anbar. All the men upstairs are talking about you and how great they now are. They want the notoriety among the other factions.”

  “But what’s to stop old Abu Omar from deciding to hog the show all to himself? Cut my head off in the morning, and as you say, not share fame and glory with Zarqawi.”

  “As you said”—Giti smiled at Jack—“we must trust God. He has brought you this far.”

  “Yeah, but I could have done without the part where I’m sitting naked in an ancient Persian dungeon with my wrists chained to my ankles,” Jack said.

  Voices grew louder as Yasir and two other gunmen came down the passageway to the cell where Jack sat chained, naked and freshly washed, with the blue medical scrubs folded on his lap.

  “Good,” Yasir told the girls as he walked in the room and saw them sitting quietly with their backs turned toward Jack, waiting for the guards. He gave Miriam a push with the toe of his boot, looking tough for the two younger al-Qaeda gunmen. “Go upstairs and get to work with Sabeen, cooking our dinner.”

  “What about food for him?” Giti asked, as she and the two other sisters hurried out the door, bowing their heads so that they did not make eye contact with any of the men.

  “Abu Omar said nothing of feeding this snake,” Yasir said, again in his commanding voice to impress his subordinate guards.

  “Very good, master,” Giti said, and that made Yasir smile. He liked the show of respect, especially in front of the men. “Get going! If I need you, I will call you.”

  Jack watched the girls hustle away, then looked at Yasir and the two young henchmen with him.

  “You boys suck each other’s dicks? Or do you prefer giving blow jobs to strangers?” Jack asked them with a smile, as if he had just complimented the three men.

  Yasir and one young man cracked half smiles, taking the compliment that they did not understand. But the other gunman slapped Jack on the side of his face with the flat side of the wooden buttstock on his AK rifle.

  “Americans speak such filth!” the young jihadi said.

  “Two of you don’t understand a word I say, but one does,” Jack said, smiling bloody teeth at the angry guard.

  “I should hit you again for provoking me,” the one who understood English said.

  “You should not react to bullshit prisoners say,” Jack told the young man. “If you’d played dumb-ass with fucktard and dipshit here, I might have said something important, thinking you didn’t understand me.”

  “Shut up,” the Haji said.

  “Don’t say I never taught you anything.” Jack smiled, nodding down at the locked chains.

  The one who understood English told Yasir in Arabic, “Unlock the chains. If he moves, we will shoot him.”

  Then he looked at Jack, and said, “You will get dressed. If you raise a finger, as if you want to escape, I will shoot you in the head.”

  “Abu Omar won’t like it.” Jack smiled and spit a glob of blood on the floor between Yasir’s toes as he went to unlock the padlock between the gunny’s ankles. Then Jack looked back at the English-speaking Haji and smiled more. “I dare you to shoot me.”

  —

  A range of mountains lay northwest of Haditha Dam and lake, and Elmore Snow looked at them with orange clouds from the sunset shrouding their distant peaks. Standing in the blockhouse atop the high hard wall, he thought of home, and of his wife, June, and his daughter, Katherine. The girl was growing up too fast. How sweet life would be right now, he thought, if he had already retired from the Marine Corps.

  He thought of Rowdy Yates, lying at rest in the Evansville National Veterans Cemetery on the outskirts of Casper, Wyoming. He thought of Brenda Kay, now living at home with her family up Headgate Draw, and wondered how she would live her life without Rowdy, the new baby coming soon.

  Elmore stared out at the sunset, the great flat desert and small hills, and thousands of empty square miles where Jack Valentine fought to stay alive, the proverbial needle in a haystack.

  “Colonel Snow,” Captain Charlie Crenshaw called from the ground on the inside of the high, hard wall. “Our CIA contingent has beamed up something on their computer that al-Qaeda sent to Al Jazeera about an hour ago, and they posted it to their Web site.”

  “Jack?” Elmore asked, as his heart crashed flat to his boots.

  “Afraid so, sir,” the Delta Company, Fifth Marines commanding officer answered.

  “Did they kill him?” the colonel asked, his voice broken. He didn’t know if he could handle losing another Marine he held so close to his heart.

  “Not yet,” Crenshaw said. “They got him dressed in a blue jumpsuit and threaten that they’ll cut off his head unless America releases all the prisoners at Abu Ghraib.”

  “Motherfucker!” Elmore screamed into the empty desert from his high perch.

  “Excuse me, sir?” the captain asked.

  “I’m sorry, Captain Crenshaw,” Elmore said, and headed down the ladder. “Something I say when I am really upset.”

  “I’ve heard tell,” the skipper said, leading Lieutenant Colonel Snow to the blockhouses where Speedy Espinoza had set up his CIA intelligence shop with Hacksaw, Kermit, and Habu bunking there, too.

  When they got inside, Espinoza clicked the PLAY button on the news agency’s Web site.

  Jack Valentine sat on a short milking stool in what appeared to be a room with stone walls. An al-Qaeda black flag draped the background, and two men with rifles, dressed in black outfits and their heads and faces wrapped in black, stood at each side of the Marine. A man directly behind Jack, also wearing a black ninja suit and mask, held a short Moorish sword with a broad, curved blade.

  A gray beard peeked below the mask that the man with the sword wore, suggesting that he was older and probably a higher-ranking al-Qaeda Iraq boss.

  The man bellowed his speech in Arabic for all the jihadi brethren, then spoke in very good English:

  “We are the Army of God, Jamaat Ansar al-Sunnah, may Allah be praised. Today we have captured the American Marine, an evil assassin of the faithful, Gunnery Sergeant John Arthur Valentine, known to us as the minion of Satan, Ash’abah al-Anbar.

  “It is God’s will that America must release all of our faithful brothers from the prisons at Abu Ghraib and at Guantanamo, Cuba. American forces must also lay down their arms and the infidels depart Iraq and all the lands of the Levant. Unless this happens in the next seventy-two hours, I will execute Gunnery Sergeant John Arthur Valentine in the method of our faith. May Allah be praised!

  “Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!”

  “And kiss my ass,” Speedy Espinoza said, clicking off the video.

  “Seventy-two hours,” Elmore said.

 
“Probably about seventy hours by now,” the CIA agent said, “given the time lost after Al Jazeera received it and that it took for them to post the video to their Web site.”

  “Less than three days.” Elmore sighed.

  “Fuck!” Bronco Starr said.

  “We shouldn’t have left him there!” Cochise Quinlan protested, and the colonel looked at him.

  “He saved our lives, Colonel. All of us,” Petey Preston said. “Me and Chico, we’d be dead if it wasn’t for Gunny V.”

  Elmore Snow cocked his head to one side and gave Billy Claybaugh a look. Then he wrinkled his forehead at Cotton Martin and pointed his thumb at corporals Preston and Powell. “I thought those two went to Germany. To the hospital.”

  “Sir, Cotton didn’t have a thing to do with it,” Staff Sergeant Claybaugh spoke up.

  “You knew about this?” Elmore said to Billy-C.

  “Yes, sir,” he answered.

  “After the fact, sir,” Chico Powell said.

  “I busted ’em out, sir,” Sergeant Cochise Quinlan said, stepping up to take full blame.

  “You know, you guys are U-A,” Elmore said to the two wounded corporals. “Do the hospital people even know you’re missing?”

  “Those Air Force dudes at Charlie Med?” Petey Preston smiled. “No, sir. They don’t have a clue. Never will.”

  “Who has your record books?” Elmore asked. “Captain Burkehart sent those to the hospital when we transferred you out.”

  “We have them right here, sir,” Cochise said, and the two Marines held up large envelopes that contained their enlisted Service Record Books and all their orders.

  “Didn’t I see this in a movie once?” Elmore said, and began to laugh.

