Terminal Impact Page 12

  “Fucking Eskimo,” Jaws grumbled.

  “Fucking El Centro gangster,” Andre shot back.

  “South Central, ass-wipe,” Gomez growled. “El Centro’s some shit hole down on the border near Arizona with orange groves and coyotes.”

  “Jaws. Who peed in your Wheaties?” Jack said, turning from the radio and Billy-C’s gunfight to look at Gomez. “Cut Rasputin a little slack. He may not know Pico-Union from Alameda, but what the fuck do you know about Alaska?”

  “Fucking cold, polar bears, and I don’t give a fuck if I never see it. That’s what I know,” Jaws came back.

  “You need to branch out, dude,” Rasputin said.

  “Branch this,” Gomez said, grabbing his crotch, then grumbled as he turned back at the radio, “Fucking Eskimo.”

  —

  Heavy black smoke boiled out of the buildings as the fires took over the neighborhoods on both sides of the road. The gunner on the MRAP had belted up more high-explosive dual-purpose grenades and now belched them from his MK19 machine gun into the flaming structures. With each explosion, a fountain of red embers blew into the sky.

  “Now we’re cooking!” Billy-C said on the intercom. “Watch for movement and shoot what moves. Nothing but bad guys out there.”

  Jeremy Phipps kicked open the back doors on the Cougar, and a dozen grunts plus a medic poured out of their tight-fitting entrapment. Six warriors and the doc followed him on the left side, and five ran right, tailing their top kick, Sergeant First Class Connor Bower, a genuine Boston Southie with an attitude, hailing from Beantown’s Irish hood near the Red Line’s Broadway Station off Dorchester.

  The main gun operator in the forward turret with his assistant feeding up fresh mark 19 belts of grenades, two more gunners, top hatches open and running a pair of M240E1 machine guns mounted at the truck’s rear, and the driver with a second assistant gunner, both hustling ammo, stayed inside, pouring cover as their infantry deployed.

  Braving a burst of hot-running enemy lead, the Army lieutenant from Fayetteville had just gotten his sixth man set along the low mud fence that flanked much of the road when three AK rounds found him. Two of the bullets took him off his feet, slapping into the back of his body armor, more painful than damaging. However, the third slug shattered his left elbow and left his arm twisting like a wet rag.

  Phipps pulled himself up to the mud wall, bleeding badly, and announced on his radio, “I’m alive, boys. They just winged me.”

  The medic, who had taken cover ahead of the officer, just missing the AK burst, threw a compression wrap on the lieutenant’s arm and hit him with a shot of morphine.

  As Jeremy Phipps’s eyes rolled up, more from shock than drugs, Connor Bower came on the command radio with his unmistakable Southie brogue. “L-T’s down, but okay. I got command now. Sah-gent Bower, if yah askin’. Hah ’bout you jah-heads? Ready ta kick some ass?”

  “Fuckin’ A, dude,” Claybaugh came back.

  “We’ll run straight at ’em, then push around our end,” Bower said. “You jah-heads cover the flanks on your end and kill ’em when they flee. Don’t let any a dese rat bas-tads escape. You gat dat?”

  “We’re already on the move,” Billy answered.

  Bullets flying, Bower left a sergeant in charge of his right echelon and ran to the back of the Cougar. He slammed his hand against the steel doors while hot lead slapped all around him. “Open up! Wounded man comin’ in!”

  Then the medic and another soldier dragged the half-conscious lieutenant back to the MRAP, where the driver and an assistant gunner pulled him inside.

  Billy-C watched the fearless sergeant leading his warriors, enemy lead in the air and him standing amidst it.

  “You guys catching this John Wayne moment? That’s one insane motherfucker,” he said on the MARSOC intercom. “I like him.”

  “Insanity don’t make him bulletproof,” Cotton Martin said, then splattered an al-Qaeda gunman with an AK who appeared at the corner of a burning building, taking aim at the crazy Irishman. His .50 caliber Barrett sent the enemy’s head tumbling high in the air like a football over a goal post while an arm and a leg flew right and left, and the rest of the body sprayed red chunks on the stucco wall.

  “Fuck!” exclaimed Byrd Clingman, who the crew had named Jewfro, because of his curly brown hair. “Downright spectacular when those Raufoss penetrators hit somebody.”

  As Connor Bower scattered his warriors on both sides of the road into well-dispersed assault lines, and began to move them forward and push an angle on the Hajis’ lower flanks, using fire and movement tactics, Billy-C spread his two snipers even wider from his center position, curving around the enemy’s opposite end.

