Alice Montoya lowered her head, and mumbled, “I thought we might negotiate a deal for reduced charges, Your Honor. After all, he did go in there with a gang, started a fight, and caused damages, according to the property owner.”
Judge Archer shook his head and sighed.
“Paul, here’s the choice I want your client and his father to consider while we’re still in recess,” Darius Archer said to the defense lawyer, all the while looking eye to swollen eye with Jack. “Young Mr. Valentine can go to trial and face this crock of bullshit, but like the prosecution pointed out, at the end of the day, the lad will have to face judgment for the crime of going to that bar and starting a fight. No matter how we cut that piece of meat, at best your boy’s facing assault and property damages. Even if he got the shitty end of the stick in that fight, Jack started it. He took it to Chui, went to his hangout for the express purposes of causing him harm. So, Jack pays. That’s a criminal conviction and a life changer.”
The judge waited and let his words soak in, still looking eye to swollen eye with Jack Valentine. Then he added, “Or. And that’s a big or, son.”
“Yes, Your Honor?” Paul Cruz answered.
“I served in the United States Marine Corps from 1968 to 1973,” the judge began. “I made sergeant in three years, went to college on the GI Bill, and got my law degree at Georgetown University. That gave me a fine profession, a good life, and I sit here as a Texas district judge today.”
Paul Cruz smiled, and so did Harry Valentine. Jack hung his head and stared at his scuffed-up boot toes.
“In order for my client to join the Marine Corps these days, he cannot have a police record or any arrests, much less a conviction,” Paul Cruz told the judge.
“I am aware of that fact.” Judge Archer nodded. “As I said previously, I have the power to throw out this whole mess of nonsense for lack of merit and evidence and wipe the slate clean. No arrests ever took place. We can do that, can’t we, Freddy? And let those other three walk, too, with a good warning.”
Sergeant Montoya, also a Marine Corps veteran, smiled big, and said, “Yes, sir, Judge Archer, Semper Fi.”
“How about that, Prosecutor Montoya? Will this be a problem with the district attorney?” the judge asked. “Can you take care of your end, or do I need to see him?”
“No, Your Honor, I can take care of everything.” Alice Montoya smiled.
“How about it, Jack? Life or death?” Judge Archer asked young Valentine.
“Yes, sir. Life,” Jack answered. “It’s a deal.”
“No more fighting. No more hunting Chui Baca?” the judge added.
“No, sir,” Jack answered.
“Freddy,” Darius Archer said, looking at the police sergeant. “Run downstairs to the military recruiters’ offices and see if that Marine gunnery sergeant, Mike Seacrest, will come up here and bring paperwork to get this boy signed up. Since Jack is just seventeen, we have his daddy right here, happy to sign the papers for his son to be a Marine.”
“Yes, sir, Your Honor,” Sergeant Freddy Montoya said, laughter in his voice as he jogged out of the courtroom.
—
Second week of January 1991, Lance Corporal Jack Valentine squared away his gear inside a white hardback barracks with a white-metal roof in an expeditionary encampment built by Seabees over the past three months outside Goatville in northern Saudi Arabia. Half a million American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, along with another 436,000 troops from thirty-four other nations had massed since mid-November in similar expeditionary garrisons across the northeastern flank of Saudi Arabia, spitting distance from the Iraq border.
There they waited with knives in their teeth, poised to run across the south half of Iraq like fire on gasoline, and crash their thunder downhill at Iraqi-occupied Kuwait, like a hammer on an anvil, obliterating the enemy and cutting off all hope of escape except into the sea or through the attacking lines, where the Iraqis would surely die. This largest gathered army since June 6, 1944, when Allied forces landed 1.3 million soldiers on the beaches of Normandy, crouched, ready to pounce should diplomatic efforts fail to persuade President Saddam Hussein to give up the oil-rich state he had stolen, and return it to its people and their emir, Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah.
Hussein had accused Kuwait of slant drilling across their border and taking oil from Iraq’s Ar-Rumaylah oil fields. Saddam demanded that Saudi Arabia and Kuwait cancel Iraq’s $30 billion debt it owed them as payment for the oil theft. He also hurled insults at his foe, accusing Saudi Arabia and Kuwait of conspiring to keep oil prices low in an effort to pander to Western masters.
As Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, sending more than three hundred thousand troops across the border, he claimed as justification for his incursion that Kuwait had originally belonged to Iraq, and he was merely reclaiming that which rightfully belonged to Iraq. He said that Western colonists had created the small oil state for their advantage. In truth, Kuwait had existed years before Britain, under a League of Nations mandate, created Iraq at the end of World War I.
On August 8, 1990, Saddam Hussein formally annexed Kuwait as Iraq’s nineteenth province. This final insult set the wheels in motion for the great war to come.
Just one more new arrival among the swelling numbers along the Iraqi border, Jack pulled the zipper closed on his neatly packed Advanced Operator load-out bag that doubled as an overgrown Marine Corps field transport backpack. Inside it, Jack had tucked away everything important in his now Spartan warrior lifestyle.
Gold-embroidered Force Recon jump wings and a silver-embroidered SCUBA/UBA head above them adorned the top flap of the pale OD green Gortex duffel with the name J. A. VALENTINE, USMC finely stitched in bold black letters beneath them. He had spent the better part of a paycheck buying the well-organized, compartmented bag with padded pack straps and a tubular frame inside it made of aircraft aluminum, specifically designed for special operators like him. Jack had bought it in San Diego after graduating Amphibious Reconnaissance school at Coronado Island, before heading to Camp Lejeune and joining Second Force Reconnaissance Company.
He pushed the AO bag against the foot of his plywood-bottomed wooden bunk next to a similarly pale green, extralarge parachute cargo bag, with J. A. VALENTINE, USMC beneath a Marine Corps emblem stenciled in black paint on its side. This satchel contained the bulky stuff of his combat kit. Things like his Kevlar helmet and body armor, his Ghillie suit and bonnet that he had fashioned by hand during his ten weeks of Scout-Sniper School, along with his camouflage ground cloth and portable hide. It also held his knee pads, elbow pads, ass pack, and hooded gas mask and charcoal-lined and highly uncomfortable nuclear-biological-chemical-warfare protective suit that he dreaded ever having to wear in a real war.
Saddam Hussein had a reputation of stooping to the lowest of depths and using chemical weapons on people he disliked, such as his attempted genocide of the Kurdish civilians of Halabja, Kurdistan, and across northern Iraq as part of his Ba’athist regime’s Al-Anfal Campaign in 1988. Planes and artillery bombarded the Kurds with napalm and other conventional weapons, then Hussein’s forces set a deadly mixture of chemical weapons on the populace, killing thousands. Among the chemical weapons were nerve agents, sulfur-mustard gas, blister agents, and hydrogen cyanide.
Jack had spent the three months before deployment training in Mission-Oriented Protective Postures, Levels 1, 2, 3, and 4. MOPP Level 4 meant everything went on the body. It must have been how armored-up knights of old felt swaggled in their tin suits, training and fighting. He wondered how he could ever Ghillie up and carry out reconnaissance, target acquisition, or sniper missions under MOPP Level 4 conditions. Yet the alternative of dying a horrifying painful death by Saddam’s chemical agents made the struggle in MOPP Level 4 doable.
Although he had a month’s leave coming after Scout-Sniper School at Camp Pendleton and Amphibious Reconn
aissance training at Coronado, the Marine Corps’ equivalent of Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL school, Jack took only a week off between graduation and reporting to his new duty station. He wanted to hit the ground running, still fresh, hard, and focused.
Now nearly twenty years old, Jack spent his first off-duty week since his thirty-day boot camp leave at home in El Paso with Mom and Dad. He and Harry Valentine took one day on their own, just the two of them, father and son in the New Mexico mountains, trout fishing. The rest of the time, it was nothing but Jack and Dad and Mom, and her good home cooking. Drippy, overstuffed chicken-and-green-chili enchiladas smothered with onions, more peppers, cheese, and sour cream. Jack’s favorite.
Before he headed to Camp Lejeune, Harry and Elaine Valentine had arranged a special dinner for their boy, Jack. They invited Herman and Lola Gonzalez, Paul and Patricia Cruz, Judge Darius Archer and his wife, Anita, and El Paso Police Sergeant Freddy Montoya, a divorcé who came alone.
