Charles Henderson - Terminal Impact

Liberty smiled. “No, sir. Neither surprised nor offended. Very much expected. I’d do the same thing. It’s nice to be loved, sir.”

Kendrick smiled back. “Well, I do honestly care about you and every agent in my command. However, let’s keep any mission talk out of your conversations with Gunny Valentine or anyone else outside your team. For the Gunny’s protection, more than anything. He’s got enough on his plate without worrying about you. And I sure as hell don’t want him mixing it up with people should you get your, ah, shirttail in a wringer.”

“My tit in a wringer, you mean?” Liberty laughed.

“Your Marine Corps influence is telling.” Kendrick chuckled. “At any rate, when you get to Baghdad, act normal. See your gunny when mission allows. Stick to your cover story at all costs. You’re there on an administrative audit. Let him and anyone else there believe this is purely a rookie jaunt for an up-and-coming agent to test her wings. Nothing tactical or special operations. Make out like you won a trip to Baghdad as a prize for doing so well in school. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” Liberty said, and left.

Afternoon sun cut long shadows across the Baghdad airfield as Gunnery Sergeant Jack Valentine and seven of his MARSOC operators trailed out to mount a waiting US Army Black Hawk. The chopper would fly the patrol from LZ Victory to a no-name crop-of-rocks insertion point known only by grid coordinates in the al-Anbar wastelands, north of Hit.

Two local cops and a clutch of Iraqi security force soldiers, gaggling within smelling distance by their trucks, gawked at the unholy tribe, festooned with long guns and made up for war. The Iraqis’ surly looks told what their minds said. None of it good.

Each Marine sported his own devil’s face, painted with different menacing designs of brown, tan, and black camouflage. Bold dark stripes slanted evilly across their foreheads, tilting above their eyes. Accent lines off the sides and under their eyes joined wide streaks of black and brown that angled down their cheeks. Some men had totally blackened circles covering their eyes, and black-smudged triangles in the hollows under the ridges of their cheeks. They also drew teethlike lines over their lips, so that their war-painted faces resembled the classic death’s-head. Other faces, like Jack’s, resembled a demonic tiger.

Each of the Marines wore an embroidered black ace-of-spades patch with a Punisher skull in its center, trimmed in red, and a pair of black-and-white dice showing snake eyes on the fronts of their Kevlar operator’s vests. The team logo that Jack had designed. He had a Jacksonville ball cap and T-shirt shop crank out three hundred of the embroidered patches along with a five-foot flag of the same logo design that now adorned the HOG Wallow wall behind his desk. On the men’s backs, they each had painted a red-trimmed black crusader’s Templar cross. Another Jack Valentine novelty to set his tribe of Spartan warriors apart.

Jack heard one cop gag out in a disgusted Arabic voice, “Shayatin mukali.”

He recognized the colloquial Arabic phrase for “painted devils,” a name the Hajis had given American snipers, so he stopped his crew and smiled at the men. His black-over-brown tiger-striped face, slanting bold lines above and around his eyes and down his cheeks, evil and dark beneath the shade of his flop hat, contrasted by his flashing white teeth, startled the Iraqi security crew.

Then a soldier wearing two gold stars on green epaulettes, the lieutenant in charge of the Iraqi detail, pointed at Valentine, recognizing him, and said, “Ash’abah al-Anbar! Ash’abah al-Anbar!”

The other men mumbled the words, too, eyes glaring, faces frowning, as if they had just seen old Iblis himself.

“Yeah, baby, I’m back! The Ghost of Anbar,” Jack bellowed out, and let go a wicked laugh. “Old Shabah the bogeyman himself has returned to haunt your bloody lands. Beware! Beware! My shayatin and me, we’re out there in the darkness, killing your cousins and devouring their souls.”

“Dude.” Cotton Martin laughed. “So much for winning the affections of our local hosts.”

“I know,” Jack said, striding to the helicopter. “Elmore will be proud of us when he hears about it.”

“Yeah, Gunny V. That’s what I’m afraid of. Just like the spades and skulls you got going on in the hooch. And that freaking black wall,” Sergeant Clarence “Cochise” Quinlan said, stepping fast behind them. His old pal from Ninth Marines, Sergeant Sammy LaSage, marched with him.

“Don’t forget the Templar cross, Cochise.” Jack smiled.

“Oh, Heaven forbid!” Quinlan let out. “It’s like we painted these big-ass targets on our backs. First we piss off the Hajis like we’re back for round two of the Crusades, then we all wear massive indicators to give them something to aim at.”

“You worry too much, Cochise,” Jaws said, hot on his heels with Bronco Starr.

Corporal Randy Powell, whom Jack had named Chico because he considered Randy a name for a male cheerleader, and Corporal Petey Preston brought up the rear.

When they reached the Black Hawk, Jack shook hands with the crew chief and machine gunner, both Army sergeants. They still had the rotor tied down, and the front seats sat empty.

“You two hard chargers going to drive this ship?” Jack asked with a grin.

“Naw,” the crew chief grumbled, “Captain Foulks is still in the ready room doing chalk talk, and I think Lieutenant Snyderman’s in the latrine changing her tampon or taking a shit.”

Gunny Valentine took a gander back at the buildings that sat at the edge of the flight line and thought for a moment.

“So we’ve got a female copilot?” he asked.

“And pilot,” the crew chief said, and licked the load of Copenhagen out of his lower lip and spit it to the side, careful not to splatter the brown suede on Jack’s Desert RAT boots or his own.

“Women drivers,” Valentine said, feeling the guy out.

“Good pilots,” the crew chief came back. “Can’t fault their flying or lack of balls. They’ll dust you in a hot LZ and not blink. But they are a royal pain in the ass.”

“Attention to orders, and micromanaging the shit out of everything we do,” the door gunner chimed in.

“Them against the male-dominated world,” the crew chief concluded. “Busting the shit out of the glass ceiling.”

“We’ll keep that in mind when we meet them,” Jack said, and looked around at his crew. “Don’t be fucking around with your wise shit. Got it? We’re just going to ride and jump off. That’s all.”

All seven of his team nodded.

Jack reached in his cargo pocket, took out a clear-vinyl-covered tactical map section, and unfolded it.

“Gather round, children,” he said, and put his finger at their insertion point. “You should have this down pat, so tell me where I have my finger, and don’t say up my ass or on the end of my hand.”

Bronco said, “Departure point. From there we spread the two teams in a line and work our way toward the road, then move parallel to it north.”

“Roger,” Jack said, and looked at LaSage. “Sage, what’s our intervals?”

“Team one and team two spaced by seven hundred meters, and each interior two-man team split by two hundred meters,” LaSage answered.

“Coordination, Jaws?” Valentine asked the strong silent one.

“We’re up on covered net, we’ll have visual reference by infrared and night optics, and our reporting points,” Alex answered.

“Be sure we know where each team is at any given moment. Vital to survival and success,” Gunny Valentine stressed. “Staff Sergeant Martin will ride the inboard flank for team one. I will ride the inboard flank of team two, across that seven-hundred-meter divide, opposite him.”