  “Hook on around, Cotton. We’ll blindside ’em when they run for it,” he told Martin, who had also spread his operators and maneuvered to hook around the enemy on his side of their ambush positions.

  With everything on both sides of the road now ablaze, funneling fire and smoke through the neighborhoods parallel to the Fallujah-bound road, al-Qaeda gunmen began to dash out of back doors and gallop down alleyways.

  Hub Biggs, the tall boy out of Kerrville, Texas, had stayed even with his Scout-Sniper partner, Corporal Clyde Avery McIllhenny, whom the team called Hot Sauce.

  Point of fact, Clyde McIllhenny came from Lafayette, Louisiana, was a member of the Tabasco Sauce McIllhenny family, and was the great-grandnephew of one of Tabasco’s more legendary bosses, Brigadier General Walter Stauffer McIllhenny, who led Marines on Guadalcanal in World War II.

  Tabasco Mac, as his fellow Marines had nicknamed General McIllhenny, in addition to his heroism, for which he received the Navy Cross and Silver Star, also had great talent with a rifle and pistol, earning Distinguished Marksman in both disciplines. Likewise, Hot Sauce had a natural marksmanship talent, and sought to earn Double Distinguished ranking like his famous uncle who had made Tabasco a Marine Corps staple.

  “Yo, Hot Sauce. You seeing this?” Hub Biggs said in a soft voice over his comm link.

  “You talking about the dude who ducked behind the car?” McIllhenny answered.

  “You see what he’s doing?” Biggs asked.

  “Not hardly,” Clyde came back. “I’s waiting for him to run, then pop him on the fly. Looked like he’s carrying a scoped rifle. You got a shot?”

  “Oh yeah,” Biggs answered.

  “What ya waiting on? Weather to change?” Hot Sauce said.

  “I just feel bad taking advantage of a man with his pants down,” Biggs said. “Poor bastard’s got the runs. Must be all the excitement. Soon as he got behind the car, he dropped bloomers and let fly. Squirting like a fire hose.”

  “Dog would a caught the rabbit had he not stopped to take a shit,” McIllhenny said. “Bust that side mirror over his head. See what he does.”

  Biggs laughed as he took aim and squeezed off a shot.

  The mirror exploded over the sick gunman’s head, and the man fell backwards, into his puddle of shit.

  Then the Haj rolled to his knees and lurched for his rifle. That’s when Hub Biggs put his second shot square in the man’s back, sending him skidding through his own fresh shit, face-first, drawers down.

  “That’s a sight you don’t see every day,” Cotton Martin said. “You’re one warped motherfucker, Hub. You do know that, don’t you?”

  “What was I supposed to do?” Biggs asked.

  “I don’t know,” Martin answered. “Maybe just shoot him right off the bat?”

  —

  Ray-Dean Blevins pulled the seat of his 5.11s out of the crack of his ass when he stepped out of his Escalade. Then he checked his breath as he headed to the MARSOC-Iraq headquarters hooch.

  Inside, Corporal Ralph C. Butler sat at Captain Burkehart’s desk and put the finishing touches on an email to his mother, Janine, back home in Red Bank, New Jersey. She taught thi
rd grade at Red Bank Primary School, and had raised Ralph on her own since the boy was three years old, and his father was killed.

  Ralph’s dad, Trooper Ely Butler, a New Jersey State Police motorcycle officer, died when a hit-and-run stolen delivery truck sideswiped him as he was writing a speeding ticket on a highway shoulder near Fort Monmouth. They never caught the killer although the stolen delivery truck turned up quickly, abandoned on a side street in Eatontown. The only eyewitness, the real estate agent getting the ticket, driving her Lexus eighty miles per hour up Route 35 because she was late for a property closing, saw nothing.

  When Ray-Dean knocked on the front door and stepped inside without waiting for an invite to enter, as if he belonged there, Smedley gave the Malone-Leyva mercenary the stink eye. He swung around and clicked off the intercom speaker, too, where he had been listening to Billy-C and the crew turning the tables on the jihadi ambush.

  “Can I help you?” Butler huffed, immediately suspicious of the heavily accessorized, steroid-juiced intruder carrying the low-slung Glock 21 strapped to his thigh.

  “Oh, it’s okay, Corporal Butler,” Blevins said after checking Smedley’s name on the embroidered tag above his pocket. “I’m an old Force Recon Marine from the way back. Half the guys in MARSOC are buddies of mine.”

