by Jack Dayton
Jack Dayton
Black Angel
Murder at Quantico
Copyright © 2020 by Jack Dayton
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Jack Dayton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Jack Dayton has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.
First edition
ISBN: 978-1-7347288-0-4
Cover art by Maxwell Roth
This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy
Find out more at reedsy.com
To All the Marines
who are “standing by to stand by.’
“No, Ma’am, I’m not a superhero. I’m a Gunnery Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps.”
Anonymous
Acknowledgement
I am forever indebted to all the people who supported my commitment to telling this story.
My thanks for reading and advising on aspects of the narrative for authenticity go out to LtCol Jeffrey ‘Beav’ Haniford, USMC Ret, LtCol Jeff O’Neill, USMC Ret, LtCol Jeff Tlapa, USMC Ret, and Peter Huss, my cousin.
A special thanks to Col Jay Hatton, USMC Ret, who enlightened me on particular cultural aspects of the Marine Corps and MSergeant Ronald Morrison, USMC Ret, who shared the benefit of his expertise in the finer points of Marine Corps bureaucracy. CDR Russ Evans, USN Ret, was a source of plot ideas which were instrumental in shaping the final narrative. LtCol Derek Snell, USMC Ret, assisted me in developing an understanding of the training in mountain warfare and for that I am very grateful.
My deepest gratitude to my friend, LtCol Michael Ronza, USAF Ret, who generously allowed me to learn from him the aspects of diplomatic life that informed crucial aspects of the story.
I am especially appreciative for my family who assisted in shaping the narrative. They were available throughout to encourage and guide the writing process. Their belief in this endeavor extended to supporting every request, including acting out particularly challenging scenes.
Special thanks go to my cousin, Tom Woosley, for encouragement and his assistance in formatting and production for publication. His expertise was irreplaceable. Also instrumental in assisting me was David Hale whose knowledge of manufacturing and production processes was critical to elements of the story.
One individual stands out as a resource that worked with me throughout the process of writing the book and that is LtCol Rob Peterson, USMC Ret. A gifted writer, he contributed invaluably to the arc of story and a fuller development of the characters. I am forever indebted to him and his unflagging encouragement.
My most profound appreciation is extended to my friend and the exemplar on which the hero of this story is based, Gunnery Sergeant Alan Fowler, USMC Ret. Gunny Fowler consistently exhibited the intrepid spirit, unquestioned moral courage and extraordinary commitment to his fellow Marines which I attempted to depict in this story. Without his assistance this book would not have been possible.
This book was an effort to express my gratitude to him and to all Marines for their dedication to freedom and to the United States of America.
Chapter 1
The blackness of the night out of the door was wrong. No light, not even security lights. Nothing, as he felt his way through the rugged terrain behind the house. He was skidding down the embankment, keeping low in the dark when he heard it. A scuffle in the dry leaves, blows, a low growling trailing off to a choking gurgle. “Guidry,” he called out. He stopped to listen, the sounds of struggle gone. A small bridge over the creek strung with white Christmas lights was the only illumination. He could hear voices from the house, men shouting and women’s cries. He continued down the hill more slowly. He almost tripped over the legs of a prone figure. Dead, his neck slashed.
Then another sound, not far, coming from the place where the struggle had been. He groped his way over to the barely visible figure. Guidry was still alive. “Les,” he called to him. He could just make out his face in the diffused light from the bridge. His eyes were wide, face contorted, fighting for air. “Guidry, you stay with me, you hear?” His throat bore the same marks as the other body. A black gash under his jaw with the stain flowing down in dark ribbons from his neck. “Guidry, you SOB, you . . .” He trailed off as the muffled gurgle choking sound stopped.
He looked back up to the house, shouting “Down here, we need a doctor!” He could see the silhouettes of men coming down the hill through the same uneven terrain he had just covered. He shifted back to the body of his friend, eyes staring, no sound. He put his hand pointlessly on the place where his throat was gaping wide. He glanced back at the festive lights of the house behind him, the outline of figures stumbling down the embankment toward him. “Hang in,” he murmured to no one in particular. What the hell was he doing in this place?
* * *
Sergeant Courtland Seelbach was restless in captivity. His cubicle at Quantico offered reminders of his prior life in the wild. The snaps of him, tacked to the cubicle half-walls, looming large over a group of grimy Marines, mugging for the camera, weapons waving. The pictures only aggravated his sense that he was stuck in the wrong place. He shifted the lump of tobacco deeper into the gap between his lower lip and gum and scanned the office. He reached for the Nerf rifle behind his chair, took aim at Lance Corporal Casper’s monitor across the room and squeezed the trigger. The pop of the gun followed by the snap as the dart hit the glass was momentarily satisfying. He still had it. Casper’s head swiveled around, nodding. “Ooh rah, Sergeant,” Casper’s crooked grin a begrudging recognition.