Jack’s girlfriend, Liberty Cruz, had gone off to college in New York City, at Columbia University, preparing herself for law school. She set her sights on Cornell University Law School, best of the best she regarded, but just in case disaster struck, she kept Columbia Law as her fallback. She had the inside track there as an undergrad.
Moms and dads spent the evening talking about how good Jack had turned out, and of Liberty and what Paul Cruz hoped she would do with her life as a lawyer. “She’s doing it for me,” Cruz boasted.
Jack said little, mostly yes, sir, and no, sir, and pass the enchiladas for seconds and thirds, but smiled a lot when Paul Cruz said what he did about his daughter going to law school for him. Jack knew the whole story.
Liberty was a rebel through and through, but she loved her daddy, and honored his wish for her. Law school it was. No arguments. While Father envisioned she would take over his successful criminal defense practice in El Paso when he retired, she had radically different ideas. Ideas she had shared only with Jack.
What Jack knew and what he didn’t think either Paul or Patricia Cruz even suspected was that Liberty wanted nothing to do with defending criminals. She wanted to hunt them on the streets and throw them in the slammer. She wanted to be a gunslinging hard-ass operator. A special agent of the “Efah Bee Eye” she joked. Then in time, she planned to open her own business, executive security and special investigations.
“Big money in it,” she told Jack, as they sat in his dad’s Ford pickup truck sucking face and imagining their futures the week before Jack headed off to boot camp.
Liberty dreamed of one day owning a fab villa overlooking the Mediterranean, along the French Riviera, well east of that shit hole of a steamer town, Marseilles, maybe in the hills above Saint-Tropez, or perhaps in Italy, near Milan. She wanted a life of splendor, exotic sports cars and jet planes. She could not imagine sitting in a courtroom next to some sleazy, foul-smelling scumbag drug dealer, pimp, and gangster that her father spent his life dutifully defending. Young Miz Cruz assessed a big fat zero for idealism, but Machiavellian pragmatism ordered her life’s agenda.
Oh, she had a heart, but she also had a brain. A very good brain, and a dream for her, and for Jack. Good old noncommittal slide-along Jack, who cared little about either money or one day owning a fine villa in France, but headed for the Marines. Liberty mused, there he’ll learn all about commitment and discipline. He could do his Marine thing while she did college, and they’d meet in the middle, later.
“What’s your obsession with money and all that crap that goes with it?” Jack had asked her on that last warm night in El Paso, sitting in the dark, making love, and imagining tomorrow.
“Money isn’t happiness,” Liberty told her beau, “but it’s a whole lot easier to find happiness with money than without it.”
Jack couldn’t argue that point.
Conversely, Paul Cruz had preached the Constitution of the United States to his daughter from childhood. She dreamed up the Statue of Liberty Halloween costume more to please him than herself. Liberty, his red-white-and-blue sparkler, torch in hand, standing for freedom and justice for all. Just like Captain America and Superman.
As for bad guys, Liberty had no use for them. Put ’em away or shoot ’em. Preferably shoot ’em and save the taxpayer the bundle for defense attorneys like her dad. She saw his clients and detested them.
While Paul Cruz thought he knew his tall, good-looking, well-built, long-black-haired, dark-eyed daughter, Jack Valentine knew her best.
During the dinner party, the families also reminisced about Marco and Jack, fast friends as little boys, Marco a year older than Jack and towering over him from age nine onward. The two years of football with Jack at tight end and Marco at center had brought the two boys’ families close, going to the games and all the surrounding activities for parents of players. Then when Marco was murdered, the two families bonded into one. Harry and Elaine helped them grieve and survive. His homosexuality never came up in conversation although it swam uncomfortably close, just beneath the surface.
When the dinner began, Harry had Jack make a grand entrance from his bedroom, dressed in his class-A, Marine Corps Kelly-green uniform. Proudly above his left breast pocket, Jack wore his gold jump wings and silver SCUBA/UBA head above his few service ribbons and his silver expert rifle and pistol shooting badges.
