Jack Coughlin - Clean Kill

The copilot screamed in agony.

Juba laughed and stomped the ribs before releasing the arm. “Get out of here. And you. Get my drink!”

I T WAS NOT Astraight line trip, for the aircraft had been forced to take a more circuitous route to stay out of harm’s way and avoid discovery. Hour after hour droned past in the sky and there were three refueling stops at strategic points along the way. At each one, the crew crept silently out onto the tarmac to take a breather from the plane which seemed to crackle with a horrible menace from the passenger that had grown obnoxious under the influence of booze and narcotics. They watched in silent disgust through a cabin camera as he drank himself into oblivion, with a detour into roaring anger, until he passed out somewhere over Pakistan.

J UBA WAS IN THEtunnel, his body and face torn by a sniper’s big bullet and the tight hideaway collapsing beneath the thundering explosion of a huge bomb. Blinded and unable to breathe, the weight of the falling dirt crushing the final sparks of life from him, lost in blood and pain and darkness, badly wounded and trapped underground with dirt in his mouth and eyes. Oh, it hurts.

He had lived several lives and despaired that this was the way it would all end, dying slowly in an underground tomb.

The plane hit an air pocket, dropped momentarily, and the sudden jolt caused the passenger to moan loudly and shift in his seat until the aircraft steadied and droned on. His mind spun with a mixture of hallucinations and true memories as the drugs and booze played him-letting the British army train him to be a terrorist, fighting for al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq before going out on his own with deadly biochemical weapons that he used to strike both London and San Francisco. Those acts had made him the most dangerous man in the world, a terrorist with a price on his head, a fortune in the bank, and a secret weapon that commanded respect and support from political and religious fanatics.

Then everything had been taken away in an instant. Juba still tried to convince himself that it had been only a fluke shot, an unfortunate accident, just bad luck, one of life’s more unfair moments, for no other man possessed his rare skill with a rifle. He changed positions in his seat again. Could not get comfortable. Heard noises. Even felt the wrinkles in his trousers, hard as rocks.

He remembered it all-the duel of single sniper bullets, the explosion, being buried alive in the suffocating tunnel, and, after giving up all hope, pinpoints of light breaking through the dirt. Frantic Iraqi villagers digging with their hands freed him from the grave. That bastard Kyle Swanson somehow got off that lucky shot. Tears leaked from his right eye and creased his face.

Two strong men came aboard the plane when it landed in Saudi Arabia and propped the limp, sniffling passenger between them, got him down the short staircase and into the rear of a waiting limousine. The copilot followed with the valise and threw it into the vehicle’s trunk, slammed it closed, and stalked away, glad to be done with him.

A young man in a dark suit and a white shirt open at the neck was also in the rear of the stretch limo as it drove away toward downtown Jeddah. He studied the figure plopped across from him. The man was disheveled, stinking and grunting like a filthy animal. This is the hero to whom we have paid so much? This lump is the mastermind? He extended his index finger and pushed a button to open the window beside him. It was still humid and hot, but he needed to flush out the foul odor.

KUWAIT

C RAAACK! T HE BIG SNIPERrifle kicked back hard against Kyle Swanson’s shoulder and 800 meters away the.50 caliber bullet gouged out a hole in the paper target. The three other Marines with him also were running rounds downrange into the great nowhere in a mad fusillade designed to keep their muscle memory sharp.

The four of them had taken a Humvee from the special ops camp, loaded it with ammo and an assortment of weapons, from light machine guns to pistols, and ventured into the heat wearing full body armor. They would spend some time making sure every tool they had, including themselves, was in top working order. Training never stopped, no matter how good you were.

Staff Sergeant Darren Rawls, a tall African-American from Alabama, ripped through a thirty-round magazine with an M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, the faithful 5.56 mm air-cooled, belt-fed, gas-operated SAW. Sergeant Travis Stone, a sweaty bandana covering his stubble of red hair, chunked away with an XM203 40 mm grenade launcher, blowing up fountains of dirt. Staff Sergeant Joe Tipp was testing a small-grip SIG SAUER P250 combat pistol that he had liberated from a Navy SEAL in a poker game. It sounded like a small war.

After an hour, they took a break and retreated to a rectangle of shade provided by the Humvee, where they shucked the heavy helmets and body armor, drank bottles of water, and sat on the dirt. The land all around was flat and hot and brown, nothing to see all the way to the horizon.

Rawls studied it, squinting into the bright sun, then raised his eyes to the crystalline blue sky. “Space ain’t the final frontier. This is.”

Joe Tipp raised his nose and sniffed the air. “Anybody else smell another Rawls scam?”

“Fuck you. Just listen. Space tourism! Rich assholes are paying millions of dollars to go into space and even want to go to the moon. Now what’s up on the moon?” He pointed to the bleak horizon of Kuwait. “Same shit as out there.”

Kyle Swanson finished his second bottle of water, feeling the cool wetness all the way down to his toes. “Brilliant analysis. You got a point?”

“We’ve got all those freako tourists who show up at the edges of a war, thrill-seeking motherfuckers who think combat is some kind of paint-ball game. So how about we form a little company, sell escorted trips out here. Get the muthas all armored up, ride around in civilian Humvees, let ‘em pop off some rounds like we’ve been doing. Like a safari in Africa.”

Travis Stone stopped eating a pouch of peaches and tossed the sticky plastic spoon at his buddy. “Again with the money schemes. Remember the reality TV series for Elvis impersonators? The golden treasure of the Spanish kings in Memphis? Drill an oil well in Harlem? At least the soft porn movie idea had naked women involved.”

“Those movie people lied to me! I wrote a damned good script!” Rawls shrugged away the criticism.

“And lost your investment. Again.”

“You never want to expand your mind, try nothin’ new. When I put in my twenty years with the Corps and get that retirement paycheck, I’m gonna invest, man. We gotta think ahead if we want to be rich in our old age.”

If they only knew , thought Kyle. These guys will never have to worry about a job if I go into Excalibur.

Joe Tipp spoke. “You keep on thinking, Darren. I kind of liked the porn idea. Just watching some of the interviews with the actresses was worth my thousand bucks.”

Darren Rawls started cleaning his SAW, fighting the ever-present talcum of desert dust that could foul a barrel or jam a magazine. “So I’ll do another script. This time, the four of us will do the whole thing. How difficult can it be? Joe does the camera, Trav does the sound, Kyle directs, and I’ll be the star! You white rabbits don’t have the qualifications that I do for a good sex show. Sell it on cable or on the Internet.”

Travis looked over. “What about the combat safaris?”

Rawls gently stroked the automatic weapon with a soft, oily cloth. “No hurry. That can come next, after the movie. The Middle East ain’t goin’ nowhere. And writin’ is hard, so I can’t even think about it now. Anyway, got something else on my mind.”