Charles Henderson - Terminal Impact

“Crap,” he breathed to himself and checked to see if his intercom radio had taken a hit, too. It seemed okay as he examined the case, then he remembered turning it off to save the battery. He looked at the sky as the dozen Hajis departed out of the wadi, and he wished that the planes would now make a fourth pass. But they didn’t.

“I should have taken the chance and called them down!” Jack said to himself, and shrank into his hiding place. A sense of loss and utter frustration suddenly drained him.

Then he took a deep breath, stuffed the radios back in their pouches, and told himself, “Suck it up, Jack. You’ll be fine.”

Ray-Dean Blevins leaned against the passenger-side front fender of the Escalade, a sneer on his face, belching bad gas, watching State Department security officers and US Agency for International Development workers helping Iraqi police and Red Crescent attendants tend to the wounded. He considered it a waste of time. His face and posture visibly projected his surly attitude.

Freddie Stein sat in the backseat of the Cadillac, brooding, while Gary Frank stood on the other side of the car, trying to shake dry his pissed-wet pants and blubbering incoherently to anyone who had the misfortune of coming near him that he had nothing to do with the shooting.

“I was just driving!” he whined. “I followed orders.”

It didn’t take long for Cesare Alosi to roll onto the scene in his Cadillac behind a second car with a three-man crew of pipe-hitting shaved heads who looked like he had recruited them from a California prison. One even had a face tattoo. Spiderwebs across his cheek. A black widow by his eye. He and his partner, a guy with Nazi SS lightning bolts on his neck, both had UDT Freddy the Frogman inked on their forearms but wore navy blue ball caps with gold SEAL eagle, anchor, pistol, and trident emblems embroidered on them.

“SEAL, huh?” Ray-Dean said to the oversized thug with the face tattoo.

The guy touched his ball cap, and said, “Oh yeah.”

“What team? Six?” Cooder asked.

“Right, me and George,” the face-tattoo guy said, nodding toward his ugly partner.

“Seems like every guy I ever met with a shaved head and Navy tattoos was in SEAL Team Six. Kind of like Marine Snipers,” Blevins said. “George there your swim partner?”

“Naw. What do you mean, swim partner? I worked alone. Special missions,” he said, and George gave Cooder a look.

“All top secret, huh?” Ray-Dean said, nodding.

“Yeah,” the face-tattoo guy said.

“What was your class?” Blevins asked, his bullshit meter pinging. Even a slimeball Marine like Cooder has one.

“What do you mean, class?” George said, and he turned his SEAL cap around backwards.

“BUD/S class, dude. What class?” Ray-Dean asked, now having fun with the two phony apes, probably biker-gang dropouts. Maybe not even that.

“You know, that was quite a few years back,” George said. “What was it, Ken?”

“We went to SEALs straight from Army Green Berets,” Ken said. “They gave us a pass since we was already trained. We went to UDT school at Pensacola.”

“I never knew SEALs or even UDT had a school at Pensacola,” Blevins said.

“What were you, some kind of know-it-all jarhead?” Ken with the face tattoo said.

“Yeah, that’s me,” Cooder said.

“You assholes don’t know shit, so shut the fuck up,” George grumbled.

“I guess all your other team guys are dead, too? Some badass operation in Somalia?” Ray-Dean smiled. “All missions top secret and that bullshit?”

“Yeah,” George said, getting more pissed.

“What kind of medals you two collect? I bet you got a chest full. Those top secret missions and all. Lots of bragging rights, huh?” Blevins grinned even bigger.

“Fucking Navy Cross, and Ken has four, count ’em, four Silver Stars, shit stick,” George came back.

“Oh! Badass!” Ray-Dean exclaimed, half-drunk and smelling like shit.

“Keep up your wise-ass shit and we’ll show you badass,” Ken with the face tattoo growled.

“Just curious,” Ray-Dean said. “No disrespect, dude. What about Freddy the Frogman on your arm there? You UDT and SEAL both?”

“Fuckin’ A,” George said. “What the fuck did you ever do besides chop down all these unarmed civilians?”

“Shit, dude,” Blevins said. “Like I said, Marine Corps. All I got is an honorable discharge. I’m a pure piece of shit, and I know it. But hey, dude, I don’t claim to be someone I’m not.”

“What you saying?” George snarled, his hand going on his Glock strapped in a rig across his chest.

“Not a thing.” Blevins shrugged. “You got it, you wear it. I know a couple guys on SEAL Team Three, down at Ramadi, and a guy on their new Team Seven. I think he’s back at Coronado. I just never met anybody really from Team Six. That’s all. Until I met you two.”

“Shows what you fucking know,” Ken with the face tattoo said, and walked to the front of the Escalade, where Cesare Alosi busily talked with both hands to the US embassy chief of security.

“Yeah. I know shit. Fucking posers,” Ray-Dean grumbled, watching George walk to the front, too, and join the important people in conversation. Like he and his asshole buddy belonged in charge, too.

The embassy security boss shook his finger in Alosi’s face, and that made Ray-Dean grin, feeling a great deal of satisfaction, seeing the slick asshole getting a taste of shit put back in his mouth for once. Then Cesare glared at Blevins and came to him as the human waste leaned on the Cadillac’s fender looking narrow-eyed back at his master.

“You and these two idiots you call a crew, go pack your trash. You’re leaving Iraq,” the Malone-Leyva boss told Ray-Dean. “I’m booking you on the next flight out of Baghdad that has three open seats. Cargo or first class, it doesn’t matter. You’re out of here. I’ve had it.”

“Where to, sir?” Freddie Stein chirped, standing up through the sunroof. He had quietly put down the Escalade passenger window so he could hear what the boss had to say.

“Anyplace. I don’t give a shit. As long as you’re gone from my life,” Alosi answered. “Get as far from me as possible. You three are finished. Terminated. Fired. Let payroll know where to send your checks after we deduct today’s damages.”

Cesare took two steps away and stopped, looking at the Escalade. “Blevins, when I get you booked on a flight, drive that piece of shit to the airport. Leave the keys at our liaison desk. Don’t let me ever see you again. You copy?”

“Fuck you,” Ray-Dean said.

“Mr. Alosi, sir,” Gary Frank pled, hurrying around the car, his pants pissed wet, smelling harsh, and getting under Cesare’s nose, wreaking of steroid urine. “I just drove! I never fired a shot! Why are you canning me?”

Cesare looked at the sad sack with his urinated trousers. He didn’t know what to say, so he just walked away with the phony SEALs, George and Ken, and the other tattooed shaved head who drove their armored Escalade.

He told George, “Round up these passengers and get this caravan to the airport. Then see me at my office.”

“Tonight?” George asked, like it would interrupt his other important plans.

“That would be helpful,” Alosi said, and walked back to his car.

“Fuck him and the horse he rode in on,” Ray-Dean said, and slid in the driver’s seat, his ass squishing in the urine that filled the foam under the upholstery. He looked at Gary Frank. “Get the fuck in and shut the fuck up.”

Cooder looked in the back, and Freddie Stein still stood in the open sunroof, whimpering. “Sit the fuck down!”

Blevins then pulled the shifter into low D and smoked the tires as he left.