Savages

not going to blow us up, are you?” Ben asks.
    “We should be okay,” Chon says. “Unless the BC has a drone overhead or something. Then we’re fucked. But I wouldn’t use the TV remote for a while.”
    Just to be on the safe side.
    Ben asks, “What should I do if I hear you mutter, ‘Fuck’?”
    “At this range? Nothing.”
    A lot of existential questions will be answered just after the “Fuck.”
    As in life itself.

222
     
    The caravan comes up the twisted road.
    Like a coiled snake, the Cajon Pass. Way the fuck out there in the empty desert, miles away from anything that could pass for civilization.
    Moonscape on either side of the road.
    God threw a temper tantrum and tossed boulders around like marbles on the steep slopes.
    Turning red in the dawn light.
    The reflection makes it tough on Chon, high up on the opposite slope, sighting the Barrett.
    He hopes Ben is cold enough to throw the switches.

223
     
    Lead car, cash car, follow car.
    Escalade, Taurus, Suburban.
    The Escalade is far out in front, maybe fifty yards, the Suburban is tight on the Taurus.
    Ben crouches in the rocks not far from the road.
    Remote controls for toy airplanes in his hand.
    Two toggle switches.
    They’ve been out there all night, planting the IEDs. Studied this road on Google Earth, looked for the right narrow hairpin curve, close to rocks that will contain and channel the blast.
    Non-symmetrical conflict.
    It won’t be self-defense this time, it will be out-and-out murder.
    The men in the caravan must be fairly relaxed. They came up from the flat desert and could see any car for miles, and saw nothing.
    There’s nothing out here.
    Ben waits.
    Hand trembles.
    With adrenaline, or doubt?

224
     
    The caravan comes into the narrow switchback.
    Chon sights in. In his mind’s eye, though, he sees—
—Taliban
moving like scorpions across a similar landscape
     his own caravan blown to shit
          blood streaming from buddies
Now I’m one of
them
    He sights in again.
    No time for
Lack of PTSD
    He only hopes that
    Gentle Ben
    Increase-the-Peace Ben
    is one of them, too, now.
    Now
, Ben.
    Find your inner Taliban.

225
     
    Ben peeks above the sheltering boulder and sees the three vehicles come into the pass.
    The cars themselves are nothing—assembly-line products of plastic and steel, little Bunsen burners of global warming. Dinosaur carbon prints on the sere landscape. They are
things
, and Ben has no compunctions about things (“we are spirits in the material world”). Tries to tell himself that they are
only
things but he knows the truth—there are people inside the things.
    Beings with families, friends, loved ones, hopes, fears.
    Capable, unlike the vessels that carry them, of pain and suffering.
    Which he is about to inflict.
    Index finger and thumb poised on the switch.
    A simple muscle fiber twitch but
    There is no Undo button.
    No Control Alt Delete
    Ben thinks about suicide bombers
    Murder is the suicide of the soul.
    He takes his hand off.

226
     
    Now, Ben, Chon thinks.
    Now or never.
    Now or not at all.
    Two more seconds and the moment will have passed.

227
     
    Ben flips the switch.
    A blast of flame and the lead car hops sideways.
    Shredded.
    The cash car speeds up to pull around it but
    Chon squeezes the trigger of the Barrett Model 90 and
    The driver’s face disappears, red (incarnadine) with the daybreak, then
    Its passenger leans in to take the wheel as
    Chon slides the bolt back, reloads, sights, and shoots a big raggedhole into the would-be hero’s chest and then the car rolls into the rocks, stops, and bursts into flame.
    Men, rifles in their hands, start to get out of the follow car but
    Ben flips the second switch and
    fragments of the Escalade become shrapnel, tearing, ripping, killing, and what it doesn’t do
    Chon does.
    The survivors of the blast—stunned, shocked, and bleeding—look up and around as if to ask the question
    where does death come from
    it comes from
    Chon, sliding the bolt, pulling the trigger, and in seconds
    It is quiet except for
    The crackling of flames and the
    Groans of the wounded.

228
     
    Chon drops the rifle, it
    Clatters on the rocks and he
    Scampers down the slope, gets into the work car, pulled off on the side, covered in brush, and he races it down to where
    Ben
his face lit by flame
stands among the dead and dying.
    “Get the money,” Chon says. He reaches under the dead driver’s legs and releases the trunk.
    It opens with a