Parting Gifts and a Memory

4 Months later:

He finished the phone call with Brigadier General Michael Sherrill Denton… PFC Mark Denton’s dad. Cliff was satisfied. Everything was done but the deed. There would be a delivery system, all mercs from one of the big contractors the US military contracts with… the smaller, personal missions, more subversive exercises… the kind they didn’t want the U.S. Military’s marketing department hung for. But the special request from Cliff and his people, “Escort and support only. We want to kick the doors in. No one else!” Granted.

There would be three envelopes for the veterans, one for each. Passports, Dignitary Credentials, foreign driver’s licenses… all names they could barely pronounce…. Diplomats, doing diplomatic things, seeking foreign muscle to quell certain borders, certain enemies… and it all had to be quiet, confidential work. Expensive work. They had their contractor identified for these international endeavors. He operated out of Istanbul. Everything was set, and the plane would be in the air in 45 minutes.

He called the number in Nevada, keeping his promise.

“Hello Mr. Polite, long “E”, spelled like Polite.”

“Hello, Sheriff…”

“Sheriff? Fuck that, cowboy, your fraternity of war makes us comrades, don’t it?” She laughed… of course she would, still recovering from surgeries and learning to use her right hand again.

“You’re right, Darlene,” Cliff smiling in chagrin, “Sorry, I won’t make the mistake again.” she was chuckling at her hometown bravado. “Tell me, how you’re doin’?”

“Therapy this and therapy that, walk here, walk there, and can’t wait till they let me run! Pretty soon, they’ll be teaching me how to shit again too! But I’m getting close, Cliff. I’ll be cuttin’ this friggin’ colostomy bag soon. I’ll be free in two or three weeks, I think. That’s what they keep tellin’ me anyway.”

“That’s great, Darlene. Great news!” His eyes glassed in wanting tears, his mates listening to the conversation, remembering the face and the hearty soul of the woman on the other end… “Tough bitch” they would call her, only with the highest degree of respect. “You gonna go into some easier line of work when you’re out?” It was meant as a joke, it got shot down.

“Hell, no! What this did concerning the Governor’s and the National Guard’s response? The media chopped ‘em up for their failures… and, much as I don’t deserve it, losing 13 men in one fucking night…” her words caught in her throat for the memory, “… the city wants me back in the saddle, if you can believe it.”

“Hell, Darlene, they got the right sheriff, and we all know it… I’m just concerned about you taking the job again after all of that…”

“After all that…” he said.

********* ******* ********

Art had joined Darlene as bookends to the shattered doorway into the hotel, the devastation from the breach explosions cast all along the hallway. Johnny and Cliff turned the corner, joining the other two. It was a fool’s short life if they had tried the front door. But that would be first bit of business.

With the fires catching in the carpets, Art and Darlene led the entry, high-stepping through the burn, Cliff and Johnny following… those two took positions at the bottom of the stairwell, leaning on the outer walls, weapons trained upward through the walkway. It was a switchback stair, so they could only see up to the first landing, certain there was more awaiting them above.

Art, having kept the duffel handy as his tag along, reached in and pulled out a “blooper gun”, and loaded the M-79 with a canister. The intent was to eradicate any obstructions. He took aim at the front doors first and called out, “Grenade out!” and he fired, the notable “bloop” flopped the grenade canister into the door assembly; it was nothing he would wait to see, as he jumped back to the fore-wall protecting he and Sheriff Coyle from the igniting munitions. A loud THWUMP! overlapping with another blast that was the boobytrap, shook the building, casting shards and shrapnel in all directions. The crackle of debris sounded like a rain of trinkets, the smoke and dust was smothering.

Art backtracked to the stairwell, loaded another canister and stood to the side, Johnny stepping away from the position. “Grenade out!” Cliff pulled to the side and held his ground. Art shot the cannister off the wall and the explosion snookered the munitions the Turks had planted in the higher stairwell, igniting a mammoth explosion, blowing fire and hot debris up and down the stairwell.

The dual blast pasted the Turk to the hall wall, and he fell to the floor, just a couple paces from the dead American and Yusef, the fire braising corpse and fighter alike, hair was singed to stubble. With a blistered, red face and half a moustache, the fighter slid himself up to his knee, assuming mop-up kills would be all that was required thinking the Americans died in their own arrogant assault. And through the haze of flames came a figure charging up the last stairs, running from the blaze as much as to gain high ground. The Turk strafed the space as he dove to the side, aiming to create separation from bullets and fire.

Sheriff Coyle stumbled to the top stair and fell to the floor. It was the escape of flame she sought, but the bullets she caught.

Cliff had followed the rowdy battler, skipping through the fires as they tamped through, and he grabbed Darlene and pulled her up. Her Sig Sauer 226 was lying on the ground somewhere, her limp right hand hanging to her side, swinging free of any control, it was dislodged by the automatic weapon’s fire yet not separated from her arm. She held it up, expecting deliberate movement, and it flopped as she brought it up, her face stone-cold, red from the fire… she began coughing and just declared, “He shot my hand off, Cliff. He shot my shootin’ hand right off.”

