Terminal Impact Read online

  “Alex, come on,” Jesse whined. “We can take turns, dude.”

  Jaws ignored him, both hands on the gun, as if he owned it.

  Gunny Valentine was ready to throw Bronco Starr out the door when the lead Cadillac smoked tires to a dead stop on the expressway.

  “You locked and cocked, Jaws?” Jack yelled to the backseat. Both Billy-C and Valentine had their M4s up and ready.

  “I’ve been locked and cocked, Gunny,” Gomez answered. He spun a 360, looking for a target, and shouted down below, “Not a thing happening out here. No gunfire. Nothing. I don’t get it.”

  Bronco leaned between the front seats, looking out the windshield.

  “Why they stop, boss?” he asked.

  “Just be ready to feed ammo,” Jack answered, searching everything that surrounded them.

  “Sniper?” Bronco asked.

  Then the radio crackled from the lead Cadillac, manned by security contractors from Malone-Leyva, “We’re taking heavy fire!”

  “So we stop and make ourselves better targets?” Staff Sergeant Claybaugh fumed.

  “I don’t see a thing!” Jack said, pissed off.

  Before Jack could get on the radio and ask the embassy security officer what he wanted to do, gunfire erupted from the up-front black Escalade.

  “We’ve got shots coming out the Escalade,” Jack reported on the radio. “Zero incoming, but automatic fire going out all ports of the lead car.”

  Several bullets skipped off Valentine’s Humvee, and Jaws ducked low in his turret.

  “Do I return fire?” he shouted down, swinging the .50 in big arcs, searching for targets.

  “At who?” Jack yelled back. “All the shit’s coming out that Escalade. Nothing incoming!”

  “What the fuck are those guys on?” Billy-C asked.

  “Dude from Camp Liberty told me these private-security punks be shooting steroids, hard drugs, meth and shit, and stay drunk all night,” Bronco offered.

  Valentine looked at the insanity ahead of him. “Makes sense to me.”

  Just then, the three-man crew in the lead Cadillac came rolling out, hitting pavement, lighting up the world with a SAW and two Uzi burp guns. They ran a mad dash to Jack’s Hummer. Behind them fire exploded out of the abandoned car, flames and black smoke boiling skyward.

  “Pop the back, Bronco,” Jack ordered. “Soon as those turds get aboard, Billy, roll this motherfucker hard to Camp Victory.”

  Jack put the radio to his mouth and called to all following vehicles, “We’re hitting it, high speed to Victory. Try to keep up.”

  As soon as the trio of Malone-Leyva security pros got inside Jack’s Hummer, Billy stomped the gas pedal and dodged around the burning Escalade.

  “What the fuck!” Jack blew at the Malone-Leyva trio, dressed in tan M-L logo ball caps, sunglasses, tan 5.11s, black Under Armour T’s, and Advanced Operator Kevlar vests, pockets crammed with gadgets.

  All three men stunk of booze, chemical-laden sweat and body odor, and urine. One had pissed himself when the shooting started, and now he tried to get his wet pants off, crammed in the back of the Hummer.

  “Fucking wait!” Jack yelled at him. “Just fucking lay in your shit for five minutes. It won’t kill you.”

  “You saw that RPG, didn’t you?” the crew leader asked the Marines.

  “Weren’t no RPG, dude,” Jaws said, holding on to his big gun while Billy-C drove hard.

  Behind Jack’s Hummer, the two Caddies and Cotton’s truck poured on the gas while the MRAP roared full-tilt boogie to keep up, blowing black smoke out its pipes. Shrinking in the mirrors, the abandoned Escalade sent a towering plume climbing skyward. A common sight in this city of exploding cars and bomb vests.

  The contractor leader looked at the corporal and took off his sunglasses. “Was too! Motherfucker! RPG came right across our hood!”

  Jaws turned sideways, looking down at the idiot, ready to boot the mouthy bastard, but caught the gunny’s squint.

  “Heavy fire! Shit, bro. You had to have taken some, too,” the contractor fumed.

  “I ain’t your bro, and I saw nothing,” Jack said. “My corporal saw nothing. No RPG. Sure as shit one didn’t blow.”

  “Dud most likely,” the scumbag said.

  Billy-C studied the leader in the rearview mirror. Jack took in the man’s need for a shave and a haircut, and his bloodshot eyes. One fucked-up piece of shit. Skin pasty, cheeks gaunt but big bones and chin. Muscles and no fat. Eyes sunk in his skull and watery red.

