Charles Henderson - Terminal Impact

Cliff Towler had served as a Marine liaison captain with the British Royal Marines, and had learned darts the hard way. After having his clock cleaned along with his wallet, the American sharpened his skills on Five-Oh-One and Three-Oh-One, and learned the bull’s-eye betting hustle from the British Marines as well.

Suddenly, a woman’s wail after a hard thud and the crash of breaking glass drew everyone’s attention to the far corner. Ray-Dean Blevins stood over Francoise after having given her a hard whack to the chops. She tried to crawl away, but he put the toe of his boot in her ass, delivering a cruel blow.

Liberty came straight up out of her seat, blazing, and before anyone else could do a thing, she had laid the inside of her forearm, the point just below her elbow, flat across Ray-Dean Blevins’s face.

Blood sprayed as his nose exploded, and Cooder-with-a-D tumbled backwards into the booth where he and Francoise had sat.

When Chris Gray got there, Agent Cruz had already helped the French reporter to her feet.

Instead of a thank-you, however, enraged Francoise pulled her arm from Liberty’s grasp and let loose a slur of French words, first at Ray-Dean Blevins, then at the woman who had come to her aid.

“You Americans!” Francoise screamed. “All alike! You think you can solve the problems of the world, but all you do is destroy and kill. You come to this country, so big and proud of yourselves. You know all the answers, don’t you? Putting in your puppet regime. Always getting your way. You care nothing for the people you murder. Go to hell, American fuckers! All of you!”

With that, Francoise spit a glob of blood on the floor and tromped across the bar and out the door in her click-clack glittery shoes and snatch-hugging tight pants.

Liberty blinked at Chris Gray and her three men, who now stood with him among a crowd of mercenary contractors from around the planet. Then she looked down at Ray-Dean Blevins, slumped back in his seat with a wad of napkins crammed in his nose.

“Only a weak-assed coward of a man hits a woman!” she fired at Cooder-with-a-D.

Blevins just blinked.

The angry woman then pushed her way through the wall of men, parting them like Moses, and went back to her table, where she picked up her whiskey and threw it into the back of her throat. She looked at the barkeep, and roared, “Ajax, bring me a triple!”

Every man in the place, except for Ray-Dean Blevins, began clapping.

Chris Gray sat back down and relit Liberty’s cigar, then his own.

“I think that went remarkably well, don’t you?” He smiled. “We certainly have their attention now.”

“I’m sorry,” Liberty said. “I lost it when that asshole kicked that poor woman. Slugging her wasn’t bad enough, he had to put his boot in her ass.”

“That new best friend you just made over there, nursing his broken nose, is Cesare Alosi’s gofer boy, Ray-Dean Blevins,” Gray said. “Grade A slime, and capable of anything, including cold-blooded murder. You’ll need to watch your back with him now. That elbow smash on the hooter you gave him, in front of all these admirers? He’ll definitely want revenge.”

“Am I supposed to be scared?” Liberty asked, as Ajax delivered her a glass and a full bottle of Maker’s Mark.

“Not scared, but you do need to be cautious,” the bartender said before Gray could respond. Then he added, “Everything tonight’s on the house. I can’t count the times that scumbag has beat that poor woman. No one has ever stepped in until you did. Nobody wants trouble with him. Like most cowards, he’ll never face you head-on but will shoot you in the back.”

Liberty gave Blevins another glance as he sat in his booth alone, napkins stuffed in his nose, glaring at her.

“I’ll keep that in mind, Ajax,” she said.

“Welcome to my world, Miz Cruz.” Gray smiled.

She looked at Chris. “What’s the story on the woman?”

“Francoise Theuriau, so her passport reads,” Gray began. “She works freelance out of the London bureau of the Massachusetts Democrat and Morning News , a progressive left fish wrapper in Boston. As you’d expect, they’re critical of the war, Congress, the president, American Constitutionalism, and democracy in general.

“We ran deep background on her because she still has my terrorism antennas vibrating. She hails from Marseilles, but her French passport home address is in Avignon, where she also went to college at Université d’Avignon .”

“Oh, he speaks French,” Liberty said, and smiled at the way Chris rolled out the university’s name with its French pronunciation.

“I did the Rosetta Stone course that State Department puts out,” Gray said.

“So did Jack,” Liberty said. “He’s quite good with languages. He grew up speaking Spanish, from his mother, but then learned Castellón and Andalusian dialects, because of her classical Spanish background. That branched into Portuguese and French. Italian is next on his list, because I speak Italian and want to live in Milan someday, after I make my millions,” she finished with a little laugh.

“Now I feel inadequate,” Gray said. “How about Japanese? Jack Valentine master that, too?”

“I think he has the barroom pickup lines down pat, from his time in Okinawa,” Liberty said.

“Yeah, me, too,” Gray said. “Okinawa, Philippines, and South Korea gave me, like most Marines, a good foundation of international barroom and taxi language skills.”

“I get so tickled when you Marines go into your bar-girl routines.” Liberty laughed. “You should hear Jack. What is it? Hello, GI. You buy me drink? Payday come, I love you big-time. Come on, I so horny. We go boom-boom.”

“I love you long time. Make boom-boom all night. You want short time, that okay, too.” Gray laughed. “Take me stateside, I love you plenty. Buy me Honda. Get me green card. Take me big PX.”

“Oh, yeah.” She laughed. “Do they really say all that silly crap?”

“That and more. We don’t just make this shit up.” The CIA operator smiled. “I think it’s an acquired art form. Young privates and lance corporals, hitting the rock for the first time? They call them chiisai sakana , little fish. A sergeant or a young lieutenant, they’re ookii sakana , big fish. The bar girls reel them in and drag them to the altar, tak’san and sukoshi alike.”

“Jack calls it going native,” Liberty said.

“I have friends who have good marriages to some of these girls,” Gray said. “But most cases, it’s hookers doing what hookers do.”

“So this French reporter?” Liberty asked. “She doesn’t strike me as a hooker trying for a brass ring.”

Gray nodded. “Naw, just a slut reporter. But then, the great spy Mata Hari was a slut, too. Francoise definitely makes my intel nose itch.”

“You put her under surveillance?” Cruz said.

“Sparingly and very carefully,” Gray said. “Don’t forget, she is a news reporter, a member of the press corps, covering the war for an American newspaper. Even if the rag unabashedly hates everything about the government and what we’re doing. We get caught watching her, we’re screwed.”

“Politics.” Liberty sighed. Then she looked around the room. It had settled back into darts and drinking. Ray-Dean Blevins had joined two other American contractors at a different booth. She nodded in their direction. “And how about those guys?”

“Frank-n-Stein,” Gray said.

“Which one is that?” Cruz said, trying to not get caught watching them.

“Blevins’s security team,” Chris said. “Gary Frank. Squirrely guy sitting next to Ray-Dean. Former Marine Corps public-affairs sergeant. Malone-Leyva’s press-relations man and a bed wetter. He’s got a reputation of not holding his liquor and it running down his leg when he gets excited.”