Terminal Impact

by Charles Henderson

  “Very important,” Jack said.

  “We’ll search the pockets and bring everything we find to you,” the doctor said. “Where will you be?”

  “Right here,” Jack answered.

  “You don’t want to get cleaned up? Grab a shower?” Elmore said, looking at the gunny, who was wearing blue scrubs pants and a hospital gown over his bare upper body.

  “She has to see my face when she wakes up,” he told Elmore. “She has no one else.”

  “What do you propose to do?” Elmore asked. “She’s not a puppy, Jack. You think Liberty can accept her, competing for your affections? Regardless of the circumstances, she is human, and jealousy can get to even the best among us.”

  “We’ll work it out,” Jack said. “I promised Giti that I would take her to America. Her and Miriam and Amira. If we escaped, I would take them to America.

  “Giti made it, so I have to keep the promise. She will live with my mom and dad. Have her baby in El Paso, and live there, where people will take care of her.”

  Elmore looked at Jack and took a big breath. “What about you? What about that FBI agent girlfriend of yours?”

  “I’ll be her big brother, and Liberty will have to accept it on those terms,” Jack said, holding Giti’s hand.

  “So you’ve got it all worked out,” Elmore said.

  “Yeah, so far. Pretty much making it up as I go along,” Jack said, then smiled at his old friend. “Got it all figured, except the part of how we get her out of Iraq and to El Paso, Texas.”

  “That may take some doing, but I’ll bet that we manage,” Elmore said, smiling, and put his arm over his gunny’s shoulders and waited for the little pregnant Iraqi girl to wake up.

  “By the way, Jack,” the colonel said, still looking at Giti and now noticing her eyes flutter. “What’s on that note you got the doc fetching? Something sentimental?”

  “You could say that,” Jack said, and spread a wide grin at Elmore. “The directions to Zarqawi’s safe house. Where he’s hiding right now.”

  _ 19 _

  “Ghost in the hide,” Jack said on the intercom that Lieutenant Colonel Elmore Snow also had patched into a covered command frequency, with an on and off switch. All ears at the unified command headquarters listened. So did several sets of important ears in Washington, DC.

  “Roger,” Elmore responded. “Call when target verified on location.”

  Jack gave his microphone button two clicks and switched off the command channel output so he could talk to his Marines without the world listening.

  “Cotton,” Jack called.

  “In the hide,” Staff Sergeant Martin replied, Sergeant Sammy LaSage tucked at his side. Covering the back half of the house outside Hibhib, he had a powerful night-vision and daylight, high-definition spotting scope with satellite uplink of supersharp video feeding real-time action to monitors and recorders watching from Baghdad to the Pentagon and the White House.

  Sergeant Cochise Quinlan lay next to Gunny Valentine, covering the front of the same al-Qaeda Iraq safe house where they believed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi hid. With the same HD high-power lens, the eight-man team had two sharp pictures feeding the satellite both front and back views.

  Bronco Starr and Jaws covered the left corner of the house, angled off Jack Valentine’s flank. And likewise, Hub Biggs and Bobby Durant covered Cotton Martin’s flank.

  The four two-man sniper teams had set their hides at eight hundred meters from the house, covering quartering angles, eliminating every inch of possible dead space. If anyone showed up, they had him dead to rights, and on worldwide video for verification.

  The eight-man squad had parachuted into position around Zarqawi’s safe house at four o’clock in the morning, counting on the al-Qaeda leader’s guards standing the late shift with heavy eyelids. No one in or around Hibhib paid attention to the high-flying Marine Corps C130 Hercules as it cruised overhead, spilling out its passengers. Nor did anyone see the eight dark canopies of the Special Operations Marines’ MC5 free-fall, ram-air parachutes as Jack and his boys silently dove from a high-altitude deployment at twenty-nine thousand feet and steered from their low opening at twenty-five hundred feet to exact landing points. Each of the two-man teams precision glided to four landing sites, each one a mile from the four corners of the house.

  They shed their oxygen tanks, masks, helmets, and skydiving rigs, and hid them well. The Marines would pick up their expensive gear en route to their extraction point.