“Force Recon!” Freddy Montoya had said when Jack stepped into the living room, looking hard and sharp. The police sergeant bounced to his feet and pumped the young Marine’s hand. “Put her there, bro. I was First Force Recon out of Pendleton in my day.”
“Less than two years and you’ve made lance corporal. I’m impressed,” Judge Archer added. “You’ve done well, son. I appreciate your parents having Anita and me over for dinner, so we could see you. Once in a while, in my court, we do strike gold.”
“I have you to thank, Your Honor. I expect to get promoted to corporal soon after I report for duty at Second Force Recon,” Jack announced. “I got the highest pro-con marks of any non-rates out of Amphib-Recon. My time in grade for corporal closes next month.”
After dinner, while they sat on the patio under mosquito-repelling Tiki torchlights, drinking coffee in the cool desert evening, and Jack had changed into a sport shirt and slacks, Freddy Montoya gave Jack a serious look.
“Maybe I got some good news for you, Jack, and maybe it might be disturbing news,” Freddy said, and gave a concerned look at the parents of Marco Gonzalez.
“Spill it, Freddy,” Harry Valentine said to his pal.
“Well, Jack, I know you got here a few days ago, and you’ve been here at your parents’ house twenty-four/seven, unless you’re going someplace with Harry or your mom, right?” Freddy said, trying to sound reassuring. “But in case a detective might come calling, wanting to ask a few questions, I don’t want you to get alarmed or anything. It’s just routine.”
“What is it, Sergeant?” Paul Cruz asked, picking up on the policeman’s awkward tone and never considering anytime a detective questions a client a matter of routine business.
“You remember that scumbag, Chui Baca? The one who beat the crap out of Jack, and we all think murdered Marco Gonzalez?” Freddy told the lawyer, then looked at the dead boy’s parents and offered an apologetic grimace.
“I thought for sure the DEA had him for life on those charges,” Paul Cruz added, remembering the gangster. “Chui Baca’s made of Teflon.”
Patricia Cruz added, “Bad warrants and federal prosecutors lost all the evidence. Witnesses vanished.”
“Yeah, too bad about all that,” Freddy said, and looked at Jack who sat expressionless, cool, waiting.
Everyone now sat silently, watching the cop, waiting for the shoe to finally drop.
“Somebody popped Chui,” Freddy announced. “Did it two days ago. Caught him center mass, right in the chest with a high-velocity .30 caliber rifle slug. A 175-grain Sierra MatchKing, jus
t like military snipers use. Blew his heart and lungs apart. His buds that was with him said he stepped out of his car and bam! Took him right out of his shoes. He thrashed on the ground for about ten seconds. Scared those sorry bastards real bad. They never heard the shot or saw where it came from. Just bam, when it hit Chui, and killed him like a dog.”
Harry Valentine nodded at his son, then at his cop friend. Unfazed.
Herman and Lola Gonzalez both smiled with the news.
“Breaks my heart,” Jack said, and shrugged at Freddy.
“Mine, too.” Freddy smiled back. “But, given you wanted to kill the bastard and all, a little over two years ago, detectives might come knocking. Don’t worry about it. Nobody’s gonna look that hard for whoever committed this public service.”
Paul Cruz looked at Jack and didn’t say a word.
No one questioned Jack or Harry Valentine about it, then or anytime afterward.
—
Just as Jack Valentine had stretched out on his bunk a hard knock came on the barracks door, and without waiting to be asked to enter, a lean, high-and-tight brush-cut, tough-looking Marine captain stepped inside.
“Looking for Lance Corporal John Arthur Valentine,” said the captain dressed in crisp desert-camouflage utilities, roughed-out desert jump boots, and a wide-brimmed desert-camouflage flop hat gripped in his left hand, along with a brown manila file folder.
Three other non-rate Marines sharing quarters with Jack snapped to attention and pointed to the last rack, where Lance Corporal Valentine lay, propped on his elbows, eyeballing the officer as he walked inside.
“That would be me, sir,” Jack said, getting to his feet and standing at attention.
“Elmore Snow’s the name,” the captain said. “Take a seat, son.”
Jack took a seat on his bunk, and the captain sat on the metal folding chair by it. He held the lance corporal’s Marine Corps Service Record Book in his hands, and opened it across his knees.
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