Casper, better known by his nickname ‘Ghost,’ had his desk at the doorway of a small office on a long hall in the basement of Breckinridge Hall, the command building at the National University of the Marine Corps. Despite it being the organization responsible for professional military education for the Marine Corps, it was an underappreciated, little-known resource across the ranks of the Corps. Most of the Professional Military Education took place online so the physical location, while venerated, was unassuming. At the end of the day, it was a place that had the feel of any college administrative building. Long halls lined with rooms full of cubicles.
Casper and Seelbach were confined in one below decks. The joke was that if anyone from the Command Deck came downstairs it was to make sure everyone was still rowing. The office was just big enough for two desks, Casper at the doorway and Seelbach against the opposite wall. A small space with a round table for meetings made it functional if spartan. The one saving grace was the bank of windows that would have allowed morning light to pour in unrestricted had they not been covered by blinds. You couldn’t be too careful. Force protection.
“Stay sharp,
Ghost,” Seelbach admonished. “I could’ve nailed you easy.” Seelbach got up from his ergonomic chair, another assault on his Marine tendency to forego the comforts of a soft civilian office. He walked over to Casper’s desk, retrieving his dart. “I still think you need to turn your monitor around so you can face the door. You got your back to the door, Ghost. You wouldn’t stand a chance.” He was looming over Casper now. “Besides, everybody who comes in can see if you’re on Facebook. How’d that look?”
He lingered, arm hanging on Casper’s half-wall partition. “How’d that transportation request for the party bus go?” He felt ridiculous even using a phrase like ‘party bus’ but that’s what it had come to. As the action Non-Commissioned Officer for the National University of the Marine Corps’s operations office, he was expected to manage the details for things like VIP visits. Office calls with the Commanding General of the University, reserved parking spaces, transportation requests . . . he was on the hot seat for all the BS details that were like a booby-trapped pressure cooker. If everything went down without a foul up, nobody cared. But if anything went wrong, he was the one who would take the face shot. His nature as a warfighter was being tested in ways his training had not prepared him for. The raw courage and experience he used as a squad leader of Marines that brought them out of the horror of Hell House in Fallujah were enough to earn a Bronze Star and a famous photo. But here, it was all spit and polish. He had nothing against spit or polish. They just were not his strengths. He hated this job.
To Seelbach, the little things that he did to keep his crew sharp and make the time pass were important. He was more interested in the current transportation request than usual. He knew Casper had gotten some push back from motor transport when they had first submitted the TCPT. Something about proper licensing. They’d tried all the usual to break the request loose with no success. That’s when Seelbach got an inspiration. He decided that Casper should go over to Motor T and work it face-to-face. Of course, it would have no impact. A lance corporal had zero juice with the hard-core criminals in Motor T but the chance to shake things up might lead to an interesting sea story at the end of the day.
“I don’t think they are going to help us out, Sergeant.” Casper kept his eyes on his monitor wondering what his famously cocky NCO was thinking. “I submitted the TAR but they are still blocking it.”
“Did you tell them that this is for the Board of Visitors? That these are people in their goddamn 60’s. That they can’t walk bent over in a freakin’ panel van to the back of the vehicle. Did you?”
“No, Sergeant. I haven’t talked to anyone over there.”
“Then that’s what we need to do. What do you think, Ghost?” Seelbach was warming to the notion of this latest of efforts to crack the garrison mentality at Quantico. He was so intent he was only slightly aware that the point at which he should have spit had long since passed.
He was also completely unaware that Gunnery Sergeant Roscoe Vance stood in the doorway behind him. Vance, the operations chief, had decided to drop in. He enjoyed Seelbach’s company and would often take the short walk down the hall to experience the 03 atmosphere only available from an infantry Marine. His shaved head, ability to exist solely on ramen and constant flow of dip was never intended to be confined to garrison so it was natural that he might display a certain energy bordering on mischief. He recognized that Seelbach’s tendency to stir the pot carried with it a certain risk and bore monitoring. He wanted to be able to guide the obvious talents Seelbach brought to the job, not confine him.
Vance had a reputation as a straight shooter only partially related to his direct, no bull leadership. It was also because he was a highly decorated scout sniper with a long list of jihadi kills and Marine lives saved. He was a unique SNCO . . . a Master’s degree, a spotless record with numerous awards, and a complete dedication to modeling behavior above reproach. His nickname - The Deacon - reflected his stellar reputation . . . and his tendency to use the profane language commonly associated with Marine Corps culture only when necessary to execute the mission. He shared many of the same distinguishing characteristics of infantry Seelbach displayed from the shiny shaved head to the rolled sleeves strained by overdeveloped biceps.
