The Enemy

talking to and what was he ordering?
    “Give it up, Marshall,” I called. “How much shit do you want to be in?”
    It was what a hostage negotiator would have called a pressure question. It was supposed to have a negative psychological effect. But it made no legal sense. If he shot me, he would go to Leavenworth for four hundred years. If he didn’t, he would go for three hundred years. No practical difference. A rational man would ignore it.
    He ignored it. He was plenty rational. He ignored it and he fired the big Ithaca instead, which is exactly what I would have done.
    In theory it was the moment I was waiting for. Firing a long gun that requires a physical input before it can be fired again leaves the shooter vulnerable after pulling the trigger. I should have come out from cover immediately and returned lethal aimed fire. But the sheer stunning impact of the ten-gauge cartridge slowed me down by half a second. I wasn’t hit. The spray pattern was low and tight and it caught the Humvee’s front wheel. I felt the tire blow and the truck dropped its front corner ten inches into the sand. There was smoke and dust everywhere. When I looked half a second later the shotgun barrel was gone. I fired up at the top of the window reveal. I wanted a tight ricochet that came down vertically and drilled through his head.
    I didn’t get one. He called out to me.
    “I’m reloading,” he said.
    I paused. He probably wasn’t. A Mag-10 holds three rounds. He had only fired one. He probably wanted me to come out of cover and charge his position. Whereupon he would rear up and smile and blow me away. I stayed where I was. I didn’t have the luxury of reloading. I was four down, eleven to go.
    I heard the radio again. Brief static, four syllables, a descending scale.
Acknowledged, out.
Fast and casual, like a piano trill.
    Marshall fired again. I saw the black barrel move in the window and there was another loud explosion and the far back corner of the Humvee dropped ten inches. Just dumped itself straight down. I flattened in the dirt for a second and squinted underneath.
He was shooting the tires out.
A Humvee can run on flat tires. That was part of the design demand. But it can’t run on no tires. And a ten-gauge shotgun doesn’t just flatten a tire. It
removes
a tire. It tears the rubber right off the rim and leaves little tiny shreds of it all over a twenty-foot radius.
    He was disabling his own Humvee and he was going to make a break for mine.
    I got up on my knees again and crouched behind the hood. Now I was actually safer than I had been before. The big vehicle was canted right down on the passenger side so that there was a solid angled wedge of metal between me and him all the way to the desert floor. I pressed up against the front fender. Lined myself up with the engine block. Put six hundred pounds of cast iron between me and the gun. I could smell diesel. A fuel line had been hit. It was leaking fast. No tires, nothing in the tank. And no percentage in soaking my shirt with diesel and lighting it and tossing it in the hut. I had no matches. And diesel isn’t flammable the way gasoline is. It’s just a greasy liquid. It needs to be vaporized and put under intense pressure before it explodes. That was why the Humvee was designed with a diesel engine. Safety.
    “
Now
I’m reloading,” Marshall called.
    I waited.
Was he or wasn’t he?
He probably was. But I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to rush him. I had a better idea. I crawled along the Humvee’s tilted flank and stopped at the rear bumper. Looked past it and scoped out my view. To the south I could see my own Humvee. To the north I could see almost all the way to the hut. There was an open space twenty-five yards wide in between. No-man’s-land. Marshall would have to traverse twenty-five continuous yards of open ground to get from the hut to my Humvee. Right through my field of fire. He would probably run backward, shooting as he went. But his weapon packed only three rounds fully loaded. If he spaced them out, he would be firing once every eight yards. If he loosed them all off at the start full blast and unaimed, he would be naked all the rest of the way to the truck. Either option, he was going down. That was for damn sure. I had eleven Parabellums and an accurate pistol and a steel bumper to rest my wrist on.
    I smiled.
    I waited.
    Then the Sheridan came apart behind me.
    I heard a hum in the air like a shell the size of a Volkswagen was