Charles Henderson - Terminal Impact

“Same chick I saw in the pictures on your laptop. Liberty Cruz,” Cotton said. “Billy says she’s FBI. One fucking hot agent, if you ask me.”

“You’re looking at my laptop?” Valentine bleated.

“Billy-C was looking at your pictures, and I saw all the eye candy over his shoulder. That tall dark drink of fine wine you got on there. Shots of her in that tiny bikini were killer,” Cotton said, pulling at his belt and shaking his balls back down his pants legs. “You fucking hurt me. You know that, Jack?”

“I hope you die,” Valentine said, and flipped the phone shut as he walked outside.

He punched in Liberty Cruz’s speed-dial cell number, and she answered on the first ring.

“Damn, you must feel guilty about something,” Jack said, “answering on the first ring. What’s up?”

“I am so excited about this weekend.” She swooned. “I’ve got a room booked in Jacksonville for us, and dinner reservations at Thig’s Barbecue House. You always telling me how you love that place. We’re going to get some of their fall-off-the-bone ribs and swine wine barbecue sauce. Oh, Jack, I have missed you so bad!”

“Where are you?” he asked, not having a clue about the text-message conversation that had gone on while he had briefed his snipers.

“I told you, Jack!” Liberty exclaimed. “I’m here in Jacksonville. SERE School. I check in Monday. I had a choice of Florida or Camp Lejeune, and I chose here. You’re here. Why then would I go to Florida?”

“Sorry, babe.” Jack sighed. “It’s been a rough week. My brains are fried.”

“You put some pretty serious stuff in those text messages,” Liberty chirped. “I hope you’re not too fried to live up to all that bragging.”

Jack torqued his jaws and considered how he could get even with Cotton Martin. Billy-C Claybaugh was in on it, too. He was back there, next to Cotton. Both of them sending the text messages. Valentine had hoped for a quiet weekend alone in his little cottage down by the Swansboro docks. Maybe do some fishing, and finish the seascape painting he had been dabbing in oils for the past several weeks. Painting and drawing relaxed his mind, and his artwork was quite good.

When he retired from the Marine Corps in a few years, he thought of disappearing down to Santa Maria, Mexico. A little village below a trout lake in the mountains of Chihuahua, 150 miles southwest of Juarez. He and his dad used to go there when he was a kid. Crystal-clear water and fat fish. Simple country people and no pressure.

He also loved Liberty Cruz, ever since high school. Nobody else. He had his one-nighters, but no one of a relationship status. He had Liberty and wished she could understand the beauty of his simple life’s dream.

Her ambition and obsessive mind-set for accomplishing her agenda of wealth and the big house on the Riviera had kept him from ever asking her to marry him. Yet she was the only woman Jack Valentine had ever loved.

“Why don’t you pick me up and we’ll just find out,” Jack said. “I’ll leave my truck here at the schoolhouse for the weekend. We’ll bury the phones and get lost in our lust. How’s that sound?”

Liberty laughed. “Oh, Jack. I’m on my way!”

“We can swing by my place in Swansboro, let me pick up an overnight kit and clean clothes,” Jack said.

“Still not wearing underwear, Jack?” Liberty giggled.

“Nada.” Jack grinned. “Commando through and through. I also have a big watch.”

“Oh yeah!” Liberty laughed, and hung up.

When Cesare Alosi checked in with his headquarters in Baghdad, he met three former Marine Scout-Snipers now working for Malone-Leyva. One had retired as a master sergeant, and the other two had left the Marine Corps in the mid-nineties. A bit on the mature side, he thought, but still solid.

As the stylish boss, in his tan 5.11 operator’s shirt and matching trousers, bloused over roughed-out Army Ranger jump boots, and a black operator ball cap on his head, smelling of the latest Versace men’s cologne, put out his hand, Hacksaw Gillespie had a good laugh as he shook it.

“Sorry, boss, but you smell too good for these parts,” he mused. “I recommend you keep the flu-flu in the locker, or you’ll have one of these Iraqi sweet peas trying to park his pork up your caboose.”

Alosi let go of his paw and put his hand in his pocket. He didn’t bother shaking hands with Kermit Alexander or Cory Webster. All three of the mercenaries, now working for Malone-Leyva as contract hit men and executive bodyguards, wore black “do-rag” bandanas tied over their heads like Hulk Hogan. All three wore moustaches and goatees, too.

They dressed in cargo jeans and Under Armour T-shirts and wore Advanced Operator vests with the pockets stuffed with gadgets. Their legs were Velcro strapped with semiauto .45 caliber pistols, sporting flashlights on rails.

“So,” Alosi said, and paused for effect, eyeballing Hacksaw, then Kermit The Frog and Habu last. “You guys are like what? Pirates?”

“Yarrrr!” Hacksaw grinned back, flashing gold-capped front teeth and pointing to a diamond ear stud. Then he slipped on a pair of Ray-Ban black-framed shades. “We got to look badass for the clients. Didn’t you read the handbook?”

“I wrote the handbook,” Alosi said.

He walked around the men’s office, which also doubled as transient sleeping quarters, should a team have to work days and nights. The place was a wreck. Trash was on the floor, and beer bottles filled three overflowing garbage cans.

“Home sweet shit hole,” Hacksaw said.

“I agree,” Cesare said. “I thought you guys were Marines. You know, squared away. Disciplined.”

“We didn’t sign on to do maid work or housecleaning,” Kermit snapped back. “You want home sweet shit hole cleaned up, hire a maid.”

“Yeah,” Habu chimed in, pissed off, already not liking this dressed-up sweet-smelling Don Juan.

“I’ll do just that,” Alosi said, went to the desk, swept crap out of the chair, and sat. “What are your stories?”

“I retired from the Corps a few years back, E-eight and glad to leave,” Hacksaw said, stepping up to do the talking. Kermit and Cory were happy to have him do it.

“Staff Sergeant Webster there ran a sniper gun and our old boss, Gunny Mutt Alexander, spotted for him. I worked as a spotter with another Marine,” Hacksaw said. “We hunted cocaine cowboys down in Colombia and Chile back in the eighties and nineties. Killed a whole raft of them.”

“Really?” Alosi said, a smile crossing his face, and he cocked his feet on the desk.

“We was in the Gulf War, the first one, for a short bit, but got back down south where we enjoyed the work more, and the women, if you know what I mean.” Gillespie grinned.

“Don’t misunderstand Hacksaw. We didn’t party,” Webster interjected. “We worked hard. Killed a lot of bad guys.”

“You were all Force Recon then?” Alosi asked. “They got the drug-interdiction missions down there, if memory serves me right.”

“Correct, sir,” Kermit offered. “Captain Elmore Snow led us. Great man. I’d follow him to hell and back.”

“I’ve heard the name,” Cesare said, then looked at the three, considering their ages and experience. “You ever hear of a Marine Scout-Sniper, Jack Valentine? I think Force Recon, too, gold jump wings and lots of shirt salad.”

All three men laughed.

“He’s our bro, bro,” Hacksaw said. “Shit, I spotted his first kill. Down by Hillah, during the Gulf War.”

“Really?” Alosi beamed. “He’s headed over here, you know. Leading a MARSOC team, they say.”

“Awesome!” Habu said. “Oh, you’ll like Jack. Everybody likes Jack!”