  “Sir, we ain’t hurt bad,” Preston said. “Couple of leaks here and there, a few broken ribs. Hey, you get dinged up worse than this playing high school football. We don’t need to go to a hospital. They let Staff Sergeant Claybaugh stay at MARSOC on light duty. Why not us?”

  “Yeah, and I see how that’s working out, too,” the colonel said, looking at Billy-C leaning on his crutches.

  “I’m healing just fine, sir,” Claybaugh said.

  “We got our antibiotics and everything,” Powell said. “Billy even got some extra refills for us, so we’re fat. Way more than we need. Don’t worry about anything, sir. We got all the bases covered.”

  “You know, a daughter in high school is less trouble,” Elmore said, and let out a long breath of frustration. “I’ll call Captain Burkehart and have him start fixing this.”

  “Sir, nobody’s going anyplace without Gunny Valentine,” Jaws piped up.

  “That’s the law, sir,” Bronco chimed in.

  “Who’s law?” Elmore asked.

  “Our fucking law, sir,” Jaws said, deadpan and serious.

  —

  Six men sat at a table eating a late-night dinner, surrounded by two dozen gunmen in the al-Qaeda safe house near the village of Hibhib. At the head sat Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Davet Taché stood by the door with Jean René Decoux and their female spy, French journalist Francoise Theuriau.

  “Juba, Hasan, and the lovely Francoise,” Zarqawi said, “always you make the stylishly late entrance. So very French of you.”

  Davet smiled, and said in French, “Fashionably late as always, sir. However, I rushed here from Baghdad as quickly as I could with wonderful news from Omar Bakr.”

  “Make them a place at the table,” Zarqawi ordered the men who served their meal.

  “Even the woman?” one of the gunmen asked, looking at Francoise.

  “Certainly,” Abu Musab huffed. “Do you know what this woman did for the jihad? She is the one who gave us the secret plans. It is our honor to sit with her tonight.”

  Francoise smiled as she made her way to a chair. She adjusted the dark blue hijab around her head and neck, making sure it remained properly tucked inside the top of her dress, hiding any hint of her breasts. Rather than click-clack high-heel slippers with open toes, now she wore plain brown shoes with socks, and a long brown dress and matching long blouse. Proper Muslim attire.

  Davet Taché and Jean René Decoux wore fine Armani silk and wool-blend summer business suits. Davet’s light gray with a thin blue pinstripe and Jean René’s a dark tan.

  “We have come to stay a few days if you don’t mind,” Davet said. “Things have become somewhat difficult in Baghdad. One of our American contacts has become a liability of late. While the FBI investigates him, we thought it best that we make ourselves unavailable.”

  “Juba, or it is today your French character, Davet,” Zarqawi said. “You and Hasan, and this woman, may remain my guests for as long as you desire. Now, what news?”

  “The one they call Ash’abah al-Anbar, the Ghost Sniper, Gunnery Sergeant John Arthur Valentine,” Juba began.

  “I heard that pig on CNN say his name some days ago,” Zarqawi remarked. “What of him?”

  “Abu Omar has him.” Davet smiled, and looked all around the table, and at the men standing guard. All of them aglow.

  “Hah!” Zarqawi let out, and slammed the heel of his hand on the table, rattling the dishes. “Have him brought to me! I will saw off his head!”

  “Abu Omar begs your indulgence,” Davet interjected.

  “Indulgence?” Zarqawi huffed. “I want that American here. Not at Haditha! Here!”

  “Sir,” Juba said. “He has already released a video to Al Jazeera, making demands. Omar will behead Gunnery Sergeant Valentine in three days.”

  “Insubordinate fool,” Zarqawi grumbled. He sat thinking for a moment, angry. Took a breath and nodded.

  “What’s done is done. Three days it is,” Abu Musab said. “I will do the beheading. It will take place here.”