  Then there was that smell. Oh, that smell. Not the liquor, but that other stink that oozed from their filthy hides. Drugs and steroids. Steroid unmistakable in the piss.

  Bronco put his face close to the window, focusing on the world and wanting fresh air. Then he looked at the contractor boss.

  “How come you to torch your wagon, dude?” he asked.

  “Shot all to shit. Totally fucked,” the leader said.

  Bronco shrugged. “Is now.”

  As Jesse Cortez said it, the leader gave Bronco a mean squint. “Don’t I know you?”

  “Could be,” the corporal said. “You tried to do the Basic-Recon course at the School of Infantry, out at Pendleton, when I went through out of boot camp. You sprained your ankle or something, didn’t you?”

  “Broke it,” the guy said, and smiled, and put out his hand to Cortez. “Good to see you, bro.”

  Jesse shook it but didn’t like it.

  “Hey,” Billy-C called from up front. “Didn’t you used to be at three-two? Like a year or so ago?”

  The dude smiled. “Yeah, that’s me. Didn’t know if you recognized me, all bulked up and built nowadays.”

  “Takes a minute,” Claybaugh said. “You look like you got that Mickey Rourke thing going on. Your face kinda grown a chin and big cheeks.”

  “Dude, that’s age,” he said, not liking the passive-aggressive way the staff sergeant hinted at the steroids.

  Billy-C nodded. “Right. These days a guy ages a lot in a year.”

  “Still can’t think of my name, though,” the Malone-Leyva crew chief said, half a smile on his face.

  “Oh, I think I recall some kind of hyphenated red-clay grit sort of John-Boy name,” Claybaugh drawled out.

  Jack’s guys laughed and Bronco tuned in with a smile like Sylvester just ate Tweety Pie. Then when he saw Billy-C couldn’t quite pull it out, he blurted, “Ray-Dean Blevins.”

  “Yeah, that’s it!” Claybaugh called out, leading the caravan down the off-ramp from Airport Street, main gate of Camp Victory dead ahead. “But they call you something else. Coochie or Cootie. Yeah, that’s it, Cooter.”

  “Cooter’s a pussy,” Ray-Dean said, then added, “It’s Cooder, with a D, not a T.”

  Jack grinned. “On Dukes of Hazard, they spelled Cooter with a T.”

  “I spell it with a D, okay?” Blevins popped back.

  Staff Sergeant Claybaugh looked in the rearview, and said, “Corporal Blevins. How the fuck you been, dude?”

  Ray-Dean gave Jack a go-to-hell glance, then spread a condescending smile at Billy-C. “Gettin’ rich as shit while you lame-ass losers still be living off food stamps.”

  As the caravan closed behind the lead Hummer, a security force came out from behind concrete barricades by the blast-proof steel entrance to the American headquarters compound, and began their vehicle check. Thumbs-up, and a soldier waved the two Escalades and three military trucks to proceed inside Camp Victory.

  “Who’re your friends, Cooder-with-a-D,” Jack asked, looking at the other two contractors.

  The one in wet pants nervously spoke first. “Gary Frank. I used to be a Marine sergeant in public affairs. A forty-three thirteen. Radio and television. Malone-Leyva hired me to work PR for them. I got put on security duty for a couple of weeks to get me some front
-line experience, and see how the company does business. Pretty exciting so far.” The guy finished with a big smile.

  Jack nodded at the guy and felt sorry for the schmuck.

  “And you?” Valentine said to the dry-pants contractor.

  “Fred Stein,” he answered. “Hard stripe sergeant, US Army Rangers. Signed on with Malone-Leyva five months ago. I finish this tour next month. Then I’m going home to work construction with my dad’s little company in Tennessee.”

  “You sound relieved,” Jack said.

  “Security contracting. Not my cup of tea, it turns out,” Stein answered.

  Jack nodded, kind of liking the guy.

  Bronco began giggling like a child with a dirty secret. Jaws gave him an elbow. “Don’t fucking say it.”

  “What?” Billy-C grinned, stopping the Humvee at the dismount area at Al Faw Palace, the caravan halting behind him.

  The VIP car’s passengers couldn’t depart the Escalade behind Jack fast enough. Then the two crews of the remaining black SUVs made a fast circle and lit cigarettes. The MRAP Cougar pulled around the stopped cars and headed to its home shed at Camp Liberty, inside concrete walls on the north side of the Victory compound.

