Charles Henderson - Terminal Impact

The captain took a deep breath. “Two weeks or so ago, First Sergeant Alvin Barkley personally hand carried our copy of that top secret operation order to this office and put it in my hands. I signed his classified documents logbook and accepted possession for the detachment. I placed that envelope on Colonel Snow’s desk.

“Corporal Butler, when you cleared the incoming correspondence and documents from his desk, you should have logged in that operation plan along with the other classified materials. Until that was done, you were under strict orders not to leave this office until all classified materials were secure. Am I correct?”

“Yes, sir, Captain Burkehart,” Corporal Butler said, his face dead pale and his heart about to stop.

“Then why can’t I find the one-five op plan in our classified files, and an entry in the logbook stating that it was placed in our files?” Burkehart said, steamrolling.

“I have no idea, sir,” Butler said. “I logged in everything. I swear, sir. I don’t read the stuff, I just log in the documents. Sir, I’m at a complete loss.”

“I received a flash message just a few minutes ago, urgent fucking on fire,” Burkehart said. He looked at his two dumbfounded Marines, and added, “At ease.”

“What happened, sir?” Billy asked, now frightened.

“CIA intelligence reports that the operation plan’s security has been compromised. Information from it, if not the entire bloody plan, may have fallen into enemy hands,” the captain told the two Marines. “All recipients of the operation plan have been ordered to inventory their classified files and account for all copies of it.”

He took a deep breath. “Gentlemen. We have a problem.”

“Sir, Jack and the team have a lot bigger problem,” Billy said. “Did you read their portion of the operation plan? They’re out in the middle of no-man’s-land, on patrol with no immediate support. You’ve got to figure that if the enemy has this plan, they also know all the contingencies and have them addressed.”

The captain hung his head. “Keenly aware, Billy. That’s why Colonel Roberts has ordered a halt to the operation and a redeployment of forces. More or less they’re going to do a little hip shooting, hoping to catch the Hajis trying to catch us.”

“But what about Gunny Valentine and the team?” Butler asked.

“Hopefully, he’s got our people dispersed and they’re getting the word to fall back and regroup, too,” Burkehart said. “But back to the burning question. How did that operation order disappear from our hands? Who’s been in our office?”

“There was that drop-dead-gorgeous FBI agent looking for Gunny Valentine. Then those three guys from Malone-Leyva,” Smedley offered off the top of his head.

“Liberty Cruz, the gunny’s better half,” Billy-C said. “Very unlikely candidate. Did she even go in the headquarters office?”

Ralph shook his head no.

“Hacksaw Gillespie and those other two guys from Malone-Leyva, Kermit and Habu, they’re old friends of Jack’s. Marines from the old days,” Billy said.

“I know Top Gillespie, and both Kermit Alexander and Cory Webster,” Captain Burkehart said. “Back in the old days, when I was a young buck sergeant. They’re rough as a cob but straight-arrow. Besides, I was in the office the whole time when they stopped by on their way out to Hit, wanting to see Jack. They’re contracted to the CIA. All three hold top secret clearances.”

“Then again, sir,” Billy offered. “You never know about a guy. Not the first time good guys went bad.”

“For a price,” the captain added. “Money brings out the evil, that’s for sure.”

Corporal Butler began searching around like a dog in a round room looking for a corner, like he suddenly had to take a shit.

Captain Burkehart looked at him and gave him a nod to run to the head. Smedley took off, and the captain looked at Billy-C. “Poor kid has like a spastic colon. Gets the drizzles at a drop of a hat. Nerves mostly. Especially bad when he gets excited. He’s the guy that can get the shit scared out of him. Literally.”

Billy laughed. “Sorry, sir. Smedley’s a good Marine, but spastic colon is not something I want by me in a hide.”

“That’s why he’s our admin clerk and supply NCO,” Burkehart said. “He wants to be a super trooper so bad he can taste it. I really feel for the guy.”

“Yeah,” Billy said. “We still let him wear the haircut and suit. Definitely, he’s one of ours.”

As the captain nodded agreement, Corporal Butler hurried back from the head.

“Sir, I know who stole that operations plan,” he said. “I had to take a shit. Like just now. He’s a Marine, so I asked him to watch the phone for five minutes. Not even five. He must have taken it. I’m pretty sure he came the same day that you had that big pile on Colonel Snow’s desk.”

“Marine?” Billy asked.

“Who was it?” Captain Burkehart followed.

“I made an entry in the duty NCO log, when he left,” Smedley said, and went to his desk for the ledger. He thumbed through several pages, found it, and smiled. “Ray-Dean Blevins. He works for Malone-Leyva.”

Walter Gillespie used a set of picklocks to get in Ray-Dean Blevins’s apartment door. He had carried the burglar tools in a zipper case ever since he bought them in Medellín, Colombia, on his last drug-interdiction tour with Elmore Snow, Mutt Ambrose, Kermit, Habu, and Jack Valentine.

The smell of dirty clothes and a filthy, sex-stained bed stopped him for at least two steps.

“We get free maid service. Why doesn’t he use it?” Hacksaw said, looking around the efficiency kitchenette hotel room.

He didn’t even want to see what went on in the bathroom. The living room that doubled as a bedroom was a disaster, so he went in the kitchen. He smiled as he pulled out the silverware drawer.

“Perfect,” he said, as he looked in it and saw the same kind of white-plastic organizer that he had in his own apartment kitchen’s utensil drawer.

Walter took the paper copy of the operation plan, which he had carried in the back of his pants waist, under his shirt, and put it beneath the silverware organizer. Then he took the thumb drive, wiped clean of fingerprints, and dropped it in the back left corner of the drawer, exactly like Alosi or Blevins or both of them had hidden it in his apartment.

When he walked out of the flat, and locked the door behind himself, he called Chris Gray.

“It’s done,” Hacksaw said.

“Good,” Gray said. “Too bad we didn’t know yesterday.”

“Why’s that?” Gillespie asked.

“I just heard on the net that Gunny Valentine and his seven Marines got in some serious shit,” Gray said. “Heavy fire from three sides.”

“Ghost One, Corsair Three. React team notified,” one-five’s operations chief told Jack Valentine on the crypto secure command and control voice network.

As he said it, Alvin Barkley and a fifty-man strike team already knelt at the edge of their landing zone, waiting for air lift to arrive to take them to the endangered Marines. With them was Jack’s Mob Squad. The first sergeant knew he couldn’t keep Iceman, Nick the Nose, Pizza Man, and Momo out of the fight. He didn’t even try, but called them first. Besides, the four MARSOC Marines had a kitful of Fleet Anti-terrorism Security Team training. They’d be handy.

Sergeant Jorge Padilla and the big brindle Malinois with titanium canines, Rattler, knelt close to First Sergeant Barkley and listened to the voice exchanges coming from the handset on the radio strapped to the communications Marine squatting on the other side of the strike-force leader with the big knife. Next to him, all four members of the Mob Squad listened, too.