Charles Henderson - Terminal Impact

“What about Gunny Valentine, Lieutenant?” Elmore asked. “Does he know anything?”

“He heard that Abu Omar had him in his dungeon,” the Marine officer answered.

“Which dungeon?” Snow said, and walked to the old man. “Tell us which place! We have no time for games!”

The Marine speaking Arabic told the man what the colonel had said, and the goatherd pointed west. “There are three wells that direction and four wells that direction,” pointing south. “Abu Omar moves from one to another. But all of them are his strongholds. I do not know in which fortress he keeps Ash’abah al-Anbar .”

“What do we do?” Elmore asked the first sergeant and Staff Sergeant Martin, now surrounded by their men.

“Split up?” Cotton asked.

“Half go south and half go west?” Barkley agreed.

Elmore thought and shook his head no.

“We all go south,” Elmore said. “That place that took the bombs the other day, pilots said the place was burning when they pickled a pair of mark 82s down the chimney. Jack was there. Had to be. He showed up on YouTube right after. Omar’s headquarters can’t be far.”

Barkley took out a map section and spread it on the hood of his Hummer. “I marked all those locations that Espinoza had on his computer. Down here to the southwest is the oasis that got bombed, the place you believe Jack got snatched.”

Three other red dots sat in close proximity to the bombed-out camel stop, and the first sergeant pointed to each one. “These two don’t offer advantage, so we can hit them at the toss of a coin.”

Then Barkley put his finger on the red dot about twenty miles west of the Euphrates River, halfway between Haditha and Haqlaniyah.

“See the wadi down south and another wadi just north, both running east, not that far to civilization?” he said. “They use those wadis like highways. Keeps them off the skyline, and if a plane flies by, they pile up next to the ravine wall.”

Elmore looked at the topographical lines on the tactical map, studying the contours of the land. Then he looked to the southwest of the prime location and saw that Barkley had marked a red X there.

“What’s that?” Snow asked, pointing at the X.

“Rally Point Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Plan B,” the first sergeant answered. “That’s where we picked up your boys, and we killed a whole shitload of Hajis.”

“Given the size of that squad bay here,” Elmore said, looking at the red dots marked across the desert from Haditha and Hit to Syria and Jordan, “Abu Omar could house a force the size of a regimental landing team out there.”

“Yes, sir, he sure could,” Barkley said.

Elmore looked again at the red dot that Alvin Barkley had pointed out as the prime spot, not that far from Haditha.

“That’s Abu Omar’s headquarters,” Colonel Snow concluded. “What is it, twenty or thirty miles southwest of here?”

“Maybe that, Colonel Snow,” Barkley said. “But given the rough terrain, we go cross-country, it may take us two hours. We can shoot the gap soon as we get our Army counterparts and the Iraqis here to take charge of the prisoners and clear out the basement.”

Elmore looked at the house and checked his watch. “We can’t just blow it to hell and move on?”

“Sure, sir.” Barkley smiled. “But what about the prisoners? We can’t drag them along. How about we shoot them? Just like the Hajis do. Blow the shit out of the place and kill everybody.”

“You made your point, First Sergeant,” Elmore said, and let out a frustrated, deep breath. “We’ll wait.”

Then Colonel Snow looked at the poor old man and his family. They stood, huddled together, zip ties on their wrists, scared to death. The child tore at Elmore’s heart. This was the part of war he hated worst. It ranked right behind losing men.

Elmore knew more than most the toll that war takes not only on the warrior but the people trapped between sides. They do what they must to survive. They have no politics, except family and living.

As Dr. King had taught, justice does not exist without righteousness, and mercy does not exist without love. Elmore believed to be righteous, to be just, to be honorable, a man must take every opportunity to show mercy. It might turn a heart and win a war.

“Have somebody take the zip ties off that fellow and his wife,” Snow said. “And please get them off that little girl. They’re not combatants. They just live here.”

“Come and eat,” Giti called to the four men standing guard, two outside the house and two inside, AK rifles slung on their shoulders. They leaned their weapons in a line against the wall by the doorway, handy but out of the way, and sat down on four chairs at the kitchen table.

Amira and Miriam put bowls of stewed vegetables on the table, and Sabeen served the four guards from a large, cast-iron skillet with slabs of sizzling wild goat steaks. She forked out the four she had fried in the heavy pan and put two fresh ones on the fire to cook for Yasir, since he had brought home the meat.

“A wild goat that Yasir hunted on the desert,” Giti said, getting the tall pitcher of hot tea ready for the men. “You should thank him for this meal.”

One of the gunmen laughed as he began cutting his steak with a table knife. “Oh yes, this goat must be his fabled Boosolah, the white oryx. We will have unicorn next week.”

The other three laughed as Giti pressed the tea leaves, and got the beverage ready to pour in their cups.

“Here, let me,” Sabeen said, and took the pitcher from Giti.

The Syrian girl took something from her apron, and Giti watched as she lifted the lid to the tea pitcher and poured something inside it.

Giti mouthed words to her, “What did you do?”

Sabeen then opened her hand and showed Giti a triangular-shaped, small plastic squeeze bottle that had contained thirty milliliters of eye drops. On the label she read, “Visine. Gets the Red Out.”

“Eyedrops?” Giti mouthed, her eyebrows straight up, eyes peeled wide, her face expressing complete puzzlement.

Sabeen poured the tea, smiling, acting the hostess with the mostest. Then the heavyset girl shoved the pitcher into Giti’s hands, seeing smoke rolling off the meat in the skillet. “Here, take this!” she exclaimed, and ran to rescue Yasir’s steaks before they burned.

The guards got another laugh, seeing the fat girl hustle.

Sabeen wrapped a hot pad around the iron skillet handle and lifted it from the gas flames as she turned off the burner.

“Giti, take Yasir his plate of vegetables and the tea. I will follow you with the steaks,” Sabeen said, holding the hot, heavy, cast-iron skillet with both hands.

She had it all figured out. The minute she found the eyedrops in Abu Omar’s bedroom, sitting on his chest of drawers by his bottle of nasal spray. The desert heat and dry, dusty air played havoc on his sensitive eyes and nose.

As the girls went down the stairs, Giti whispered, “What have you done? What are we doing?”

“Escaping, silly,” Sabeen whispered back. “Trust me.”

Yasir sat on a stool with a rifle across his lap, by the big wooden door to the dungeon cell where Jack Valentine lay, waiting for his miracle, seriously praying that God would intervene somehow. Faith, at this point, was all the Marine had left.

It had been four hours since Abu Omar had departed with most of his men, and Jack expected the crew or a big part of them to come back soon. With each minute that he waited, his hopes sank, and the sincerity of his prayers grew stronger.

“We will not feed that man in there,” Yasir said, seeing the two steaks sizzling in the skillet.

“Certainly not,” Giti said. “It would be far too risky to open that door with so few of us here.”