Terminal Impact Page 14

  “One dumb motherfucker’s all I can say,” Captain Burkehart added. “If he’d just lain still in that trash pile, and let Billy take that rifle, he’d still be alive. Army already cleared that area, so when we left the scene, he could have just gone home.”

  “Sometimes a rattlesnake just can’t help himself but bite a guy,” Claybaugh rationalized.

  _ 7 _

  Cottonmouth and a splitting headache roused Ray-Dean Blevins to a foggy realm of consciousness. The smell of coffee, toast, eggs, and bacon made him open his eyes.

  Laughter. Screechy female laughter. Then a familiar male voice made him raise his head to see who else was there.

  Francoise stood in front of his kitchenette cookstove, scrambling a skillet filled with eggs while Cesare Alosi dabbed dry freshly cooked turkey bacon with paper towels.

  The Malone-Leyva boss wore a black company T-shirt and tan 5.11 cargo trousers, a Glock 19 strapped to his upper thigh, and a black M-L operator’s ball cap tilted on the back of his head. The French reporter wore one of Cooder’s drab tan company T-shirts and nothing else. Her ass cheeks played peekaboo below the bottom hem.

  “How’d you get in here?” Blevins grogged out at his boss, staggering up from the bed. Then he realized he was naked and sporting morning wood. So he grabbed the top sheet off his bed and wrapped it around his waist.

  Seeing his package, Francoise giggled like a teenage virgin ditching Sunday school with the bad boys. She made a show of hiding her eyes, as if she had a degree of modesty, then went back to scraping the pile of eggs around the pan.

  Alosi gave it a slight headshake, rolling his eyes, then smiled at Cooder as if he knew it all. “Your little friend Paolo let me in as he slipped out this morning. Odd fellow, that one. And boy, did he look haggard. Hard night at the races? Three of you? Really? My, oh my . . . Bet you had fun.”

  “It’s not what you think!” Ray-Dean shot back, pulling the sheet up high to his chest like a shy girl at a topless beach, and wrapping it tight under his armpits.

  “I’m not judging you.” Alosi laughed. “Who you fuck and how you three fucked. That’s your business. I don’t want to know even the slightest details of what went on here last night. Seriously. None of my business.”

  “Well, it’s not what you think. That’s all,” Blevins blustered as he threw the sheet in a wad on the bed, pulled on his trousers, and hurried to the table where he noticed that Cesare had left off reading the First Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment operation plan, opened to the back-page appendices. He gave Alosi the stink eye.

  Seeing the frown, Cesare offered, “Look, dude. I apologize for waking you. Not really thinking, I put on a pot of coffee. The aroma woke Francoise, and she insisted on cooking breakfast. I pitched in to help, and I guess we got a little silly and a bit loud. I honestly intended to let you sleep. I just wanted a cup of coffee to sip while I read that operation plan I found on the floor as I came through the door. Nice work, Ray. Top secret no less. I suppose it came from your visit with your friends at MARSOC? That right?”

  “Yup,” Cooder said, taking a Malone-Leyva polo shirt off a pile of clothes atop an overflowing hamper. He sniffed it, gave it a shake to air out the body odor, then put it on.

  “Very good work indeed, young squire,” Cesare said, pouring a cup of coffee and bringing it to Ray-Dean.

  “Look, boss,” Cooder said, taking the cup, then casting his eyes down at the operation plan. “Maybe we should throw that thing in the shredder and pretend we never saw it. Soon as I knew what I had, I got a really bad feeling. Seriously. This ain’t any small-change security detail. No, sir. We’re talking a full-scale battalion operation from Hit to Haditha Reservoir. Lots of American lives at risk here.”

  “Let me do the worrying,” Alosi said, and wrapped his arm around Ray-Dean like his new best friend. “After all, we’re on the same side. Right? Would I do anything to compromise the security of those Marines or any other American presence here? We’re in business to help them!”

  Ray-Dean pulled away from the clutch of his boss. “Right. Just like you helped those guys yesterday. I hear two KBR drivers and a MARSOC Marine got whacked in that ambush, plus some other dudes got wounded. Paolo, that squirrely guy you saw on his way out this morning, told us all about it. He’s a sound tech with CNN, and was there with the news crew covering the story. One Marine killed, another one wounded. Couple Army guys with minor wounds and their lieutenant hit pretty bad. You don’t think that bothers the shit out of me? I may seem like a worthless shit turd to you and a lot of other people, but I’m still a Marine.”

