Terminal Impact Read online

  “Trousers, sir.” Jack grinned. “In the Marine Corps, men wear trousers and women wear pants.”

  Elmore laughed and gave Jack a playful shove.

  “Other than the command ceremonies,” Elmore said, “I’ve also got to check on how Second M-SOB is coming along. We’ve got two detachments we’re trying to send to Afghanistan, to join JSOC and hunt Osama bin Laden. I’ll be gone to Lejeune maybe three weeks. Be back here sooner if all goes well.”

  “Afghanistan. That’s where we ought to be, sir,” Jack said, without thinking too much. “Not a whole lot popping up here in our favor, locating Zarqawi. Osama’s a much bigger prize. It’ll be my luck some deck ape with a burp gun will whack the bastard before I can get him lined up in my gunsights.”

  “He’s not a prize, Jack. He’s just a man. We work best where God sends us,” Elmore said.

  Jack shrugged. “That’s what these Hajis keep saying. Right before Allahu Akbar, and they push the button on the bomb vest. God is great! They’re doing it for God. We’re going where God sends us. All this death and evil done in the name of God. Really, sir?”

  “The god they pray to is not my god. Not the God of Abraham and Moses. Not God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, our triune God who is Love,” Elmore said, and it made Jack wince to hear it. Talk of God always made him uncomfortable, mostly because he carried so much sin and well-earned guilt.

  “Some say it’s Satan, not God,” Jack said, and looked to make sure the shop was vacant. He reckoned that Billy-C must have cut out to deliver mail to the crew, and that was good. None of the gang needed to hear very much of Elmore Snow’s radical Christian perspectives about Islam. The boys might grow fangs and go on killing sprees, all in the name of doing God’s work.

  “In the year AD 610, when Muhammad was in the desert outside Mecca, encountering his angel inside the cave called Hira, on the mountain named Jabal al-Nour, and this angel, supposedly Gabriel, informed him that God had named Muhammad a holy prophet, giving birth to the Islamic faith, he was out there worshipping the god of the moon. A demigod the Mesopotamians had named Sin. In Arabic he’s called Hubal,” Elmore began, and rested his leg on Jack’s desk. “You know who Sin is?”

  “The devil?” Jack said.

  Elmore went on, “In the ancient faiths of the Arabic regions, long before Islam or Christ, the Mesopotamian people worshipped the moon god, Hubal, or Sin, as their supreme god, believing him the father of the sun god, Shamash, and of Ishtar, the goddess of the bright star that is the planet Venus. Together, the three gods formed a holy triad that controlled the universe.

  “Depictions of Sin, or Hubal, showed him as this wise and unfathomable old man with a flowing gray beard, an all-knowing and all-seeing god of all creation. He wore a headdress of four horns surmounted by a crescent moon.

  “On nights when the crescent moon came in confluence with Venus, Ishtar embraced by her father, Hubal, this was the most powerful moment in any year. Thus, as Muhammad established Islam, he used the crescent moon and star as one of its symbols.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Jack said.

  “Hubal strikes a remarkable likeness to Ba’al, the Hebrew demigod that the Children of Israel bowed to in idolatry when they fell away from God,” Elmore explained. “God visited His wrath on His people because they fell into wickedness, worshipping idols of Ba’al and even sacrificing their own children to him. For all intents and purposes, Ba’al is Satan. And we know from even our childhood Sunday school classes that Satan is the great liar, tempter, and purveyor of all evil, the cunning deceiver who wants us to worship him as god.”

  “So, Muhammad is out in the desert worshipping the devil, and God sends Gabriel to visit this joker?” Jack said, priming the pump, now having fun fueling Elmore’s love of long, drawn-out explications of insights born from his exhaustive historical, social, and cultural studies of what makes enemies tick. For Colonel Snow, every pebble on the enemy’s beach has a revelation beneath it, and he turns over every stone.

  “A very good question indeed,” Elmore said. “Perhaps old Lucifer fooled the young prince.”

  “That would make sense,” Jack said.

