Terminal Impact Page 10

  As he sat down at his computer, another courier came through the door with a handful of similar-looking envelopes. Saying nothing, the captain merely pointed at the colonel’s desk. The courier laid them on top of the envelope and other papers, and left.

  —

  While Jack Valentine had the double album Traveling Wilburys Collection playing on his CD boom box, keeping corporals Jesse Cortez and Alex Gomez tranquilized while they painted the finishing touches along the corners and edges of the black accent wall, he mixed several shades of gray and white paint in plastic throwaway cups. He had used white chalk to sketch on the black wall the outline of his massive evil-eyed skull with long teeth exuding a terrible snarl, and no lower jaw. Punisher style. Except Jack had decided to paint his own stylized version of Le Croix Pattée, the footed cross, worn by Knights Templar during the Crusades, on the skull’s forehead.

  He had gotten the idea from Elmore Snow’s lecture on Muhammad and the Crusades. Why not? The cross of the Knights Templar might provoke the enemy even more than a mere Punisher-inspired skull by itself. Besides, everybody these days sported some version of that skull. Le Croix Pattée, painted blood red and trimmed in black, would pop.

  On the desk nearest him, Jack had set his intercom radio tuned to Billy-C’s security team’s channel. He could hear the boys laughing and yakking while George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, and Roy Orbison sang about a woman called Maxine riding a llama through an old parking lot, and she never came through here again. Or words to that effect. Jack liked the song because of its old-school Flamenco style. The rhythm and the bass run held his heart.

  His mother’s roots reached deep in Mexican musical and dance culture, and extended to Cordoba in the Andalusia region of Spain, where the Flamenco was born. Jack’s grandfather, Pablo Francisco Guerra de Cordoba, whom the villagers called El Capitan, a tall, stately man, had come to Mexico as a young gypsy and danced the Flamenco in the Ballet Folklorico de Mexico. Jack was very proud of his grandfather, and his aunts and uncles, too. All musical artists, like his mother, a great Flamenco dancer herself. Thus music and art were in the gunny’s blood, and a great passion in his life.

  “We shoulda gone on that convoy, Guns,” Bronco said, interrupting Jack’s musical daydream, hearing his buddies on the radio, laughing, sounding like they were having a lot more fun than him.

  Jaws said, “Shut the fuck up, Jesse.”

  “You always in my shit, Jaws,” Cortez whined. “Thought you was my bro, dude.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Gomez repeated. “We get this done, we can kick back. Drink a brew and watch a movie, maybe. Those guys, they’re happy now but that’s Fallujah Road they’re running. I’d rather be here, under the cool A-C, painting. Not ducking lead.”

  Bronco thought about it, and nodded. “Right on.”

  Jack began sketching the skull’s teeth longer, exaggerating them with uneven points like dripping wax.

  He stepped back and cocked his head to one side. Bronco and Jaws came alongside him and cocked their heads, too.

  “Whoa, Guns,” Bronco said. “Gnarly skull.”

  Jaws nodded and let a smile creep out.

  “Gnarly,” Jack agreed, and glanced at Jaws, seeing the rare smile. “You approve?”

  “Righteous,” Jaws said.

  —

  Immediately after his morning meeting with Cesare Alosi, Ray-Dean Blevins had done his best to kill a pint of vodka, pissed off about feeding Iraqi whores information on US military security operations. He knew he had become worthless scum, but even scum will sink only so low. Making American forces look bad, to the point of compromising lives and safety, so that Malone-Leyva could generate some business, went way too far, even for him.

  He soon killed the pint and clanked it in the trash with several other dead soldiers. When he couldn’t find more to drink, Ray-Dean fell across the foot of his bed where he dazed out for an hour. When he awoke, he stumbled into a hot shower, gave himself a good shave, and put on clean clothes.

  Now, Ray-Dean looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, flashed his teeth, and checked his breath. Still a little vodkaish. So he took another slug of minty-fresh mouthwash, gargled and swished it good, then he swallowed the whole glob. Why waste good alcohol?

  He kept a room in the same hotel where most of the American press corps resided, along with a good number of mercenary soldiers like himself, working for the several security contractors. Hacksaw Gillespie, Habu Webster, and Kermit The Frog Alexander kept rooms here, too. They had clued him in about nightlife with the American and European reporters. Great food, great drinks at the frequent going-and-coming luaus they threw. More female correspondents in Baghdad these days, all ready to face the war-beast in the daylight, and screw their drunken brains out at night.

