Charles Henderson - Terminal Impact

Ray-Dean had heard scuttlebutt that one-five was planning a big operation, and he guessed that this envelope contained information about that project.

“For fuck sake,” Cooder-with-a-D laughed under his breath, and as he heard the toilet flush, he stuffed the envelope down the back waistband of his cargo trousers and pulled out his shirttail. He hurried to the door before Smedley Butler could get back to the front office and yelled at him, “My boss just sent me a text message. I got to run.”

Smedley gave him a wave, then glanced at Colonel Snow’s desk and ensured that the Marine Corps Gazette lay back atop the pile of mail and other folders, envelopes, and papers. Then his eyes caught the red-striped borders on the classified folders.

“Skipper’s going to get us all put in jail,” Butler griped as he gathered up the folders and envelopes stamped SECRET and CLASSIFIED. One by one, he registered them into the classified-documents log, assigned them a file number, and put them away in the safe. He had no clue that one was missing.

After the bulk of surviving al-Qaeda gunmen managed to break from the ambush and scattered at a hard run, a gang of more than a dozen well-armed fighters rallied among a clutch of mud-and-stick farmhouses with adobe fences and brush-arbor animal shelters surrounded by withered vegetable gardens, goat pastures, tall weeds, rocky hills, and gullies through which a sorry excuse for a road zigged and zagged. Here, what was left of the main force of Hajis now prepared a countering ambush against Sergeant First Class Connor Bower and six of his grunts, who pursued them along that dirt road. The enemy, however, did not see Billy Claybaugh, Petey Preston, and Randy Powell mounting a hill on their flank overlooking the entire scene, nearly three-quarters of a mile away.

The staff sergeant and his two corporals had cut a diagonal for the high ground that Billy had anticipated would give them a distant but commanding overwatch where they could see the fleeing al-Qaeda and keep an eye on his Army brothers, too. He was right.

Cotton Martin and his Marines along with the truck drivers and the remaining soldiers from the MRAP worked at clearing the ambush area of holdouts left behind to offer cover fire while their main al-Qaeda Iraq force fled. One by one, these zealots died hard.

Once Billy-C, Petey, and Randy fanned into positions on the hilltop overwatch, they began scoping the enemy positions. Rather than just shooting a few of them at best, while the remainder escaped up the nearby gullies, he wanted to get the Army warriors in position to cut off any escape.

“I’ve got overwatch on you, Boston, and you’ve got a dozen to fifteen Hajis just ahead of you, holed up in some mud houses and shit,” Billy said on the command frequency to Sergeant Bower. “I’m guessing they’ll try to cut you guys down after you make that turn in the road just ahead.”

“Roger that,” Bower replied. “You got any targets?”

“Lots of ’em,” Billy said. “But lots more will escape unless you boys block the gullies and road, and kill ’em when they come runnin’.”

“I’m guessing you’ve got a plan?” Connor Bower came back.

“Sort of, I suppose,” Claybaugh said. “Just take a few steps up in the rocks on each side of the road and implant automatic fire there. Then send two riflemen to the right and two left, and they take positions on the high ground over the gullies leading away from the farmhouses. You might miss one on the flanks, but I’m guessing that when you open fire in those spots, the Hajis will think you spread yourself thin, sweeping around their flanks to attack, and left the middle open. We’ll kill ’em in their own kill zone.”

“If they’re set to ambush us, how you going to flush them out?” Bower asked, his South Boston brogue strong as the anticipation of yet another fight tightened his jaws.

“I’ve got a little something that just might rattle ’em loose,” Billy said. “Give me a call back when you’re ready for me to kick off this rodeo.”

Billy and his Marines watched the soldiers climb up the gully walls and take position on the high ground at the right and left of the farms. He already had his eye to his riflescope and finger on the trigger when Connor Bower offered one word on the radio.

“Go,” Bower said, and Billy-C broke his first round.

One of the gunmen had hidden behind a water trough made of stones, clay, and tar. While his front was amply covered from the approaching American soldiers, his back was wide open to Billy. The .50 caliber Raufoss round disassembled the Haji in a burst of body parts.

Two other jihadi brothers had taken ambush positions behind some adobe feed bunks, and when their friend exploded only a few feet from them, it sent them running for a nearby adobe wall. The first man vaulted over the top, but the second gunman caught one of Randy Powell’s .338 Lapua Magnum 250-grain hollow-point boat-tail Sierra MatchKing bullets between his shoulder blades.

Three more Hajis squatted behind the mud fence and had the wall of a house two feet behind them. When they popped their heads up and fired their AK rifles at nothing, Petey Preston splashed a Lapua round on the wall behind them.

The three Marine Scout-Snipers waited for movement among the houses, but not a soul stirred.

“They’re hunkered down.” Randy sighed.

“And they’re not moving,” Billy-C said. “Let’s see what happens when I start blowing holes with Raufoss rounds.”

Claybaugh then took a breath, steadied his crosshairs on the adobe wall where he anticipated an al-Qaeda gunman squatted, and let one go.

A hole the size of a dinner plate blew through the mud fence, and the adobe wall of the house behind where the gunman had squatted glistened red and wet with blood.

“Fuck! That’s nasty!” Powell said, and fired his magnum at the house, trying to ricochet lead at one end of the wall and hold the enemy in place while Petey Preston put shots on the opposite side.

“Once more,” the staff sergeant said, and squeezed off another explosive penetrating shot. It, too, blew a big hole in the fence and left the house sprayed with blood and bits of another dead al-Qaeda.

Billy cycled his bolt and chambered another big round, and in the periphery of his riflescope he caught movement in a window. Someone stood just to the side of the opening, so he moved his crosshairs there and blew a hole in the house.

As the shot exploded, the round must have barely grazed the man standing there with his back against the wall by the opening. He came spinning out the window, half-alive, his right arm and a good part of the right side of his upper torso torn off. He hit the ground dead.

That was all the remaining al-Qaeda needed. They poured out of their positions and ran for the gullies, where several gunshots turned them around. Rather than running toward the deadly sniper fire, they chose to try to make it around the first bend in the road, where the overhead rocks and hills gave them closest cover.

Billy, Randy, and Petey chased them with shots, making sure they all got around the corner.

“You got ’em,” Claybaugh said on the command channel as Connor Bower and two of his solja-boys opened fire with their machine guns and mowed down the rest of the Hajis.

Ray-Dean Blevins waited until he had driven outside the secured perimeter of Camp Victory before he stopped his Escalade, pulled the envelope from his waistband, and opened it. His eyes scanned down the cover page of the First Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment’s top secret operation plan. As the impact of what he had stolen took hold, he let out a breath that ended with, “Fuck!”