  “Look, Ray. It’s business. On the positive side, I picked up a little CIA work on this operation, and I got a call from KBR’s in-country boss late yesterday, and they pitched us a security contract for convoy-protection management. It’s worth millions!” Alosi rationalized. Then, with a nonchalant shrug, he added, “You break a few eggs to make an omelet. Right? People do get killed in a war.”

  Blevins frowned. “What’s in it for me? This new security contract worth millions from KBR. I get a bonus?”

  “Yeah,” Cesare said. “That Escalade you burned. Consider it off the books. Plus, I’m putting a fifty-grand kicker in your direct deposit this month for the op plan you brought us. Does that soothe your guilty conscience?”

  Ray-Dean nodded yes, then half smiled. “Like, what difference does it make now? Right?”

  “Right!” Alosi bubbled, and put his arm back around his new best friend. “We go on living, you and me. Nice cars, pool in the backyard. Big boat. Pussy on the quarterdeck. All the good shit that comes with serious money. Right?”

  Cooder-with-a-D gazed at Francoise, looking sexy in his T-shirt, holding a platter heaped with scrambled eggs, her plump, bald snatch peeking out, and he smiled.

  —

  When Billy Claybaugh pulled open the door to the MARSOC operations hooch and heard the weird Arabic music, it stopped him in his tracks. A hellish scene.

  The great skull painted on the black wall loomed over Jack Valentine, who sat transfixed to his laptop computer screen, watching a video taken off one of the many al-Qaeda Web sites. Then came “Allahu Akbar” chanting from the sound track, mixed with the sounds of gunfire.

  “Jack! What the fuck, over!” the staff sergeant said as he hobbled on a set of aluminum crutches, heading to Gunny Valentine’s desk as fast as he could scramble. He knew what his sniping partner watched, and it wasn’t healthy.

  In 2005, six Marine Scout-Snipers and their platoon’s Navy Hospital corpsman, all from a reserve unit in Cleveland, fell victim to an ambush south of Haditha. Most of them died on the spot as an al-Qaeda gunman shot video of the grisly scene and later posted it on the Internet. One Marine, still alive, was dragged through the nearby village and brutally sacrificed as a crowd cheered.

  The Marines had been betrayed by the Iraqi soldiers assigned to support the operation, who knew many sensitive details about the plan and deployment of the ill-fated sniper team. Once the Iraqi and Marine leadership identified the traitors, they sent a reinforced rifle platoon of Marines to apprehend the men.

  En route to the village where the culprits had fled, the Marines again suffered betrayal, again compromised by Iraqi traitors inside their tent. This time fourteen infantrymen from that same reserve unit died in a well-executed ambush. In less than two days, Cleveland, Ohio, lost twenty-one of its sons to al-Qaeda Iraq gunmen.

  This all occurred only days after Jack and Billy-C had taken the shot that missed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as he stood on the roof of the taxi on the bridge into Haditha, lording over the public execution of men and boys that day.

  “Recharging my mental batteries,” Jack said without looking up.

  “Fucking up your mind, I say,” Claybaugh said, and slammed shut the lid of Jack’s notebook PC. “You know how seeing the video of those Cleveland Scout-Snipers getting ambushed f
ucks up your dope. It fucks up mine just watching you watch it. Hell, Jack, I trained those guys with you, don’t forget. I knew them, too. Fuck, dude!”

  “They died because of us, Billy,” Jack grumbled. “You can’t deny it. I took that totally impossible shot, and pissed off the madman. You know he came specifically hunting the Marine Sniper who nearly killed him. We went home, but twenty-one of our brothers died because of us.”

  Billy fell onto the chair by Gunny Valentine’s desk, holding out his leg stiff to protect his sore ass, landing on the good cheek. After an exhale from pain, he looked at his longtime friend and started to say something more. But then the Alabama staff sergeant with nearly always something smart-assed to say just shook his head, words failing him.

  “I should have said no,” Jack complained. “When the skipper came back with yet another road-guard mission. I should have nutted up. My lack of balls? Got you shot and got Rowdy killed.”

  “We got compromised, Jack,” Claybaugh said. “Somebody tipped off al-Qaeda. That’s not your fault.”

  Jack clenched his jaws. “You wouldn’t have been there if I had been the man I’m supposed to be. I was rolling with the flow. Getting this deployment done, following orders, not making ripples. You got shot, and that’s on me.”

