Charles Henderson - Terminal Impact

“Naw, that’s probably normal for civilians who don’t work,” Cotton said. “Are you copying our video feed? Kitchen help went back inside, but we got two more in suits.”

“Roger, I see it,” Jack answered. “Those suits look familiar to you?”

“Not to me,” Cotton answered.

“Tell Sage to zoom in some more,” Jack said. Then he asked Colonel Snow, “You seeing this? Those guys dressed real nice look familiar?”

Elmore had both Chris Gray and Speedy Espinoza crowded around the monitor with Liberty, and behind them the entire remaining MARSOC crew, along with Hacksaw, Kermit, and Habu.

“That’s Cesare Alosi’s buddies, Davet what’s his frog, and Jean René the other frog,” Hacksaw growled.

“Shit, it sure is!” Kermit confirmed. “We saw both those sweet peas at Alosi’s office at least a dozen times. Them always bringing thousand-year-old ashtrays and crap.”

Then Francoise stepped out on the back porch with them, wearing men’s pajamas, her head uncovered, and smoking a cigarette.

“Ray-Dean Blevins’s sweetheart from the Baghdad Country Club. The one he thumped. What’s her name?” Liberty said.

Chris Gray was busy writing notes and answered without looking up, “Francoise Theuriau. Ace correspondent for that fish wrapper, the Massachusetts Democrat and Morning News .”

“That’s how Abu Omar got the operation plan,” Liberty said. “These three are al-Qaeda spies. Francoise screwed Blevins, and he gave her the plans.”

“Or she stole them from him,” Gray said. “I still can’t buy that even a shit-turd like Cooder-with-a-D Blevins would knowingly give al-Qaeda a top secret plan that could get Americans killed. Jury’s still out on Cesare, but I like to think that even the worst Marines are better than that.”

“Action at the front door,” Jack broke in. “I’ve got a minivan, Chinese, King Long, parking. A man and a woman got out. Someone just stepped from inside to the front porch. Two other men now getting out of the van.”

Cochise Quinlan zoomed his powerful spotting-scope lens to full out and captured each person’s mug. “You recording these faces?”

“We’re getting them clear and bright, high-definition color. Going to all commands here and to Washington as we speak,” Elmore said. “Beautiful job.”

“The guy on the porch, Cochise. Get on his face,” Jack told his sergeant. “Now, if he’ll just turn this direction.”

Gunny Valentine had no more than asked, and the man wearing a black kufi that covered the back half of his head, turned his face to them. He had a short, scruffy black beard, chubby round cheeks, and a round nose. Jack knew the face because he had dreamed of it time and again after he had missed the shot that day, it dropping between the al-Qaeda chieftain’s feet, a year ago on the bridge crossing the Euphrates at Haditha.

“It’s Zarqawi,” Jack said, his crosshairs on him.

“Take him, Gunny V,” Cochise Quinlan said.

“Check that, Ghost. We have a pair of fast movers inbound to the target,” Colonel Snow interrupted. “Paint the house.”

Lasers shone on the target from all four sides, pinpointing the exact center. Overhead, two United States Air Force F-16C fighters dove on the run. The lead jet let go two five-hundred-pound smart bombs, a GBU-12 and a GBU-38.

Inside, one of Zarqawi’s three wives, a child he had gotten pregnant at age fourteen, worked in the kitchen with her two-year-old daughter playing on the floor. In an instant, along with her and the child, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, died, along with the three French spies who had come back in the house to welcome the two other al-Qaeda leaders.

“Mission accomplished,” Jack called on the radio.

“You’re not disappointed?” Cochise asked. “Not getting to pull the trigger on Zarqawi?”

“Kind of glad, actually,” Jack said. “I never have liked killing people. But sometimes, it is satisfying.”

When Jack and the team landed in Baghdad, Elmore Snow met them on the airfield, where the Ospreys had let the team off, after extraction outside Hibhib, a few miles north of Baghdad. The colonel had a one-page printout of an email that Captain Burkehart had received while the gunny and his team were on the Zarqawi mission.

“Here, check this out,” Elmore said, and grinned like someone had given him a winning lottery ticket.

Jack read the page and laughed. “Boy did they ever fuck up. Are you serious?”

“Welcome to my world, Gunner Valentine,” the colonel said, and shook his Marine’s hand.

“I never would have thunk it, Colonel,” Jack said, his head swimming a little. “I thought they just wanted Marines with about ten or twelve years under their belts, so they could give the Corps at least a good ten on top of it. I’m pushing twenty.”

“They figure you’ve got a good ten years left in you, and so do I,” Elmore said. “You’ve got thirty years written all over your face. Smart guy like you, I see a cross over to captain at the very least.”

“Colonel Snow.” Jack grinned at his boss. “No matter how hard you try, you can’t make me smart.”

Elmore gave his new young warrant officer an elbow.

“What is it?” Bronco Starr asked, jogging to catch up with the gang, all of them crowding behind the new Marine gunner and their commanding officer.

“Gunny V just got word that now he’s Gunner V,” Cochise Quinlan said. “Get ready to salute, ladies.”

“Well that sucks,” Bronco said, and got funny looks. “Well it does! Gunny Valentine leaving. Now we’ll get some dick-sucking recruiter or bag-of-shit drill instructor who thinks he’s a Scout-Sniper without training or the MOS.”

Cesare Alosi always hated going to Victor Malone’s castle in south Texas. It sat too close to Mexico, and the old boss had a bad reputation of making people who upset him disappear, for good. So he especially hated it today.

“Glad you could make it on short notice,” Malone said, wearing handmade black alligator cowboy boots, Bermuda shorts, a Hawaii-print aloha shirt, and a silver Stetson.

“Not a problem, Victor,” Cesare said. “Your Gulfstream G550 makes traveling at a moment’s notice quite bearable.”

“Shit, I love being rich!” the man said. “Don’t you?”

“I’m not rich, not by your standards,” Alosi said, trying to be humble for his boss.

“By my standards, Donald Trump ain’t rich.” Malone laughed. “How about that Zarqawi! You see that in the news?”

“Yes, I did,” Cesare said, and walked with Victor Malone through the man cave of his castle on the Rio Grande, where he had a full body mount of an African bull elephant standing in the center of a room that was the size of a gymnasium. At the other end, he had a full body mount of a rare black rhino, an endangered species. Near it in a tree crouched a full body mount of a black leopard. A regular leopard stood below him. He had several cheetahs, a lion, a misplaced Indian Bengal tiger, and a stuffed silverback gorilla with a chimpanzee hanging by one arm in a tree.

At one side of the room, a waterfall came out of the wall, and at the other end, a fireplace taller than most men. Best guns of every size and caliber lined the wall above the mantel, Holland, Rigby, Purdy, all the million-dollar works of art hung above art-carved silver-capped elephant tusks that flanked the great hearth.

“How about that boy escaping those ragheads,” Victor Malone said, taking a seat in a wide-bodied ostrich-leather sofa chair and pointing to the one across a zebra rug from him for Cesare to sit on.

A Latino man came into the room, and the boss said, “Pour us some of that good stuff, Pedro.”