Blaine was halfway across the field, when one of the mechanical dummies looked up at him. He froze in his tracks and felt a tremor of shock pass through him.
The target wasn’t a dummy.
It was a man. Shot full of holes and staring out through sightless eyes.
The war games they were playing here were real, with flesh and blood used in place of cardboard silhouettes. The corpse’s features were too bloodied to make out clearly. Perhaps he was a recruit who hadn’t been making it. The law of San Melas might well be survival of the fittest. Only the best were sent off the island to …
Where? Why?
“Hey, you there! You’re off limits!”
Blaine hadn’t heard the jeep squeeze to a halt. He turned slowly and faced two men with rifles at the ready.
“This is my area. I’m just on guard duty.”
“Bullshit! I don’t know you. I don’t—”
McCracken acted before the sentence was complete. He felt the futility of his ruse, knew it would get him nowhere. He was going for the M-16 on his shoulder as he dove and found the trigger just as he struck the ground.
The two men were dropped immediately by his hail of fire, managing a harmless volley each. But the gunshots would certainly bring the force of hundreds descending upon the field. Outfighting or outrunning those numbers was impossible. Outwitting them was something else again.
Blaine fired a trio of bursts into the distance beyond the ridge. Then, faking panic, he grasped his rifle tight and sprinted back in the direction he had come from. A last-second thought made him dive to the ground near the two men he had shot. His hand found the wounds of one and came away thick with oozing blood. He smeared it over his forehead and half his face, then wiped the remainder on his green pants for still more effect.
He ran from the field, eyes gazing back with forced fear, one leg dragging theatrically behind him.
Floods of men were rushing toward him, led, as expected, by the bereted leaders.
“Help me! Help!”
Blaine struggled to reach them, eyes darting more feverishly than ever over his shoulder.
“Stay down!” he screamed in warning. “Stay down!”
Most of the charging men hit the turf and rolled. A few of the bereted leaders held their ground. Blaine collapsed at their feet. He was struggling for breath and made sure they saw the blood running down the side of his face.
“How many?” one of the men in a beret asked.
“I don’t know,” Blaine wheezed. “Six maybe. I couldn’t tell. They took us by surprise from over the ridge. They seemed to be everywhere.”
“How are they packed?”
“I don’t know,” Blaine huffed.
“How are they packed, I asked you? Get a hold of yourself, soldier!”
The bereted leader grabbed Blaine and shook him at the shoulders.
“I dunno, I dunno. …”
“I said, get a hold of yourself!”
Blaine gazed vacantly at him. “They’re packed heavy. Automatic weapons.”
“Get to sickbay,” the bereted leader told him, and then signaled his men to move on.
McCracken hobbled off in the opposite direction. He had bought himself time, but that did nothing about an escape route. And now he was moving away from the airstrip. Wait! The motor pool where the heavy equipment had been stored! He could grab a jeep or truck from there and drive it to the airfield.
Blaine quickened his pace just a bit as more uniformed men streaked by him. Any moment now the leaders surveying the field might realize there had been no assault, that they had been fooled. He had to reach the motor pool before then.
He reached the macadam surface of the complex and straightened up. Suddenly his pace was that of a sprinter making fast for the motor pool. Shouts and screams started up behind him. He heard footsteps pounding the pavement and glanced back to see men rushing at him leveling their weapons.
Blaine turned all the way around and fired a spray to his rear which scattered most of the soldiers giving chase. Hundreds of others were rushing back from the target practice field. His ruse was obviously up. A jeep would do him no good now, would only delay the inevitable. But a tank …
He lit out at top speed toward the neat row of tanks.
The machine gun in the guard tower opened fire, and Blaine dodged behind the side of a building to escape the bullets. The gun had him pinned, an easy target for the many troops sprinting back toward the complex. He had to move now. In the amber light of the early evening Caribbean sun, Blaine focused on a tank at the end of the row. He had been in plenty of M60s over in ’Nam; they were powerful but cumbersome machines which took a minimum of three men to operate. Recently, though, many had been updated with computer technology, so it was possible for only one man to drive the tank and fire it. McCracken could only hope these M60s had been part of that lot. If not, the best he could hope for would be to do plenty of damage with its big gun until they got him.
Blaine sprinted out from his hiding place and dared the bullets to hit him. He ran in a zigzag to make it difficult for the tower machine gun to lock on to him. But now the troops were roaring back and fanning out in commando fashion to enclose him, not realizing yet what he was headed for.
Bullets chimed off the tank’s steel flesh as he reached it with a final leap. He vaulted behind the gun turret for cover, popped open one of the hatches, and plunged in headfirst.
He landed hard and rose immediately to close the hatch and lock it down. Bullets continued to ricochet off the steel outside, some clanging harder than others. Blaine switched on the cabin’s lights and moved to the dashboard. He blessed his luck; all the gauges were digital, indicating this was one of the updated tanks.
The control panel was on his right, and he hit the M60’s master switch. Then he pressed the starter button and the diesel engine began to hum. The pedals beneath him were similar to those found in a car, the left being the brake and the right the accelerator. There was a T-bar located directly in front of him which took the place of a steering wheel. To his right and up a little was the weapons range and targeting indicator with readouts displayed on a miniature television screen. The digital counter above it read “3,” meaning three rockets were stowed in the big gun. A button within reach of the T-bar would launch them, so he could drive and fire at the same time. The machine gun firing buttons were also within easy reach, and as he shifted the gear lever into low, Blaine couldn’t help but be amazed by this wonder of modern ballistics.
Still, three rockets would be little more than a distraction. The chances of his getting off the island suddenly seemed extremely thin. The bullets chiming regularly off the tank’s exterior reminded him he couldn’t stay inside forever.
McCracken swung the T-bar hard to the right to make the M60 go left to clear the motor pool. He headed it straight toward the largest congestion of troops, going right into the teeth of their offensive. He pressed his eyes tighter against the rubber eye holes that functioned like a submarine’s periscope. He saw the troops backing away unsurely, retreating under the onslaught of the monstrous vehicle. The M60’s top speed was perhaps thirty miles per hour, but McCracken kept it slow for more maneuverability. An explosion to his right shook the tank, and Blaine adjusted his viewer to include a wider scale.
On the tower a man stood poised with a bazooka, a second behind him sliding in another shell. Blaine slowed the tank to a crawl and switched on the automatic targeting device.
A set of grids with numbers alongside appeared on the screen before his eyes. He kept adjusting until the guard tower was in the grid’s center.
The man holding the bazooka went into his crouch.