  “Hey, I’m fine, brother!” Billy came back. “Like a razor slashed across my ass cheek is all. A few stitches, and I’m back in the weeds. Ready to rock and roll.”

  “You can’t say that about Rowdy Yates,” Jack reminded his sniping partner. “In a few hours, when the sun comes up at Camp Lejeune, Elmore’s going to make the widow’s death notification with the chaplain and the Casualty Assistance Call Officer. We’re down a man, and he was a good one.”

  “They’re all good ones,” Claybaugh said.

  “Yeah,” Jack said, lifting the lid on his computer but then shutting it back down. Then he looked at Billy-C and put a smile on his face. “How’s your ass?”

  Claybaugh grinned. “A horizontal smile to go with my vertical. But the sideways one hurts like a son of a bitch.”

  “Let’s see,” Gunny Valentine said, motioning for the staff sergeant to stand up, turn around, drop trousers, and unveil his wound.

  As Billy complied, britches at his ankles, bandage off, bent at the waist with his bare butt pointed at the gunny, Rasputin and the Mob Squad barreled through the main door.

  “Whoa! Dude! Cover up! That’s one memory I don’t want,” Sergeant Romyantsev said, leading the four others and suddenly encountering Billy-C bent over bare-assed a foot from Gunny Valentine’s face.

  Sergeant Carlo “The Iceman” Savoca and his top corporal, Sal “Pizza Man” Principato, swooped in close for a good look. Nick “the Nose” Falzone and Marcello “Momo” Costa stepped back with Rasputin. They had no desire to look at Billy Claybaugh’s naked bum or his wound.

  “You need to get a tattoo with that scar, like eyes. You know, like on a smiley face?” Principato offered, and put his finger on the stitched wound.

  “It does look like a smile across my cheek, don’t it,” Billy said, looking over his shoulder at the boys giving his butt close scrutiny.

  “Like, have a nice day, asshole.” Iceman laughed. “You know, the smile face talking to your bung.”

  “Shouldn’t you, then, have the whole cheek tattooed yellow?” Rasputin offered, now moving in close to see, too, interested by the smiley face comments.

  “Yeah!” Billy said. “Like two big black eyes and a black outline around the smile, surrounded by a big yellow circle that takes up my whole ass cheek. And shaded like 3D. You know?”

  They all laughed.

  “You’ve got to do it, Billy,” Sergeant Savoca said. “Soon as we get back to Lejeune. We’ll all chip in.”

  “Not to change the subject,” Jack Valentine said, “but to what do I owe the pleasure of not only having the entire Mob Squad grace my presence, but Rasputin the Devil emerge from his dungeon?”

  “This operation with one-five out in the Anbar. Staff Sergeant D said we’re all going. Even him and me both. That true, Gunny?” Sergeant Romyantsev asked.

  Jack Valentine looked at his Mob Squad, then Rasputin, and spread a big smile, cautious. “Would you like to go?”

  “Gunny. That’s why we wear tree suits,” Sergeant Savoca said, wedging his two cents into the conversation. Then, looking at Romyantsev, added, “Rasputin will even put on clothes.”

  Gunny Valentine looked at Romyantsev standing there with his arms folded, wearing a black Metallica: Some Kind of Monster tank top, neon-green P-T shorts, and flip-flops. “This operation. We’ll need the entire detachment. Except for Captain Burkehart, Smedley, and Billy-C. They’ll stay back and hold down the fort.”

  “So, it’s not a handpicked team, like I heard at first?” Savoca said.

  Jack shook his head no. “I changed my mind. After what happened yesterday, that silly horseshit stops. We’re going on mission to do what we came here to do. Kill Zarqawi.”

  “Fuck yeah!” Pizza Man let go. “Balls out!”

  “We’re assigning teams to each of one-five’s infantry companies, and a composite group to the battalion’s command element. We’ll brief everyone on the breakdown, overall objectives, and who goes where right after noon chow,” Jack went on.

  “Mob Squad, heads up. You’re chopping out to Haditha Dam tonight. Link up with a hard-core Force Recon knife fighter, First Sergeant Alvin Barkley, top kick at Charlie Company. You’re first team out. I hope you’ve got your kits packed and ready.”

  “They’ve been packed and ready,” Savoca said.