  When he got to the elevator, a French freelancer working for an American news agency based in London stood in the car headed to the lobby. Her first name was Francoise, and Ray-Dean could not recall her last. Some mouthful of frog soup that he couldn’t pronounce right anyway.

  She wore a leopard-print silk top with no bra, or if she had one on, it was far too thin to do much good. Her ample breasts jiggled and bounced every time she moved. Black synthetic something covered her lower half, pegging her muscled legs down to her ankles. The clinging thin spandex gripped tight around an inviting plump camel toe, the crotch seam pulled deep down the center of her roomy snatch.

  Francoise smelled of strong, day-old perfume and well-used pussy. Her scent made Cooder’s dick hard. He didn’t try to hide the growing bulge in his 5.11s, either, but gave her a nasty smile.

  “How about an afternoon cocktail?” she asked him in her sultry French slur of tipsy words as the elevator eased toward the lobby.

  “Love to, sweetness, but I’ve got business. Maybe later if you’re still around,” Ray-Dean told the woman whose face could make a freight train take a dirt road, but whose love monkey he had slam-danced many a worthless night.

  When the lift hit the lobby stop, Francoise gave Cooder-with-a-D Blevins a wet red-lips smack on his cheek, then she click-clacked off toward the hotel bar.

  Ray-Dean thought about following her and maybe getting a quick blowjob, but he checked his watch. No time for folderol. He didn’t want to risk running into any old acquaintances, especially Gunny Valentine, returning from a totally fucked-up patrol when he visited the MARSOC compound at Camp Victory.

  Just a friendly drop-in and howdy-do with brother Marines, he rationalized as a cover for his dark mission. A few light and hearty laughs with the usually talkative storekeepers and gunsmiths, get a little updated dope on what’s happening, then he’d duck out.

  As he slid into his new Escalade, which replaced the one he had burned, he reached in the console glove compartment and took out a bottle of Givenchy men’s cologne. He pulled off the lid and gave himself a nice spritz. Then Ray-Dean pulled the shifter to drive and headed across town toward the airport.

  —

  Hot, bright sun glared off the hood of the Hummer, and Rowdy Yates blinked through his sunglasses. He took them off and pushed back his helmet, wiping sweat off his face with the back of his hand.

  “Wish we could go faster. Get a little breeze blowing through this truck,” he said, putting the sunglasses back on and adjusting his helmet.

  “Just think cool,” Billy said, and gave the boy a pat on the shoulder.

  “We’re like three pigs in a blanket back here, boss man,” Corporal Randy Powell said, extra ammo boxes pressing him against the door.

  Petey Preston sat on the other side of Powell, equally jammed. “Chico’s right, Staff Sergeant. All this extra guns and ammo is overkill. I’m sorry but shit, dude.”

  Cochise Quinlan gave Petey a kick in the shoulder with the side of his boot, enjoying better air manning the Maw Duce in the open turret. “We get in the shit, and you’ll b
e kissing Billy’s ass.”

  “Yeah, Cochise, you got the breeze up there on the duce, and we’re down here smelling each other’s farts,” Petey came back, and gave Quinlan a hard elbow in the thigh.

  “Put a sock in it and keep your eyes open,” Billy-C said from up front. Bad vibes rode up his spine as the convoy rolled through the tight spot. His stomach twisted into a knot, just as it always did before a fight. Jack called it built-in radar, and paid attention when Billy Claybaugh’s jaws tightened.

  “You feeling the Lump?” Rowdy asked, knowing that look on Billy-C’s face. They’d all heard Gunny V talking about Claybaugh’s inbuilt early-warning system. Some people have the hair stand up on the backs of their necks, but for Billy, his gut wrenched. He got it just before an ambush, when all the warning signs made his nerves edgy and his stomach tied itself up. He also got it when competing in gold-medal matches on the Marine Corps Shooting Team. That’s when his coach named it the Lump.

  Billy looked around. Mud houses, high mud walls. Two-story block houses with flat roofs. Open windows. Junk cars. Trash piles. Lots of places to set up guns for an ambush. The Lump made his ears turn red and his jaws clench hard. He had it bad this time.