  “Very good, sir,” Davet Taché responded, still speaking with his eloquent French. “We will send word to Abu Omar.”

  —

  Elmore Snow tossed on his cot for two hours, trying to force himself to get at least four hours’ rest, a minimum he considered needed for any combat leader. He could not get the picture out of his mind of Jack Valentine sitting shackled in front of a camera and the black-suited terrorist with the Moorish sword going to work, cutting off his head.

  He laced up his boots at 3 a.m. and went to the Company D communications module. The colonel gave the sergeant standing the watch a pat on the shoulder. “Got a line to Baghdad?”

  “Yes, sir,” the sergeant said, tired and staying awake with willpower and strong coffee.

  “I need to call this number. MARSOC Detachment headquarters,” Elmore said, and handed the Marine the information.

  “Anybody even left back there?” The sergeant smiled at the colonel.

  “Better be at least a captain and a corporal, and one of them had better be awake,” he said.

  Two rings and a groggy Ralph Butler answered, “MARSOC Detachment, Iraq. Corporal Butler speaking, sir or ma’am!”

  “Skipper nearby?” Colonel Snow asked.

  “He’s with that good-looking FBI agent and the CIA spook, over in operations,” Butler said.

  “Patch me to them,” Elmore said.

  Two rings, and Mike Burkehart answered, “Operations, Captain Burkehart speaking.”

  “Mike, Colonel Snow here,” Elmore said.

  “Yes, sir,” Burkehart said. “We saw the video of Jack if that’s why you’re calling.”

  “Yes, and there’s more,” Elmore said. “I figured you guys got the news. Speedy Espinoza said they have a team of CIA analysts working on that video in Baghdad, and a group at Langley, too, around the clock. They make anything of it?”

  “Let me put Chris on,” Burkehart said, and handed the phone to Gray.

  “What have your people figured out, anything worthwhile?” Elmore asked.

  Gray said, “Giv
en that the people who have Jack claim to be this bunch of Sunni insurgents calling themselves Jamaat Ansar al-Sunnah, Assembly of the Helpers of Sunnah, the teachings and writings of Muhammad, we have a very good idea who the guy with the big knife is.”

  “Abu Omar Bakr al-Nasser,” Elmore said. “Way ahead of you. Got a couple of interrogator-translators and an S2 officer who doesn’t sleep much at nights either, on account of him researching these monsters.”

  “How about Colonel Omar Bakr Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti?” Gray said.

  “That’s a new spin. Like putting a circle around his X, when a hillbilly checks into a Memphis hotel?” Elmore joked.

  Gray laughed. “I had to think about that a minute, Colonel. Yes, sir, exactly like that.

  “You got a deck of those Saddam Hussein bad-guy playing cards they used to hand out?”

  “I guess I lost mine,” Snow answered.

  “You recall this one dude in there, former Iraqi interior minister, defense minister, Republican Guard general, chief of Saddam’s intelligence service and all-around monster straight from hell, Ali Hassan Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti?”

  “Chemical Ali. Of course,” Elmore said. “He’s the guy that gassed the Kurds.”

  “Roger that,” Gray said. “Sitting in a Baghdad jail cell as we speak, awaiting the hangman’s noose as his appeal winds its way slowly through the political system here.”

  “Let me guess,” Elmore said. “Our guy, Abu Omar, is somehow tied to this creep.”

  “Oh yes,” Gray said. “Like first cousins.”

  “Chemical Ali is a first cousin of Saddam Hussein,” Elmore said.

  “Give the colonel a gold star,” Gray said.

  “So this guy, Abu Omar, is Saddam’s brother?” Elmore asked.

  “Not quite,” Gray said. “He’s Saddam’s other first cousin. Abu Omar shed the al-Majid al-Tikriti identifiers in exchange for the al-Nasser family and location device.”

  “Nasser. Isn’t that like a royal family in Dubai?” Elmore asked. “One of the Arab Emirates?”