Charles Henderson - Terminal Impact

“So I gather,” Cesare said, still smiling. “Some more than others.”

The three Marines didn’t quite know how to take the last comment but let it slide.

“You know,” Hacksaw said, looking side to side as if someone might eavesdrop. Then in a low voice added, “Jack Valentine put the bullet in Pablo Escobar’s ear.”

“I thought Colombian National Police shot him when they raided his hideaway town house in Medellín,” Alosi said. “All the Wikipedia and Google stuff says it.”

“Bullshit! Pure bullshit,” Hacksaw said, and looked at his boys. The other two nodded at their new boss.

“Jack Valentine shot Pablo Escobar in the ear from three hundred yards using an Australian Special Air Service M55, Tikka sniper rifle with a ten-power Leupold scope, shooting the .22-250 Remington cartridge with a 52-grain hollow-point boat-tail Sierra MatchKing bullet,” Kermit Alexander said. “Like a bolt of lightning. Four thousand feet per second! I was there. So were Habu and Hacksaw, and Sergeant Major Ray Ambrose and our officer in charge, Captain Elmore Snow. We all saw Jack make that shot.”

“We were down there in Colombia in ’92 and ’93, with the CIA running special operations dovetailed into that Los Pepés uprising they had going on,” Cory Webster explained.

“Yeah, I’ve heard about the Los Pepés thing.” Alosi nodded.

“Jack got that Aussi gun off a British SAS operator working with our group and the Los Pepés brigade. Sad story there. His whole team got bushwhacked by Escobar’s men,” Webster went on. “Sergeant Valentine had made close friends with that Tommy, an outstanding SAS paratrooper and special operator. Easy to get tight with soldiers like that. When we found him and his lads dead on the road, old Jack got real mad. Trail was still hot, so we went on the hunt.

“Just one valley over, we found the bastards, doped up, counting their loot. We killed every last one of the dirty bastards with no mercy. They threw their hands up, but we shot ’em anyway. We wasn’t police, and they needed killin’.

“They had the dead Brit’s rifle among the other stuff they stole, so Jack took it. He cleaned it up and put it to good use.

“That was one hot shootin’ gun, and our boy knew how to use it. When Sergeant Valentine killed Pablo Escobar, that was the last round he ever fired with that rifle. I guess it closed the book for him and that British boy. Grave sealed. Justice served.”

“What happened to the rifle?” Cesare asked.

“We shipped it stateside with our gear, and Jack took it home,” Hacksaw said. “Knowing him, it’s tucked away someplace. He’d never get rid of it. Too many memories.”

“So, once again, history and Google are wrong.” Alosi smiled. “Jack Valentine killed Escobar, not the police.”

“Colombian National Police couldn’t hit a bull in the ass with a bass fiddle.” Gillespie laughed. “But with us working some deep-cover black ops, the CIA felt all too happy to give those shit turds a day in the sunshine. Besides, Escobar’s big brother put the hit on them. We didn’t need that grief. Best let them have the credit.”

“We found Escobar hiding out in a fancy apartment and called the sheriff,” Habu told Cesare. “Police surrounded the building and Pablo went out the second-story French doors, climbed over the wrought-iron railing off the little patio, and tried to escape down the red-tile roof. I remember it like yesterday. Jack Valentine was on the rifle, and Captain Snow had the binoculars on Escobar. He gave the command to shoot him, and Jack dropped the bastard like a sack of rocks. Blew the wax out of his ears and the holy dogshit out of his head.”

“I look forward to meeting this man, Gunnery Sergeant Jack Valentine.” Cesare Alosi smiled.

“Oh, you’ll like him,” Hacksaw said. “Everybody does.”

“Yes, you said that.” Alosi smiled.

A black Cadillac Escalade with armored doors, floors, and bulletproof glass led two others just like it out of the United States embassy compound, Baghdad. A Marine and Army security contingent joined them as they blew past the blast gates onto Haifa Street rolling west, guns up, throttles down. The high-speed wagon train had just turned onto the Qadisaya Expressway to intercept Airport Street, which led to Baghdad International, when suddenly the Escalade out front slammed brakes to a full stop. There it sat, dead center of the fast track of the high-walled concrete-flanked four-lane.

Two up-armored, M1025 sand-tan Marine Humvees, with M2 .50 caliber machine guns on 360 turrets up top, had the VIP sedan, the second black Escalade, sandwiched between them. The third black Escalade followed next, with a fully loaded Cougar HE, six-by-six, Mine Resistant Ambush Protected troop truck close behind. A six-man squad of unhappy Army infantry rode inside the MRAP with its crew while a lone warrior manned an MK19 forty-millimeter grenade-launching street-sweeper machine gun from the truck’s well-fortified dorsal turret.

Several times daily, caravans like this carried American embassy diplomats, CIA field operators, and staff workers to and from the airport for flights, or meetings with Iraqi state bankers, walled inside airport security, or to and from skull sessions at the Al Faw Palace, a postcard picture of imperial luxury surrounded by a reflecting-pond moat in the heart of Camp Victory. The base sat next to the airport, within the same high walls of security, where the American-led Allied coalition headquartered its bosses and key planners. And the home of Elmore Snow and his MARSOC team as well.

Jack Valentine rode shotgun while Billy Claybaugh drove the front Hummer, a good interval behind the lead Escalade and ahead of the VIP car. Cotton Martin rode shotgun in the Hummer following the sedan with Sergeant Clarence “Cochise” Quinlan driving. Corporal Petey Preston ran the Maw-Duce in the turret, with Corporal Randy Powell assisting him.

Elmore Snow and his twenty-two-man MARSOC team had landed in Iraq two weeks ago and had not seen the outside of Camp Victory since. Except for the opportunity to run security on a couple of high-speed caravans from the embassy to the airport. It was something for his operators to do while they waited to slide into the tall grass on their primary mission, hunting Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Jaws manned the turret on Valentine’s Humvee while Bronco assisted him. Corporal Cortez kept protesting that he should run the .50 and Corporal Gomez should assist him.

“Alex, come on,” Jesse whined. “We can take turns, dude.”

Jaws ignored him, both hands on the gun, as if he owned it.

Gunny Valentine was ready to throw Bronco Starr out the door when the lead Cadillac smoked tires to a dead stop on the expressway.

“You locked and cocked, Jaws?” Jack yelled to the backseat. Both Billy-C and Valentine had their M4s up and ready.

“I’ve been locked and cocked, Gunny,” Gomez answered. He spun a 360, looking for a target, and shouted down below, “Not a thing happening out here. No gunfire. Nothing. I don’t get it.”

Bronco leaned between the front seats, looking out the windshield.

“Why they stop, boss?” he asked.

“Just be ready to feed ammo,” Jack answered, searching everything that surrounded them.

“Sniper?” Bronco asked.

Then the radio crackled from the lead Cadillac, manned by security contractors from Malone-Leyva, “We’re taking heavy fire!”

“So we stop and make ourselves better targets?” Staff Sergeant Claybaugh fumed.

“I don’t see a thing!” Jack said, pissed off.

Before Jack could get on the radio and ask the embassy security officer what he wanted to do, gunfire erupted from the up-front black Escalade.