Child, Lee – The Enemy

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

387

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

388

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.

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