“Shit weasel?” Gunny Ambrose laughed.
“Yeah,” Gillespie said. “Shit weasel.”
Jack nudged Kermit. “Who’s Dirty Harry or Leroy?”
“Sergeant Leroy Griffin. The Scout-Sniper you replaced,” Alexander answered in a low voice. “We called him Dirty Harry because he was one badass gunslinger. Don’t take it personal. Nobody’s looking at you like you robbed Leroy’s gun smoke or anything. Shit just happens.”
“Sergeant Webster,” Elmore Snow said. “This does seem like an impossible mission, but we do have our backup. Should we get into an engagement, which I strongly caution against. Contact only being a sniper shot and immediate clandestine movement. But should we engage and hold contact with enemy forces, we have Black Hawks at the ready. They will immediately come to our aid and extract us.”
“Right, sir,” Kermit said. “We just got to hold off Saddam’s entire Republican Guard for what, two hours flight time from here to there?”
“About that, plus some change,” Snow said.
“No comment, newbie?” Ray Ambrose asked Jack.
“Like Hacksaw said, do you want to live forever?” Jack shrugged, hiding the real fear that now twisted his stomach.
A knock came at the door, and a captain put his head inside. “General Boomer and the staff are headed this way.”
“Thanks,” Elmore said, and looked at his Marines. “You know, Lieutenant Colonel Jim Conway has command of Third Battalion, Second Marine Regiment these days. I taught at the Infantry Officers Course at The Basic School, with my pal, Captain Ed Gregory, and Jim taught tactics, as well as commanded a couple of companies. He and I had a long, heart-to-heart talk about this mission last night. Shit hits the fan, he’s coming our way.
“Like you, I don’t like to depend on some Army air group of reservists that I never met to save my life. Colonel Conway’s got the big balls to do what’s got to be done to get us home. That’s a promise. Push comes to shove, he intends to bust fences and get us. He told me when this thing cooks off, he wants to drive up Saddam’s Highway of Death, right up to the Son of King Nebuchadnezzar’s Summer Palace, and build a barracks on top of the ruins of old Babylon.”
“Let’s just live low like lizards, like we always do, and don’t sweat the small shit,” Kermit The Frog said. “Ain’t nobody out there gonna be looking for any loony tunes Force Recon scouts snoopin’ and poopin’ straight up their asses, right? We goin’ where they think we ain’t. We keep it that way, and we be fine.”
Everyone shrugged and agreed.
“Yeah, we got this, Skipper,” Kermit said, confident.
_ 21 _
“Just live like lizards. Stay low like we always do and don’t sweat the small shit.” Jack Valentine laughed at himself in the mirror of the bathroom just past the gate where he had debarked from his flight home. Living like a lizard had become second nature to him, and it had taken many years with Elmore Snow to learn that fine warrior art. He didn’t really need to go to the restroom, but he wanted a few more minutes alone to saddle his mind straight. No telling what would greet him past the security gate.
As Jack walked out of the restroom, he heard the click, click, click of rolling suitcases coasting along the ceramic-tile floor of the airport hallway that led from the passenger gates to the front lobby, and the crowds awaiting loved ones. Stacey and Patricia followed dutifully behind the plane’s captain and first officer.
Stacey saw Jack and elbowed Patricia. She looked, too, and smiled large. Gunner Valentine smiled back and gave them a salute.
Both young women saluted back, then Stacey put her thumb next to her ear with her little finger down, mimicking a phone, and mouthed at Jack, “Call me.”
Jack had started to toss her calling card in the trash in the restroom, but on second thought changed his mind. He rationalized to himself that with Liberty Cruz, a guy never really knows where he stands. What’s wrong with keeping a few backup options open? Right? You never know.
So he had tucked the card back in his shirt pocket and buttoned up his blouse. When he saw Stacey, he patted his breast, letting her know he still had her card and just might ring her phone.
Then as he waited, watching the flight crew go on past the security barriers, and disappear around that turn, the knot that grew in his stomach finally took hold of the Marine gunner’s better senses.
