Charles Henderson - Terminal Impact

“Bad news, I gather?” he said, and Alosi glared at him.

“I thought you said Jack Valentine was a good guy,” Malone-Leyva’s head of operations in Iraq asked the man he had promoted to chief supervisor.

“He is,” Hacksaw Gillespie answered.

“We’re out three hundred grand because of Valentine. I don’t call that good,” Cesare fumed.

Gillespie scrunched his face and squinted at his boss. “This wouldn’t be about our loose cannon Blevins putting the torch to his SUV last week, would it? You know, that boy is past due for the psycho ward.”

“I don’t fucking give a shit!” Alosi seethed. “Every one of you are way past due for the psycho ward.”

“Well, present company excluded.” Hacksaw grinned.

“No, present company especially included,” Alosi said, still fuming.

“What the fuck you need done?” Gillespie asked.

“I need Jack Valentine convinced that on second thought, he did see an RPG shot across the front of my Escalade, it disabled as a result of the attack, and my crew returned fire at an ambush,” Alosi said.

“That ain’t happening,” Hacksaw said, shaking his head.

“It will happen!” Alosi screamed, his voice cracking from rage that sent the veins bulging in his face.

“What the fuck you want us to do, kill him?” Walter asked, sarcastic.

“Yes!” Alosi said. “Unless he signs off on this claim, kill his ass. Then start taking down his men until someone signs off. Get their attention.”

“Jack’s an old friend, boss. Out-fucking-standing Marine. One hell of an operator,” Hacksaw said. “I’m not doing anything that hurts him or his men.”

“I’ll can your sorry ass, you don’t do as I order,” Alosi said.

“Go ahead, asshole,” Hacksaw came back. “I’ll cash out the remaining full year of my brand-new chief-supervisor contract. Go home happy. Rich. And sing like a bird. Nondisclosure agreements don’t cover crimes. I can overlook a few things I’ve seen done here, but not this.”

Cesare took a breath and knew Hacksaw had him. However, he had others in the company that would be all too happy to work some dirt for him.

“That was my temper speaking. Blowing steam. I don’t mean anything. Fuck it, I’m just pissed off,” Alosi now said, showing his calm, professional side. “I apologize, Top Gillespie. Forget I ever said such nonsense.”

“We all get pissed off, sir,” Hacksaw said, and shook hands with his boss.

“Forgiven?” Alosi asked, smiling as he shook hands.

“You got it, sir,” Gillespie agreed.

He went to the wall where the report and denied claim lay on the floor, and picked it up. Several pages had come unstapled on impact, and the retired Marine special operator master sergeant gathered them, too.

“I’ll go over to Camp Victory and have a talk with Jack,” Hacksaw said. “I’ve been meaning to visit him. Let him know I’m here. Can’t hurt to ask if he’ll reconsider and let this thing slide. At the end of the day, sometimes we have to get into the gray just a little bit, between the black and white, the good and bad of things. When it serves a greater good, Jack can be reasonable. Like keeping harmony among us and MARSOC.”

“Good way to look at it, Top.” Alosi smiled.

Gillespie spread a big one back, showing off the gold-rimmed pearly-enamel front grill he’d had installed in Miami’s rapper central with part of his high pay from the last pump with Malone-Leyva. The new implanted teeth replaced the chewing-tobacco-ravaged originals he had lost.

As the mature but still athletic and sturdy retired Marine opened the office door, Alosi called to him.

“Say, Top,” Cesare said, “put a call out to Ray-Dean Blevins and have him report to me ASAP.”

“You got it, boss,” Hacksaw said, and left.

“Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!” chanted the Iraqi jihadist who had parked a stolen taxi at the corner of a busy intersection on Baghdad’s south side. He sat in the rear seat, looking out the back window, and spoke as he watched through the viewfinder of his digital camera, recording his voice under video as two US Army Humvees approached on the boulevard that entered the opposite side of the intersection.

He chanted more rapidly now, as several rocks and some cans came tumbling off the roof of a building overhead onto the American vehicles, occupied by soldiers not normally engaged in direct combat. This early morning, they had ventured out to take care of some administrative errands on this normally quiet side of the city.

A can hit the windshield of the lead Hummer, and the driver slammed on the brakes. He jumped out of the truck, angered, and pointed his rifle at the roof of the building above him. He shouted something that the taxi’s driver running the camera did not understand.

“Allahu Akbar!” another Iraqi insurgent chanted under his breath. He hid in a hot, tight space, padded with a blanket, inside the rear fender of the taxi, and put the crosshairs of his makeshift sniper rifle’s telescopic sight on the angry American who stood in the street with his M4 raised, ready to shoot, searching the rooftops.

The sniper and his partner who drove the taxi and shot video of their jihad, which others would post on the Internet, had taken a Russian-made AK-47 and wired tight on top of it an old three-power hunting-rifle scope. They had also welded a homemade sound suppressor on the muzzle of the rifle, to silence their shots. It fit perfectly inside the taillight hole on the rear fender of the taxicab. The missing taillight and lens gave the sniper a clear shooting port and reasonably good field of view.

Sweat poured off the Iraqi gunman’s face as he lay inside the car’s fender, and he followed his crosshairs on the American soldier as he walked into the middle of the street. “Allahu Akbar,” the sniper said as he put pressure on the trigger.

He tried to remember everything that his Islamic brother from the east of Europe had taught him about relaxing, breathing, focusing on the crosshairs, then holding his breath without strain while gently adding pressure to the trigger until the shot broke.

“Ahmed, let the shot always fire with surprise. This way you know that you did not force the trigger, and the bullet will always strike exactly where you had your sights aimed,” the Chechen jihadist they called Juba had told him. Ahmed was not this gunman’s name but his Muslim brother who had once held acclaim as a precision marksman in the former Soviet Army called everyone he trained in Iraq, Ahmed.

Someone opened the door of the second Hummer and yelled at the soldier standing in the street, craning his neck, turning his head in every direction, looking for the kids who must have thrown the rocks and cans at them.

“Let’s go!” the soldier in the second Hummer shouted.

“Allahu Akbar,” the Iraqi running the digital camera chanted again and again, and captured on his video the sudden impact of the silenced .30 caliber projectile as it struck the American soldier loitering in the street. The bullet exploded through his neck, sending a spray of red just above his body armor. The shot’s force threw the man to the pavement.

Blood gushed from the downed American’s neck as he writhed on the street. He tried to cry out for help but could make no sounds from his shredded larynx except that of air escaping his lungs from his final gurgling breaths.

Iraqi shopkeepers and early-morning customers casually moving along the sidewalks now ran in every direction, hiding inside every available door. In a heartbeat, the normally bustling quad of streets and shops sat empty. The people disappeared from sight like cockroaches leaving the kitchen when lights come on.