Child, Lee – The Enemy

needs to be vaporized and put under intense pressure before

it explodes. That was why the Humvee was designed with a

diesel engine. Safety.

382

‘Now I’m reloading,’ Marshall called.

I waited. Was he or wasn’t he? He probably was. But I didn’t

care. I wasn’t going to rush him. I had a better idea. I crawled

along the Humvee’s tilted flank and stopped at the rear bumper.

Looked past it and scoped out my view. To the south I could see

my own Humvee. To the north I could see almost all the way to

the hut. There was an open space twenty-five yards wide in

between. Like no-man’s-land. Marshall would have to traverse

twenty-five continuous yards of open ground to get from the

hut to my Humvee. Right through my field of fire. He would

probably run backward, shooting as he went. But his weapon

packed only three rounds fully loaded. If he spaced them out,

he would be firing once every eight yards. If he loosed them all

off at the start full blast and unaimed, he would be naked all the

rest of the way to the truck. Either option, he was going down.

That was for damn sure. I had eleven Parabellums and an

accurate pistol and a steel bumper to rest my wrist on.

I smiled. I waited.

Then the Sheridan came apart behind me.

I heard a hum in the air like a shell the size of a Volkswagen

was incoming and I turned in time to see the old tank smashed

to pieces like it had been hit by a train. It jumped a whole foot

off the ground and the fake plywood skirts splintered and spun

away and the turret came off its ring and turned over slowly in

the air and thumped down in the sand ten feet from me.

There was no explosion. Just a huge bass metal-to-metal

thump. And then nothing but eerie silence.

I turned back. Watched the open ground. Marshall was still

in the hut. Then a shadow passed over my head and I saw a

shell in the air with that weird slow-motion optical illusion you

get with long-range artillery. It flew right over me in a perfect

arc and hit the desert floor fifty yards further on. It kicked up a

huge plume of dust and sand and buried itself deep.

No explosion.

They were firing practice rounds at me.

I heard the whine of turbines in the far distance. The faint

clatter of drive sprockets and idlers and track-return rollers.

The muffled roar of engines as tanks raced towards me. I heard

383

a faint boom as a big gun fired. Then nothing. Then a hum in the

air. Then more smashing and tearing of metal as the Sheridan

was hit again. No explosion. A practice round is the same as a

regular shell, the same size, the same weight, with a full load of

propellant, but no explosive in the nose cone. It’s just a lump

of dumb metal. Like a handgun bullet, except it’s five inches

wide and more than a foot long.

Marshall had switched their training target.

That was what all the radio chatter had been about. Marshall

had ordered them away from whatever they were doing five

miles to the west. He had ordered them to move in towards

him and put rounds down on his own position. They had

been incredulous. Say again? Say again? Marshall had replied: Affirmative.

He had switched their training target to cover his escape.

How many tanks were out there? How long did I have? If

‘enty tank guns quartered the area they would hit a man-sized

target before very long. Within minutes. That was clear. The

law of averages absolutely guaranteed it. And to be hit by a

bullet five inches wide and more than a foot long would be no

fun at all. A near miss would be just as bad. A fifty-pound chunk

of metal hitting the Humvee I was hiding behind would shred it

to supersonic pieces as small and sharp as K-bar blades. Even

without an explosive charge the sheer kinetic energy alone

would make that happen. It would be like a grenade going off