Charles Henderson - Terminal Impact

They spent the night with Abu Omar, enjoying good food and warm company at his farm, north of Baiji, and before first light, struck out for Haditha, hidden under the mountain of stinking produce. In Haditha, Juba and Hasan would train a new class of snipers in Abu Omar’s jihadi army. They would teach the shooters how to hide in plain sight, or in a rubbish pile, in the fender of a car, or in a darkened room away from the window.

In five days, Juba and Hasan, and their crew of four would return to Baiji, where they would change back into their business clothes and return to Baghdad from their trip up the Tigris buying ancient artifacts and jewelry, family heirlooms that dated back a thousand years.

A baker’s dozen Iraqi soldiers wearing drab green flak jackets and dull green helmets backed up four Haditha policemen, similarly dressed, who ran the Route 19 roadblock a half mile east of the bridge across the Euphrates River that entered the city. The same bridge where just more than a year ago, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had murdered a score of leading citizens and their sons, terrorizing the remainder of the city’s leaders to fall in line behind al-Qaeda Iraq. It was the same day that Jack Valentine had taken his shot at Zarqawi and missed.

Backing up the squad of Iraqi soldiers and four policemen running the roadblock, First Sergeant Alvin Barkley sat behind an M2 .50 caliber machine gun atop an up-armored Humvee with a reinforcing ring of sandbags piled around the gun turret. He and twenty-two of his company of Marines had come here today to ferret out a reported influx of enemy fighters and arms resupply.

By State Department agreement with regional and national political leadership, Iraqi soldiers and police had to run the roadblock with American forces as support on request. Not Alvin Barkley’s idea of how to run security. Too many holes in the net. Too many Iraqi cousins let slide without a look. Too many trusted friends waved through.

The Marine wiped sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand before he looked through his green-rubber-covered binoculars at the approaching truck. He began rolling the focus knob with his fingertip as he watched it come closer.

Through the mirage, dancing heat waves, and dust-devil swirls, Barkley brought into focus the cab and the two people riding inside the rust-bucket old rig tipping and tilting its towering load as it rattled along the rough road. He sharpened the focus on the gray-bearded old Haj behind the steering wheel. Then he put eyes on the teenage girl riding on the passenger side, a Muslim shawl over her head, draped loosely to allow airflow around her face.

Young. Pretty. Out of place with the grizzled old man behind the steering wheel.

“Sergeant Padilla,” Alvin Barkley called down to a Marine with a Belgian Malinois working dog on a leash, “you and Rattler get ready. We got a live one coming our way.”

“Roger that,” Jorge Padilla answered. He tightened his grip to short-safety on Rattler’s leash, taking a wrap halfway down the lead. Cued, the big black-and-brown brindle Belgian braced, just enough to let his handler know he stood ready to work.

Rattler had a full set of titanium teeth that replaced most of his original choppers, installed one by one in the several years after he had finished his basic training at Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas. A land shark’s land shark, his aggressive bite in the attack mode had eventually broken all of his original canines and uprooted several molars.

When Rattler clamped on, he did not let go, sometimes breaking teeth but never relenting. Although the titanium implants served the dog well, some of them also gave way under his enthusiasm and also required replacement. Thus, veterinary dental specialists had to devise a way to more substantially anchor Rattler’s titanium teeth, and resorted to titanium reinforcing rods and screws anchored to his skull bones, and installed larger, stronger teeth to withstand his fierce bite.

Now with his mouth filled with the oversized sparkling silver, nearly indestructible metal teeth, giving Rattler a hellish smile on his mostly black face, he could now, quite literally, tear the fenders off a Honda or rip the arms off a man.

The Malinois wore a Marine Corps desert-pixel-camouflage tactical vest with his corporal rank insignia stitched on its sides. His working dog uniform. Sergeant Padilla had Rattler’s name and USMC embroidered just below the two chevrons and crossed rifles.

As military working dogs go, Rattler performed at the top of the game, a total land shark, living for the “Kong,” his chewy red-rubber-ball toy that his handler, his “Kong Dispenser,” used to reward him after every task. Rattler loved his job, loved the “Kong,” but loved Sergeant Jorge Padilla most of all. They had lived as inseparable partners for the past five years of the dog’s six years of life. And now Rattler smiled with anticipation of the game. His tongue hanging out, teeth glittering in the sun, lopping drool off his lips.

Alvin Barkley looked down, admiring the sleek but muscular dog with just the right amount of drop in his hips to win anybody’s Belgian show. He could breach nearly any barrier, or quickly find a way around it, and had a special knack of leaping through windows. Best yet, the athletic animal had smarts that rivaled many human Marines. Perhaps surpassed even a few in Barkley’s company.

The first sergeant reckoned that having Rattler around gave his Marines an incalculable edge on the often-hazardous road-guard duty.

His long Dan Dennehy custom-made Bowie strapped to his leg, opposite his special-ordered Lippard Model 1911A2 .45 caliber Close Quarters Battle Pistol tied to his other leg, Alvin Barkley slid low behind the big machine gun and aimed the muzzle right at Abu Omar’s ugly face.

“Open your blouse,” Omar Bakr al-Nasser ordered Giti Sadiq as he pushed on the brake pedal. The worn-out pads squeaked and ground metal to metal against the drums as the towering old truck rolled to a stop.

“No!” the girl protested without thinking, reacting immediately modest, and clutched the top of the simple, gray-cotton shirt that she wore. Then she took her shawl and wrapped it tight around her head and shoulders, gripping it firmly around her, but now realizing and dreading the abuse she knew would come.

Abu Omar looked hard at her, his lips curled. “Do it now!”

Tears filled Giti’s eyes as she released the shawl, so that if fell open, loose again, away from her ample breasts. Then, one by one, she unbuttoned the blouse and untied the chemise she wore beneath the shirt, so that her bare breasts showed easily to anyone who might look inside the truck.

Not satisfied that she showed enough, the old devil reached across the cab and gave the girl’s blouse and undergarment a yank open. “You sit there now, so they can see what they like,” he told her. “Stop your sniveling… and smile!”

When the first Haditha cop stepped on the running board and looked inside the cab, he immediately saw the girl sitting there with her blouse opened. He motioned for another policeman to go to the other side and check it out.

Then, smiling two gold front teeth at Abu Omar, he said, “What is this, grandfather?”

“A servant,” Omar said, and gave the cop a nasty smile in return. “She does my bidding. Anything.”

“Anything?” the cop asked, sweat popping on his face, and he brushed his black moustache with the back of his hand as he looked hard at Giti’s breasts rising and falling as her breathing increased.

She looked straight ahead and put her mind back in Al-Shirqat. Her childhood. Playing with the new goat kids, petting them and cuddling them, and her father scolding her for doing it.