right next to me.
I heard a ragged boom, boom north and west of me. Low, dull
sounds. Two guns firing in a tight sequence. Closer than they
had been before. The air hissed. One shell went long but the
other came in low on a flat trajectory and hit the Sheridan
square in the side. It went in and it came out, straight through
the aluminum hull like a .38 through a tin can. If Lieutenant
Colonel Simon had been there to see it he might have changed
his mind about the future.
More guns fired. One after the other. A ragged salvo. There
were no explosions. But the brutal calamitous physical noise
was maybe worse. It was some kind of primeval clamour. The
air hissed. There was deep brainless thudding as dead shells hit
the earth. There were shuddering bass peals of metal against
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metal, like ancient giants clashing with swords. Huge chunks of
wreckage from the Sheridan cartwheeled away and clanged and
shivered and skidded on the sand. There was dust and dirt
everywhere in the air. I was choking on it. Marshall was still in
the hut. I stayed down in a low crouch and kept my Beretta
aimed at the open ground. Waited. Forced my hand to keep
still. Stared at the empty space. Just stared at it, desperately. I
didn’t understand. Marshall had to know he couldn’t wait much
longer. He had called down a hailstorm of metal. We were being
attacked by Abrams tanks. My Humvee was going to get hit any
second. His only avenue of escape was going to vanish right
before his eyes. It was going to flip up in the air and come down
on its roof. The law of averages guaranteed it. Or else the hut
would get hit and collapse all around him first. He would be
buried in the rubble. One thing or the other would happen. For
sure. It had to. So why the hell was he waiting?
Then I got up on my knees and stared at the hut.
Because I knew why. Suicide.
I had offered him suicide by cop but he had already chosen
suicide by tank. He had seen me coming and he had guessed
who I was. Like Vassell and Coomer he had been sitting numb
day after day just waiting for the other shoe to drop. And finally
there it was, at last, the other shoe, coming straight at him
through the desert dust in a Humvee. He had thought and he
had decided and he had gotten on the radio.
He was going down, and he was taking me with him.
I could hear the tanks pretty close now. Not more than eight
or nine hundred yards. I could hear the squeal and clatter of
their tracks. They were still moving fast. They would be fanning
out, like it said in the field manual. They would be pitching and
rolling. They would be kicking up rooster tails of dust. They
would be forming a loose mobile semicircle with their big guns
pointing inward like the spokes of a wheel.
I crawled back and looked at my Humvee. But if I went for it
Marshall would shoot me down from the safety of the hut. No
question about that. The twenty-five yards of open ground must
have looked as good to him as they looked to me.
I waited.
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I heard the boom of a gun and the whump of a shell and I
stood up and ran the other way. I heard another boom and
another whump and the first shell slammed into the Sheridan
and bowled it all the way over and then the second hit
Marshall’s Humvee and demolished it completely. I threw
myself behind the north corner of the hut and rolled tight
against the base of the wall and listened to shards of metal
rattling against the cinder blocks and the screeching as the old
Sheridan’s armour finally came apart.
The tanks were very close now. I could hear their engine
notes rising and falling as they breasted rises and crashed
through dips. I could hear their tracks slapping against their
skirts. I could hear their hydraulics whining as they traversed