  “Muhammad’s father, Abdullah ibn Abdul-Muttalib, and the whole Muttalib family ran the Kaaba in Mecca. Today the most holy site in Islam. But in those early days, the Kaaba was the temple where Hubal the moon god resided among 360 gods that the people worshipped, all called Allah in those times, meaning the gods, one god for each day of their calendar year. That was until Abdullah’s death in AD 570. Six months before Muhammad was born,” Elmore went on.

  “In fact, after Muhammad’s encounter with the angel, and he began to spread the word and fear of Islam across the lands, he destroyed all the demigods in the Kaaba, except the idol of Hubal. Which I am told stands in the Kaaba today and represents Allah.”

  He cocked an eye at the tall coffeemaker sitting at the side of the office, and asked, “That oil fresh?”

  “I was just going to get a cup, sir,” Jack said. “Decaf okay? That’s all we serve around here.”

  “Decaf is what I like,” Snow said, and filled a clean mug that had sat, turned upside down on brown paper towels next to the pot.

  Then the colonel returned to his perch on Jack’s desk and carried on with his history lecture.

  “With his father dying the year he was born, Muhammad was sent to the desert to live with his mother and the Bedouins, which they thought was healthy for a child. Fresh air and camel dung.

  “The lad’s mother soon expired from that healthy desert life on the move, when the lad was three or four years old. So little Muhammad went to live with his uncle, Abu Talib ibn Abdul-Muttalib, his father’s brother.

  “Uncle Talib, now the Muttalib in charge of the family business, ran the Kaaba. So you’ve got to figure that young Qasim Muhammad al-Muttalib ibn Hashim, known to us as the Prophet Muhammad, very likely did not worship the God of Abraham, the father of Ishmael, to whom Muhammad claims kinship but there is no proof of it. More likely, like his father and mother and uncle and kin before them, he worshipped the moon god, Hubal.”

  Elmore took a big drink of coffee and let that sit with Jack to ponder.

  Nothing better to do, Jack enjoyed relaxing with his decaf and hearing Elmore prattle, so he tossed out more bait.

  “So you’re telling me that Muhammad was out in the desert six hundred years after Christ, worshipping the devil in a cave, when he claims that an angel appeared and told him he was now a prophet of God?” Jack concluded.

  “Correct,” Elmore said. “Do you suppose that God Almighty would visit His own herald, Angel Gabriel, on a man out in a cave one night worshipping Hubal and Ishtar under the crescent moon and Venus?”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” Jack said.

  “Thus God declares this devil-worshipping swordsman His prophet? Does that make a lick of sense?” Elmore ranted, raising his voice as Billy-C came back to the hooch.

  “What devil-worshipping swordsman we talking about?” the staff sergeant asked, seeing the two Marines drinking coffee and going and getting himself a mug of it, too.

  “Muhammad,” Jack said.

  “Oh hell yeah!” Claybaugh chimed in. “You know, my grammy back in Alabammy told me these Islams is a bunch of devil-praying zealots from the dark side. And I needed to watch my step over here, or they’d hex me.”

  Elmore frowned at the Marine. “I’m talking verifiable history, Billy, not raging superstition or advocating hate at anybody. Most of these ignorant people believe they worship the true God of Abraham, not Satan. I’m just explaining how Satan has likely misled them. It would explain why Muslim extremists perpetuate so much evil in the world. God is Love, not hatred and murderous bloodshed.”

  “Unless you provoke His wrath,” Jack added.

  “God’s wrath is nothing to joke about, Gunnery Sergeant Valentine,” Elmore
cautioned. “God destroying people is not the same thing as Muhammad riding on his rampages, putting Christians and all kinds of other people who would not convert to Islam to the sword. Committing bloody murder!”

  “So when the Christians put the Muslims to the sword in the Crusades, that was a good thing?” Jack asked, baiting his longtime friend. He had heard Elmore’s rants before and enjoyed their entertainment.

  “I think it was terrible!” Elmore said sincerely. “I don’t believe God sent the Crusaders. They took it upon themselves to slaughter a lot of innocent people, along with the jihadi villains that sacked Jerusalem. We suffer many of our problems today because of that misguided Christian zeal. The Crusades were perpetuated by kings and villainous popes, not God. We should have sent missionaries to save the Muslim people, not the Knights Templar to eradicate them.”