The gunny paused, his 6’3” frame blocking the door, not wanting to interrupt Seelbach working the issue with Casper. “So what I’m gonna recommend, Ghost, is that you go over there and make some points with these people. You can’t let them run over you, godammit.” Seelbach was shifting his weight back and forth, nodding his head, thinking. He looked down at Casper. “You see what I did there? Motor T . . . run over you.”
Vance cocked his head. Seelback pressed on, his gaze drifting upward. “And what you should do is take Lance Corporal Diaz with you. She might get their attention in a way that you might not, you know what I mean?” Vance’s eyes popped open wide, his eyebrows up, forehead a washboard. “And you better communicate clearly with these fuckin’ Motor T assholes, you get me, Ghost? Use the fuckin’ language the Marine Corps gave you, you know what I mean?”
Vance cleared his throat. His eyes were closed now, the palm of one calloused hand passing over the shine of his shaved skull. He inhaled and let out a long breath. Seelbach and Ghost had both swiveled to face him. “Gunny . . . ” Seelbach shifted the Nerf gun to the floor.
“How you doin’ today, Sergeant?” Vance nodded. “You, Lance Corporal Casper?”
“All good, Gunny.” Seelbach was tight-lipped for a reason. His cheek was filled now with the dip spit he should’ve dumped five minutes ago.
Vance noted the full cheek, the small dribble of amber at the corner of the sergeant’s mouth. The Gunny went on. “I was wondering how the transportation request was going for the Board of Visitors.
“We’re working it, Gunny. Should be okay. Lots of moving parts.”
The Gunny smiled, nodded. “Well, I think that’s what we hope to get from Motor T, right? Moving parts?”
“Roger that, Gunny.”
“Ghost, what do you think? You’re getting some outstanding guidance from Sergeant Seelbach, I’m sure.”
“Yes, Gunny,” Ghost’s eyes shifted to the Gunny, then to Seelbach and back to the Gunny.
“You plan on talking to the people at Motor T? Going over to find out what’s chapping their ass?”
“Well, we were just talking about that, Gunny.”
“Okay, that’ll work. Do you think you should take anyone with you, Ghost? I mean would that help?”
Casper checked Seelbach who was looking thoughtfully at the florescent lights overhead. “Ahh . . . Well, yeah, that came up, too.”
Vance went on “I mean it’s always good to have back-up. We don’t want to overreact but it would be a shame to waste a valuable Marine Corps resource like Sergeant Seelbach. Maybe it would work if you both went over there? Does that make sense, Sergeant?”
“Yes, Gunny.” An expression of relief spread over Casper’s smooth 19-year-old face.
“Excellent. That’s a plan.” Vance looked at Seelbach who was now very aware that, with a mouth full of dip spit, he was in no position to present a different course of action.”
“Oh, yeah, Gunny,” he managed.
“And we always want to represent Ops in a professional manner. Am I right!” Vance slapped Seelbach on the back. “Let’s get this done then.”
Seelbach had swallowed dip spit in the past, often enough that he was pretty sure he was past the point where it would make him sick.
* * *
Gunny Vance was back at his desk down the hall from Seelbach and Casper when the phone rang. The lilt in the voice of the female caller was familiar even as the voice itself was not. The pleasing hint of a Norwegian accent.
“Please hold for the Col Thorsten Siggordson, Norwegian Defense Attache.” Now that was different. He didn’t usually get calls from foreign defense attaches. Vance’s curiosity was on full.
“Yes, Ma’am.” Light was streaming in through the windows so Casper s
hifted his chair to enjoy the sun and tried to see beyond the view of the vehicle tires in the parking lot right outside his office.
The clicks gave way to a new voice. “Hello, Gunnery Sergeant Vance. This is Colonel Thorsten Siggordson. We haven’t met but I know well of your work in Afghanistan and Iraq and am an admirer of yours.”
Vance gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head, his dark brown eyes reflecting a spark of amusement. “Sir, thank you but you know you don’t want to believe everything you hear, especially if it was from someone who served with me.” Vance knew where the attache had been exposed to the sea stories from Afghanistan.
“Don’t be humble with me, Gunny. If only one tenth of the stories are true, you have much to be proud of,” Colonel Siggordson continued.
“Well, I won’t argue with you, sir, but anything I did was only a part of what we all did over there.”
“I understand, Gunny. I’m not calling you to reminisce though. I am actually calling to ask a favor.”
“Name it, sir.”
“That’s what I love about Marines. They are ready for any mission, even before they know what it is, ya?”
The Gunny chuckled, rubbing his chin self-consciously. “I’ll plead no contest on that one, sir.”
“Well, what I am asking shouldn’t be too unpleasant. As you may know, I have a Christmas party every year here at my house in McLean. And I know you are great friends with my Executive Officer, Major Aksel Dahl. I’m right, ya?”
“Sir, I do know Major Dahl and I would caution you not to take anything he says at face value,” Vance said, the smile on his face coming through in his admonition.
