Jimmy the King by Gus Garcia-Roberts

Author:Gus Garcia-Roberts [Garcia-Roberts, Gus]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2022-05-03T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

POWERPOINT JIMMY

All Kenny Bombace ever wanted to be was a soldier and a cop. Back in 1987, when he was a seventeen-year-old Commack North High fuck-up with poor grades and a brutalist mohawk, an Army recruiter showed up at his door at four o’clock in the morning. Kenny was expecting him, because he had enlisted at the recruitment center on Main Street Smithtown. His parents, on the other hand, were a bit surprised.

His dad, himself an Air Force veteran, at first refused to allow his son to enlist. But after Kenny pleaded, he relented, with a couple of requirements, including that his son join a branch of the Army that would teach him a profession. But Kenny didn’t honor the deal, and just did basic training for the infantry. He only wanted to see combat.

Kenny was sent to West Germany. The Americans were warned that they were just a speed bump if the Communist troops decided to invade, as the East Germans and Soviets would outnumber them twelve-to-one. Kenny fantasized about what blend of bullets and grenades he’d use to mow down his allotment of a dozen commies. But then the Berlin Wall fell without warfare, and Kenny, slightly disappointed, returned to Long Island.

He had fallen in love with the lifestyle of the soldier: the uniforms, rules, ranks, patriotism, and the manly ballet of military tactics. Being promoted to specialist had imbued him with a new ambition, and he now considered himself a leader of men. But his career post-Army didn’t quite match his self-regard.

He sold NordicTracks at the mall while taking every law enforcement exam he could get his hands on and studying for a bachelor’s degree in political science. He eventually got a job as a sheriff’s deputy making $24,000 a year. The Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office was the brown-uniformed stepchild of local law enforcement. Deputies were paid much less than county cops and they were headquartered in the jail building. Bombace spent three years processing new arrests at district court before getting bumped up to driving prisoners around the state. He studied at night to get a master’s degree in criminal justice and joined the National Guard, where he was promoted to second lieutenant with a specialty in military intelligence. Viewed by his colleagues as haughty beyond his station, Bombace eyed a switch to the more prestigious county department: “I wanted to be a cop, a real cop, so bad.”

In 2003, he finally got his chance with the SCPD. But just as he was about to start onto the Suffolk force, he learned he was being deployed to Iraq. Bombace probably could have gotten out of it and had every reason to try. He had the new job, and he and his wife had two infant sons. But he couldn’t turn down an opportunity to finally lead troops into battle.

After seven months training in Fort Drum, Bombace had become a captain by the time he arrived in Samarra, Iraq, in 2005. His mandate was to establish a seven-hundred-member civilian police department in a lawless city under daily mortar attacks.

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