  As the four teams lay invisible in their hides, the sun slowly broke light across the eastern horizon. Jack hoped that Zarqawi might step outside for a breath of morning air. But that wasn’t happening. So the Marine Scout-Snipers lay in their hides, chilling and watching.

  As he waited for the al-Qaeda leader to show his face, Jack fought the urge, but had to chuckle.

  “What’s so funny?” Cochise whispered.

  “Thinking about yesterday, when we got back to Baghdad,” he answered, and giggled more.

  “You know, Billy’s good about shit like that,” Cochise said, and couldn’t help but snigger, too.

  —

  Keeping his promise, Elmore Snow had called Liberty Cruz, who waited in Baghdad with Smedley and Captain Burkehart. The colonel had said that he would tell her the minute he got word on the gunny, just before they launched on the operation from Haditha Dam. His first opportunity to keep the promise came when he landed at Al Asad Air Base, thus he called when Jack finally showered.

  Chris Gray and Elmore both tried to get the FBI agent approved to fly out to Al Asad, and see Jack there, but the general saw no good reason for the risk. She would see her beau soon enough. She should thank her lucky stars that she was in Baghdad, he reminded them. Any Marine wife would trade places with her in a heartbeat. The colonel couldn’t argue, nor could Miz Cruz. So she waited for Snow’s next call when he knew what time they would land at home base. Liberty wanted to keep her presence in Iraq a surprise for Jack, so the whole team played dumb.

  “We’re inbound late this afternoon. Should be there just at dark,” Elmore told her, and Liberty went to work.

  She showered and put on ample squirts in all the right spots of Christian Dior’s fancy-smelling perfume that Jack really liked, J’adore. A rich and sexy fragrance that always brought the gunny’s nose straight in for a deep landing.

  “If that stuff don’t make a man’s dick hard, then he’s gotta be dead,” Jack would say.

  After her shower, a little lotion, body powder, and ample clouds of J’adore mist sweetening her from little toe to top knot, she brushed out her long, beautiful black hair and let it fall free all around her shoulders and face.

  From her suitcase, she pulled out a clean, black silky thin Under Armour T-shirt and put it on with no bra. Jack always loved that. Naked body beneath a thin layer of nearly nothing.

  “Like two babies fighting under a blanket,” he’d say, watching her walk around braless in a T-shirt.

  To finish off the whole effect, Liberty slipped on some nice-fitting supersexy, black-silk, low-cut underwear with black lace around the legs and waist. Then, as an afterthought, she took the back of her T-shirt and tied an overhand knot in it, so that it rode high up, showing off her panties.

  Then she took a seat on Jack’s bunk and waited.

  It seemed like forever had passed, then Liberty finally heard a rattle at the operations hooch front door. She got on her feet, shook her hair good, and gave herself a bounce on her toes. A big, sexy smile spread on her face.

  She had told both Captain Burkehart and Corporal Butler to stay out of the operations building because she had a special something planned for her gunny’s homecoming. They agreed and stayed away.

  Liberty peeked around the hallway corner, after the overhead lights came on, and a familiar-looking back and flop hat sat down at the gunny’s desk. Barefooted, sh
e padded her way behind him, J’adore wafting through the air, and in a sexy slur, she said, “Hi there, Sailor. Looking for a good time?”

  Billy Claybaugh spun around in Gunny Valentine’s chair and fell out of it when he saw Liberty Cruz in all her heart-stopping glory.

  “Holy shit!” he wailed from the floor, and scrambled to his feet. He stood dumb stupid, eyeballing her from top to bottom and back up again. “Who the hell let you in?”

  “Who the hell let you in!” Liberty fired back, her hands on her hips, ready to kill.

  “Gunny Valentine’s on his way from the flight line with Colonel Snow, and I just got back from Haditha Dam with Chico and Petey,” Staff Sergeant Claybaugh said, fast as he could think. “Cotton and everybody else, and those three other guys, Hacksaw and Kermit and Habu, they’re coming, too. Liberty! You need to put some clothes on!”

  “Captain Burkehart didn’t get hold of you guys and warn you?” Liberty asked the Marine, fuming. The same knucklehead had once again stepped into her romantic surprise for Jack.

  “I guess not,” Billy said, wringing his flop hat like a rag but still totally enjoying the view, memorizing it.