  While Cooder-with-a-D and his crew climbed out to join the Malone-Leyva crowd, Bronco laughed to Staff Sergeant Claybaugh. “Frank and Stein! Get it?”

  Claybaugh grinned at Ray-Dean Blevins. “So long, Cootie.” And got a middle finger shot back at him.

  After they left, Billy-C wheeled the Hummer toward their MARSOC set of white hard-walled homes that looked more like ship containers than living quarters and offices. Jack sat on the right seat, and Bronco and Jaws settled in back. Cotton Martin and his crew followed in their truck.

  “You know,” the staff sergeant said to Jack, “Corporal Blevins weren’t a bad sort, as a Marine. I’d give him a 3.8 out of 4.0, if you asked me to write a pro-con on the dude.”

  “He’s a pure zero in my book,” Jack said.

  “Cooder didn’t break his leg at Basic Recon, either. I was there,” Bronco chimed in. “He faked that sprain. He’s all kinds of big talk. Wore a Recon T-shirt but never earned the 0321 to go with it.”

  It was just past nine in the morning when they parked their two trucks, and everyone headed to his air-conditioned quarters to check email and clean guns.

  Just as Bronco and Jaws headed out, Gunny Valentine called to them, “I want that piss smell out of my Hummer before you guys sky out.”

  They both wheeled in their tracks and tried sad faces on their gunny. It didn’t work. Then Bronco bucked up.

  “How about Cochise and Randy, Guns?” Bronco said. “They just walk?”

  “Cotton wants his truck cleaned, that’s his call,” Jack said. “I own you two Spartans, and I want my Hummer decontaminated. Spring lilacs or new leather needs to greet my nose next time I sit down in that truck. I do not want to smell any faint whiff of contractor. Got me?”

  “Right, Guns,” Jaws said, and headed toward the Humvee, grumbling. “You running your mouth did this, Jesse. Always got to have shit to say.”

  “He was going to do it anyway,” Cortez whined. “Bro, it ain’t because of what I say.”

  Bronco turned for help from Gunny V, but got his back.

  —

  Elmore Snow stepped in the MARSOC headquarters hooch and swatted the dust off his pixel-patterned Marine Corps desert-camouflage utility uniform with his flop hat. A sign made of wood from an ammunition crate and black words that read, HOG WALLOW, hung above the door outside. Jack had hand painted the sign and stylized Marine Scout-Sniper emblems, upward-pointed arrow with overlaid SS, at both ends of it.

  “Sir, you mind doing that outside?” Jack said, looking up from a book propped on his leg. He had his feet cocked on his desk and a cup of hot decaf green tea tipped against his lips.

  “You look relaxed after a hard start of a day,” Elmore said, and pulled up the metal chair by Valentine’s desk. “What you reading?”

  “Riding the Rap,” Jack said, and closed the book. He put his feet on the floor and took another sip of hot tea.

  Elmore nodded. “You already read Pronto, I guess.”

  Between sips, Jack said, “Yup.”

  “What about this gunfight?” Lieutenant Colonel Snow asked.

  Jack grinned. “What gunfight?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. How about the one that destroyed a three-hundred-thousand-dollar armored Cadillac. That one sound familiar?” Elmore said.

  “Like I said, Elmore, what gunfight?” Jack answered, his eyebrows raised at his boss.

  “This report that Malone-Leyva’s chief of security submitted to the United States Department of State two hours ago, asking for reimbursement of the cost for their lost vehicle, says there was a gunfight, Jack,” Snow said, and laid the stack of stapled papers on Valentine’s desk.

  “Boy, that’s fast,” Jack said, picking up the handful of bullshit witness statements and cover-sheet claim. “Not even four o’clock, and they’ve already submitted paperwork. I guess that’s the difference between private enterprise and government. It’d take our boys a week just to collect statements.”

  Elmore looked down his nose as Gunny Valentine leaned back in his chair and cocked his feet back on his desk.

  “Funny thing, Jack,” the colonel said. “Army guys in the Cougar said they were too far back, but their man in the turret definitely heard gunfire. So, why haven’t you or Staff Sergeant Martin signed off on these claims? Those soldiers aren’t lying.”