“I’ll never call her,” Jack said to himself as he walked toward the front of the airport. He reached inside his green blouse and took the card out of his shirt pocket. Flicking it with his fingers as he stared at Stacey’s name and number, he thought about it and smiled as he saw the trash receptacle just before the security exit.
“Sorry, Stacey. It’s just not meant to be,” Jack said as he headed down the last leg of the hallway. As he passed the receptacle, he gave the pretty girl’s calling card one last glance and tossed it in the bin.
—
Harry Valentine stood in the outer-lobby waiting area at El Paso International Airport. He held a baby girl in his arms, and Giti Sadiq stood next to him.
Elaine Valentine stood on the other side of her husband, and next to her, Liberty Cruz with her mom and dad, Patricia and Paul. Behind them waited Marco Gonzalez’s father and mother, Herman and Lola. Herman still worked with Jack’s dad at Harry’s Heating and Air-Conditioning.
Freddy Montoya also showed up, with his newest young squeeze after a failed third marriage. And so did Judge Darius Archer, showing his years and now alone in life with the recent passing of his wife, leaning on a cocobolo walking stick with a brass duck’s head for a handle.
When the plane let out the passengers, and everyone had rushed up the hallway to the lobby, Marine Gunner John Arthur Valentine casually sauntered far behind his fellow travelers now hurrying to get their baggage. By the time he had made his head call and ambled up the long hall past the security gate, nearly all the other passengers on his flight had disappeared to the baggage claim area.
As Jack finally came into the airport’s outer lobby, his family and friends cheered, clapped, and whistled. Total strangers going to and from the ticket counters then joined in when they saw him. Everyone applauded the good-looking Marine in his green dress uniform with six rows of ribbons above his left breast pocket, gold jump wings with a silver SCUBA/UBA head above them, and silver crossed rifles and pistols, expert shooting badges. It made Jack blush.
“Hell if you don’t look like a regular war hero,” Freddy Montoya crowed, and grabbed Jack’s hand first. He shoved his large-breasted trophy doll up for the Marine to meet, and she couldn’t help herself but give the still-flushing gunner a red-lips smack on the cheek that left a mark. That didn’t help Jack’s embarrassment one bit.
“Good to see you, Sergeant Montoya.” Gunner Valentine smiled. “You, too, and thanks for the kiss. What’s your name?”
“Lolly.” Freddy grinned. “My little Lolly Pop.”
Jack had finished his tour in Iraq, waltzed through a short psych-eval at both Walter Reed and Bethesda, then endured six months of housebreaking and paper training in his Warrant Officer Basic Course at The Basic School at Quantico. On graduation day, Gunner Valentine drove nonstop to Camp Lejeune and dusted out his home on the waterfront in Swansboro. That Monday, he reported aboard at Marine Special Operations Command.
It took Elmore Snow’s best efforts and a good dinner from June to convince the new gunner that he owed it to himself and the men he led to include his family as a priority with God, Country, and Corps.
“Family makes a Marine a more balanced leader,” June had said at the table that night.
“I made a command decision and cut you a set of leave papers. June bought you a plane ticket. We think you need to take some time off,” Elmore told his newest subordinate officer over glasses of Jameson’s best Irish nectar.
“Colonel Snow,” Jack said, “I need to get settle
d here first, then I will take the time off. I promise. We have a lot going on. The surge, and then my platoon going downrange to Afghanistan. Ten months is not much time.”
“You’re not the only Marine in the Corps, Gunner Valentine,” Elmore reminded him. “Despite what those Army shrinks said about you, tough skin and all. I think you need a little time with your feet up.”
When Jack had come off the Zarqawi mission back-to-back with his ordeal with Abu Omar, two Air Force psychiatrists, a Navy doctor, and a female Army contract Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder specialist did their best to analyze the newly selected Marine warrant officer. They felt certain he would need long-term care in a German hospital. No normal human can endure what he did and still have all his marbles.
Jack Valentine sent them screaming out of the interview rooms, pulling out their overeducated hair, at three hospitals. He laughed at all the right jokes, felt sad at all the right sob stories, and told them he would love to hang out at a crowded shopping mall or go see a movie like Saving Private Ryan with any of them, anytime.