  Butler still kept the stink eye going on Blevins.

  “So you say,” Smedley said. “You got a name?”

  Ray-Dean gave him a cockeyed nod.

  “Hey, I’m cool with your being careful and shit,” Ray-Dean said, taking a seat on the corner of Colonel Snow’s desk and eyeballing the pile of envelopes, postal mail, and various papers laid there. He picked up a Marine Corps Gazette and thumbed it open.

  “Captain Burkehart’s not here, if you’re looking for him. He won’t be back for a good while either,” Smedley then offered, hoping Blevins would leave. “Can I give him a message?”

  “Like I said. I’m an old friend of a lot of the guys here, not the captain. I don’t know him. My boss is up the street at a conference, and I’m killing time. That’s all. Thought I might swing in here and catch up with some of my bros,” Blevins said with a shrug, keeping his butt in place on the corner of Colonel Snow’s desk and relaxing even more with the magazine spread open, as if he might read it.

  He looked again at Ralph’s name tag above the pocket on his utility jacket and pointed. “Name like Butler, I bet these ass-wipes call you Smedley, don’t they. Am I right?”

  Butler just stared at the jerk.

  “So, Smedley,” Blevins picked up. “Who’s on campus? Toss me a few names, and I’ll tell you if I know them.”

  “How about you toss me a few names,” Smedley answered.

  “Staff Sergeant Bill Claybaugh,” Ray-Dean offered. “Me and him was real tight back in the day at three-two.”

  Butler nodded. “He’s on patrol.”

  “Down to Fallujah?” Blevins said.

  Smedley pursed his lips. “Yes.”

  “My bet, they hit the shit, didn’t they,” Ray-Dean said. “You always hit the shit down that way.”

  “Going on now,” Smedley said.

  “On that run, it’s not if but when. Bad karma. Totally bad karma,” Blevins said, shaking his head, showing Butler his dismay. “Our guys got it under control?”

  “Couple of truck drivers dead, and one of our operators,” Ralph opened up. “But Staff Sergeant Claybaugh and Staff Sergeant Martin have it handled now. Last I heard on the squawk box, they’re kicking some righteous ass.”

  “My boy, Billy! Hard as woodpecker teeth,” Ray-Dean said. “Gunny didn’t go with them?”

  “Gunny Valentine’s down at operations. He’s on the net with them,” Smedley said, relaxing into the conversation.

  “How about Jesse Cortez? He out with Claybaugh?” Blevins asked. “I went through recon school with his lame ass out at Pendleton.”

  “Bronco?” Butler smiled. “He’s at operations, too. Gunny’s got him and another guy on work detail.”

  “Typical Cortez.” Blevins laughed. “Extra punishment duty, right? Jesse’s alligator mouth always talking himself into shit his hummingbird ass can’t handle. Fucker’s always on E-P-D.”

  Smedley laughed. “Yeah, that’s Cortez. But he’s one of our best snipers. Him and his partner, Jaws, are badass in the field.”

  “Jaws,” Ray-Dean said. “That’s the big Mexican dude, looks like a gangster with the tats and shit?”

  Butler nodded yes. “Alex Gomez. We call him Jaws.”

  “So, mind if I camp here until my boss gets done?” Ray-Dean asked, seeing that Butler had finally relaxed his attitude toward him.

  “You’re a Marine, right?” Smedley asked, looking for a little reassurance.

  “I hope to shit in your shoulder holster. Force fucking Recon,” Blevins said.

  “What was that name again?” Smedley asked, relaxed but still wanting to be sure about the man.

  “Sergeant Blevins,” Ray-Dean said, lying about his former rank. “I go by Cooder, with a D.”

  A smile spread across Butler’s face. Cooder-with-a-D rang the bell. He’d heard Gunny Valentine ranting about this asshole, and how he insisted on spelling Cooter with a D instead of a T, because of the pussy connotation that the Cooter with a T had.

  “Mind if I help myself to a little coffee?” Blevins said, already pouring a cup.

  “Sure,” Smedley said, and gave a look at his near-empty mug, then noticed the rapidly building pressure in his gut. Irritable bowel syndrome, triggered from nerves, caused by the strange visitor. He gave Ray-Dean, who was thumbing through pages of Marine Corps Gazette, a look. “You know how to answer the phone if anybody calls, right?”

