Charles Henderson - Terminal Impact

“Meantime, I’ve got a flight out to Dover Air Force Base in about three hours,” the colonel said, glancing at his watch. “Then a puddle jumper down to Jacksonville. We have the MARSOC Colors unfurling and inaugural appointment-of-command ceremony on Friday afternoon.”

“Real shame, sir,” Jack said.

“What do you mean?” Elmore said.

“Some one-star we don’t know will take command of this creation that you dreamed up back when we were killing cocaine cowboys around Medellín, many moons ago,” Jack said. “You’re the guy that sold this idea to the Marine Corps, convincing them we needed our own organization, like the SEALs and Delta Force.”

“I’m not in this for credit or praise, Jack,” Elmore said. “What we’ve got exceeds even my most ambitious dreams. I couldn’t be happier.”

“Well, sir,” Jack grumbled, “I don’t have to like it, and neither do the boys. Every one of us says they need to kick you up to full colonel or even go ahead and jump tracks to brigadier and put you in charge. It’s your show, and nobody in the American armed forces knows as much about special operations as you do.”

“I’m flattered, Jack”—the colonel smiled—“but it’s a lot more complicated than just Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command. We’re coordinated into the armed-forces-wide Special Operations Command. It’s a whole joint forces structure under Central Command, and it unites all special warfare forces of the United States.”

Jack rattled off, “I know, sir. We got SOCOM opened shop in Florida, and JSOC under them in Afghanistan, and I guess we’ll have our own Joint Special Operations Command here in Iraq, too, giving you yet another star to salute. I’ve heard all that alphabet soup. If you ask me, it’s just another excuse for career-serving officers to get stars put on their collars.”

Elmore Snow smiled and put his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Oh, how right you are, young Spartan. The political opportunists will certainly seize the day. However, you and every Marine in our detachment here, and the command back at Lejeune, benefit. We’re quickly becoming our own Marine Corps occupational field.

“Scout-Snipers will no longer fall under the 8500, marksmanship training field, but will more appropriately expand the Marine infantry 03 field. Your 8541 MOS will change to 0317. And who knows? The next step may well be a primary MOS that is Special Operations.”

“Elmore, sir,” Jack said, and looked to see no one else lurked anywhere in the operations offices, “I would love to see you in command and wearing a star. Just saying. You’re the toughest, scariest Marine I ever knew. Soft-spoken but swinging a big stick. You’d make a great Commandant of the Marine Corps, sir.”

Colonel Snow put his head back and laughed. “Jack. Son. You’re plying the lather just a little thick. I’ll be lucky to see full colonel. I’m a snake eater, not a politician. I was a sergeant who got lucky and made lieutenant, and got sent to Beirut. Then I got to teach young leaders at the Infantry Officers Course, and worked hand in glove with our incoming Marine Corps commandant, General Jim Conway. Remember how Colonel Conway gathered up our team in Iraq, back in the Gulf War? He doesn’t forget his friends. Believe me. Great things are coming for all of us.”

“Yes, sir, and the Marine Corps has done itself proud naming General Conway our new commandant,” Jack said. “Pete Pace as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is good for all us Scout-Snipers, too. You know how he loved Gunny Hathcock. So why don’t those guys who truly know you put you in command of MARSOC for real?”

“They know that I do best crawling in the weeds, shooting bad guys,” Elmore said. “You only see the commander side of me, and the friend that would give his life for any one of you Marines. But, up where the flags fly high, I struggle. I’m that guy with the grass stains on his pants.”

“Trousers, sir.” Jack grinned. “In the Marine Corps, men wear trousers and women wear pants.”

Elmore laughed and gave Jack a playful shove.

“Other than the command ceremonies,” Elmore said, “I’ve also got to check on how Second M-SOB is coming along. We’ve got two detachments we’re trying to send to Afghanistan, to join JSOC and hunt Osama bin Laden. I’ll be gone to Lejeune maybe three weeks. Be back here sooner if all goes well.”

“Afghanistan. That’s where we ought to be, sir,” Jack said, without thinking too much. “Not a whole lot popping up here in our favor, locating Zarqawi. Osama’s a much bigger prize. It’ll be my luck some deck ape with a burp gun will whack the bastard before I can get him lined up in my gunsights.”

“He’s not a prize, Jack. He’s just a man. We work best where God sends us,” Elmore said.

Jack shrugged. “That’s what these Hajis keep saying. Right before Allahu Akbar , and they push the button on the bomb vest. God is great! They’re doing it for God. We’re going where God sends us. All this death and evil done in the name of God. Really, sir?”

“The god they pray to is not my god. Not the God of Abraham and Moses. Not God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, our triune God who is Love,” Elmore said, and it made Jack wince to hear it. Talk of God always made him uncomfortable, mostly because he carried so much sin and well-earned guilt.

“Some say it’s Satan, not God,” Jack said, and looked to make sure the shop was vacant. He reckoned that Billy-C must have cut out to deliver mail to the crew, and that was good. None of the gang needed to hear very much of Elmore Snow’s radical Christian perspectives about Islam. The boys might grow fangs and go on killing sprees, all in the name of doing God’s work.

“In the year AD 610, when Muhammad was in the desert outside Mecca, encountering his angel inside the cave called Hira, on the mountain named Jabal al-Nour, and this angel, supposedly Gabriel, informed him that God had named Muhammad a holy prophet, giving birth to the Islamic faith, he was out there worshipping the god of the moon. A demigod the Mesopotamians had named Sin. In Arabic he’s called Hubal,” Elmore began, and rested his leg on Jack’s desk. “You know who Sin is?”

“The devil?” Jack said.

Elmore went on, “In the ancient faiths of the Arabic regions, long before Islam or Christ, the Mesopotamian people worshipped the moon god, Hubal, or Sin, as their supreme god, believing him the father of the sun god, Shamash, and of Ishtar, the goddess of the bright star that is the planet Venus. Together, the three gods formed a holy triad that controlled the universe.

“Depictions of Sin, or Hubal, showed him as this wise and unfathomable old man with a flowing gray beard, an all-knowing and all-seeing god of all creation. He wore a headdress of four horns surmounted by a crescent moon.

“On nights when the crescent moon came in confluence with Venus, Ishtar embraced by her father, Hubal, this was the most powerful moment in any year. Thus, as Muhammad established Islam, he used the crescent moon and star as one of its symbols.”

“I didn’t know that,” Jack said.

“Hubal strikes a remarkable likeness to Ba’al, the Hebrew demigod that the Children of Israel bowed to in idolatry when they fell away from God,” Elmore explained. “God visited His wrath on His people because they fell into wickedness, worshipping idols of Ba’al and even sacrificing their own children to him. For all intents and purposes, Ba’al is Satan. And we know from even our childhood Sunday school classes that Satan is the great liar, tempter, and purveyor of all evil, the cunning deceiver who wants us to worship him as god.”

“So, Muhammad is out in the desert worshipping the devil, and God sends Gabriel to visit this joker?” Jack said, priming the pump, now having fun fueling Elmore’s love of long, drawn-out explications of insights born from his exhaustive historical, social, and cultural studies of what makes enemies tick. For Colonel Snow, every pebble on the enemy’s beach has a revelation beneath it, and he turns over every stone.