  “Oh, I never said there wasn’t gunfire, sir,” Valentine answered, and took a sip of tea. “We had lots of shooting. My Hummer’s dinged with bullet creases. We just never had a gunfight. No ambush. No enemy.”

  “So you’re saying that the Malone-Leyva vehicle never took fire but fired at nothing?” Elmore asked.

  “That’s about the size of it,” Jack said.

  “What about the rocket attack?” Snow asked.

  Jack laughed hard. “My ass! Nobody shot any RPG, and no Hajis on the road ambushed that Escalade. That half-drunk, steroided-out fool, Ray-Dean Blevins, went psycho as we sped along the boulevard, and I guess his PTSD must have kicked in. I don’t know. Just giving him any benefit-of-the-doubt reason for stopping in the middle of the fucking expressway and opening fire on nobody.”

  “What about the lost armored car? Burned to smithereens,” Colonel Snow asked.

  “You’ve got two nitwits with no experience led by a drug-induced fool who starts screaming that they’re under attack,” Jack said. “They start shooting, scared shitless. Hell, that poor child Gary Frank wet his pants! They pulled pins on incendiaries, bailed out of the car behind crazy Cooder-with-a-D Blevins, beating face against pavement, and blazing guns at zero bad guys. Colonel Snow, that’s it in a nutshell. No gunfight. Just stupid.”

  “You and your team in our two vehicles are the only real eyes and ears on the event,” Snow said, and jotted notes on the face of the report. “Your statement in total is what you just told me?”

  “In total, sir,” Jack said. “Cotton and his boys will say the same thing. No gunfight.”

  “You know, Malone-Leyva will not like this one bit,” Elmore said. “Maybe you and the boys just sign off on this and let it slide?”

  “No way, sir!” Jack said, sitting straight up and stamping both boots on the floor. “I’m surprised at you, sir, asking me such a thing.”

  Snow smiled. “I had to ask. Just in case.”

  “Why?” Jack frowned. “That’s not me, sir. I don’t care what the fuck is expedient or avoids trouble. As far as I can see, Malone-Leyva or any of the other bloodsucking mercenary outfits shouldn’t even be suited up here.”

  “I can’t help but agree. But we don’t run things do we?” The colonel sighed, and Jack did, too.

  “You know, the
y could be a problem,” Elmore added. “State Department will not approve this claim without your signing off. That asshole who runs the show over here for Malone-Leyva will be none too happy. He’s a real head of steam, I hear. Friends in high places, like that US senator from Nevada, Cooper Carlson. Always ragging our asses. Could be trouble.”

  “Fuck them, sir,” Jack answered, and looked at the book he’d been reading.

  Elmore followed, “And the horse he rode in on. I know.”

  Jack blinked deadpan. “Just like Raylan Givens told Dale Crowe Junior, I don’t take it personal. Malone-Leyva can piss up a rope. Ray-Dean Blevins is not my problem. He’s his own problem. What old Cooder-with-a-D will have to do now is ride the rap. It’s all anybody can do.”

  Jack opened his book back up, and Elmore Snow picked up his paperwork, put on his hat, and left.

  —

  “Fucking Jack Valentine!” Cesare Alosi yelled as he threw the twenty pages of denied claim for the three-hundred-thousand-dollar fully armored Cadillac Escalade across his office.

  As it smacked the wall and fell dead on the floor, Walter Gillespie, who had just entered the office, ducked.

  “Bad news, I gather?” he said, and Alosi glared at him.

  “I thought you said Jack Valentine was a good guy,” Malone-Leyva’s head of operations in Iraq asked the man he had promoted to chief supervisor.

  “He is,” Hacksaw Gillespie answered.

  “We’re out three hundred grand because of Valentine. I don’t call that good,” Cesare fumed.

  Gillespie scrunched his face and squinted at his boss. “This wouldn’t be about our loose cannon Blevins putting the torch to his SUV last week, would it? You know, that boy is past due for the psycho ward.”

  “I don’t fucking give a shit!” Alosi seethed. “Every one of you are way past due for the psycho ward.”

  “Well, present company excluded.” Hacksaw grinned.

  “No, present company especially included,” Alosi said, still fuming.

  “What the fuck you need done?” Gillespie asked.

  “I need Jack Valentine convinced that on second thought, he did see an RPG shot across the front of my Escalade, it disabled as a result of the attack, and my crew returned fire at an ambush,” Alosi said.