could. “Your mothers will curse you if you don’t get some fire going, fellows.” His team began to return the fire, but they were clearly shaken by the laser sights.
Yasotay smacked another clip into his Uzi. Then, with calm deliberation, he stood, aimed at a Delta commando coming at him in the dark, and killed the man with a single burst to the brain. He found another target in a second and fired into the ribs. He found a third and hit him in mid-body. By this time, like angry birds, the red streaks sought him through the smoke and the darkness. And as they climbed to find him, one of his men found the courage
“That’s it!” Yasotay shouted. He waited one more second, then dropped out of gun range. Overhead the world seemed to explode as the tracers tore through the air. But he heard another sound: his own M-60. God, he was glad he’d brought it, because the damned thing had so much authority that it drove anything that faced it into retreat.
“Sir, they’re falling back.”
Indeed, the Delta commandos, faced with the heavy gun, straggled backward. They were hung up in the elevator shaft entrance and its environs.
Then Yasotay’s M-60 jammed.
It was the second big blast that panicked Jack. It was so close! He blinked, terrified, and felt his pants fill with liquid. He realized he’d urinated. Then it sounded as if hundreds of kids were beating on the walls with two- by-fours, the sounds wooden and unconvincing. What? He couldn’t figure it out, until at last it occurred to him he was hearing small-arms fire.
They’d be coming, he knew. They’d come through that door there, these army guys, and they’d kill everybody, and that was it.
He turned to the mad general and said, “I don’t think—”
“Burn it! Burn it, you fool. My hand must get into it! Burn it through, goddamn you, Hummel.”
The pistol came close to his skull and rested there.
Jack’s will collapsed. He wasn’t strong enough. He was going to die, he knew. He’d never see his kids again or his wife: he was a fool and a loser and a vain and worthless man, and this was the one test that counted and he was fucking it up and this guy would kill him or the Army would kick its way in and kill him.
But he tried.
“I can’t,” he said. “I won’t.”
The general placed his pistol next to Jack’s head. Jack felt the circle of the muzzle boring against the frail bone of his temple. There was a click.
“Do it,” commanded the general.
Jack plunged the torch back into the long slash in the metal and watched as the hot bright needle of flame melted the last rim of titanium around the black hole. He could tell: it was done. You could get your hand in now. It was over.
He looked up.
“It’s finished,” he said.
The general’s arm rose and came down and Jack accepted the blow across the face. It went off like a thunderclap, the sound of the pistol barrel striking bone and shaking brain and the world wobbled out of sight with the surge of pain, and then became blurry.
Jack felt himself sliding away and knew the warm wetness on his face was blood. But through his daze he saw the general reach in, struggle once, and then emerge with the key.
“Yasotay. Yasotay, I have it!”
The first blast knocked Walls to his knees and he almost fired the shotgun involuntarily. The second blast, even louder, really scared him. The gunfire rose like the sound of the ocean, beating and crashing against the walls.
He turned to the woman.
“Okay, mama-san,” he said. “You just cover my ass, okay?”
Something that passed for acceptance radiated from her dark eyes for just a second and she turned and muttered something to herself and Walls, then realized she was praying. She was giving herself up to God for what would happen in the next two seconds or so. So he himself said a quick one. Dear God, he said, if you’re a white man or a brown man or a yellow man I don’t know, but please don’t let these guys blow up the world before I move my momma and my brother James to the country. And if you do, then fuck you, ’cause you be dead too.
With a punch of his foot Walls kicked in the door to discover a young man in the blue beret of the Soviet airborne running with an RPG to reinforce the second strongpoint, and he blew him away with Mr. 12, felt the hard kick of gun against his shoulder, cycled the slide in half a second, popping a red from the breech, blew away another as he turned, dipped running across the corridor, blew away a young man with an AK-47 who turned to look at him, and saw himself in the kill zone of still a fourth who, before he could fire, fell back as his head exploded because the Vietnamese woman had shot him there with her Taurus.
Walls winked and gave her the thumbs-up — bitch can
He was thinking, Come on, you motherfuckers, come to me, come to old Walls, Walls got the glory and the truth for you here with Mr. 12 by his side, and indeed he came upon two wounded men busily inserting ammunition into clips, and he did the necessary without a twitch of guilt, pumping the slide as the hot shells flipped from the breech and then he heard a cry and was hit by a spray of gunfire in the wrist, rib, and neck, and went down.
Mother, Mother, her daughter cried from the flames, Help me! Help me!
Phuong ran to her, past the black man who had been shot, but in her way was a white man with a rifle, and so she shot him; then another came and she shot him; there were two more and she shot them. Suddenly, they were everywhere around her and she felt herself hit, but she turned and fired twice more and was so close she could not miss, though she was hit again and again.
Mother, do not let me burn! her daughter screamed.
Phuong rose through her pain, turned to find her daughter, and two more white men fired at her and hit her, but she fired back, hitting them too.
I am coming, she screamed in her heart, and then she saw her daughter and went to her and grabbed her and the burning finally stopped.
Jesus, he hurt, but then he looked and saw that he still had the damn vest on and the bad one in the rib had just flattened itself out while kicking him like a mule. His wrist had been hit with a ricochet, his neck didn’t bleed bad. He pulled himself over to the woman.
She lay quiet. Seven men lay around her. The automatic was on the floor, its slide locked back. He knelt, quickly felt for pulse. Nothing. Her eyes were closed and tranquil.
Jesus, mama-san, he thought, you’re some kind of fine lady.
One of the bad guys was trying to crawl away, leaking blood. Walls put the muzzle of the shotgun against his head and fired. Then he raced on.
Yasotay gave the M-60 a good kick and when that didn’t work, bent, pulled out his boot knife, and popped the feed cover. He could see that a bad shell had become stovepiped into the bolt head. With his knife blade he got some purchase, gave a mighty heave, and popped the thing out. Then, throwing the knife away, he reseated the belt, slammed the feed cover, and pulled the bolt back. He turned to the gunner, who was so overcome at Yasotay’s charisma that he made no move to take over the gun. So Yasotay stood as red flashes zeroed toward him, and he saw the Delta commandos flooding toward him, visibly taken with his extraordinary courage. He pressed the trigger. The gun made him a god. The tracers flicked out, and where they hit they pushed the shadowy figures of Delta