Cliff grabbed her around her waist and burst into the hall with his UMP turned down the hall, letting it spray in cover fire as he hauled the sheriff to a door marked “laundry” and he powered through, dragging Darlene in and to the floor within. The fire or the bullets were their choice, he made it this far out of desperate escape.

Johnny followed them up and was positioned at the top of the stairwell with no safe place to go, fire at his heels, he held his shirt over his face to manage the smoke. Cliff rose, looking out the door, and shouted from their safe position, “Haji is in one of the hotel rooms. Probably the first.”

Johnny turned down the smoking stairwell and shouted, “Art get to the front of the building, gunning, Haji might be running from a window!”

Both warriors had fully reverted to the warring men they had once been, in a theater of war they could never forget, and Haji was the enemy whether they were Iraqi insurgents or these Turkish operatives.

Both vets gazed down the hall with no enemy in sight, and Cliff turned to Darlene, “You stay here, Sheriff… We’re goin’ for him.”

She was seated on the floor, her pants wet from the shrapnel wounds she had initially received, and her arm was a river. Cliff shook his head, then kneeled, stripped his belt and went to work on Sheriff Coyle. “I’m gonna have to put a tourniquet on or you’re gonna leak all over this pretty damn carpet.” She laughed, and nodded, conceding her condition, or that the carpet was pretty… “But you stay put now. I’ll come right back for ya.” Nothing more than battle directions. He got up and pushed out the door.

**********************

Cliff took point, and realized it was Donnie lying face down in the carpet, “Keep me covered.” Johnny leveled his M-16 down the hall, gave a warning burst as a coming promise to the Turk, Bdd-rrr-rripp!

Cliff felt for a pulse, and got something, “He’s alive!” He immediately hoisted the limp body up, but realized Donnie was also putting his feet to use, while impotent and almost inert. “Stay with me, D! I got ya, gonna get you out of here!” It was all fire, bullets or the smoke gaining ground in the hallway… they wouldn’t have much time.

He swung the laundry door open, sooner than Sheriff Coyle expected and she went to her holster, prepared to shoot it out, realizing again she was disarmed. “Easy, Darlene. It’s Donnie, and it’s not good.” He laid him down on his stomach to discourage the free-pour of blood from the wounds across his back. Donnie’s mouth was dripping with it, his lungs were filling, meaning they had to end this all fast or Donnie wouldn’t make it.

He quickly looked about, pulled open a cabinet and grabbed a handful of towels, feeling like a triage nurse, he threw them down on Donnie’s unmoving body, “Sheriff, stuff what you can! I’ll be right back.” He turned back out, while Darlene already to her knee, began stuffing the tunic with towel after towel, hoping to pack sufficiently to stem the blood flow… but she was also growing dizzy, and she realized this might be a race between she and the vet lying before her.

Cliff took point, Johnny on his left and paces apart, no easy bullet doing both the vets. The first hotel room door was closed, assuring them they had located the Turk. He felt at his belt, and realized he had used his lone flashbang, and Johnny too, in aiding the escape of the hostages. It would have to be old brazen work. Cliff gave the door a powerful kick, hoping to knock it into another world, and it broke from its seat, the casing splintering, and he dove low, Johnny turning the corner, his M-16 firing in the instant as a message, and to force a defensive reaction, making themselves less the easy kills. Silence followed. Cliff stayed low, rolling against the wall to his left… Johnny went into a crouch, and ducked into the room, laying down flat.

*********************

Darlene heard the M-16 fire, then the buckling in of a door, and another quick burst. She shook her head for the foolishness. Tending to a wounded comrade was no way to die, she thought. Noble, yes, but knowing her own dire condition, logic told her she had to move, the war needed to be over, hell was waiting one way or the other.

She stood and teetered for a moment, looking at her right hand dangling in useless sway, she exited the laundry, retracing her steps to her own blood on the carpet. Curiously the fire had dissipated, having sucked much of the oxygen from the upper level, the smoke in the stairwell was starving out the blaze, despite she still had to tamp it with her boot just to find her pistol. It had fallen and canted against the baseboard, almost in sentience avoiding the fire itself. She kneeled, fearing if she bent over she would fall, she collected her weapon in her left finger and thumb, expecting a torching touch. She was pleased to feel its friendly familiarity, and an easy warmth as if she had just spent the last hour firing it at the range, she coddled the weapon, and let it slip into her wanting palm.

She stood, putting her right shoulder to the wall, her hand flopping and oddly she felt her knuckles clip the wall it was swinging so freely. She grimaced at the thought of rehab… It was the most optimistic thing she had concluded in the night… and for what reason? She, herself was nearly dead… And maybe that was why.

She heard the vets let out another burst in the first suite, and she heard no return volley. It was a ruse, she figured, in her fugue and newly drifting thoughts, because if the enemy were in a small space as a hotel room and they were receiving no return fire… the Turk was not there…

And she was right!

