Charles Henderson - Terminal Impact

When the MARSOC executive officer approached the ambush scene, he could only think that this was how Hiroshima must have looked right after the atom bomb exploded there, or pretty close to it. Fire consumed everything on both sides of the road, pouring black smoke in the air. Little of any kind of structure stood, most everything that used to be houses burned in fallen piles with only bits and pieces of the buildings pointing skyward among the unchecked flames.

Smoke obscured the afternoon sun. The whole place felt hotter than hell and looked like hell, too.

First elements of the reaction force had landed by Black Hawk helicopters and immediately begun securing the area surrounding the ambush site, searching for any enemy stragglers. Their reinforcements arrived just ahead of Captain Burkehart and set up checkpoints at both ends of the village.

When the skipper stepped out of his Hummer and looked for his Marines, he couldn’t find any of them except the zippered black bag that held Rowdy Yates. The Army team had thoughtfully laid the Marine’s body aside from the two dead KBR truckers, likewise bagged and tagged. They had only found parts of the body of the one driver who had died in the bomb blast.

“My Marines,” he asked the Army captain who commanded the re- action force. “What’s their status?”

“On their way in,” the officer told Burkehart. “Should be here any minute. They chased down the main force that initiated this ambush and by all reports killed most of them. Last enemy body count was twenty-eight. We estimate they had somewhere between thirty and fifty combatants. Not bad shooting. Not bad at all.”

“We secure here?” Burkehart asked, giving the area a scan. Lots of rear-echelon gagglers running around lax and slack like highway patrolmen at an interstate wreck scene. The Marine Mustang captain knew better than to just prance around the open spaces like a spring fawn. He kept covered.

“Oh yeah,” the soldier assured him with a casual shrug.

As the Army captain walked away with a talkative and overly excited master sergeant decked in clean uniform and newly issued combat gear jabbering at his side, Mike Burkehart noticed Cotton Martin maneuvering with his three Marines through the debris field on the right side of the roadway. He, too, remained cautious of a possible unseen enemy straggler hidden in some rat hole.

“Skipper!” Cotton let out, glad to see his captain, Hot Sauce, Jewfro, and Hub Biggs smiling behind him. “As they say, the proverbial shit hit the fan here. We had an overwhelming enemy force laying for us.” Then as Staff Sergeant Martin got close enough to speak in a low voice, “They had it planned to the T. Somebody on the inside had to have fed them all our dope. Cost us one of our own.”

Both men gave the body bag that held Lance Corporal Yates a long look.

“Maybe they had eyes on you when you departed the wire,” Burkehart said, raising his eyes.

“No way they could see us then and have time enough to put together an ambush of this size and complexity, and with the kind of weaponry they used,” Cotton said, looking cold at the skipper. “They knew we’s coming from the get-go. They were set up in the upper rooms and rooftops, hides in junk piles and old cars. That’s not some quick setup. No, sir. They got inside intel. I’m sure of it.”

“Any word from Staff Sergeant Claybaugh and his team?” the skipper asked.

“Last check? I’d say he’ll come through that smoke on the left, over yonder, any second,” Martin said, pointing toward the smoke pall on the opposite side of the road.

He had no sooner spoken and was still pointing when the silhouettes of the three Marines came into sight. Billy-C saw the captain and Cotton, and gave them a wave. Then he broke off from Petey Preston and Randy Powell, and jogged to the body of the dead sniper with the bloody Dragunov rifle lying gripped in his lifeless hands.

“What’s up with that?” the captain asked, seeing the staff sergeant break off from his two compadres .

“War trophy, I suppose,” Cotton answered, seeing Billy bend over to grab the sniper rifle from the dead enemy.

Corporal Powell had kept moving, but Preston waited for his staff sergeant, his Vigilance rifle cradled across his arms, ready, just in case.

“Billy says that’s the motherfucker that killed Rowdy,” Cotton added.

“Going up on the wall at the Hog Wallow?” Burkehart said.

Cotton nodded. “Yup. I expect so.”

Billy-C held the Dragunov up for the captain and Staff Sergeant Martin to see, then bent over to pick up something else just as a lone rifle shot cracked from a smoldering rubbish pile a football field away. The impact of the bullet sent Claybaugh headfirst into the dead Iraqi insurgent’s body.

Petey Preston caught the movement in the rubbish pile and shot the sniper as he tried to flee. The impact of the Lapua Magnum took off an arm and made a mess of the chest, killing the man before he hit the ground.

Randy Powell made a beeline for his downed staff sergeant as Billy-C scrambled back to his feet.

A bloody patch spread across the seat of Claybaugh’s trousers, as Corporal Powell ducked under Billy’s shoulder and helped him walk, the Dragunov still clutched in his hands.

“Laid open my left ass cheek,” the staff sergeant said as he hobbled toward the captain, Cotton, and the others with Randy Powell as his crutch. “But I got that dead motherfucker’s rifle.”

“Guess you bent over at just the right time,” Mike Burkehart said.

“Motherfucking AK bayonet. Dead guy had it on his belt,” Billy said, holding up the multipurpose knife and fighting tool that also slides onto the muzzle end of an AK-47 rifle. “I’ve been wanting one of these suckers for a long time.”

“Got shot in the ass for your trouble, too,” Cotton said. “I guess you paid the price for it.”

“Guy that shot him paid a bigger price,” Corporal Preston said, coming in behind Claybaugh and Powell.

“One dumb motherfucker’s all I can say,” Captain Burkehart added. “If he’d just lain still in that trash pile, and let Billy take that rifle, he’d still be alive. Army already cleared that area, so when we left the scene, he could have just gone home.”

“Sometimes a rattlesnake just can’t help himself but bite a guy,” Claybaugh rationalized.

Cottonmouth and a splitting headache roused Ray-Dean Blevins to a foggy realm of consciousness. The smell of coffee, toast, eggs, and bacon made him open his eyes.

Laughter. Screechy female laughter. Then a familiar male voice made him raise his head to see who else was there.

Francoise stood in front of his kitchenette cookstove, scrambling a skillet filled with eggs while Cesare Alosi dabbed dry freshly cooked turkey bacon with paper towels.

The Malone-Leyva boss wore a black company T-shirt and tan 5.11 cargo trousers, a Glock 19 strapped to his upper thigh, and a black M-L operator’s ball cap tilted on the back of his head. The French reporter wore one of Cooder’s drab tan company T-shirts and nothing else. Her ass cheeks played peekaboo below the bottom hem.

“How’d you get in here?” Blevins grogged out at his boss, staggering up from the bed. Then he realized he was naked and sporting morning wood. So he grabbed the top sheet off his bed and wrapped it around his waist.

Seeing his package, Francoise giggled like a teenage virgin ditching Sunday school with the bad boys. She made a show of hiding her eyes, as if she had a degree of modesty, then went back to scraping the pile of eggs around the pan.

Alosi gave it a slight headshake, rolling his eyes, then smiled at Cooder as if he knew it all. “Your little friend Paolo let me in as he slipped out this morning. Odd fellow, that one. And boy, did he look haggard. Hard night at the races? Three of you? Really? My, oh my… Bet you had fun.”