Gideon's Corpse

“No, you take your best shot.” He handed Jackman his 9mm, butt-first. “If you think I’m one of the good guys, help me. You think I’m one of the bad guys, take me out. It’s your decision now, not mine.”

Jackman took the proffered weapon. His look turned to one of uncertainty, struggling with a strong sense of duty. He gave it a quick inspection, ejected the magazine. “Nice try. There’s no rounds in here.” He tossed the weapon aside.

Son of a bitch.

An uncertain silence fell. Gideon began to sweat. Then, in an almost impulsive movement, he passed the mechanic’s own handgun back to him. “Put it to my head,” he said.

Jackman made a brusque movement, seizing Gideon in a hammerlock and pressing the gun against his temple.

“Go ahead. Shoot me. Because I’m telling you right now: if they get away, I don’t want to live to see the result.”

Jackman’s finger tightened visibly against the trigger. There was a long, ticking silence.

“Did you hear me? They’re getting away. You’ve got to make up your mind—are you with me or against me?”

“I…I…” Jackman hesitated, flummoxed.

“Look at me, judge me, and damn it, make your decision.”

They stared into each other’s eyes. One more hesitation—and then the face cleared, the decision made. He took the gun away, reholstered it. “All right. Shit. I’m with you.”

Gideon peered out through the driver’s periscope. Then he jammed the gearshift of the Stryker forward and released the clutch. The vehicle lurched back and smashed into a Humvee, knocking the heavy vehicle back several yards.

“No, no, the shift works the other way!” Jackman shouted.

Gideon yanked it back and the vehicle lurched. He floored the accelerator but the Stryker only lumbered forward, gaining speed slowly because of its great weight.

“Can’t this damn thing go any faster?” he cried.

“We’ll never catch them,” said Jackman. “We can’t do more than sixty. A Humvee will do eighty, ninety.”

For a moment, Gideon took his foot off the accelerator, almost freezing up in despair. They had too big a lead—it was useless. Then he remembered something.

Pulling the map of the base out of his pocket—the one he’d been given at the front gate—he tossed it at Jackman. “Look at that. The base access road winds all over the place. We can still cut them off if we head straight for the front gate.”

“But there’s no road going straight to the front gate,” said Jackman.

“With this thing, who the hell needs a road? Just point me toward the gate. We’ll take it cross-country. And when we get there, be ready to operate the weapons.”

75

Gideon accelerated the Stryker across the long parking lot, past the burning helicopter, and hit the pavement, making fifty miles an hour, the vehicle’s eight wheels humming loudly on the service road.

Jackman examined the tattered map. “Take a heading of a hundred ninety degrees. Here, use this.” He indicated an electronic compass on the dashboard.

Gideon turned to one hundred ninety degrees south, the Stryker leaping the curb and churning across a wide expanse of grass, heading toward a line of trees.

“What do we have for weapons?” Gideon called out.

“Fifty-cal, Mk-9 automatic grenade launcher, smoke grenades.”

“Can the Stryker cut through those trees?”

“We’re going to find out,” said Jackman. “Shift into eight-wheel drive. That lever, there.”

Gideon pulled the lever and accelerated for the trees, the diesel roaring. God, it was a powerful engine. The trees were spaced far apart, but not far enough. He steered toward an area of what looked like younger, thi

“Hold on,” he said.

The vehicle struck one, then another, slamming through them with a loud thwack as each tree snapped off at the base, the vehicle bucking and lurching, the engine roaring, trunks flying aside, leaves whirling. A minute later they broke into a grassy clearing.

A red light glowed on a nearby flat panel and a flat, electronic voice sounded. “Warning, speed unsuitable for current terrain conditions. Adjusting tire pressure to compensate.”

Gideon peered through the driver’s periscope. “Shit. There are some really big oaks ahead.”

“Slow down, I’ll try to clear them with the grenade launcher.” Jackman pressed a series of switches, and the weapons system screen flickered to life. He peered intently through the gu

There was a series of whooshes and, a moment later, an eruption of sound. The oaks disappeared in a wall of flame, dirt, leaves, and splinters. Even before the area had been fully cleared Gideon floored the accelerator again, the wheels spi

They broke free of the woods with a final crash. Looming ahead, across a road, was a chain-link fence surrounding a residential neighborhood: neat rows of bungalows, driveways, cars, postage-stamp lawns covered with all the accoutrements of suburban living.

“Oh shit,” Gideon murmured. At least nobody much was around, the families largely evacuated. He aimed the Stryker toward the path of least resistance. They hit the chain-link fence, peeling it up like a ribbon before tearing through. He careened across a backyard, pulverizing a jungle gym and sideswiping an aboveground pool, causing an eruption of water across the yard.

“Jesus!” cried Jackman.

Gideon kept the accelerator pi

A single-story bungalow lay directly before them: checked curtains hanging in the living room picture window, yellow flowers framing a beautifully kept lawn. Gideon realized he could not avoid the house entirely and aimed for the garage. They impacted with a terrific blow, the Stryker’s engine screaming as they knocked aside a pickup truck, then tore out the back wall of the garage, trailing wooden beams and wallboard and clouds of dust.

“Warning,” came the electronic voice. “Speed unsuitable for current terrain conditions.”

Looking through the periscope, Gideon could see people ru

“Sure you don’t want to go back?” Jackman asked through clenched teeth. “I think you missed something.”

Pushing the vehicle forward, Gideon tore through another chain-link fence on the far side of the neighborhood. Beyond an empty parking lot, a grid of Quonset huts loomed ahead, the narrowest of alleys between each of them; Gideon headed for the broadest looking of the alleys, but it wasn’t quite broad enough. The Stryker chewed its way through, crumpling the walls on either side like so much tinfoil and knocking the flimsy huts off their cheap foundations.

Bounding into an open area, they blew across a set of baseball diamonds, smashed through some cheap wooden bleachers, burst through a brick wall, and—quite abruptly—emerged onto the base’s golf course. As he worked the controls, Gideon remembered vaguely that a golf course was the first thing he’d seen on entering the base: they were almost at the entrance.

He rode over a tee-off area and ground his way down the fairway, the few golfers out and about dropping their clubs and scattering like partridges. He crossed a narrow water hazard, boiled through the mud on the far side, and churned over a second green, sending huge divots and gouts of turf flying—and then, as they topped a rise, Gideon could make out, a quarter mile away, a cluster of buildings and a fence that marked the front gate.

…And along the service road paralleling the golf course, speeding at right angles to them, was the Humvee carrying Blaine and Dart.