  “What do I say, ‘MARSOC, how do I direct your call?’” Ray-Dean answered.

  “That works,” Butler said. “I need to make a head call. You mind picking up the phone if it rings?”

  “No sweat, GI,” Ray-Dean said. “Take your time. Take a nice long shit if you want. Like I said, my boss is in that meeting, and I’m just killing time.”

  Smedley nodded and trotted to the restroom that connected between Colonel Snow’s room and Captain Burkehart’s.

  As soon as the lad shut the door, Ray-Dean Blevins turned to the pile of envelopes on Colonel Snow’s desk and his eyes focused on several folders with red strips down the edges and big letters stating SECRET stamped on them. Then he saw the fat, nine-inch-by-twelve-inch manila envelope with CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET stamped in red ink on its face. It had “Hand Carry Only” handwritten on it and underscored three times. Then “Lieutenant Colonel E. B. Roberts, Commanding Officer, First Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment” written in ballpoint ink on the upper left-hand corner and “Lieutenant Colonel H. E. Snow, Commanding Officer, MARSOC-Iraq” written in the same handwriting in larger letters on the center.

  Ray-Dean had heard scuttlebutt that one-five was planning a big operation, and he guessed that this envelope contained information about that project.

  “For fuck sake,” Cooder-with-a-D laughed under his breath, and as he heard the toilet flush, he stuffed the envelope down the back waistband of his cargo trousers and pulled out his shirttail. He hurried to the door before Smedley Butler could get back to the front office and yelled at him, “My boss just sent me a text message. I got to run.”

  Smedley gave him a wave, then glanced at Colonel Snow’s desk and ensured that the Marine Corps Gazette lay back atop the pile of mail and other folders, envelopes, and papers. Then his eyes caught the red-striped borders on the classified folders.

  “Skipper’s going to get us all put in jail,” Butler griped as he gathered up the folders and envelopes stamped SECRET and CLASSIFIED. One by one, he registered them into the classified-documents log, assigned them a file number, and put them away in the safe. He had no clue that one was missing.

  —


  After the bulk of surviving al-Qaeda gunmen managed to break from the ambush and scattered at a hard run, a gang of more than a dozen well-armed fighters rallied among a clutch of mud-and-stick farmhouses with adobe fences and brush-arbor animal shelters surrounded by withered vegetable gardens, goat pastures, tall weeds, rocky hills, and gullies through which a sorry excuse for a road zigged and zagged. Here, what was left of the main force of Hajis now prepared a countering ambush against Sergeant First Class Connor Bower and six of his grunts, who pursued them along that dirt road. The enemy, however, did not see Billy Claybaugh, Petey Preston, and Randy Powell mounting a hill on their flank overlooking the entire scene, nearly three-quarters of a mile away.

  The staff sergeant and his two corporals had cut a diagonal for the high ground that Billy had anticipated would give them a distant but commanding overwatch where they could see the fleeing al-Qaeda and keep an eye on his Army brothers, too. He was right.

  Cotton Martin and his Marines along with the truck drivers and the remaining soldiers from the MRAP worked at clearing the ambush area of holdouts left behind to offer cover fire while their main al-Qaeda Iraq force fled. One by one, these zealots died hard.

  Once Billy-C, Petey, and Randy fanned into positions on the hilltop overwatch, they began scoping the enemy positions. Rather than just shooting a few of them at best, while the remainder escaped up the nearby gullies, he wanted to get the Army warriors in position to cut off any escape.

  “I’ve got overwatch on you, Boston, and you’ve got a dozen to fifteen Hajis just ahead of you, holed up in some mud houses and shit,” Billy said on the command frequency to Sergeant Bower. “I’m guessing they’ll try to cut you guys down after you make that turn in the road just ahead.”

  “Roger that,” Bower replied. “You got any targets?”

  “Lots of ’em,” Billy said. “But lots more will escape unless you boys block the gullies and road, and kill ’em when they come runnin’.”

  “I’m guessing you’ve got a plan?” Connor Bower came back.

  “Sort of, I suppose,” Claybaugh said. “Just take a few steps up in the rocks on each side of the road and implant automatic fire there. Then send two riflemen to the right and two left, and they take positions on the high ground over the gullies leading away from the farmhouses. You might miss one on the flanks, but I’m guessing that when you open fire in those spots, the Hajis will think you spread yourself thin, sweeping around their flanks to attack, and left the middle open. We’ll kill ’em in their own kill zone.”