  Frowning at MARSOC’s duty clown, she asked, “How did you manage to slip up here ahead of the crowd?”

  “I wanted to fix up a surprise on Jack’s computer. You know, welcome home. Sort of,” Billy explained, and then clicked open the greeting on the gunny’s screen.

  It was that favorite photo of Liberty in the bikini on the beach, hard nipples and all, and Claybaugh had floated large red letters across the top, “Welcome Home Big Boy!”

  “You’ve got to be kidding!” Liberty huffed.

  “It sure as hell isn’t as nice as what you had planned,” Billy-C said. “But you really ought to go put something on. All those guys are coming with the gunny and the colonel. I’m embarrassing enough for you, and you don’t need to fuck up their minds like you’ve fucked up mine.”

  “Serves you right, you little twirp,” Liberty said, and tramped back to Jack’s room, where she put on her shoes, cargo pants, and matching tan jacket, but she left her hair down, bra off, and still smelled awfully good.

  —

  Midmorning, Bronco Starr called Jack on the intercom, and asked, “What if I went up and knocked on the door and asked if Abu Musab can come out to play?”

  “Shut the fuck up, Cortez,” Jaws grumbled.

  “Dude, it’s like nobody’s home,” Jesse complained.

  Jack checked his watch, clicked on the command radio, and called Elmore. “Pushing ten o’clock and no movement.”

  “Remain in place,” the colonel responded.

  “You get that, Bronco?” Jack said.

  “Roger that, Ghost,” the short guy answered.

  “We got movement at the back door,” Cotton Martin broke in. “Two guys with AKs. Taking out trash. Raking out scraps to a couple of dogs.”

  “Barking alarms,” Jack said. “Probably finished breakfast. Those guys must get up late.”

  “Naw, that’s probably normal for civilians who don’t work,” Cotton said. “Are you copying our video feed? Kitchen help went back inside, but we got two more in suits.”

  “Roger, I see it,” Jack answered. “Those suits look familiar to you?”

  “Not to me,” Cotton answered.

  “Tell Sage to zoom in some more,” Jack said. Then he asked Colonel Snow, “You seeing this? Those guys dressed real nice look familiar?”

  Elmore had both Chris Gray and Speedy Espinoza crowded around the monitor with Liberty, and behind them the entire remaining MARSOC crew, along with Hacksaw, Kermit, and Habu.

  “That’s Cesare Alosi’s buddies, Davet what’s his frog, and Jean René the other frog,” Hacksaw growled.

  “Shit, it sure is!” Kermit confirmed. “We saw both those sweet peas at Alosi’s office at least a dozen times. Them always bringing thousand-year-old ashtrays and crap.”

  Then Francoise stepped out on the back porch with them, wearing men’s pajamas, her head uncovered, and smoking a cigarette.

  “Ray-Dean Blevins’s sweetheart from the Baghdad Country Club. The one he thumped. What’s her name?” Liberty said.

  Chris Gray was busy writing notes and answered without looking up, “Francoise Theuriau. Ace correspondent for that fish wrapper, the Massachusetts Democrat and Morning News.”

  “That’s how Abu Omar got the operation plan,” Liberty said. “These three are al-Qaeda spies. Francoise screwed Blevins, and he gave her the plans.”

  “Or she stole them from him,” Gray said. “I still can’t buy that even a shit-turd like Cooder-with-a-D Blevins would knowingly give al-Qaeda a top secret plan that could get Americans killed. Jury’s still out on Cesare, but I like to think that even the worst Marines are better than that.”

  “Action at the front door,” Jack broke in. “I’ve got a minivan, Chinese, King Long, parking. A man and a woman got out. Someone just stepped from inside to the front porch. Two other men now getting out of the van.”

  Cochise Quinlan zoomed his powerful spotting-scope lens to full out and captured each person’s mug. “You recording these faces?”

  “We’re getting them clear and bright, high-definition color. Going to all commands here and to Washington as we speak,” Elmore said. “Beautiful job.”

  “The guy on the porch, Cochise. Get on his face,” Jack told his sergeant. “Now, if he’ll just turn this direction.”

