Home, Hart thought. He was now in his own country but couldn’t even talk to Washington. There were a few buried fiber optic cables, but Hart didn’t trust them. They were shared with other men operating around him. Hart instinctively didn’t trust anything shared. A man would do anything — say anything — if captured alive by the Chinese.
But before the war on a field training exercise he had tested the line. It was covered by rocks in a hollow not far from there. The Pentagon operator had asked for the access code issued especially for the test, and then had said, “How may I direct your call?” Hart had laughed, unprepared for the question. He gave the woman the only number that came to mind. After a few clicks he was connected to his hometown: Lansing, Michigan. His ex-wife had sleepily answered the phone. Hart had hung up without saying a word.
A wave of sadness washed over Hart at the recollection. “I’m a total fucking idiot!” he said softly to himself. He then repeated the words with a studied southern drawl. Hart had spent the last three months honing his accent. He was better at crude Arabic than at the intonations and dipthongs of southern American English. But he was certain that no Chinese soldier would think him out of place for any reason other than the obvious: Hart was a male of combat age.
“Barely of combat age,” he said to himself. He had joined the army late in life. At twenty-four, his wife had left him for another man. Lansing had seemed too small after that. She had kept going to the same places they had gone when they were together, only now with her new husband, Hart’s former boss. Hart had a college degree and a job he didn’t like. He had joined the army, whose ranks were just beginning to swell. “Figur’ I saw it comin’,” he drawled, satisfied.
Hart had kicked much ass in Officer Candidate School. The few years spent working after college had given him the edge in discipline over his early-twenties classmates. He had gone on to eat airborne and Ranger schools for lunch. By age twenty-seven, Hart had gotten his coveted green beret. Although the physical hardships had been grueling, the mental rigors had been therapeutic. He had killed his ex-wife and her new husband over and over again on the rifle range. Twice, in the sawdust-filled close-in combat pits, he had been warned about going too far. “Save something for the Chinese,” the instructors had said to him quietly on the side.
And now, here he was: a baby-faced thirty-one-year-old trained killer sent out to kill.
The rifle seemed heavier when Hart again raised its butt and checked the scope.
“Sh-shit!” he said in a hiss. Chinese army trucks were arriving at the gas station. The few soldiers posted to guard the fuel cache that they had finally discovered first waved and then saluted dismounting officers. Hart traversed the rifle a few degrees. Truck after truck pulled to a stop. Five, six, seven! he counted silently, finally stopping at fifteen.
He raised his lower-power, wider-angle field binoculars. A convoy bunched up along the road. Rows of men’s backs could be seen under the trucks’ canvas. Hart’s scalp began to crawl as the magnitude of the target sunk in. Twenty or thirty men per truck. Twenty or thirty trucks in all. Maybe five or six hundred men. An entire fucking infantry battalion, he realized. It screamed for an airstrike, but airstrikes weren’t an option. Nothing less than hundreds of aircraft or missiles could penetrate this deep into Chinese airspace. Plus he was out of contact and couldn’t even call it in. This wasn’t the kind of war for which he had initially trained.
Hart pulled his three spare boxes of .50 caliber rounds from his pack as goose bumps tickled his skin. He looked closely in surprise at his quivering hand, then laid the ammo boxes beside his full-auto sniper rifle. That was it. He was ready. He had two hundred of the most potent rounds in America’s small-arms arsenal, but even more potent had been the advance planning that had taken place several months earlier. He tried now to wait the last few minutes for the shot.
The growing crowd of soldiers soundlessly hooted on the two-inch-diagonal screen before his eye. He dialed the scope’s power down to take in a wider field. Soldiers jostled for position in line. Special Forces Command had had months to dream up dirty tricks. They had stocked the soft drink machine and left the power running. While drivers began refueling trucks, thirsty infantrymen pooled their American coins and began to greedily guzzle frigid Coca Colas.
There had to be sixty or seventy of soldiers in the cluster.
Hart powered up his detonator panel. The “ready” light initially glowed amber, but the LED switched to steady green before Hart had time to worry about his batteries. He flicked open the switch’s cover but hesitated. With the naked eye he could barely make out the line of trucks beyond the ridge that rose between Hart and the road. But he knew there were some guys at a dusty gas station drinking cokes. Others stretched or pissed beside their rides. It could have been any number of convoys in which Hart himself had ridden. He could even imagine the substance of their banter.
He didn’t doubt the justness of his cause or question his right to take the act. He just took a moment to overcome thousands of years of socialization. To override the ancient dictate against murder.
He pressed the button firmly with his thumb and held it for a full second.
A boiling mushroom cloud of orange flames — soundless for an instant — shot two hundred feet into the sky. The shock wave clapped his face and ears. He quickly raised the rifle and braced his boots against the half-buried rock at which he had camped. On full auto, the long rifle kicked like none other he had fired. But the recoil was straight back, which was where Hart came in. His heavily padded shoulder would absorb the pounding blows. His feet would hold him in place.
Through the scope he saw nothing but flames where the buildings and pumps had been. Dozens of smoldering bodies littered the hill and roadside like ants. Hart moved the weapon’s aim down the line of vehicles. The first half dozen were blackened and burning. A flaming river of gasoline flowed straight down the road beneath the convoy — yet another of Special Forces Command’s deadly tricks — but no Chinese moved until Hart got to the tenth vehicle in line. Those men were thrashing and flailing, on fire. Hart traversed the rifle all the way to the last truck visible before another hill obscured his view. As luck would have it, that truck was trying with difficulty to turn around on the narrow, two-lane road.
Hart dialed the scope back to 120. The crosshairs steadied on the engine block.
The .50 caliber roared, battering its human shock absorber and threatening to wrench itself from his grip. The half-second burst put only five rounds on target, but in the calm that followed Hart saw flames and steam shooting from the truck’s buckled hood through the thin smoke that rose from his muzzle. The windshield was completely gone. So was the driver behind it. As he watched, the truck rolled off the side of the hill and into freefall. Troops dove out the rear, a few successfully, most to their death as the truck flipped in air and tumbled down the steep drop.
“Shit!” Hart cursed. He had wanted to use the truck as a roadblock. He raked the next truck in line broadsides flattening both tires. Men poured out of trucks as their drivers tried to maneuver. Hart winced as three men were crushed between the fenders of two trucks. One driver stuck his head out to look back as they screamed. Hart took aim and blew his head off his shoulders. His truck remained in reverse, dooming the three crushed men. Hart’s .50 caliber doomed the rest.
Puffs of smoke began erupting from the road. Popping sounds arrived moments later. But apart from the occasional clipping of tree branches or slap against a rock, Hart got no sense that he was receiving fire. He scanned the road and killed the few missile and machine gun crews who were setting up on the road. He then began firing single, deadly shots at the officers and NCOs who gave their lives trying to bring order to the chaos. Finally, Hart switched to auto and mowed down the men who sprinted along the road in flight from the river of burning gasoline.