Charles Henderson - Terminal Impact

Machine gun fire began working from Cotton Martin’s Hummer as the Army lieutenant with the infantry squad in the Cougar came on the radio.

“You Marines still mobile?” he called.

“Roger, we’re both mobile,” Billy said, but added, “My driver’s dead.”

As the Army officer spoke, heavy fire from both sides of the road focused on the MRAP. An RPG glanced off its side and exploded as the turret gunner sent several forty-millimeter grenades at the building from which most of the machine gun fire came and the rocket had launched.

“Gather the drivers from the rear KBR trucks, and bring both those Hummers up here so we can form a defense and deploy my infantry,” the lieutenant commanded.

Billy had just pulled Rowdy over his legs, and squeezed himself under the dead Marine’s body, getting into the driver’s seat, when a B-40 rocket hit the passenger side of the Hummer and blew away that wheel.

“We’re stuck, sir,” Billy came back on the radio. “An RPG just took out our front end.”

“Shit,” the lieutenant answered. “Consolidate your two vehicles there and get those KBR drivers under cover.”

Cotton Martin pulled his Hummer alongside the two semis behind Billy-C and laid down suppression fire with both his machine guns while the two surviving KBR drivers squeezed inside with the Marines. Already, both cabs of the big trucks looked like Swiss cheese.

“Pull asshole to belly button behind me, Cotton,” Billy said, seeing the second Hummer coming up, taking heavy fire.

“They aim to overrun us,” Cotton said. “We need to get deployed and roll an offense at them. Turn the tide!”

“You there, Gunny V?” Billy-C called on his intercom.

“Billy, I’m right here, and cavalry’s coming, just like I promised. Reaction force launching your way as we speak. Give me a sitrep when you can catch a breath,” Jack Valentine said over the radio to Staff Sergeant Claybaugh, trying to sound calm while his heart beat double time. All interior decorating had come to a complete stop. Bronco Starr and Jaws stood close by their mentor, intense, listening to the gunfight and combat chatter of their mates that came over the intercom speaker.

“Gunny, let’s mount up,” Jesse Cortez pleaded.

“Fuckin’ A, dude,” Alex Gomez followed. “Let me drive, and we’ll get there in fifteen minutes.”

Jack wanted to do it but knew better. A reaction team of reinforcements had already moved out for business. Gunships had launched, and what battle Billy and the boys had going on would likely be over before any of the MARSOC tribe could possibly arrive to help.

“Rowdy’s KIA,” Billy-C came back. “I’ve got machine guns laying down cover fire, and we’re deploying teams right and left to go on assault. Enemy strength substantial. Twenty or thirty. But we gonna kill these motherfuckers!”

“Kill ’em all, brother,” Jack snarled back. “Light ’em the fuck up!”

Bronco dropped to the floor and sat, staring at his boots. Jaws stood with his skull-ringed biceps and tattooed arms crossed. Jack stood by him, resting his chin on his fist, listening to the fight.

“He was going to be a dad,” Bronco said, not raising his head. “Rowdy, I mean. He showed me the ultrasound pictures of his baby girl this morning.”

“Fuck it,” Jaws said. Then he looked at Gunny Valentine. “Those cocksuckers in the head shed got us on these silly shit details long enough, Guns. It needs to stop.”

“That’s right, Gunny V,” Bronco added. “They got battalions of doggies just sitting on their asses. Let those assholes run security. Better yet, give it to those scumbag civilian security contractors. Better they die than one of us.”

Jaws came back, “Why we not out there huntin’ these Haji motherfuckers anyway and killing ’em all? I thought we had Zarqawi on our list. Why ain’t we hunting that motherfucker?”

“I feel you, boys,” Jack said. “You got my vote. Time this extracurricular horseshit stopped. Fuck the military politics. I’m telling the skipper. We’re going full MARSOC ops out in the Anbar, hunting Zarqawi or whoever the fuck else we can shoot in the meantime. Every fucking one of us I can drag on Black Bart Roberts’s operation. If we’re going to die, we die on our terms. Not some dog-meat security duty leading supply trucks. Total fucking bullshit!”

“Fuckin’ A,” Jaws said.

The entire front half of a two-story stucco house cascaded to the ground after Cochise Quinlan poured two and a half belts of .50 caliber Browning machine gun monolithic ammunition through the building’s vital supports. The 746-grain solid brass bullets cut through the corners and center supports like a chain saw on soft pine. A salvo of forty-millimeter high-explosive grenades fired from the MRAP’s mark 19 finished off the structure, once Cochise had broken its spine.

When the house fell, its entire roof collapsed atop its broken walls and floors. Dirt and gray smoke boiled skyward behind the gush of air that rushed from under the roof as it went down. Like drunken sailors lost in a fog, half a dozen Qaeda gunmen staggered out of the mess dazed, each man blinded from dirt-clogged eyes, bleeding, delirious from explosion trauma, and their bodies caked with dust like floured chicken ready for the deep fryer.

As the building fell to rubble, Billy-C watched from behind a low adobe wall, with Petey Preston and Randy Powell. He couldn’t help but smile. An awesome sight. Poetic justice to the dirty bastards who had lain in ambush inside the now-destroyed house.

Staff Sergeant Claybaugh carried the new short-barreled Barrett Bullpup and a satchel full of mark 211 .50 caliber tungsten-core Raufoss multipurpose, explosive-incendiary, armor-penetrating ammunition. A Raufoss round will blow through a wall, or even a sheet of ballistic steel plate, then explode behind it. The multistage explosive-incendiary properties of the round do a total job on anyone fighting behind a wall or armored barrier.

Corporals Preston and Powell each had an EDM-Vigilance, VR1 model,338 Lapua Magnum semiautomatic sniper rifle, and had stuffed their packs and vest pouches tight with ammo. The three Scout-Snipers spaced themselves thirty meters apart and formed sectors of fire that fanned across their entire left flank. Billy lay between his two cohorts, covering the middle with his big-bore gun.

When the front half of the two-story house came down, the gang of Hajis inside the second-story room had no place to go. They clung to what they could but soon fell into the rubble. It reminded Billy of breaking open a rotten log filled with termites. After the grenade salvo from the MRAP, those not killed came staggering out, firing their rifles.

Petey Preston busted two gunmen with his Lapua Magnum. Randy Powell splashed three more with his Vigilance. Billy-C laid crosshairs on the back of the sixth man, who clutched a Dragunov for dear life and tried to run after seeing his cohorts die. The staff sergeant coolly squeezed off a .50 caliber Raufoss round that nailed the Haji right between his shoulder blades. The man exploded like a watermelon dropped off a tall building.

“He’s the one that got Rowdy,” Preston yelled over the intercom. “You see that Russian sniper rifle he had?”

“Roger that,” Billy replied. “He was shooting out of that top window, right in line with our truck. We get the chance, I’m taking that rifle home with us and mounting it on the HOG Wallow wall back at Camp Swampy.”

“Put Rowdy’s name on it,” Petey said.

“Fuckin’ A,” Billy came back. “His picture by it, too.”

One of the two KBR truck drivers manned the .30 caliber machine gun on Billy-C’s Hummer and helped Sergeant Quinlan keep belts fed in his .50. Two men, two machine guns, and no extra help. Everybody else had deployed to cut the heart out of the ambush.