Charles Henderson - Terminal Impact

Likewise, in Cotton Martin’s Humvee, Bobby Durant ran the Maw Duce and the other KBR driver manned the M240 Golf .30 caliber machine gun. Luckily, both truck drivers had prior Army infantry experience and knew how to rack a machine gun, pace their fire, and not melt the barrels.

Lieutenant Phipps did everything he could to help in the fight, keeping the crew busy on the MK19 grenade-launching machine gun, ducking fire while lobbing all they had against the sizeable enemy force. Despite the one building taken down and its rat pack of fighters now killed, seven other Haji gun nests kept pouring lead on the MRAP. The dozen infantry soldiers could do little more than hunker inside the armored truck and wait for a break to kick open the back doors.

Two brave souls inside the Cougar HE popped open the top hatches at the back of the truck in an attempt to fire machine guns at the al-Qaeda attackers, hoping to set up a base of cover fire so that the rest of the troops could scramble outside and go to work. Rooftop guns quickly poured their wrath on the opened lids, and sent lead and copper fragments spraying inside. When the soldiers finally got the hatch covers closed, four men had suffered flesh wounds in their arms and legs.

“Can you Marines move up to cover our position so we can get the fuck out of this death trap?” Lieutenant Phipps called to Billy-C and Cotton.

“Roger dodger. On our way, sir,” Cotton answered, and started maneuvering his team forward.

Machine guns on the two Humvees shifted their fire to the buildings that flanked the front of the caravan and began focusing their streams into open windows and rooftops.

“Air strike about now’d be real nice,” Cochise Quinlan sang from behind his .50, ammo links rattling in the Hummer like popcorn pouring out the popper at the Carmike Majestic in downtown Chattanooga. The former Marion County, Tennessee, sheriff’s deputy who went active duty from the Marine Reserves when the planes crashed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon rode the big gun hard, trying to shut down the enemy’s rooftop fire on the column’s left flank.

“A reinforced Marine infantry company would work even better,” Cotton Martin came back.

“Meantime, we make do,” Billy-C added. “Boys. Tuck it up. We gonna leapfrog to the front. Fire and movement. Cochise and Bobby, you and the truckers work those machine guns so the rest of us can maneuver up. Once we get them solja-boys outta that tin can, where they can sling a little lead, then us snipers’ll go do our thing.”

“Kill ’em all, Billy. Let God sort ’em out,” Jack Valentine broke into the conversation on the operations-office radio.

“We kilt a bunch of ’em, Gunny, but they’s a whole bunch more still needs killin’,” Claybaugh answered, now in his mental groove. “Shore wish’t you an’ the rest of the tribe was here with us, to enjoy the moment. Share the wealth. I feel downright greedy havin’ all this fun, and you girls sittin’ there with your hands in your lap, nothing better to do than gather round the campfire, braid each other’s hair, and sing ‘Kumbaya.’ As you say, we got ourselves a target-rich environment. Except right now, we’uns is mostly the targets they’s a shootin’ at.”

As the machine guns focused on the front two buildings on both sides of the road, the seven MARSOC snipers on the ground kept the remaining four enemy positions covered. Any shots or movement in an open window, from a rooftop or around the junk on the ground drew hot lead from Marines.

With every fifth round coming from all four machine guns a red tracer, fires in the shot-up debris and in several of the buildings began to burn. When Billy-C saw the erupting flames, he got an idea.

“Lieutenant Phipps!” Billy called on the command channel. “You boys got any sort of incendiary grenades for that mark 19? Maybe like illuminations or flares?”

“Stand by one and I’ll check with my gunner,” the Army officer said. A few seconds later, he answered, “A couple or three belts of green and red clusters, and a belt of illumes, but mostly we’ve got H-E-D-P fragmentation rounds. Why?”

“Have your gunner load up with the incendiaries. Anything that ignites a fire. Those willy-peter illumes are dandy. Lob it on all these buildings and set ’em ablaze,” Billy-C said. “Smoke from fires started with our tracers is blowing south. If we set the neighborhood ablaze, lots of smoke, it’ll totally fuck up the Haji’s shit. Smoke inhalation, burning eyes, you know the drill. And it won’t be in our faces at all. Besides, a fire might burn a bunch of these sand rats out of their holes, so we can shoot ’em.”

“I like your idea, Sergeant,” Jeremy Phipps said. “We’ll give ’em all we got. Maybe we can get out of this tin can before they figure out how to put an RPG into it.”

“Right, sir,” Claybaugh said. “Light ’em up!”

In a few seconds, the MK19 began hosing red and green flares, and white phosphorus illumination rounds into the windows of every building within reach. Three belts later, rising flames and smoke enveloped the whole neighborhood.

Just as Jack looked up, the operations-hooch doors burst open, and the six remaining MARSOC–Iraq snipers and both detachment armorers rumbled inside. The eight men huddled around the gunny’s desk, picking up on the action over the intercom radio’s speaker.

“Smedley says Billy-C and the boys gettin’ hit hard,” Sergeant Sammy LaSage, whose name everybody had shortened to just plain Sage, growled. “What’s the damage on our side?”

“Three dead. Two truck drivers and one of our own, Rowdy Yates,” Jack said, looking around the crowd that now made up the rest of the Iraq detachment. “Staff Sergeant Claybaugh just set the world afire, down by Fallujah. Rough count, our guys splashed a dozen Hajis, and they’re still fighting.”

“Target-rich. We ought to be there,” Sage said.

“Billy’s got this,” Jack said.

“No doubt, Guns,” Sergeant LaSage agreed. “I’m just saying it seems a shame we’re not there to help out.”

Valentine smiled. “Billy said nearly the same thing.”

Sage nodded. “Right on.”

Sammy LaSage grew up in Albuquerque and got drafted by the Colorado Rockies baseball club out of Manzano High School. He played two years of single-A shortstop for the Modesto Nuts before giving up the dream. Then he enlisted in the Marine Corps when he decided that playing more years of farm-team baseball with holes in his jeans, cold chicken in a box lunch on the team bus, and a rattrap pickup truck to drive did not quite cut it. Cooperstown would not be his.

So with his high school diploma and not much else, Sage went looking for more meaningful work. Not many demands outside the diamond for a five-foot-nine-inch athlete with a rocket arm, quick hands, and a good eye for a cut fastball.

Down to his last nickel and a quarter tank of gas in his twenty-year-old Dodge, Sammy LaSage took note of a Marine Corps recruiting office next to the Church’s Fried Chicken store, where he had just filled out an employment application, on Juan Tabo Boulevard just south of Manuel. He didn’t have to think much about it to decide that a Marine uniform fit him better than a chicken outfit, so he filled out an application there, too.

Good eyes, quick hands, and strong arms worked well for the Marine Corps, too, and Sage found his new home and life.

Bronco and Jaws served on Sergeant Sage’s team, along with a dark green Marine named Craig Heyward, a corporal from Garland, Texas, the Dallas suburb where Hank Hill and his oddball King of the Hill family and friends also lived. Propane and propane products made Garland great, and Calvin Johnson was proud of that fact, along with the Dallas Cowboys, who Hank Hill and the boys also loved. God bless Tom Landry!