Before the lead vehicle had even come to rest, bullets began thumping into the general’s vehicle, each one making a sharp thud, like the blow of a small hammer. Prang began shouting orders in a language Gideon didn’t understand.
But whatever the general was telling his driver quickly became irrelevant. Blinded by the shattered windshield, the driver struggled wildly to control the wheel. The Range Rover cut sharply to the right, the left front wheel digging into the soft dirt at the edge of the road. The vehicle shuddered, listed hard to the left, and began to flip end over end.
On a few occasions of particular stress in his life, Gideon had noticed that time seemed to slow down, to stt uádown, to retch like taffy. This was one of those occasions. The crash unfolded at a strange, leisurely pace, the Rover rotating as slow as a Ferris wheel. Once, twice, three times—the bullets whacking into the car as it bounced and flipped.
When it finally stopped, the car lying upside down, the bullets continued to thud against the steel body. They blew out windows, bits of seat cushions, the television screen on the back of the passenger seat, and several pieces of the general’s rib cage. Miraculously, nothing hit Gideon.
Just as suddenly as the onslaught had started, it stopped. Dead silence. Gideon’s vehicle had landed on its roof in a flooded rice paddy. Brown water leaked rapidly into the cabin.
Gideon was hanging upside down, retained by his seat belt. He tried unbuckling the belt, but it was jammed. He shifted his weight until he managed to open the buckle, then fell into the stinking brown water that was quickly flooding the inverted roof.
The general was also hanging upside down, blood dripping down his face and into the quickly collecting water. The corncob pipe was still clamped between his teeth. Gideon took the Benchmark knife the general had clipped on his pocket, cut his seat belt, and eased the man down into the water. Red circles bloomed where the shrapnel had sliced through his uniform and into his torso. From one of the frag wounds, blood was spilling in powerful pulsing surges, which meant the shrapnel had hit an artery.
Prang’s rheumy eyes locked on Gideon’s. “Alun Jong,” he whispered, his voice hollow and cracked. “Go to Alun Jong. A boat pilot named Daryl Eng . . . he’ll get you to your brother.”
Then General Prang’s face went slack, and the pipe slipped from his lips and tumbled into the water with a soft splash. It hissed, then went silent.
Gideon heard men shouting commands and the sound of their feet sloshing through the rice paddy. How close were they? He couldn’t tell, but he could hear them getting closer.
Gideon’s eyes fell on the general’s holstered pistol, a chromed Colt 1911 autoloader with ivory grips, cocked and locked. He grabbed the pistol, freed it from the holster, checked the chamber. A brass cartridge gleamed in the throat of the gun.
It was the oddest sensation, how easily it all came back. The sensation of the pistol, the sound, the feel. The 1911 felt—as it always had to him—like an extension of his own hand. For a moment, he froze. It had been almost twenty years since he’d touched a gun—any gun. A complex mix of feelings flooded through him. The first sensation was of pleasure, of the rightness of the thing, the purity of it in his hand.
Until his hand began to tremble.
I can’t, he thought. Not even now.
He let the gun slip from his grip and watched as it dropped into the water, leaving only a ripple, which quickly went still. Although the water couldn’t have been more than a few feet deep, he couldn’t see the gun in the muddy darkness.
The noise was getting louder, the shouts more intense.
What was he waiting for? Time to get out of here. Floating listlessly on the brown water was the map Prang had shown him only a few minutes ago. On it was the location of the t guáon of theown where he was supposed to meet his brother. Kampung Naga. He grabbed the map, shoved it into his back pocket.
Tiny cubes of glass raked his body and fell away as he shimmied through the jagged remains of the window. All the sloshing sounds and shouting were coming from the driver’s side. For a moment he hunkered behind the car, wondering if they’d seen him yet, although he didn’t think they had.
Gideon’s first impulse was to run. But the little computer in his brain—the one that took over when time slowed down—told him that he’d never make it. There were too many of them. And it was a good hundred yards to the edge of the paddy.
As if to confirm his thought, he watched as one of Prang’s soldiers struggled from the wrecked front seat of the car. He was covered in blood. But he still carried his MP5. He fired two quick bursts over the underside of the car, then made a break for the berm at the edge of the paddy.
Before he’d gone five steps, he was hit three times and went down like a marionette that had its strings cut.
One part of Gideon’s mind watched calmly, almost pleased at the confirmation of his earlier analysis, while the other part stared in horror.
What now?
And then he knew. The pipe. The general’s pipe was floating nearby, like a buoy marking a channel. Gideon snatched it from the water. The bowl was still warm from its recent load of burning tobacco as he tore it off, then put the stem in his mouth and slowly, calmly, lay back into the murky water. He pushed himself away from the car, splaying out his arms and sinking his fingers into the slimy mud. He closed his eyes, and pulled himself under the surface of the water.
It was a trick right out of the silly adventure books he’d read when he was a kid—the Indian hiding underwater and breathing through a reed as he hid from the enemy. Was it really possible? Could he get enough air through the tiny hole? Would whoever had just ambushed them be able to see him?
He had no answer to these questions.
He simply concentrated on calming his heart, slowing his breathing. He could hear a soft whistle through the pipe stem as he drew his breath in and out. It took some effort, but he was able to draw just enough air through the pipe stem to breathe.
He could hear the splashing of the assailants. Nearer and nearer. Then a gunshot. Then another. Muffled voices shouting. Another shot.
Then silence.
In. Out. In. Out.
His hands started losing their grip on the mud. If he lost his grip, his body would float up when he took a deep breath and they’d see him. He tried to move his hands as slowly as possible, worming them deeper into the muck.
More splashing. The killers were moving slowly around the car. It was obvious they hadn’t spotted him. Yet. He tried to calm his quickening heart.
In. Out. In. Out.
If his heart beat too fast, he wouldn’t be able to take in enough air and he’d have to break the surface in order to breathe.
In. Out. In. Out.
to á0em">He began counting. One, in. Two, out. Three, in. Four, out.
The splashing continued. Sometimes moving closer, sometimes farther away.
Sixty-one, in. Sixty-two, out. Sixty-three, in . . .
The splashing continued for a long time. Maybe they were looting the car, taking the weapons. Maybe searching for intelligence material. It was impossible to know.
Gideon reached a count of 2,440 before he realized that the splashing had stopped. He had been concentrating so hard on his breathing that he hadn’t even noticed them moving away.
Gideon's War and Hard Target
He was tempted to surface now, but he knew that was a bad...
CHAPTER SIX
AT TWELVE THOUSAND, GIDEON opened his eyes again. Pale light still filtered through the murky water, but the sun was getting lower. He closed his eyes and kept breathing and counting.
At fifteen thousand, he forced his eyes open long enough to see that night had finally fallen. He sat up slowly, concentrating on not making any sound. As his face broke the surface, he looked around. The only light came from a hut at the far side of the paddy. He rose and walked as slowly as he could toward what he believed to be the road.