The Enemy

day just waiting for the other shoe to drop. And finally there it was, at last, the other shoe, coming straight at him through the desert dust in a Humvee. He had thought and he had decided and he had gotten on the radio.
    He was going down, and he was taking me with him.
    I could hear the tanks pretty close now. Not more than eight or nine hundred yards. I could hear the squeal and clatter of their tracks. They were still moving fast. They would be fanning out, like it said in the field manual. They would be pitching and rolling. They would be kicking up rooster tails of dust. They would be forming a loose mobile semicircle with their big guns pointing inward like the spokes of a wheel.
    I crawled back and looked at my Humvee. But if I went for it Marshall would shoot me down from the safety of the hut. No question about that. The twenty-five yards of open ground must have looked as good to him as they looked to me.
    I waited.
    I heard the
boom
of a gun and the
whump
of a shell and I stood up and ran the other way. I heard another
boom
and another
whump
and the first shell slammed into the Sheridan and bowled it all the way over and then the second hit Marshall’s Humvee and demolished it completely. I threw myself behind the north corner of the hut and rolled tight against the base of the wall and listened to shards of metal rattling against the cinder blocks and the screeching as the old Sheridan’s armor finally came apart.
    The tanks were very close now. I could hear their engine notes rising and falling as they breasted rises and crashed through dips. I could hear their tracks slapping against their skirts. I could hear their hydraulics whining as they traversed their guns.
    I got to my feet. Stood up straight. Wiped dust out of my eyes. Stepped over to the iron door. Saw the bright crater my gun had made. I knew Marshall had to be either standing in the south window looking for me running or standing in the west window looking for me dead behind the wreckage. I knew he was tall and I knew he was right-handed. I fixed an abstract target in my mind. Moved my left hand and put it on the doorknob. Waited.
    The next shells were fired so close that I heard
boom whump boom whump
with no pause in between. I pulled the door and stepped inside. Marshall was right there in front of me. He was facing away, looking south, framed by the brightness of the window. I aimed at his right shoulder blade and pulled the trigger and a shell took the roof off the hut. The room was instantly full of dust and I was hit by falling beams and corrugated sheets and stung by fragments of flying concrete. I went down on my knees. Then I collapsed on my front. I was pinned. I couldn’t see Marshall. I heaved myself back up on my knees and flailed my arms to fight off the debris. The dust was sucking upward in a ragged spiral and I could see bright blue sky above me. I could hear tank tracks all around me. Then I heard another
boom whump
and the front corner of the hut blew away. It was there, and then it wasn’t. It was solid, and then it was a spray of gray dust coming toward me at the speed of sound. A gale of dusty air whipped after it and knocked me off my feet again.
    I struggled back up and crawled forward. Just butted my way through fallen beams and lumps of broken concrete. I threw twisted sheets of roofing iron aside. I was like a plow. Like a bulldozer, grinding forward, piling debris to the left and right of me. There was too much dust to see anything except the sunlight. It was right there in front of me. Brightness ahead, darkness behind. I kept on going.
    I found the Mag-10. Its barrel was crushed. I threw it aside and plowed on. Found Marshall on the floor. He wasn’t moving. I pulled stuff off him and grabbed his collar and hauled him up into a sitting position. Dragged him forward until I came to the front wall. I put my back against it and slid upright until I felt the window aperture. I was choking and spitting dust. It was in my eyes. I dragged him upward and hauled him over the windowsill and dumped him out. Then I fell out after him. Got up on my hands and knees and grabbed his collar again and dragged him away. Outside the hut the dust was clearing. I could see tanks, maybe three hundred yards to the left and right of us. Lots of tanks. Hot metal in the harsh sunlight. They had outflanked us. They were holding in a perfect circle, engines idling, guns flat, aiming over open sights. I heard
boom whump
again and saw