He didn’t flinch. And all the Rorschach ink blots looked like butterflies, wild flowers, angel wings, his mother’s apron, or a leaf on a peaceful stream.
“You’ve been prepped!” the Army shrink accused him. “You’re a dangerous man, Mr. Valentine. I can’t prove it, but I know it!”
“Put it in your report, then,” Jack said, and left.
When he saw Giti Sadiq, and his dad holding her baby, Jack’s heart leaped. Liberty right there with her, and his mom. Elmore was right. He always was, and Gunner Valentine told himself he needed to listen to the old man more often. At this moment, he was really glad that he had tossed the flight attendant’s calling card in the trash, too. That kind of temptation did him no good, and right now he swelled with love.
“Hello there, baby sister,” Jack said, and gave the girl from Iraq a big hug and a kiss on her cheek.
Then he held his arms open for Liberty. She came around and locked her lips on his mouth hard and long, in front of her parents and his.
“Saving best for last,” Jack told his sweetheart since high school, and she smiled, seeing the gold-and-red bars on his shoulders and the black bursting-bomb insignia inboard from them on the epaulets. Then she put her finger on the black bursting-bomb insignia pinned on one side of his shirt collar and looked over at the warrant-officer bar pinned on the opposite side.
“So this is a Marine gunner.” She smiled.
“Yes, ma’am,” Jack answered.
Darius Archer came close to Jack, his voice nearly gone from age and surgery to remove polyps off his vocal cords.
“You far exceeded all my expectations,” the old judge said.
“We got that girl you saved on the road to full citizenship. And her baby couldn’t be in a better home than with your mom and dad.
“I am proud of you, Jack. My years on the bench, putting people in prison. You made all the bad days worth that good one, when I sent you to the Marine Corps.”
“That girl and her sisters saved me, Judge Archer.” Jack smiled and pulled Giti close to him, her self-proclaimed big brother. Liberty kissed the girl on the cheek, then kissed Jack once more.
Special Agent Cruz had resigned from the FBI, just as she had planned, but a few years ahead of schedule. Her torture episode with Cesare Alosi and the CIA drew heat from one particular United States senator. He wanted her head but couldn’t have it since she had departed government employment.
As for the CIA boys, Chris and Speedy, they walked on water, had Teflon underwear, and kept their station in Baghdad rocking and rolling.
“I’m headed back to Washington, DC. Have my own security business now, Judge Archer. A contract with the Drug Enforcement Agency, Treasury, too, and a little something going on the side with the CIA,” Liberty said, adding to the conversation.
“Going to hire Cesare Alosi to run your shop?” Jack joked, and the long cool woman gave him a mean knuckle shot to the arm.
“Not funny, Gunner Valentine. And I still outrank you.” She laughed, with the family and friends circled around them.
She took Jack’s hand. “I have two more days here, and I intend to make the most of them with this Marine.”
“We have a fiesta waiting at the house,” Harry Valentine said, holding the baby. “Instead of standing in the airport for the rest of the day, let’s get home and celebrate!”
The Marine gave Liberty a kiss and turned to Giti, close to his side. “A senior at Coronado High School, I hear. Top of your class.”
“I tested up.” The girl smiled. “I want to go to college now. University of Texas at El Paso, and study law.”
“Just what we need.” Jack laughed. “Another lawyer.”
“I want to help people, like Mr. Cruz does,” she said, and Liberty gave Jack a look and pointed a thumb at a smiling Paul Cruz walking behind them, listening.
“Miriam Amira Sadiq, such a wonderful name for your daughter,” Jack said, but then paused, thinking about what he wanted to say next. The hesitation stopped them from their walk. He looked at Giti and took a cautious breath, then spit it out of his craw. “Don’t misunderstand me. I love this child without exception. She’s my family, like you. But does it ever bother you that her father was such a monster? Like it or not, she is still Saddam Hussein’s cousin.”
“Miriam Amira is none of those things, big brother,” Giti said, and squeezed his hand. “She is my daughter. A child of God. He put her in my belly and saved her from all the horrors we saw. He brought her here to be born an American citizen. Our Lord has something special planned for her. You wait and see.”
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Terminal Impact Page 51