*************************

The Turk had waited until he heard the door blasted into splinters in the neighboring suite, then he allowed time for their entry… he heard a weapon’s burst… then another. He already felt like the victor, because he fooled the weak Americans, and he turned out the open door looking down the hall. Vacant… he could hear the cracking of furniture, a door sliding, the Americans were tossing the room, but he would lose his surprise soon, as discovery was imminent, they were looking for him in the wrong room.

He lifted the MP5 into shooting position, and walked the hall, his back to the wall on the door side, so he could turn his surprise into treacherous volleys of death. He stood at the doorjamb, his barrel up, then pounced around the corner, leveling his weapon… and he heard shots from his right… a barking, mean weapon shouting out in defiance at the Turk, and he felt impact on impact in his side, full, igniting punches to his rib cage folded the man over in pain.

The Turk fell to the ground on his left side, and he rolled to his back to try and free his weapon to return fire, yet already feeling lost. The woman in a uniform had been standing at the edge of the stairwell, she had been secured covertly around the corner at the stair, almost in anticipation of the assault he had planned for the Americans…

******************

Darlene walked easily up the hall, her gun trained on the fallen Turk, looking down the sight, step after easy step. The killer tried to get his machine pistol around to fire and she let three more rounds clip into the gun and his hands, immediately separating the gun and disarming the working mechanisms. The gun flopped back to the side, useless. The Turk now at her mercy… that which she had nothing left.

“Lucky me, I can shoot well with both hands!” She emptied the balance of her magazine into the face of the foreign killer. She leaned against the wall, finally feeling like the war was over. She knew that all nine of her shots hit their mark, and she was confident there was little spread. Because, if there was anything Darlene Coyle knew, despite being a pretty damn good baker, and an even better sheriff, she was a crack-shot with both hands, and few could hold a candle to her prowess with her weapon. The dead Turk was the proof.

*********************

Donnie gasped more than talked, but in the gravity of last wishes, those last survivors surrounded him, first in failed efforts to fix what surely couldn’t be fixed; but then, the last decisive work he had to commit to. And he insisted they all agree.

“Just get me that fucker’s clothes…” wheezing, “…put his shit on me… and get me to the roof… They have an evacuation any minute…”

“D, we can take out the bird. There’s still the RPG and one last pug. We can shoot it down.”

Donnie just shook his head, a ghastly pale ghost, far from the man he was in heartier times, “No… No fuckin’ around. Miss that one shot… and they got surviv…” he coughed up blood and spat, letting a string of blood drift from his mouth… “they’d have survivors… I ain’t lettin’ that happen.”

Cliff pleaded with his Lance Corporeal, “Donnie, we got rescue on the way.”

“Yea… but I know the good sheriff wouldn’t endanger them…” his breaths were coming in hurried gasps, “…so they don’t come up until… until the bird comes and goes… right?”

Sheriff Coyle, her right arm splinted loosely and bound in adequate triage from Art, was nodding in agreement, knowing it also assured this man’s death, for he had nothing left in the tank.

“I’ll drive you, D!” Their sergeant wouldn’t concede.

“Stop, Cliff… you fuckin’ mutts!” He retched and winced in heaving pain. “You know this is right…” They would debate to no end; he wouldn’t allow it. In the end, no one could argue, they did know it was right; they just didn’t want it to be. “Just do me a favor, Cliff… Take St. Save Your Ass with you guys…” He pulled his St. Michael necklace from around his neck and put it into Cliff’s shaking hand. He looked up at his old friend and sergeant and calmly said, “He pulled me out of a dozen bad ones…” He was now gasping, spitting blood again. Their heads hung low, their solemn last maneuvers would be to remain in silence, unseen, while Donnie gets picked up for an evacuation.

Donnie hugged his mates, with one long one for Sheriff Coyle, then returning to Cliff, he felt the need to sustain his old boss, “You’ll be fine, Cliff…” wheezing, clicking in his words, “…You carry the weight better than any man I ever knew… Love you, brother… Just help me into that cocksucker’s clothes, and get me up to the roof… I’ll wing all this; You finish the rest…”

******** ********* ********

“It was memorable in all the worst ways, Cliff, but I’m here to tell the stories. And that’s somethin’.”

“I hear ya, Darlene. You had a full tour’s worth of tragedy in a couple days. But you’re on the mend, and we’re all grateful… You’re tough stuff; regular Calamity Jane, shit!” everyone with ears on the call started laughing, a perfect finish to the call. “Hey, Darlene, we’re arriving to the airfield, and… well, I just wanted you to know we’re heading out to pay some respects, just like we promised.”

Darlene lit up, almost disbelieving him. Then, realized how naïve she was… those guys? Those jarheads? Forgetting and moving on? She laughed on her end.

“You sonsofbitches! I knew you’d go collect. Give him my regards, will you Marine?”

“We’ll do it, Sheriff. The boys send you their wishes. And we’ll make you one more call. Until then, listen to the therapists, even if it means learning to shit all over again.”

In an awesome retort, Darlene reaching well into her capable breech bellowed out, “Oorah! I’ll wait for the call.”

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