The War in 2020

cover behind a dumpster at the mouth of an alley, pistol ready.

He could distinguish the clear sounds of Army weaponry amid the free-for-all. But he himself could identify no target at which to fire. Only running civilians, none with weapon in hand. Two boys raced down the alley, almost running into Meredith. But they were only interested in escape.

He decided to risk a look around the corner of his metal shield. The crew of Rosario's vehicle would be in a fight for their lives. If they had not already been killed.

The crowd between Meredith and the lead carryall had largely dissolved. Perhaps a dozen people lay on the ground, either wounded or simply frightened, forearms protecting their heads. Beyond them, a civilian with a machine pistol stood on the hood of Rosario's vehicle, emptying his weapon into the bodies of its occupants.

Meredith dropped to his knees and steadied his pistol with both hands before firing. Still, he missed twice before his third bullet caught its target. The gunman collapsed backward, falling headfirst to the street.

A round ricocheted off the dumpster, loud as a cathedral bell. Meredith looked around. There was plenty of firing. But there were no targets.

He huddled close to the dumpster, scanning. A woman ran from behind a truck where she had been trapped by the gunfire. She raced blindly toward Meredith. Then she stopped, standing upright. Staring.

'Get down' Meredith shouted.

But she continued to stare at him. Then she bolted. In the opposite direction. Afraid of the man in the uniform. The residents here lived in a different world. She made it halfway across the street when she seemed to trip, spilling forward.

But there was nothing to trip over, and her blouse began to soak red as she lay motionless.

Meredith thought he had spotted the killer. He fired into a window frame. But the shadow was gone.

Several of the civilians who had thrown themselves to the ground tried to crawl to safety, going slowly, in small stretches, trying not to attract attention. But the air was sodden with bullets. Meredith understood. Even though autopsies might not find Army bullets in innocent bodies, the deaths would be laid at the Army's feet. The gang was interested only in running up the casualty figures, regardless of who the casualties might be.

Perhaps a minute had passed since the first bullets bit into Rosario's chest. Now Meredith heard the distinct sound of machine gun fire.

He looked around. And he jumped to his feet, waving his arms, running.

'No,' he screamed. 'No. Stop it. Stop.'

His carryall was working its way forward, sweeping the area with its machine gun. Coming to his rescue.

'Cease fire.'

There could be no clear target for a machine gun. More civilians would die.

The machine gun continued to kick in recoil as the vehicle pulled up to the lieutenant.

'You all right, sir?' the driver shouted.

'Stop it,' Meredith screamed. 'Cease fire.'

But, as Meredith spoke, the machine gunner seemed to jump off of the carryall, as though the lieutenant had given him a ridiculous fright. A second later the boy lay openeyed on the street, bleeding.

'Pull in between the trucks,' Meredith ordered. He threw himself down beside the fallen machine gunner. 'Hendricks, Hendricks, can you hear me?' He felt for the pulse in the boy's neck. But there was none. And the open eyes did not move.

Meredith scrambled toward his vehicle, firing wildly into the distance. There was still no enemy to be seen.

His pistol went empty, and he hurled himself over the back fender of the carryall, squeezing down between the machine gun mount and the radios. The driver and the rifleman had already dismounted and were firing from the far side of the vehicle, sandwiched between oversized delivery trucks. Shooting at phantoms.

Meredith grabbed the mike. 'All Tango stations, all Tango stations. Drill five, drill five. Watch for snipers. '

The drill would bring his other platoon vehicles up along the convoy, working both sides and establishing overwatch positions so that the trail squad could dismount and rescue as many of the truck drivers as possible.

The sound of weaponry continued to ring wildly along the street, accompanied by the breaking of glass and the complaint of metal struck by bullets.

Meredith flipped to the ops net. 'One-four, One-four — action, action. Multiple friendly casualties at last named location. We've got sonsofbitches shooting us up from all the buildings.'

The squadron net came to life. 'Battle stations, battle stations.' Meredith recognized Major Taylor's voice. It was a reassuring sound. There was no panic in that voice. It was absolutely in command, practiced and economical. Surely, things would be all right now.

A spray of automatic weapons fire ripped across the front of the carryall. At the edge of Meredith's field of vision, the driver suddenly threw his arms up into the air, as if trying to catch the bullets as they went by. Then the boy crumpled out in the open, torso sprawled in front of the vehicle.

Meredith launched himself over the side of the vehicle and lay flat in the street. He jammed a fresh clip into his pistol. His knee hurt badly, although he had no idea what he had done to it. He looked around for the rifleman.

The boy sat huddled under the mud flaps of a delivery truck, pressed against the big wheels, weeping. Meredith scrambled over to him and grabbed the boy by his field jacket. 'Get out of here. Head back toward the other squads. Stay on the far side of the vehicles. Go.'

The boy stared at Meredith in utter incomprehension, as though the lieutenant had begun speaking in a foreign language.

Meredith did not know what to do. No one had prepared him for this. Even at the worst of times in his earlier experience, he had been able to maintain control of the situation. But now nothing that he did seemed to make a difference. He low-crawled forward around the carryall, to where his driver lay. The man was dead. Punctured by a gratuitous number of rounds, as though one of the snipers had been using him for target practice. Meredith tried to drag the torso back behind the vehicle. But the action only brought a welter of bullets in response. Meredith threw himself back into the tiny safety zone behind the carryall and between the trucks.

He caught an infuriating mental glimpse of himself. Trapped. Cowering. While street punks made a fool of him. In his anger, he raised himself and fired several rounds in the approximate direction from which the last wave of bullets had come. But the action only made him feel more foolish and impotent.

When he looked around, the rifleman who had been weeping under the truck was gone. In the right direction, Meredith hoped. He already had enough of his men on his conscience.

The quality of his anger changed. The bluster disappeared, and he felt very cold. His fear, too, seemed to change, turning almost into a positive force, into an energy that could be directed by a strong will.

Without making a conscious decision, he began to maneuver. Forward. Working up the far side of the trucks, from tire to tire.

At the first truck cab, he reached up and yanked at the door.

Locked.

'For God's sake, get out of there. Come on,' Meredith yelled.

A muffled voice from within the cab told Meredith very graphically what he could do with himself.

Meredith ran for the next truck. He could hear the sound of his own men firing to his rear now, coming up in support, making the drill work.

A flash of colored clothing. Weapon. Weapon. A boy with a machine pistol. His destination was the same as Meredith's — the cab of the truck. There was an instant's startled pause as the enemies took stock of each other.

Meredith saw his enemy with superb clarity, in unforgettable detail. A red, green, and black knitted beret. Flash jacket and jewelry. Dark satin pants. And a short, angular weapon, its muzzle climbing toward a target. Vivid, living, complex, intelligent eyes.

Meredith fired first. By an instant. He hit his target this time, and he kept on firing as the boy went down. His enemy's fire buried itself in a pair of tires, ripping them up, exploding them. The boy fell awkwardly, hitting the ground in a position that looked more painful than the gunshots could have been. Unsure of himself, Meredith