  “Way I understand it, boss,” Jack said, “the Muslims started that fight by massacring Christians and Jews, and taking Jerusalem. The Crusaders came here for pretty much the same reasons we’re here today.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” Elmore answered. “Don’t forget that the Kurdish Sunni king, Saladin, wound up ruling Jerusalem along with Egypt, Syria, and all lands of the Levant in 1187, and sent the Crusaders home on their shields. We should bear that in mind. Especially today. We can handle things better. We need to win these people’s friendship, not their scorn.”

  “Sir, I think if we sent missionaries over here instead of armies, they’d end up with their heads rotting on pikes,” Billy-C said.

  “We have Christian missionaries here today, son,” the colonel said. “All kinds of Catholics and Evangelicals. In fact, one of the oldest Evangelical Christian churches in Iraq was built in Mosul by the Presbyterians in 1850. Many Presbyterians, Baptists, and other Evangelical Iraqis live here today. There’s a Presbyterian church in Kirkuk, Saddam Hussein’s hometown. We just have to try harder to win these people to the Lord.”

  Jack and Billy-C saw the colonel’s sincerity, and that gentle side of his good heart that they loved in the man. He held no malice for anyone, nor hatred. He was the classic noble warrior, a Bible in one hand, a sword in the other, and poetry on his lips.

  “I guess we need to love these bastards while we light ’em up,” Jack said, and flashed a wry grin at Billy.

  “Kill ’em but don’t hate ’em. And just kill the ones that need killing,” Elmore said.

  Jack laughed. “Colonel Snow, I can’t help but love you, sir. We’ve walked down these roads together a lot of years, and you do not change. You’ve never hated anybody, but you have killed plenty of bad hombres. You’re a special man.”

  “I thought the Good Book says, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’” Billy-C said, and looked at Jack, then at the colonel, honestly puzzled. “Ain’t us killing them just as bad as what they’re doing? Except they leave a lot of innocent folks murdered in their wake. We pick and choose ours.”

  “King James Bible says, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ but that’s not a true translation of the actual Hebrew that God wrote with His fiery finger on that stone tablet for Moses,” Elmore said.

  Jack looked at Billy-C, then at Elmore, a bit surprised. He had always heard the Ten Commandments told as “Thou shalt not kill.”

  “Yes, all our lives we have heard, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ thanks to King James. But God truly wrote on the stone and told Moses, ‘Do not murder,’” Snow said. “The correct translation says ‘murder,’ not ‘kill.’ A very big difference in the two words. Billy, we do not murder . . .”

  Elmore stopped before he said it and Jack finished it for him. “‘Bastards,’ sir? Or did you mean ‘motherfuckers’?”

  “Evil ones,” Elmore mumbled, hiding a grin.

  Jack and Billy both laughed.

  “I’ve only ever heard you say one profanity, sir.” Billy-C broke up. “Motherfucker! That’s your one cussword for everything that pisses you off. Motherfucker.”

  “Only rarely. When I’m truly mad, much to my chagrin. It slips out. I manage to keep all the others off my tongue, though, but that one choice blister agent leaps out of my mouth when I trip off the emotional cliff.” Elmore laughed.

  “You are the consummate officer and gentleman, sir, our poet warrior and scholar,” Jack said, and a light came on in his mind. “Oh, and speaking of poet warriors, did you hear from our old pard from fun times in South America, Black Bart Roberts?”

  A smile crossed Elmore’s face at mention of his old Force Recon running mate who claimed direct descendancy from the original Welsh pirate of the 1720s, Captain Bartholomew Black Bart Roberts.

  “I did get word that he is here,” the colonel said. “Out west in the Denver operations area, based near Al Asad Air Base, near Hit, I believe, commanding one-five. We’ll have to catch up and partake a thimble or two of Jameson’s Irish elixir with him when I get back from Lejeune. I’ve got a bottle of eighteen-year-old Limited Reserve stocked away in my stash of contraband.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind while you’re gone.” Jack grinned. “I like it, too. I can’t afford it, but I like it.”

  “I know, Jack.” Elmore grinned. “Lots of things you like but can’t afford and yet seem to manage somehow. Like that pretty girl of yours, Liberty Cruz. You ever going to make an honest woman of her?”

  Jack shook his head. “We’re still working on that question.”

