Charles Henderson - Terminal Impact

“They’re following my tracks,” Jack said. “You guys need to catch them. I’ll take up a defensive posture here; do what I can to hold them off. But it’s just me here, with three little girls and a few rifles.”

“You can explain the girls later, but hold tight, Jack!” Elmore Snow said. “We didn’t come this far to have these wastes of skin kill you in a shoot-out.”

“Fuckin’ A, right!” Cochise Quinlan chimed in. “Give ’em hell, Gunny V. We a comin’ ’round the mountain. Guns ablaze!”

“Do you see them?” Abu Omar shouted from behind his machine gun, standing in the back of his pickup, the black flag snapping in the wind off the corner by the tailgate.

“Something way ahead, I think by the wadi,” the al-Sunnah soldier on the other machine gun said, and pointed.

“Yes!” Omar said, and slammed his hand on the roof of the pickup. “That is Yasir’s truck!”

The driver hit the gas and honked his horn for the others behind him to pick up the pace.

Omar looked over his shoulder, his white keffiyeh fluttering like the flag, and waved his arm forward, like Peter O’Toole did as Lawrence, leading the Arabian charge.

Jack took all his ammunition from the pockets on his backpack, stacked the boxes and magazines next to his rifles, below the rim of the rift, where the two girls had stood when Yasir came up.

“Bring those guns and your ammo down here,” he ordered the girls, and lined them spaced about thirty feet apart. “These are evil men. You got that?”

All three girls nodded. They knew what to do.

“We should pray,” Giti suggested.

“God’s already up on the situation, Giti,” Jack said.

Giti nodded. “We will trust Him to deliver us from the evil that comes.”

“Yup,” Jack said, loading his guns and making sure that the three girls had their AK rifles ready to rock and roll. “Trust Jesus and those automatic rifles.”

He gave the three girls’ ammo vests a quick look. “Pull out magazines and stack them so you can load fast.”

Amira and Giti stacked their magazines handy, but Miriam had a problem.

“What shall I do with these?” she called to Jack, holding two fat, green fragmentation grenades.

“Holy shit!” the gunny said, a big grin on his face. “Where did you find those?”

“In the pocket, on the side,” Miriam said. “What are these things? Bombs?”

“Bombs? Be careful,” Giti yelled, and hurried to her.

“Grenades,” Jack said, going to the girl holding a frag in each hand. “They’re just fine as long as you’ve got the spoons pinned down.”

Jack took the two bombs from her. “I’ve got an idea.”

He could see Abu Omar’s trucks clearly now, closing fast on them, so he had to hurry.

The gunny crawled in the pickup from the passenger side, set his backpack vertical in the driver’s seat, and snugged down his helmet on top. Then he took a grenade and stuffed it in the space between the seat and the driver’s-side door. He used a bag of MREs, ironically containing a package of Smoky Franks, the Five Fingers of Death, that he had taken from the bombed house when he was captured, and used it to make sure the grenade’s spoon held tight when he eased out the pin.

With the first grenade set to blow, the pin on his finger, he backed out of the truck and closed the passenger door. Jack did the same booby-trap job on that side, this time stuffing a douche-bag delight of a poultry meal his Marines nicknamed Wild Turkey Surprise down the space to hold the other grenade’s spoon in place. As he eased out the pin, he had to roll for the wadi.

Abu Omar opened fire on the truck, peppering it and the dead body on the ground, and strafing the rift in general.

“Surrender, and we will allow you to live,” Omar shouted, as the other trucks took up positions.

Jack and the girls hunkered quiet, waiting to fight, their rifles ready. Locked and cocked.

One of the gun wagons with four men aboard pulled next to Yasir’s pickup. A soldier jumped off the side, and seeing the helmet and backpack through the shattered window, looking like a body, he let go a burst from his AK into the back. The helmet flew off the pack and bounced against the steering wheel.

“Check it out,” the driver in the Haji homemade Hummer yelled at the man. He crept forward to try to see better through the shattered left-side window.

Two al-Sunnah fighters climbed in the back of Yasir’s jalopy while the Haji in the passenger seat of the gun wagon stepped out and began looking over the old rust bucket.

Jack and the girls sat tight. Just like monkeys with a box of nuts, the Marine knew that the insurgents would have to tear it open to learn what made it rattle.

One man lifted the hood and laughed, seeing the blown engine. He was still laughing when the gunman who had driven the truck walked around to the driver’s door and opened it.

Abu Omar stood in his truck, parked back a few feet, and his other gun wagon had pulled across the front of Yasir’s pickup, as if it might drive off.

All of the Hajis, including Abu Omar, had totally focused on the men checking out Yasir’s old wreck when the first grenade exploded, blowing both the man by the door and the man at the hood to pieces. Shrapnel from the grenade killed both gunmen watching from the back of the pickup parked across the rust bucket’s front.

The first explosion blew off the roof and sent the passenger door into the rift. The second grenade blew under the truck, wounding the two guys in the cab of the truck parked across the front, plus sending deadly fragments, glass, and truck hunks flying at Abu Omar and his three remaining al-Sunnah fighters with him in the third truck.

As debris fell from the two explosions, and a fireball erupted from Yasir’s gas tank as it went sky-high, Jack and the girls opened fire.

First shot, Jack killed the driver of Omar’s truck. Second shot, he took down the machine gunner who stood up, wanting to open fire. Next he killed the passenger.

The two men in the cab of the truck in front of Yasir’s pickup, wounded but alive, rolled behind their wagon, opening fire with their Kalashnikovs.

Like a pro, Miriam stood up and began sweeping AK fire under that pickup, going after the Hajis hiding there. Amira joined her, and they managed to kill both men.

Jack worked the bolt on his rifle when Abu Omar stood up and opened fire with his PKMS machine gun.

Amira began congratulating Miriam on their success, and Jack yelled at them to get down. But it was too late.

Both girls caught three rounds from Omar’s Kalashnikov, Amira two in the chest and Miriam one in the heart.

When Giti saw her sisters go down, she crawled out of the ravine, her AK braced against her hip, and began hosing down Abu Omar’s truck. He managed one more shot before Jack put a .338 Lapua Magnum through his neck, which sent his head tumbling past the black flag.

Giti turned and smiled at her hero, then collapsed.

One of the .30 caliber bullets from Omar’s gun had caught her through the left side, and blew a two-inch chunk out her back as it exited. She bled bad and fast.

Jack scrambled out of the ditch and grabbed the girl. He pulled the scarf off her head and stuffed it in the hole in her back. Then he took his scrubs shirt off, ripped it in half, and tied a pressure wrap over entry and exit wounds.

“Where are you, Jesus? She is Your devoted child!” Jack yelled to the sky, his eyes filling with tears.

“He is with us always,” Giti whispered, her eyes fluttering open and her mouth red with blood.

“Help’s coming, baby,” Jack said, gushing tears.

“Don’t worry.” The little girl smiled at him. “We are saved from all evil of this world. Miriam and Amira, they have gone to our Lord. I will, too. Don’t weep for me, Jack Valentine.”