  “Keep your intervals wide!” Billy yelled on the command radio, seeing the two KBR semis ahead of him rolling way too close and the lead vehicle running way too slow. “Lieutenant Phipps, can we pick up the pace, sir? Let’s open some space between these trucks.”

  The six-wheel-drive Army Cougar blew out black smoke as the driver pushed down the throttle and opened the gap between him and the first tractor-trailer. Rowdy tapped his brakes, slowing way down, and the trucks behind him nearly stopped from the accordion effect of all the vehicles trying to increase distances between bumpers.

  Just then a command-detonated mine buried deep under the road blew a back wheel off the MRAP. A heartbeat behind it, a second mine, even larger, took out the entire tractor of the lead semi and destroyed half its trailer. They’d be lucky to find body parts of the driver.

  The man running the KBR truck behind him jumped out of the cab, taking a panic-stricken run for it. A sniper’s bullet cut him down, dead, as his feet hit the ground.

  “Ambush!” Claybaugh let go on command radio and intercom, a surge of adrenaline taking hold of him.

  Rowdy Yates had his left hand resting on the top of the steering wheel and had his window down. He was about to say something to Billy Claybaugh when a 180-grain .30 caliber bullet fired by a 7.62-by-54-millimeter rimmed Dragunov sniper rifle struck him just under the left armpit. The al-Qaeda Iraq sniper had placed his shot in the arm opening of the young Marine’s body armor. The heavy Russian bullet took out the lance corporal’s heart and lungs while he blinked, surprised, looking at Billy-C. Rowdy wanted to say something but died before he could make a sound.

  “Sniper!” Billy Claybaugh yelled on his microphone as Rowdy Yates fell into the staff sergeant’s arms.

  Cochise Quinlan did not wait for orders. He opened fire with the duce at the ambush’s left flank as soon as he saw the truck driver fall dead on the road. Then he trained his stream of .50 caliber monolithic brass projectiles at a second-story window that looked a likely hide for the sniper who had just killed his young brother.

  “Get that 240 up and running, and cover the right! Light those motherfuckers up!” Billy yelled as he pushed Lance Corporal Yates off him and leaned down as several AK bullets splattered the glass on his door window and the windshield.

  “Cotton,” Claybaugh shouted, as Petey Preston went to work feeding ammo to Cochise and handing belts up to Randy Powell, who opened fire with the .30 caliber machine gun. “We’re in a cross fire from both sides of the road. At least a dozen sources. Beaucoup bad guys high and low.”

  Machine gun fire began working from Cotton Martin’s Hummer as the Army lieutenant with the infantry squad in the Cougar came on the radio.

  “You Marines still mobile?” he called.

  “Roger, we’re both mobile,” Billy said, but added, “My driver’s dead.”

  As the Army officer spoke, heavy fire from both sides of the road focused on the MRAP. An RPG glanced off its side and exploded as the turret gunner sent several forty-millimeter grenades at the building from which most of the machine gun fire came and the rocket had launched.

  “Gather the drivers from the rear KBR trucks, and bring both those Hummers up here so we can form a defense and deploy my infantry,” the lieutenant commanded.

  Billy had just pulled Rowdy over his legs, and squeezed himself under the dead Marine’s body, getting into the driver’s seat, when a B-40 rocket hit the passenger side of the Hummer and blew away that wheel.

  “We’re stuck, sir,” Billy came back on the radio. “An RPG just took out our front end.”

  “Shit,” the lieutenant answered. “Consolidate your two vehicles there and get those KBR drivers under cover.”

  Cotton Martin pulled his Hummer alongside the two semis behind Billy-C and laid down suppression fire with both his machine guns while the two surviving KBR drivers squeezed inside with the Marines. Already, both cabs of the big trucks looked like Swiss cheese.

  “Pull asshole to belly button behind me, Cotton,” Billy said, seeing the second Hummer coming up, taking heavy fire.

  “They aim to overrun us,” Cotton said. “We need to get deployed and roll an offense at them. Turn the tide!”

  “You there, Gunny V?” Billy-C called on his intercom.

