Charles Henderson - Terminal Impact

“Oh, Jack!” she wept, and kissed the picture, just as someone knocked on her door.

Her cheeks streaked with tears and her hair hanging straight and wet. Not a smudge of makeup on her face, she started not to answer it, but then the voice outside changed her mind.

“Liberty!” he said. “It’s Elmore. I know you’re in there, so open up.”

She ran to the door, and opened it. When Colonel Snow started to step inside, she threw her arms around him and kissed his cheek.

“Finally!” she cried. “Someone who loves me! Elmore, I need a hug so bad!”

The bristly gray old warrior smiled and gave her a big, long hug, and kissed her cheeks, tasting her tears. Then he looked into her eyes. “I’m so sorry about everything. I spoke to Jason Kendrick and he told me what happened. What he had to do. Girl, what got into your head?”

“Oh, Elmore,” Liberty said, and closed the door behind her dear friend. “I don’t care about all that.”

“Jason told me he had relegated you to security over the copy machine and supply closet,” Elmore said. “After the stunt you and the CIA pulled with that Malone-Leyva boss, what’s his name?”

Liberty laughed. “I should have gone ahead and killed the bastard. I planned on resigning from the FBI in a year or two anyway. Opening my own contracting business. Investigations, legal digging. Corporate intelligence. Some security work. That’s always been my goal, even before I went to law school. What Malone-Leyva proves to me, what I’ve always thought, is that a person with the right tools and contacts can get filthy rich in this business. I made some lasting friends with the CIA, and my contacts with DEA go way back. I’m ready to sprout wings and soar with the eagles.”

“So getting more or less canned is no big deal?” Elmore said.

“Not at all.” Liberty smiled. “It opened my cage and lets me fly.”

“To be honest,” Elmore said, “Kendrick had a good laugh about how you put that boy through the wringer. Satanic rock music in the dark? What did you hope to gain?”

“Satisfaction.” Liberty smiled again. “I just wanted to fuck him up.”

“Then why the tears?” Elmore asked.

“For a Marine colonel and a man married to one of the classiest women I have ever known, you’re not very smart,” Liberty said. Then Elmore noticed the little framed snapshot of her and Jack, lying on the bed.

“You know, I travel with a small framed picture of June and me,” Elmore said, picking up the photograph and looking at the couple, smiling in front of the motel sign. “Our tenth anniversary. Niagara Falls, of course. We stayed in a beautiful stone three-story bed-and-breakfast on the other side of the river, in Canada. Why haven’t you and Jack gotten married? He’ll never love anyone but you, and I know you won’t have anyone but him. What’s the holdup?”

“That’s part of why I was crying, the holdup,” Liberty said. “The biggest reason is my utter frustration with that asshole Senator Cooper Carlson. What could possess anyone, let alone a half-wit politician, to announce to the world and al-Qaeda that we have a Marine missing in the desert?”

“And tell them it’s one of their greatest enemies, on top of that?” Elmore added. “It’s one thing to tell them it’s a Marine, but to let them know it’s Jack Valentine, their so-called Ghost of Anbar? Carlson ought to be indicted for murder if they get their hands on Jack now.”

“I want to know who the hell told him!” Liberty fired back. “That’s the son of a bitch I want to lay hands on. What we did to Cesare Alosi is child’s play compared to what I want to do to the bastard that tipped off Carlson. Cut off his ears and fingers and feed them to the dog while he watches. Then cut off his dick and balls and stuff them down his throat.”

Elmore took a step back. “Your beauty is only exceeded by your wrath. What if I told you that Colonel Roberts suspects that the man responsible for tipping off Carlson is the same man you had in your torture chamber?”

“How’s that?” Liberty said, backing up, her eyes big.

“His S3, Major Rick Stepien, sat next to Mr. Alosi during the secret briefing about the redeployment of one-five’s forces, and Jack’s situation,” Elmore said. “Alosi spilled coffee on Rick’s trousers leg and boots. He said that the so-and-so lit right up when the colonel announced Jack’s name and said he was missing. The NSA’s investigating, but Carlson won’t cooperate. He insists that he received the information through legal channels and warns against any witch-hunting.”

“If Cesare was there, he told Carlson,” Liberty said. “They’re tight as Frick and Frack. Nobody else in Iraq would have done it. I wish I had known this while I had him chained to a chair in the CIA’s inquisition room.”

“I think it’s probably lucky for you that you didn’t know it,” Elmore said.

“Who in the hell else besides Alosi does Carlson propose could give him the information, legally?” Liberty asked, her arms folded and a frown on her face that would ice a lake.

“Carlson says that he receives legal information from constituents serving in Iraq daily,” Elmore said. “People who were not in that classified briefing and not constrained by the National Security Act, per se, but who knew of Jack’s missing in action and were compelled to ask their senator to put pressure on the president to rescue the man. Then Carlson goes on his rhetorical tirade about representing the truth and protecting the low-ranking people in uniform who suffer at the whims of the elite commanders.”

“Oh, what a crock of shit!” Liberty said.

“We had a lot of Marines on that reaction force that rescued my seven operators,” Elmore said. “They knew that Jack had stayed behind, and I am sure that was the talk of the teepee when they got back to base. Any number of people who heard the tale could have called the senator.”

“And Cesare Alosi skates again,” Liberty growled. “He is made of Teflon. Gets away with murder and sharing classified information with the enemy, and now this, too.”

“One day, God will judge him,” Elmore said, offering her consolation. “We have to forgive those who hurt us and pray for those who hate us.”

Liberty looked at him, pursed her lips, and replied, “Let God forgive him. I want to punish the slimy bastard.”

Elmore smiled at her. “You never answered my question.”

“What’s that? Marriage?” Liberty said, and laughed. “The short answer, Jack is just so Jack!”

Elmore laughed. “Yeah. That describes everything about Mr. Valentine. Jack is just so Jack. No other words can explain it. He is unique.”

“He paints pictures, pens poetry, writes literary-fiction short stories.” Liberty sighed. “He thinks that Harper Lee hung the moon. He keeps looking for her to publish a next novel. A sequel of To Kill a Mockingbird .”

“Don’t forget J. D. Salinger,” Elmore added.

“Oh, my goodness, yes! Jack Kerouac, too, but Salinger stole his heart.” Liberty laughed. “Jack drew a charcoal picture of how he imagined Holden Caulfield looked. I had it framed because it looks so much like Jack!”

“Ah, the Catcher in the Rye, Jack Valentine.” Elmore smiled.

“Why did you allow him to get that Bachelor of Arts degree?” Liberty asked. “Completely useless! What’s he going to do? Teach? Read Henry Miller to the boys?”

“They might enjoy hearing the stories written by that nasty Bohemian.” Elmore laughed.

“Seriously, Colonel Snow,” Liberty said. “You had to approve his off-duty classes. Why art and literature?”

“Jack is a classically educated man. Brilliant. Gifted in so many ways,” Elmore told her. “He’s studied Shakespeare and the Holy Bible cover to cover. He knows a Henri Matisse from a Claude Monet by just glancing at the painting when most Marines wouldn’t even know who they are. Jack feels the emotions of Pablo Picasso and Paul Cézanne when he shows you their works. He lights up! He laughs at the ridiculousness of life, seen in the works of Salvador Dali, and the lust of life shown to us in the works of such impressionists as Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh.