Charles Henderson - Terminal Impact

Jack looked out the dirty glass on the double doors and thought for a moment. Then he looked at Jesse Cortez.

“How about Bronco Star,” the gunny said. “Bronco and Jaws. That’s a catchy pair.”

“Bronco Star and Jaws,” Martin said. “It is kind of catchy.”

“What do you think, Bronco Star?” Jack smiled at the corporal. “That work for you?”

“Only if you spell Star with two r ’s.” Cortez smiled back.

“Oh, I like that.” Jack grinned. “Bronco Starr like Ringo Starr.”

“Hey, it’s got to be cool for me to wear it,” Corporal Cortez popped back.

The four Marines walked to a set of metal double doors. Above them was a carved dark wood sign with black bold letters, HOG WALLOW, burned in it. Beneath them, smaller wood-burned words wrote, HUNTERS OF GUNMEN LIVE HERE.

Bronco Starr and Jaws stepped up and pushed the handle, but Gunny Valentine stopped them.

“We operate on Lombardi time,” he told them, and got another pair of blank looks, as if neither man had ever heard of the legendary football coach. Jack rolled his eyes.

“So I gotta go Barney Fife on you two yo-yos?” Jack sighed.

Bronco and Jaws stood there, eyes wide, question marks blinking on their foreheads.

“I say be here at 0800, that means 0745. Fifteen minutes early. Always,” Jack explained. “If Colonel Snow calls a meeting, I’m there a half hour early, and that means you be there before me. Never arrive after me. Clear?”

“Gunny,” Bronco half whined. “Why not just say the time you mean? Eight means eight, seven forty-five means seven forty-five.”

“You should’ve been a lawyer, Barney,” Jack grumbled with an even deeper sigh, and held the handle as Cortez tried to push open the doors. “You know, Bronco, those glass doors out front need a good washing. Get some cleaning supplies down the hall, in the janitor’s room. You’ll recognize it from the pine-oil smell, and you Nimrods get that glass shining like a diamond on a black goat’s ass.”

Jaws frowned at his partner and tightened his lips as he headed down the hall, huffing with each step. “You and your mouth. Always got to run your trap and try to get up on the man. Why don’t you ever just shut the fuck up? Bronco Starr my ass. You can jump up and kiss my ass, Jesse.”

“Dude, wait up,” Corporal Cortez called after his cohort. “Gunny was gonna do it to us anyway, bro. I saw that dirty glass coming in, and I knew we was getting tagged to clean it. Come on, dude. Don’t be pissed at me.”

Jaws never slowed down.

Bronco stopped and called at Jaws in a long, loud whine that echoed down the halls, “I’m sorry!”

Cotton Martin smiled as he opened the door to the HOG Wallow, where thirty hopeful Marine Scout-Snipers temporarily assigned to the new platoon waited, and let Gunny Valentine enter first. “Age before beauty.”

“Faces before assholes,” Jack fired back.

Liberty Cruz stepped from the shower, dried her long black hair with a white towel, then wrapped an oversized pink bath towel around her tall, well-shaped, athletic body. She popped open the bathroom door and saw the handsome man she had taken home last night from a reception for security and law-enforcement executives at the Washingtonian Hotel in downtown DC still there. He was scrolling through pages on her laptop, not noticing her, focused on snooping in everything private on the computer.

She casually padded cat quiet to a mahogany humidor she kept on top of her bedroom bookcase and took out a Montecristo Especial Number Two Havana cigar and silently snipped off the end with a cutter she kept in the fine wooden box. Sensually, she licked the thirty-eight-ring-size cigar, sliding its full length inside her mouth and drawing it out. Then she took out a gold lighter, popped a flame, and drew the fire into the end of the six-inch-long Panatela, sucking a mouthful of the sweet smoke and letting it go.

Without batting an eye, cigar clenched in her teeth, Liberty, a Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the only woman assigned to its Special Operations branch at Quantico, reached behind a book on the second from the top shelf and took out a loaded and chambered Sig-Sauer P-226 nine-millimeter pistol, the same handgun carried by US Navy SEALs, and pointed it at the man.

He smelled the cigar’s aroma and casually looked over his shoulder, seeing the tall, statuesque, dark-haired beauty wrapped in the bath towel, smoking the stogie and holding the gun on him.

“I ought to have a camera,” he said, unruffled.

“You know, it’s loaded,” Liberty said.

“The cigar, the gun, or you?” He laughed. “Maybe all three after last night.”

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, Cesare,” she said, and unwrapped her shiny black hair and let it fall, still damp, covering her shoulders. She shook it hard and took another long drag off the cigar.

“Just checking a few things,” he said.

“You set me up, didn’t you? So you could check a few things.” She frowned. “And I kind of liked you.”

“You fell in love,” Cesare Alosi said, throwing his empty Sicilian-American charm at her. “So did I.”

“You’re too damned good-looking for your own good,” Liberty Cruz said, dismayed. “Yeah, the name got me, too, I’ll admit. The GQ -looking guy in the trim dark suit, dark eyes, olive skin, perfectly slicked-back black hair, and a name like Cesare Pierfrancesco Alosi. It got me. That and a few too many belts of Jack Daniel’s.”

“You had me, too, Liberty.” Alosi sighed. “The long cool woman in the black dress, working for the F-B-I. Just like the song. A tall walking big black cat.” And he began to sing, “With just one look I was a bad mess, ’cause that long cool woman had it all.”

Liberty laughed and let down the gun.

“You need to leave,” she said.

“But Special Agent Cruz,” he pled, “I’m in love with you! Love at first sight.”

“You love me so much you’re snooping out my laptop?” she said, her teeth now clenched and the gun raised again. Something about this too-pretty man pegged her bullshit meter in the red. His insincerity seemed too well played, practiced. “Your name really Abdullah from Goatville? Some kind of jihadi spy?”

“Actually,” Cesare said, getting to his feet and starting toward her, “you might recall me telling you how I am deploying in a few days to Iraq with my company, Malone-Leyva Executive Security and Investigations. We’re under contract with Department of Defense, working in al-Anbar. I’m going over there and may not come back alive. Doesn’t that at least draw some of your sympathies for me and justify our lovemaking last night?”

“Not so fast,” Liberty said, motioning with the gun for him to stop his advance and sit back down. “Going to Iraq doesn’t draw water with me. I know other people, a lot more worthwhile than your sorry ass, who’re going to Iraq, too.”

“The guy in the pictures?” Cesare asked. “A Marine gunnery sergeant. Handsome fellow. Gold wings and lots of ribbons. Tough guy?”

“You might just find out if you fuck around with me,” Liberty threatened. “Or I might just shoot your worthless butt here in my bedroom. You’re dressed, and I’m showered clean. I came out of the bathroom, found you snooping, and I killed you. Home invasion. Make my day. How about that?”

“But what about all those FBI agents and supervisory special agents who saw us leave together?” Alosi mused.

“Just try me,” Liberty Cruz threatened, and now her face turned red as the throttle controlling her anger engines went forward.

“I’ll leave,” the slick mercenary supervisor said, easing to his feet, his hands raised. He knew when he had reached a limit and didn’t want the beautiful Latina to lose her good senses and her temper and empty the magazine in him. Just as in their lovemaking, women like her never stop with one shot. They go a full fifteen-round capacity.