Charles Henderson - Terminal Impact

“A week last August, when I headed to Lejeune.” Jack smiled. “By the way, sir, people call me Jack. John and Arthur, those names fit my grandfathers.”

“Roger that, Jack.” Snow smiled.

“What’s going on, sir?” Jack asked.

“You cleared top secret just before deployment,” Snow said, still thumbing through the pages of Jack’s SRB. “That’s good because I’m recruiting spooks.”

“Spooks?” Jack asked. “Like spies?”

“Intelligence work, deep reconnaissance, possible limited contact, clandestine sanctions. Special operations,” Snow explained. “I need a Scout-Sniper on my team, and Captain McBride, your commanding officer, recommended you.”

“I’m flattered, sir.” Valentine smiled.

“You’ve got your gold wings, I see, but you’re still pretty green at this business. How are you at high-altitude low-opening insertions?” the captain asked.

“Good to go, sir,” Jack said. “I love HALO. People pay fat money to do that in the civilian world, don’t they?”

“Yes, they do, Jack. We take you skydiving and don’t charge a dime.” Captain Snow grinned.

“We fixing to cross Saddam Hussein’s Line of Death, sir?” Jack said, bright-eyed.

“Some of us sooner than others,” Elmore Snow said, and looked at his watch. “I’ve got a meeting right now, so I need to run along. We have a top secret briefing at 1430 at the head shed. You’re on my team as of now. You be there waiting for me at 1400. I’ll introduce you to the others. Then we sit down with Lieutenant General Walter E. Boomer and some of his key staff. Got it?”

“General Boomer?” Jack asked, blinking. “Like in a little room with a real three-star general? He going to ask me questions?”

“Yes, Lance Corporal, you’re going to be in a little room with a real live lieutenant general,” Snow said, chuckling. “Don’t worry. I’ll do all the talking. If General Boomer says anything to you, it’s probably just to pat your back or shake your hand.”

“Wow, sir!” Jack said, standing as Captain Snow stood, too. “I never met a real general before. I mean, I’ve seen them in a parade, me marching past the reviewing stand. But I never met one face-to-face. He might even shake my hand? That would be very cool, sir.”

“Yup, very cool indeed,” Elmore Snow said as he left.

Jack ate lunch with his three Force Recon hooch mates but said nothing about his meeting with Captain Elmore Snow. They asked, but Valentine only gave them a raised eyebrow over a fried chicken breast that he held in his fingers, accompanied by a one-shoulder shrug and a grin with his mouth full of potatoes and gravy.

At a quarter ’til two o’clock, he stood in the parking area in front of the long building with the flagpole in front of it, sizing up three Marines who waited at one side of the walkway near the front door. A gunnery sergeant, a staff sergeant, and a sergeant.

Five minutes later, another sergeant joined the three, and they shook hands. Then all four eyeballed Jack, standing by his lonesome, in the parking lot, no car or jeep or truck or newfangled Humvee. Just a very young hard charger in desert utilities and jump boots with a flop hat pulled low over his eyes, looking at them.

The gunny said something to the others, then waved at Jack.

“You Valentine?” the gunny barked at him.

A big smile crossed Jack’s face as he waved back and jogged to the group. “That’s me, Gunny.”

“Early arrival,” the gunny said. “I like a Marine who lands on deck ahead of schedule. Makes an outstanding first impression, along with a squared-away uniform and body.”

“Back in high school, my football coach said we operate on Lombardi time,” Jack said. “Always be where you’re supposed to be fifteen minutes early.”

“This ain’t high school football, but I have long admired Vince Lombardi,” the gunny said. “Lombardi time. Good ethic.”

“This it, Gunny?” Jack asked.

“This what?” the gunny answered.

“The team. I thought there’d be more people,” Jack said.

“Just us five and the skipper, far as I know,” the gunny said.

“Any idea what we’re doing?” Jack asked, and looked at the other sergeants and felt a little out of place being the only non-rate.

All four Marines laughed.

“Oh, I do love fresh meat,” the staff sergeant said, and spit a hefty brown stream of Red Man tobacco juice into the green leafy boxwood shrubs planted in pots by the white-metal building’s dirt porch area bordered with white-painted rocks.

“I suspect whatever it is will be exciting,” the gunny said. “Captain Snow has a reputation for leading missions that scare the ever-living dogshit out of you.”

“But we all come back alive.” The staff sergeant grinned through juicy tobacco teeth.

“That’s what matters,” one of the sergeants said, and the other sergeant, a black Marine, nodded.

“Roger dodger,” the staff sergeant said, and spit.

“Works for me,” Jack said. “What missions? Like in Beirut?”

“No, not that far back,” the black sergeant said.

“Colombia,” the staff sergeant said. “Chile, too. Drug-interdiction operations. Gunfighting cocaine cowboys in Medellín barely a month ago.”

“Oh,” Jack said.

The gunny eyed him boots up, then looked him in the eyes.

“Pure virgin soul, my guess,” the gunny finally said. “Ever kill a man?”

Jack looked him in the eyes, considering how to answer.

“By your hesitation, maybe you’re not the virgin I imagined?” the gunny said, then smiled big.

“Naw,” Jack drawled, and looked at his feet. “I’m the virgin, pure as driven snow.”

“That’ll all change soon enough,” the gunny said, and put his arm over Jack’s shoulders and eyed his mosquito wings with crossed rifles.

Elmore Snow stepped out the headquarters front door, gave the five Marines a look, and they followed him to a conference room. As they walked inside, the captain closed the door.

“Gunny Ambrose, did you take care of introductions?” Captain Snow said, laying down several folders and reaching in his pocket for something.

“No, sir.” The gunny shrugged. “Thought we might have to throw the minnow back if he didn’t check out with the crew.”

“He check out?” the captain asked, holding whatever was in his pocket now clenched in his right hand, and looking at Jack as if he had second thoughts.

“Oh, sir,” Jack said, worried, “I’ll work extra hard. You guys do what I joined the Marine Corps to do. I trained hard for this, sir. I know I’m a non-rate lance corporal, but I’ve been in the zone since August, and Captain McBride said he would get me promoted once I got settled in the company.”

Elmore Snow laughed, and Gunnery Sergeant Raymond Ambrose gave the captain an elbow for spoiling the gag.

Jack smiled, too, and looked sideways at the gunny, who just shook his closely crew-cut head.

“You’re not throwing me back then?” the lance corporal asked.

“Well, Jack,” Elmore said. “I require all people on my team to at least hold NCO rank. We don’t have room for anyone without a blood stripe.”

“Like I said, sir, I’ve been up for promotion since the end of August,” Jack tried to explain. “I should have gotten promoted months ago, but with my PCS move from Pendleton to Lejeune, and just getting my feet on the ground at Second Force Recon, it just hadn’t happened. Not anybody’s fault, just the way the chips fell.”

“Good for you, Jack. Not anybody’s fault. That’s what I wanted to hear,” Captain Snow said, and opened his hand, showing the young Marine a set of black-metal corporal chevrons. “Captain McBride said he planned to promote you at the company formation on Friday, but with you dispatched out today, I get the honors.”