Hard Corps One Marine's Journey from Gangbanger to Leatherneck Hero

1 Sixteen with a Bullet The 9 mm Smith & Wesson balanced on my right thigh had its grip wrapped in white medical tape. It was a big son of a bitch, and it had been fired numerous times before. An engraving tool had been used to scratch and grind the trigger. This, along with the tape, would make lifting fingerprints all but impossible. Over the last two years, I'd held and fired numerous weapons. When TEC-9s were cool, we would drive out to New Mexico deserts and shoot shit up. But this was something different. The 9 mm resting on my leg wasn't going to be used for target practice. "I wish this pussy-ass muthafucka would hurry up and get home," Damien said as he looked at the house three doors down the street. "I'm ready to do this." We were both ready to do this. We'd cinched knots in the rags wrapped around our heads and tucked them up under our hats so they could be quickly yanked down to cover our faces, like a train robber would in a western. My rag was brown. Damien's was black. That day I wore stereotypical 1990s-style Hispanic gangster gear, complete with Ben Davis threads, Mad Dogg sunglasses with "100% Chicano" emblazoned on the sides, and a black baseball cap with raiders stitched across its face in Old English script. The car we were staked out in belonged to a fellow gang member. I was sixteen years old. Damien was in my gang and was down for anything. He was half-white, half-Mexican, six feet tall, with brown eyes and slicked-back dark hair. His girlfriend's jealous ex-boyfriend--the one whose house we were spying on--had just been released from jail and had, two days earlier, sworn his intention to kill Damien and me. Sitting in the borrowed car, sloshing a bottle of Olde English 800 back and forth, we were preparing to beat him to the punch. "I still can't believe this muthafucka tried to fuck with us," Damien said. "I ain't gonna let that shit ride." Damien was referring to the events that had taken place just two days earlier. Around 3:30 p.m. on a hot Albuquerque afternoon, Damien and I had just left his girlfriend's house and were driving down Eubank in Damien's sapphire-blue 1982 Buick Regal lowrider. Bumping Oldies music with the windows rolled down, we came to a red light. That's when a dark-gray Chevy Beretta with limousine-tinted windows pulled up inches from Damien's driver door. "What the fuck?" Damien said. The passenger side window rolled down. An outstretched arm holding a 9 mm handgun was now pointed at our faces. "What's up, motherfuckers?" the ex-con, ex-boyfriend yelled. "What the fuck you going to do, pussy?" Damien yelled back. "I'm going to blast you and your bitch friend, motherfucker!" he said. "Shut the fuck up, pussy!" Damien yelled. The 9 mm pistol in his hand was the same style of weapon I'd later carry with me in Iraq, but at the moment the handgun was pointed at me. I should have kept quiet. I didn't keep quiet. Instead, I went primal. "Do it, pussy!" I yelled. "Come on, bitch! Do it! DO IT, MOTHERFUCKER! Shoot me, you piece of fucking shit!" Taunting an armed homicidal maniac fresh out of jail is generally a bad idea. But I wasn't smart. I was a shithead. I yelled out my "set" (gang name). Slowly the gun began to lower. He knew my gang. He'd fucked up. I pressed on. "Yeah, bitch!" I screamed through the car window. "That's right! Do it and see if you don't get blasted, you stupid motherfucker!" The light turned green. He U-turned. We sped straight. Damien immediately dialed up his girlfriend to warn her and tell her what had just happened. More phone calls were made, guns and cars were supplied, and before we knew it, we were armed and sitting in a car in broad daylight, dressed like thMartinez, Marco is the author of 'Hard Corps One Marine's Journey from Gangbanger to Leatherneck Hero', published 2007 under ISBN 9780307383044 and ISBN 0307383040.