  “Lot of years to be pondering such an idea,” Snow said. “She’s still at Lejeune, you know. Finished SERE school in flying fashion, I hear, and now she’s training on various high-power rifles. Strange one, that girl. She’d fit in around our club quite nicely. You ought to propose.”

  “I think that’s what she’s gunning for.” Jack sighed.

  “The wife, you know, June, invited her for dinner with us one night while I’m home this trip. She and Liberty are thick as thieves. Our little girl Kathy, now graduating from training bras and middle school, sees Miz Cruz as the person she wants to be. I don’t know if that’s such a good thing or not, given Liberty’s career choices, and her taste in having you as her man. I think they planned this dinner because the ladies want to check up on you. She apparently tells June you’re pretty brief in your few emails,” Elmore said.

  “Naw, we’re good. Don’t worry about it. I keep it short and dry because I’ve got a lot of assholes around this shop eyeballing my laptop, and email and pictures,” Jack said, looking straight at Billy-C, who smiled big.

  “Oh, okay,” Elmore said, then wrinkled his forehead. “What about Black Bart? You sounded like you had something working in your craw.”

  “Right,” Jack said. And then, as if it were no big deal, “He gave me a blast on the horn yesterday. Wants us to run a little thing with him and his boys out in the Anbar for a day or so. Nothing to worry about, sir, but something good to do. Helps him out. He was supposed to send you over the plan and everything, so you could approve us going along.”

  “Captain Burkehart can look at it and give it my okay,” Elmore said.

  “Well, sir, Skipper’s up at the puzzle palace stuck in operations all the time, and we hardly see him,” Jack said. “Colonel Roberts has this thing going down pretty darned quick, and we need to jump if we ride with his boys.”

  “Bart’s got it set up? Transport, planning, all that?” Snow asked.

  “Yes, sir. Top to bottom,” Jack answered. “He takes good care of folks. You know him.”

  “Yes he does,” Snow agreed. “Fine Marine, Lieutenant Colonel Roberts. Great combat leader. A bit rough around the edges, and a mouth that matches his Black Bart name. But a good man.”

  Elmore Snow checked his watch, looked at the boxes, then at Jack. “Go ahead. You’ve got my blessing. Just make sure that Colonel Roberts sends me a copy of his after-action write-up. And if you manage to capture any intel on Zarqawi, or his henchmen, make sure we get exclusive first rights to it. Don’t go
sharing that with SEALs or Delta Force before we can swing in the saddle ahead of them.”

  “You read my mind, sir.” Jack smiled.

  “Oh, and keep the doors closed to those private-contract security mongrels I see lurking around more and more these days,” the colonel added. “I don’t like them, and I do not trust them.”

  “Couple of our boys hooked up with them now,” Jack said. “Hacksaw, Kermit, and Habu work at Malone-Leyva. Hacksaw’s been trying to get hold of me the past few days.”

  “I know,” the colonel said. “He reached out to me, too. I’m still thinking about it. Mercenaries. That’s all they are, you know. Hired guns with no law over their heads.”

  “Roger that, sir,” Jack agreed.

  Staff Sergeant Claybaugh remembered the letter from the colonel’s wife and grabbed it off the stack he brought back to the hooch after holding mail call for the team.

  “You got this from your wife,” Billy said, handing the letter to his boss.

  Snow smiled as he took it. “Thank you. A nice fat one. I’ll read it while I wait to board the plane.”

  “Stay frosty, sir,” Jack said.

  Elmore headed to the door and looked back at the boxes. “Make sure that whatever unholy raiment and bunting you may hold in those boxes remains inside this hooch. Do not decorate the outside with black draperies, skulls, or any other hideous ornaments. Please. Not this close to the flagpole. I remember what you did for graduation at the instructor school at Quantico, building that monument of bones and skulls under the yard sign.”

  “The commandant loved it, sir,” Valentine retorted.

  “Oh, it amused him,” Elmore said, “but had the school not been way off the beaten path, out there at Marksmanship Training Unit, he would have ordered those bones buried.”

  “Sir, they were just hog bones from our cookouts and a few plastic human skulls mixed with the roasted pig heads,” Jack said. “No pork to pick around these parts, and nobody’s collecting any skulls except maybe the bad guys’.”