  —

  “Billy, I’m right here, and cavalry’s coming, just like I promised. Reaction force launching your way as we speak. Give me a sitrep when you can catch a breath,” Jack Valentine said over the radio to Staff Sergeant Claybaugh, trying to sound calm while his heart beat double time. All interior decorating had come to a complete stop. Bronco Starr and Jaws stood close by their mentor, intense, listening to the gunfight and combat chatter of their mates that came over the intercom speaker.

  “Gunny, let’s mount up,” Jesse Cortez pleaded.

  “Fuckin’ A, dude,” Alex Gomez followed. “Let me drive, and we’ll get there in fifteen minutes.”

  Jack wanted to do it but knew better. A reaction team of reinforcements had already moved out for business. Gunships had launched, and what battle Billy and the boys had going on would likely be over before any of the MARSOC tribe could possibly arrive to help.

  “Rowdy’s KIA,” Billy-C came back. “I’ve got machine guns laying down cover fire, and we’re deploying teams right and left to go on assault. Enemy strength substantial. Twenty or thirty. But we gonna kill these motherfuckers!”

  “Kill ’em all, brother,” Jack snarled back. “Light ’em the fuck up!”

  Bronco dropped to the floor and sat, staring at his boots. Jaws stood with his skull-ringed biceps and tattooed arms crossed. Jack stood by him, resting his chin on his fist, listening to the fight.

  “He was going to be a dad,” Bronco said, not raising his head. “Rowdy, I mean. He showed me the ultrasound pictures of his baby girl this morning.”

  “Fuck it,” Jaws said. Then he looked at Gunny Valentine. “Those cocksuckers in the head shed got us on these silly shit details long enough, Guns. It needs to stop.”

  “That’s right, Gunny V,” Bronco added. “They got battalions of doggies just sitting on their asses. Let those assholes run security. Better yet, give it to those scumbag civilian security contractors. Better they die than one of us.”

  Jaws came back, “Why we not out there huntin’ these Haji motherfuckers anyway and killing ’em all? I thought we had Zarqawi on our list. Why ain’t we hunting that motherfucker?”

  “I feel you, boys,” Jack said. “You got my vote. Time this extracurricular horseshit stopped. Fuck the military politics. I’m telling the skipper. We’re going full MARSOC ops out in the Anbar, hunting Zarqawi or whoever the fuck else we can shoot in the meantime
. Every fucking one of us I can drag on Black Bart Roberts’s operation. If we’re going to die, we die on our terms. Not some dog-meat security duty leading supply trucks. Total fucking bullshit!”

  “Fuckin’ A,” Jaws said.

  _ 6 _

  The entire front half of a two-story stucco house cascaded to the ground after Cochise Quinlan poured two and a half belts of .50 caliber Browning machine gun monolithic ammunition through the building’s vital supports. The 746-grain solid brass bullets cut through the corners and center supports like a chain saw on soft pine. A salvo of forty-millimeter high-explosive grenades fired from the MRAP’s mark 19 finished off the structure, once Cochise had broken its spine.

  When the house fell, its entire roof collapsed atop its broken walls and floors. Dirt and gray smoke boiled skyward behind the gush of air that rushed from under the roof as it went down. Like drunken sailors lost in a fog, half a dozen Qaeda gunmen staggered out of the mess dazed, each man blinded from dirt-clogged eyes, bleeding, delirious from explosion trauma, and their bodies caked with dust like floured chicken ready for the deep fryer.

  As the building fell to rubble, Billy-C watched from behind a low adobe wall, with Petey Preston and Randy Powell. He couldn’t help but smile. An awesome sight. Poetic justice to the dirty bastards who had lain in ambush inside the now-destroyed house.

  Staff Sergeant Claybaugh carried the new short-barreled Barrett Bullpup and a satchel full of mark 211 .50 caliber tungsten-core Raufoss multipurpose, explosive-incendiary, armor-penetrating ammunition. A Raufoss round will blow through a wall, or even a sheet of ballistic steel plate, then explode behind it. The multistage explosive-incendiary properties of the round do a total job on anyone fighting behind a wall or armored barrier.

  Corporals Preston and Powell each had an EDM-Vigilance, VR1 model, .338 Lapua Magnum semiautomatic sniper rifle, and had stuffed their packs and vest pouches tight with ammo. The three Scout-Snipers spaced themselves thirty meters apart and formed sectors of fire that fanned across their entire left flank. Billy lay between his two cohorts, covering the middle with his big-bore gun.