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“Target tank,” one TC said. “Ten o’clock, forty-one hundred.”
“Identified,” the gunner said as the Abrams halted to make the shot easier.
“Hold fire,” the TC said suddenly. “They’re bailing out. Give ’em a few seconds.”
“Right.” The gunner could see it, too. The T-80’s main gun was pointed away, in any case. They waited for the crew to make a hundred meters or so.
“Okay, take it.”
“On the way.” The breech recoiled, the tank jolted, and the round flew. Three seconds later, one more tank turret blew straight up. “Jack-in-the-box.”
“Target. Cease fire. Driver, move out,” the TC ordered. That made the twelfth kill for their tank. The crew wondered what the unit record would be, while the TC made a position notation for the three-man enemy crew on his IVIS box, which automatically told the regimental security detail where to pick them up. The advancing cavalrymen gave them a wide berth. Unlikely though it was, one of them might shoot or do something stupid, and they had neither the time nor the inclination to waste ammunition. One more battle to fight, unless the other side got some brains and just called it a day.
“COMMENTS?” POTUS ASKED.
“Sir, it sets a precedent,” Cliff Rutledge replied.
“That’s the idea,” Ryan said. They were getting the battlefield video first, unedited. It included the usual horrors, body parts of those ripped to shreds by high explosives, whole bodies of those whose deaths had come from some mysterious cause, a hand reaching out of a personnel carrier whose interior still smoked, some poor bastard who’d almost gotten out, but not quite. There had to be something about carrying a mini-cam that just drew people to that sort of thing. The dead were dead, and the dead were all victims in one way or another–more than one way, Ryan thought. These soldiers of two previously separate countries and one overlapping culture had died at the hands of armed Americans, but they’d been sent to
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death by a man whose orders they’d had to follow, who had miscalculated, and who had been willing to use their lives as tokens, gambling chips, quarters in a big slot machine whose arm he’d yanked to see what would result. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. Power carried responsibility. Jack knew that he would hand-write a letter to the family of every dead American, just as George Bush had done in 1991. The letters would serve two purposes. They would, perhaps, be some measure of comfort to the families of the lost. They would, certainly, remind the man who had ordered them to the field that the dead had once been living. He wondered what their faces had been like. Probably no different from the Guardsmen who’d formed that honor guard at Indianapolis, the day of his first public appearance. They looked the same, but each human life was individual, the most valuable possession of its owner, and Ryan had played a part in stripping it away, and though he knew it had been necessary, it was also necessary for him, now and for as long as he sat in this building, to remember that they were more than just faces. And that, he told himself, is the difference. I know about my responsibility. He doesn’t know about his. He still lived with the illusion that people were responsible to him, and not the reverse.
“It’s political dynamite, Mr. President,” van Damm said.
“So?”
“There is a legal problem,” Pat Martin told them. “It violates the executive order that President Ford put in place.”
“I know about that one,” Ryan responded. “But who decides the executive orders?”
“The Chief Executive, sir,” Martin answered.
“Draft me a new one.”
“WHAT IS THAT smell?” Back at the Indiana motel, the truck drivers were out for the morning dance of moving the trucks around to protect the tires. They were sick of this place by now, and heartily wished the travel ban would be lifted soon. One driver had just exercised his
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Mack, and parked it back next to the cement truck. Spring was turning warm, and the metal bodies of the trucks turned the interiors into ovens. In the case of the cement truck, it was having an effect its owners hadn’t thought about. “You got a fuel leak?” he asked Holbrook, then bent down to look. “No, your tank’s okay.”
“Maybe somebody had a little spill over at the pumps,” the Mountain Man suggested.
“Don’t think so. They just hosed it down a while ago. We better find this. I seen a KW burn once ‘cuz some mechanic fucked up. Killed the driver, that was on 1-40 back in ’85. Hell of a mess.” He continued to walk around. “You got a leak somewhere, ol’ buddy. Let’s check your fuel pump,” he said next, turning the locks on the hood panels.
“Hey, uh, wait a minute–I mean–”
“Don’t sweat it, pard, I know how to fix the things. I save a good five grand a year doing my own work.” The hood went up, and the trucker looked inside, reached to shake a few hoses, then felt the fuel-line connectors. “Okay, they’re all right.” Next he looked at the line to the injectors. One nut was a little loose, but that was just the lock, and he twisted that back in place. There wasn’t anything unusual. He bent down again to look underneath. “Nothin’ drippin’. Damn,” he concluded, standing back up. Next he checked the wind. Maybe the smell was coming from … no. He could smell breakfast cooking in the restaurant, his next stop of the day. The smell was coming from right here… something else, too, not just diesel, now that he thought about it.
“What’s the problem, Coots?” another driver asked, walking over.
“Smell that?” And both men stood there, sniffing the air like woodchucks.
“Somebody got a bad tank?”
“Not that I can see.” The first one looked at Holbrook. “Look, I don’t want to be unneighborly, but I’m an owner-operator, and I get nervous about my rig, y’know? Would you mind moving your truck over there? And I’d have somebody give the engine a look, okay?”
“Hey, sure, no problem, don’t mind a bit.” Holbrook
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remounted his truck, started it, and drove it slowly off, turning to park in a fairly vacant part of the lot. The other two watched him do it.
“The goddamned smell went away, didn’t it, Coots?”
“That is a sick truck.”
“Fuck ‘im. About time for the news. Come on.” The other driver waved.
“Whoa!” they heard on entering the restaurant. The TV was tuned to CNN. The scene looked like something from the special-effects department of a major studio. Nothing like that ever was real. But this was.
“Colonel, what happened last night?”
“Well, Barry, the enemy came in on us twice. The first time,” Eddington explained, holding a cigar in his extended hand, “we sat on that ridge back there. The second time, we were advancing, and so were they, and we met right about here …” The camera turned to show two tanks heading up the road, past where the colonel was giving his lecture.
“I bet those fuckers are fun to drive,” Coots said.
“I bet they’re fun to shoot.” The scene changed again. The reporter’s familiar, handsome face was covered with dust, with the bags of exhaustion under his eyes.
“This is Tom Donner, with the press team assigned to the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. How can I describe the night we had? I’ve been riding with this Bradley crew, and our vehicle and the rest of B-Troop have gone through–Idon’t know how many of the enemy in the past twelve hours. It was War of the Worlds in Saudi Arabia last night, and we were the Martians.
“The UIR forces–the ones we faced were a mix of Iraqis and Iranians–fought back, or tried to, but nothing they did …”
“Shit, wish they’d’ve sent my unit,” a highway patrolman said, taking his usual seat for his beginning-of-watch coffee. He’d gotten to know some of the drivers.
“Smoky, you have those in the Ohio Guard?” Coots asked.
“Yeah, my unit’s armored cavalry. Those boys from Carolina had a big night. Jesus.” The cop shook his head,
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and in the mirror noticed a man walking in from the parking lot.
“Enemy forces are in full flight now. You’ve just had a report from the National Guard force that defeated two complete armored divisions–”
“That many! Wow,” the cop observed, sipping his coffee.
“–the Blackhorse has annihilated another. It was like watching a movie. It was like watching a football game between the NFL and the Pop Warner League.”
“Welcome to the bigs, you bastards,” Coots told the TV screen.
“Hey, is that your cement truck?” the cop asked, turning.
“Yes, sir,” Holbrook answered, stopping on the way to join his friend for breakfast.
“Make sure it don’t blow the hell up on you,” Coots said, not turning his head.