Charles Henderson - Terminal Impact

Sage lifted his leg and farted. “Ah, that felt so good. I wish I could do more.”

“Dude!” Petey said, catching a full gust of the sour sausage gas.

“That’s why they call those dogs I ate last night the Five Fingers of Death.” Sergeant LaSage laughed.

Cochise Quinlan sniffed the air and caught a whiff. “Gunny V,” he called ahead, “you remember Blewis and Coop?”

“Right,” Jack answered. “Lewis and Cooper? Great sniper team.”

“Yeah, Blewis and Coop. Didn’t one of them like to eat Smoky Franks and chili dogs with lots of onions and shit like Sage does?” Cochise said.

“I don’t have a clue,” Jack answered. “I know that Coop loves fishing. But chili dogs and smoky franks? Cochise, I think you’ve got them, and me, mixed up with someone who might give a shit.”

Jaws laughed. “Right on, Gunny V. Burned your ass, didn’t he, Clarence.”

“Fuck you, Jaws,” Quinlan said, as they walked under the wing of the V-22 tiltrotor aircraft.

As his Marines climbed aboard, Jack stopped and gave a last look at the First Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment’s air base setup. All the comforts of home. For the next two weeks, he and his boys would live in the dirt and take turns sleeping on rocks in four-hour shifts.

Deep in his gut, he had a bad feeling. Couldn’t shake it. Nagging, nagging, nagging.

“Let me ask you something,” Jack said to Alvin Barkley, who waited to board the plane with him.

“Sure,” the first sergeant said.

“We hit that IED team a day before anyone should have known that heavy military traffic would be coming up MSR Bronze or ASR Phoenix,” Valentine said. “In the briefing, EOD said they took out two more on MSR Bronze, near the same spot on the other side of the river.”

Alvin thought and nodded. “Yeah, that’s right.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?” Jack asked.

“Now that you mention it.” Alvin nodded, his brow wrinkled in thought, and he bit his lip. “Like they got word we’d come up the road.”

“Could have been that they had eyes on the battalion and saw the movement ahead of the operation,” Jack rationalized, trying hard to explain it.

“Yeah, but both sides of the river? Up there in the same place? From where we set up, we could have gone anywhere. No. That didn’t tip them. Total crapshoot, unless they knew our plans,” Barkley said.

“Does seem like I recall in the logistics section of the operations plan, we’ve got big convoys pushing up both supply routes on day one,” Jack said.

Barkley added, “I can see the MSR, frequent military traffic. But they knew to set bombs over there, on that side of the river, in that culvert, where normally it’s mostly civilian traffic, when there’s traffic at all. Somebody told them, or they got a copy of the op plan.”

“That bothers me,” Jack said.

“Me, too,” Barkley agreed.

“Lucky we got ’em,” Jack said, getting on the Osprey.

“Real lucky,” Alvin Barkley said, following him.

When Chris Gray knocked on the door of Liberty Cruz’s apartment, he checked his breath. She must have been standing right behind it, because when she opened up the CIA operator still had his hand cupped in front of his mouth.

Liberty laughed. “Checking just in case, huh?”

“Old habits.” Gray shrugged.

“Wishful thinking. However, I do appreciate clean breath.” Liberty smiled and gave him a peck on the cheek.

“Well!” Gray brightened.

“Come on, cowboy,” the good-looking woman dressed for casual war laughed, and took off, strutting her stuff down the hallway. “Let’s have fun.”

Chris Gray couldn’t help but admire the show of swaying long hair, shapely boobs, and swinging hips as he walked alongside her.

“Work, work, work. Work, work, work. Work, work, work. Hello boys, have a good night’s rest? I missed you…” Gray said, mimicking Mel Brooks’s lecherous character from Blazing Saddles , Governor William J. Lepetomane.

Liberty flipped him the bird as she turned the corner and started down the stairwell.

“Oh, you know that old movie,” Gray said, jogging the steps with her, enjoying the view and not hiding it.

She smiled at Gray as she quickstepped. “Jack’s favorite Western. His most repeated line? ‘Mongo straight.’”

Chris Gray laughed. “I’ll keep that one in mind.”

Half an hour later, the two agents walked through the outer garden gates that hid the popular mercenary and media nightspot from the street, and went to the front door of the blue-stucco building with the big picture window that had the blue neon sign lit in it, BAGHDAD COUNTRY CLUB.

Casey Runyan, Cliff Towler, and Bob Hartley had arrived long ago, and had already made a circle of friends, betting on how many bull’s-eyes Towler could hit on the dart board before missing. An old curved-top, neon-lit Wurlitzer jukebox filled with several hundred 45-rpm records blared out Little Eva singing “Loco Motion.”

Blue light from the neon in the front window mixed with the red, blue, green, and yellow Christmas lights wrapping the shelves above the bar. Recessed orange lights hidden in deep sockets illuminated the mirror behind the bar, where all sorts of liquor stood on mirror-covered stair-step shelves, and gave the place that cheap dive look. All they needed was a handful of Eleventh Avenue hookers, and they’d have the total package, Liberty thought as she sized up the joint.

“Meet your expectations?” Chris Gray asked the lady as he led her to a table that an anxious Iraqi barkeep hurriedly wiped clean for them.

Every eye in the place caught sight of the striking woman and followed her as she and her CIA escort sat down.

“Your usual, Chris?” their waiter asked in excellent English with a British lilt to it.

“Sure thing, Ajax,” Gray answered. “James in tonight?”

“He’s gone on a jaunt with Ahmed. Down to the coast at Basrah,” Ajax replied.

“Supplies?” Chris asked.

Ajax smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

Gray looked at Liberty. “What’s your poison?”

“You got Jack Daniel’s?” she asked the waiter.

“Yes, ma’am,” Ajax said. “Maker’s Mark if you prefer good Kentucky bourbon.”

“Sure. Make it a double. Straight up. Neat,” she said.

Gray looked at Ajax, and the Iraqi barkeep smiled back.

Then Liberty reached inside the front slanted pocket of her 5.11 blouse and took out a four-tube leather case of cigars. She drew out a panatela, took a scissors-like gold clipper from a sheath on the side of the pack, and snipped off the tip.

With the cigar clenched lightly in her teeth, Liberty smiled at the CIA man and his friend Ajax, both of them watching her with great fascination.

She asked Chris as she lit up, “Care for a smoke, cowboy?”

“Don’t mind if I do, ma’am,” Gray drawled out, taking a cigar from her case as she offered it, and clipped it with her nippers. He looked at the brown band on it and raised his eyebrows as he drew the roll of tobacco under his nose and sniffed. “ Monte Cristo Especiales Numero Dos. Made in Havana. Not your run-of-the-mill Dominican replica, but the genuine article.”

“My father, a defense lawyer in El Paso, has an old client in Juarez who keeps me supplied,” she explained, as the fragrance of her smoke spread in the barroom and drew more looks and a few wise-ass comments about coming rain because pigs had sticks in their mouths. Her disruption not only saw Cliff Towler miss the bull’s-eye, but he missed the dartboard entirely.

The laughs and the losing bet brought attention back to the game. Forking over a handful of bills, Bob Hartley then enticed their circle of gamblers into a game of Five-Oh-One, the FBI tactical trio’s intention all along.