Charles Henderson - Terminal Impact

“And the guy across the table I suppose is something or other Stein?” Liberty asked, way ahead of Gray.

“You got it,” Chris answered. “Fred Stein. Former Army Ranger, hard-stripe sergeant. He’s a real special case of steroids and earwax. Obviously hated his father and loved his mother. Really loved his mother.”

Liberty laughed, then added, “The opposite of the blonde with daddy issues?”

“Freddie likes them old and no teeth,” Chris said. “I have several stories of him in the villages, committing rape of women well past childbearing years.”
“Disgusting!” Liberty shuddered.

“You want to dredge up the dirt on Alosi and Malone-Leyva, these are your boys,” Gray said. “I’ve got a notebook full of interesting reading on that crew.”

“I’d like to see it,” she said. “Seriously.”

“Sure,” Gray said. “I’ll drop it by your place.”

“And nobody does anything about them?” Cruz asked.

“They’re outside most jurisdictions, as you well know, and the law that matters doesn’t care about the likes of them. Bad politics to the hand that feeds,” Gray said.

“You should be in the FBI,” Liberty said. “Jason Kendrick would put you to work, knowing you and all.”

“My job.” Gray smiled. “I don’t worry about jurisdictions or Miranda rights. I get to kill the low-life motherfuckers.”

Liberty lifted her glass. “Here’s to that.”

Ray-Dean Blevins’s nose had already swollen double in size, and both nostrils had shut. When he talked, it came out muted and whiny. He held a cold beer bottle against his throbbing head as Freddie Stein and Gary Frank kept looking at Liberty Cruz sitting and laughing with the CIA operator.

“That’s her, dude,” Gary said, and snapped his glance away as the woman looked at him. “Definitely the bitch in the picture.”

“You think Cesare knows she’s in town?” Fred Stein asked Ray-Dean.

Blevins looked at her and sneered. “Fuck Alosi, and fuck her.”

“I’d like to,” Stein came back. “Her that is. Not Cesare. I don’t swing that direction.”

“You suck dick and take it up the ass, Freddie. Admit it,” Gary Frank said, trying to sound tough to his buddies.

“I’ll show you how to suck dick when I feed you mine,” Ray-Dean said. “I’ll hold your hands while Freddie jams his cock balls-deep up your ass.”

“And you’ll love it.” Stein smirked.

“I’m not queer, you guys!” Gary Frank sang back.

“You’re always talking about sucking dick and butt fucking,” Ray-Dean said.

“Guilty dogs bark loudest,” Freddie piled on.

“Dude,” Ray-Dean said. “Gay’s okay. Hell, you might come in handy. I’m sure as shit not getting any pussy off Francoise anytime soon.”

“What was that shit about, anyway?” Stein asked. “You thumping her ass?”

“I had some stuff at my place. Bonus material I copped over at MARSCOC headquarters, to win me some points with Cesare. You know, worth a few coins?” Ray-Dean explained. “Filthy cunt had pictures of my shit on her cell phone. I sat here and started thumbing through her crap, and up comes pictures of my shit. Fucking cunt! She must have took them when I was sleeping.”

“She’s working for Alosi, I bet. Getting it from you for free so he doesn’t have to pony up,” Gary Frank said.

Ray-Dean nodded. “My guess, too. That’s Alosi’s style. He’s tight with her. I don’t trust that motherfucker whatsoever.”

“And we’re sure that’s Cesare’s girlfriend over there?” Gary Frank said, unsure with this as he was with everything.

“Fuckin’ A, dude,” Freddie said. “You said it yourself. That’s her. Same bitch in the fucking picture he has sitting on his desk.”

“Fuckin’ A,” Ray-Dean said. “Now I owe the cunt big-time. Break my nose with a sucker punch? Shit, I never saw it coming. Humiliate me like that? She’s fucking dead.”

Freddie, Gary, and Ray-Dean all nodded as they looked at Liberty Cruz and Chris Gray.

“You picking up on those three yo-yos’ body language?” Bob Hartley mumbled to Cliff Towler and Casey Runyan, leaning against the bar, drinking Amstel Light in bottles.

“She really shouldn’t have gotten involved with that fool. Let someone else be the hero,” Towler said, and the other two FBI tactical operators nodded, agreeing.

“I don’t fault her for much,” Bob Hartley said. “She’s a solid operator, but her one failing is that big heart tied right to her hot button. Emotional knee-jerking, even if it’s justified, will get us killed.”

“Fucking funny, though,” Casey said. “The way she laid out that piece of shit. One shot, and bang! He’s done!”

“What do you suppose those fools are plotting?” Hartley asked his team, and took another look at the whiskey level of the quart bottle with the red-wax-covered top sitting on the table between Liberty Cruz and Chris Gray.

“We need to clear her out,” Towler said.

“Yeah,” Hartley said. “She’s sucked down a good third of that quart bottle by herself. I don’t think Gray took more than one or two hits. But the lady can put it away. I’m getting buzzed just watching.”

“What if we start something with those three assholes?” Runyan suggested. “A little delay action to give her a chance to disappear.”

“Probably not a bad idea,” Bob agreed. “Keep those shitheads pinned down. They get out of here ahead of us, I’m betting they’ll try an ambush before she can get two blocks down the street.”

“That or follow her to the apartment and do something after she’s turned in,” Towler said.

“I wish she hadn’t fucked around with that asshole.” Hartley sighed.

“Yeah, that’s what I said when my wife divorced me last year and married her boss.” Casey Runyan chuckled.

“Alright, guys,” Hartley said. “I’ll play the drunk. You come fetch me out of trouble. If we’re lucky, we won’t kill them.”

Liberty noticed that Bob Hartley had turned his baseball cap sideways as he came staggering toward them.

“You okay?” she said, as he ran into her table and knocked over the bottle of whiskey.

Chris Gray saw the wink and took Liberty’s hand.

“Why don’t we get out of here?” he suggested.

“You sure?” Liberty asked, not seeing Hartley motioning his eyes to the door but Gray getting the message.

“I’m sure,” Chris said. “We need to go. Right now.”

Then Liberty saw Bob Hartley making a beeline toward the booth where Ray-Dean and his boys sat, sucking on Heinekens.

“Right,” she said, and got to her feet.

As the couple hurried out the Baghdad Country Club’s front door, the long cool woman from the FBI could hear the commotion. Tables crashed. Glass broke. Two blasts of a shotgun. Then quiet.

Liberty turned, started to go back, worried about her boys, but she stopped as Ajax came out the door with a smoking Mossberg pump-action folding-stock alley sweeper in his hands. He looked around, making sure more trouble wasn’t headed his way, and saw Liberty.

“It’s okay!” he said, giving her an assuring smile. “We’re all friends again.”

When the Osprey had dropped Jack Valentine and his seven Marines far in the desert, west of the Euphrates, the team immediately pushed even farther west, following a dusty ravine to a rocky outcrop that gave them good cover until dark. They rested there and filled their stomachs until night, taking turns on security, with two men always on lookout.

With moonrise six hours away, blackest darkness shrouded them well as they pushed north, staying parallel with the Euphrates River’s direction. Full combat kits strapped on their backs, loaded heavy with extra water and ammunition, testing their endurance, the eight men route-stepped ten miles into their hunting territory, west of Haditha and Haqlaniyah, and north of a dry wadi called Ashwa. To the south of them, at a camp called Wolf, a battery of American artillery with a list of on-call targets sat available for Jack and his Marines if they needed it.