  Gunny Valentine had no more than asked, and the man wearing a black kufi that covered the back half of his head, turned his face to them. He had a short, scruffy black beard, chubby round cheeks, and a round nose. Jack knew the face because he had dreamed of it time and again after he had missed the shot that day, it dropping between the al-Qaeda chieftain’s feet, a year ago on the bridge crossing the Euphrates at Haditha.

  “It’s Zarqawi,” Jack said, his crosshairs on him.

  “Take him, Gunny V,” Cochise Quinlan said.

  “Check that, Ghost. We have a pair of fast movers inbound to the target,” Colonel Snow interrupted. “Paint the house.”

  Lasers shone on the target from all four sides, pinpointing the exact center. Overhead, two United States Air Force F-16C fighters dove on the run. The lead jet let go two five-hundred-pound smart bombs, a GBU-12 and a GBU-38.

  Inside, one of Zarqawi’s three wives, a child he had gotten pregnant at age fourteen, worked in the kitchen with her two-year-old daughter playing on the floor. In an instant, along with her and the child, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, died, along with the three French spies who had come back in the house to welcome the two other al-Qaeda leaders.

  “Mission accomplished,” Jack called on the radio.

  “You’re not disappointed?” Cochise asked. “Not getting to pull the trigger on Zarqawi?”

  “Kind of glad, actually,” Jack said. “I never have liked killing people. But sometimes, it is satisfying.”

  —

  When Jack and the team landed in Baghdad, Elmore Snow met them on the airfield, where the Ospreys had let the team off, after extraction outside Hibhib, a few miles north of Baghdad. The colonel had a one-page printout of an email that Captain Burkehart had received while the gunny and his team were on the Zarqawi mission.

  “Here, check this out,” Elmore said, and grinned like someone had given him a winning lottery ticket.

  Jack read the page and laughed. “Boy did they ever fuck up. Are you serious?”

  “Welcome to my world, Gunner Valentine,” the colonel said, and shook his Marine’s hand.

  “I never would have thunk it, Colonel,” Jack said, his head swimming a little. “I thought they just wanted Marines with about ten or twelve years under their belts, so they could give the Corps at least a good ten on top of it. I’m pushing twenty.”

>   “They figure you’ve got a good ten years left in you, and so do I,” Elmore said. “You’ve got thirty years written all over your face. Smart guy like you, I see a cross over to captain at the very least.”

  “Colonel Snow.” Jack grinned at his boss. “No matter how hard you try, you can’t make me smart.”

  Elmore gave his new young warrant officer an elbow.

  “What is it?” Bronco Starr asked, jogging to catch up with the gang, all of them crowding behind the new Marine gunner and their commanding officer.

  “Gunny V just got word that now he’s Gunner V,” Cochise Quinlan said. “Get ready to salute, ladies.”

  “Well that sucks,” Bronco said, and got funny looks. “Well it does! Gunny Valentine leaving. Now we’ll get some dick-sucking recruiter or bag-of-shit drill instructor who thinks he’s a Scout-Sniper without training or the MOS.”

  —

  Cesare Alosi always hated going to Victor Malone’s castle in south Texas. It sat too close to Mexico, and the old boss had a bad reputation of making people who upset him disappear, for good. So he especially hated it today.

  “Glad you could make it on short notice,” Malone said, wearing handmade black alligator cowboy boots, Bermuda shorts, a Hawaii-print aloha shirt, and a silver Stetson.

  “Not a problem, Victor,” Cesare said. “Your Gulfstream G550 makes traveling at a moment’s notice quite bearable.”

  “Shit, I love being rich!” the man said. “Don’t you?”

  “I’m not rich, not by your standards,” Alosi said, trying to be humble for his boss.

  “By my standards, Donald Trump ain’t rich.” Malone laughed. “How about that Zarqawi! You see that in the news?”

  “Yes, I did,” Cesare said, and walked with Victor Malone through the man cave of his castle on the Rio Grande, where he had a full body mount of an African bull elephant standing in the center of a room that was the size of a gymnasium. At the other end, he had a full body mount of a rare black rhino, an endangered species. Near it in a tree crouched a full body mount of a black leopard. A regular leopard stood below him. He had several cheetahs, a lion, a misplaced Indian Bengal tiger, and a stuffed silverback gorilla with a chimpanzee hanging by one arm in a tree.