  Jack gave Savoca a hard, cold look, then eyeballed each of his three Mob Squad cohorts. “Report to First Sergeant Barkley directly, Iceman. Got it? And none of your boys’ silly it’s-just-business shit. Barkley’s no-nonsense old Corps. Hard as woodpecker teeth. He’s even got muscles in his do-do. So don’t fuck around with this guy.”

  “What do you mean hard-core knife fighter? You serious?” Momo Costa asked, now a little worried about dealing with a potential wild man.

  “Fuck yeah. Serious as a heart attack,” Jack said. “Couple years back, over in Afghanistan, then–Gunny Barkley emptied his M9 pistol in one crazy Taliban hell-bent on killing him. Fifteen nine-millimeter rounds center mass in the dude, and he’s still coming.

  “So Barkley takes out his trusty ivory-handled, sixteen-inch-long Dan Dennehy custom-made Bowie knife he always wears strapped on the side of his leg, and gutted the motherfucker, belly button to chin whiskers.

  “When Billy and I were in Fallujah last pump, Barkley did a Haji there with his knife. Almost the same story. Man’s legendary.”

  “Fuck, dude.” Momo laughed. “That’s cold.”

  “Fuckin’ A, that’s cold. Cold as shit,” Jack said.

  “Hey, you better have a big-ass pigsticker if you’re depending on a fucking M9. Total piece of shit that lightweight gun,” Pizza Man added. “My trusty .45 hardball 1911’s the only way to go to war.”

  “The .45 compared to the 9. Like a truck over a Volkswagen,” Rasputin said. “That’s 230-grain hardball. It’s a hammer. Hard to beat in a gunfight.”

  “Unless you’re shooting 230-grain .45 plus-performance jacketed hollow points. Puts your lame-ass Marine Corps hardball to shame,” a scraggly, scratchy voice chimed from the rear of the gathering.

  Jack stood up and grinned. “Hacksaw Gillespie! You old horse thief.”

  “Hammer, my boy, Hammer. The fabled Jack-Hammer of Justice!” Walter Gillespie beamed, showing a mouthful of gold grill, right at home with his Ray-Bans, a diamond stud planted in his ear, and black-silk do-rag tied on his shaved head.

  While lines furrowed deep on his face, embracing a more salt than pepper heavy-duty Fu Manchu moustache wrapping around his mouth, the old Spartan’s trim body looked as young as ever. Hard muscles rippled tight b
eneath his black Under Armour high-tech fabric T-shirt, and even covered by the baggy 5.11 operator jeans, Hacksaw’s legs looked ample and strong below a narrow waist. He sported a well-defined six-pack under his shirt and not a hint of belly fat. This salty, well-seasoned guerilla fighter had few equals when it came to combat.

  Behind Walter Gillespie, Kermit Alexander and Cory Webster stood equally fit, wearing similar hired-gun outfits, black-ops do-rags tied on their shaved heads, Ray-Bans, and full-blown Fu Manchus.

  All three men sported rings of human skulls tattooed around their biceps, each head representing a kill. Hacksaw had three circles of thirteen per row on his right upper arm and two wraps of thirteen skulls on his left. Most of his sixty-five kills, cocaine cowboys in South America. Jack had splashed forty-nine down there, including Pablo Escobar.

  “Elmore said you boys were in country, hired on as gunslingers for Malone-Leyva,” Jack said, greeting his old war-fighting compadres with bear hugs. “Where you been hiding?”

  “Under your nose. Been by here four times to see ya,” Hacksaw said. “You’re always out babysitting diplomats or some such happy horseshit.”

  “I see you got new teeth,” Jack said, eyeballing Walter’s glittering mouth. “Makes you look like hip-hop gone bad.”

  Hacksaw laughed. “My boss called us pirates.”

  “Well . . .” Jack said, sizing up the motley trio. “You do look like pirates.”

  “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, ass-wipe,” Kermit Alexander said. “Hip-hop gone bad sounds better.”

  “How about you, Habu?” Jack said to the never-talkative Cory Webster.

  “Don’t like either one,” Habu said. “Think Little Stevie Van Zandt and the E Street Band. Ray-Bans and do-rag going on, rockin’ on his Rickenbacker. That’s more me than fucking pirates or hip-hop gone bad.”

  “Thought Stevie Van Zandt played a Fender,” Billy-C said, leaning on his crutches, and offering a hand for the three old snipers to shake. “Staff Sergeant Claybaugh.”