again? Maybe he had told them the Humvees were fair game.
Maybe that was what they had found hard to believe.
But I knew they wouldn’t stop firing now. Because they
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couldn’t see us. Dust was drifting like smoke and the view out
of a buttoned-up Abrams wasn’t great to begin with. It was like
looking lengthwise through a grocery bag with a small square
hole cut out of the bottom. I paused and batted dust out of the
way and coughed and peered forward. We were close to my
Humvee.
It looked straight and level.
It looked intact.
So far.
I stood up and raced the last ten feet and hauled Marshall
around to the passenger side and opened the door and
crammed him into the front. Then I climbed right in over him
and dumped myself into the driver’s seat. Hit that big red
button and fired it up. Shoved it into gear and stamped on the
gas so hard the acceleration slammed the door shut. Then I
turned the lights full on and put my foot to the floor and
charged. Summer would have been proud of me. I drove
straight for the line of tanks. Two hundred yards. One hundred
yards. I picked my spot and aimed carefully and burst through
the gap between two main battle tanks doing more than eighty
miles an hour.
I slowed down after a mile. After another mile, I stopped.
Marshall was alive. But he was unconscious and he was
bleeding all over the place. My aim had been good. His
shoulder had a big messy nine-millimetre broken-bone through
and-through gunshot wound in it and he had plenty of other
cuts from the hut’s collapse. His blood was all mixed with
cement dust like a maroon paste. I got him arranged on the seat
and strapped him in tight with the harness. Then I broke out
the first aid kit and put pressure bandages on both sides of
his shoulder and jabbed him with morphine. I wrote M on his
forehead with a grease pencil like you were supposed to in the
field. That way the medics wouldn’t overdose him when he got
to the hospital.
Then I walked around in the fresh air for a spell. Just walked
up and down the track, aimlessly. I coughed and spat and
dusted myself down as well as I could. I was bruised and sore
from being pelted with concrete fragments. Two miles behind
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me I could still hear tanks firing. I guessed they were waiting
for a cease-fire order. I guessed they were likely to run out of
rounds before they got one.
I kept the 2-40 A/C going all the way back. Halfway there,
Marshall woke up. I saw his chin come up off his chest. Saw
him glance ahead, and then at me to his left. He was full of
morphine and his right arm was useless, but I was still cautious.
If he grabbed the wheel with his left he might force us off the
track. He might run us over some unexploded debris. Or a
tortoise. So I took my right hand off the wheel and reverse
punched him square between the eyes. It was a good solid
smack. It put him right back to sleep. Manual anaesthetic. He
stayed out all the way back to the post.
I drove him straight to the base hospital. Called Franz from the
nurses’ station and ordered up a guard squad. I waited for them
to arrive and promised rank and medals for anyone who helped
ensure Marshall saw the inside of a courtroom. I told them to
read him his rights as soon as he woke up. And I told them
to mount a suicide watch. Then I left them to it and drove
back to Franz’s office. My BDUs were torn up and stiff with
dust and I guessed my face and hands and hair didn’t look any
better because Franz laughed as soon as he saw me.
‘I guess it’s tough taking desk jockeys down,’ he said.
‘Where’s Summer?’ I said.
‘Telexing JAG Corps,’ he said. ‘Talking to people on the
phone.’
‘I lost your Beretta,’ I said.