effective against soft-skinned vehicles. I ducked backward and
put the Humvee’s engine block between myself and the hut.
Made myself as small as I could get.
Then I heard the radio again. Inside the hut. It was a very
short transmission and faint and full of static and I couldn’t
make out any actual words but the rhythm and the inflection of
the burst came across like a three-syllable question. Maybe say
again? It was what you heard after you issued a confusing
order.
I heard a repeat transmission. Say again? Then I heard
Marshall’s voice. Barely audible. Four syllables. Fluffy consonants
at the beginning. Affirmative, maybe.
Who was he talking to and what was he ordering?
‘Give it up, Marshall,’ I called. ‘How much shit do you want to
be in?’
It was what a hostage negotiator would have called a pressure
question. It was supposed to have a negative psychological
effect. But it made no legal sense. If he shot me he would go to
Leavenworth for four hundred years. If he didn’t, he would go
for three hundred years. No practical difference. A rational man
would ignore it.
He ignored it. He was plenty rational. He ignored it and he
fired the big Ithaca instead, which is exactly what I would have
done.
In theory it was the moment I was waiting for. Firing a long
gun that requires a physical input before it can be fired again
leaves the shooter vulnerable after pulling the trigger. I should
have come out from cover immediately and returned lethal
aimed fire. But the sheer stunning impact of the ten-gauge
cartridge slowed me down by half a second. I wasn’t hit. The
spray pattern was low and tight and it caught the Humvee’s
front wheel. I felt the tyre blow and the truck dropped its front
381
corner ten inches into the sand. There was smoke and dust
everywhere. When I looked half a second later the shotgun
barrel was gone. I fired up at the top of the window reveal. I
wanted a tight ricochet that came down vertically and drilled
through his head.
I didn’t get one. He called out to me.
‘I’m reloading,’ he said.
I paused. He probably wasn’t. A Mag-10 holds three rounds.
He had only fired one. He probably wanted me to come out of
cover and charge his position. Whereupon he would rear up and
smile and blow me away. I stayed where I was. I didn’t have the
luxury of reloading. I was four down, eleven to go.
I heard the radio again. Brief static, four syllables, a descending
scale. Acknowledged, out. Fast and casual, like a piano trill.
Marshall fired again. I saw the black barrel move in the
window and there was another loud explosion and the far back
corner of the Humvee dropped ten inches. Just dumped itself
straight down. I flattened in the dirt for a second and squinted
underneath. He was shooting the tyres out. A Humvee can run on flat tyres. That was part of the design demand. But it can’t run
on no tyres. And a ten-gauge shotgun doesn’t just flatten a tyre.
It removes a tyre. It tears the rubber right off the rim and leaves
little tiny shreds of it all over a twenty-foot radius.
He was disabling his own Humvee and he was going to make a
break for mine.
I got up on my knees again and crouched behind the hood.
Now I was actually safer than I had been before. The big vehicle
was canted right down on the passenger side so that there was
a solid angled wedge of metal between me and him all the way
to the desert floor. I pressed up against the front fender. Lined
myself up with the engine block. Put six hundred pounds of cast
iron between me and the gun. I could smell diesel. A fuel line
had been hit. It was leaking fast. No tyres, nothing in the tank. And no percentage in soaking my shirt with diesel and lighting
it and tossing it in the hut. I had no matches. And diesel
isn’t flammable the way gasoline is. It’s just a greasy liquid. It