shoot at something our other guys were still using.
I stayed on the track and coasted to a stop about thirty yards
south of the hut. Opened the door and slid out into the heat.
I guessed it was less than seventy degrees but after North
Carolina and Frankfurt and Paris it felt like Saudi Arabia.
I saw Marshall watching me from a hole in the cinder block.
I had only seen him once and never face to face. He had been
in the Grand Marquis on New Year’s Day, outside Bird’s post
headquarters, in the dark, behind green-tinted glass. I had
pegged him then as a tall dark guy and his file had confirmed it.
He looked just the same now. Tall, heavy, olive skin. Thick
black hair cut short. He was in desert camouflage and he was
stooping a little to see out the cinder block hole.
I stood next to my Humvee. He watched me, silently.
‘Marshall?’ I called.
377
He didn’t respond.
‘You alone in there?’
No reply.
‘Military police,’ I called, louder. ‘All personnel, exit that
structure immediately.’
Nobody responded. Nobody came out. I could still see
Marshall through the hole. He could still see me. I guessed he
was alone. If he had had a partner in there, the partner would
have come out. Nobody else had a reason to be afraid of me.
‘Marshall?’ I called again.
He ducked out of sight..lust melted backward into the
shadows inside. I took the borrowed gun out of my pocket. It
was a new-issue Beretta M9. I heard an old training mantra
in my head: Never trust a weapon that you haven’t personally
test-red. I chambered a round. The sound was loud in the
desert stillness. I saw the dust cloud in the west. It was maybe a
little larger and a little closer than before. I clicked the Beretta’s
safety to fire.
‘Marshall?’ I called.
He didn’t reply. But I heard a low voice very faintly and then a
brief scratchy burst of radio static. There was no antenna on the
roof of the hut. He must have had a portable field radio in there
with him.
Nho are you going to call, Marshall?’ I said to myself. ‘The
cavalry?’
Then I thought: the cavalry. An armoured cavalry regiment. I turned and looked west at the dust cloud. Suddenly realized
how things stood. I was all alone in the middle of nowhere with
a proven killer. He was in a hut, I was out in the open. My
partner was a ninety-pound woman about fifty miles away. His
buddies were riding around in seventy-ton tanks just below the
visible horizon.
I got off the track fast. Worked around to the east of the hut. I
saw Marshall again. He moved from one hole to another and
watched me. Just gazed out at me.
‘Step out of the hut, major,’ I called.
There was silence for a long moment. Then he called back to
‘I’m not going to do that,’ he said.
378
‘Step out, major,’ I called. ‘You know why I’m here.’
He ducked back into the darkness.
‘As of right now you’re resisting arrest,’ I called.
No reply. No sound at all. I moved on. Circled the hut.
Worked around to the north. There were no holes in the north
wall. Just an iron door. It was closed. I figured it wouldn’t have a
lock. What was there to steal? I could walk right up to it and
pull it open. Was he armed? I guessed standard procedure
would make him unarmed. What kind of deadly enemy could a
gunnery observer expect to face? But I guessed a smart guy in
Marshall’s situation would be taking all kinds of precautions.
There was beaten earth outside the iron door where people
had made informal tracks to places they had parked. What an
architect would call pathways of desire. None of them led north
towards me. They all led roughly west or east. Shade in the
morning, shade in the afternoon. So I stayed on open ground
and got within ten yards of the door. Then I stopped. A good
position, on the face of it. Maybe better than going all the way