drone of an aero engine. Maybe from a lone fighter crawling across an azure 1940s sky. Or the scream of a fast jet passing low overhead, shaking the ground. Or the
No, the twentieth century’s signature sound is the squeal and clatter of tank tracks on a paved street. That sound was heard in Warsaw, and Rotterdam, and Stalingrad, and Berlin. Then it was heard again in Budapest and Prague, and Seoul and Saigon. It’s a brutal sound. It’s the sound of fear. It speaks of a massive overwhelming advantage in power. And it speaks of remote, impersonal indifference. Tank treads squeal and clatter and the very noise they make tells you they can’t be stopped. It tells you you’re weak and powerless against the machine. Then one track stops and the other keeps on going and the tank wheels around and lurches straight toward you, roaring and squealing. That’s the real twentieth-century sound.
We heard the XII Corps’ Abrams column a long time before we saw it. The noise came at us through the fog. We heard the tracks, and the whine of the turbines. We heard the grind of the drive gear and felt fastpattering bass shudders through the soles of our feet as each new tread plate came off the cogs and thumped down into position. We heard grit and stone crushed under their weight.
Then we saw them. The lead tank loomed at us through the mist. It was moving fast, pitching a little, staying flat, its engine roaring. Behind it was another, and another. They were all in line, single file, like an armada from hell. It was a magnificent sight. The M1A1 Abrams is like a shark, evolved to a point of absolute perfection. It is the undisputed king of the jungle. No other tank on earth can even begin to damage it. It is wrapped in armor made out of a depleted uranium core sandwiched between rolled steel plate. The armor is dense and impregnable. Battlefield shells and rockets and kinetic devices bounce right off it. But its main trick is to stand off so far that no battlefield shell or rocket or kinetic device can even reach it. It sits there and watches enemy rounds fall short in the dirt. Then it traverses its mighty gun and fires and a second later and a mile and a half in the distance its assailant blows up and burns. It is the ultimate unfair advantage.
The lead tank rolled past us. Eleven feet wide, twenty-six feet long, nine and a half feet tall. Seventy tons. Its engine bellowed and its weight shook the ground. Its tracks squealed and clattered and slid on the concrete. Then the second tank rolled by. And the third, and the fourth, and the fifth. The noise was deafening. The huge bulk of exotic metal buffeted the air. The gun barrels dipped and swayed and bounced. Exhaust fumes swirled all around.
There were altogether twenty tanks in the formation. They drove in through the gate and their noise and vibration faded behind us and then there was a short gap and a scout car came out of the mist straight toward us. It was a shoot-and-scoot Humvee armed with a TOW-2 antitank missile launcher. Two guys in it. I stepped into its path and raised my hand. Paused. I didn’t know Marshall and I had only ever seen him once, in the dark interior of the Grand Marquis outside Fort Bird’s post headquarters. But even so, I was pretty sure that neither of the guys in the Humvee was him. I remembered Marshall as large and dark and these guys were small, which is much more usual for Armored people. One thing there isn’t a lot of inside an Abrams is room.
The Humvee came to a stop right in front of me and I tracked around to the driver’s window. Summer took up station on the passenger side, standing easy. The driver rolled his glass down. Stared out at me.
“I’m looking for Major Marshall,” I said.
The driver was a captain and his passenger was a captain too. They were both dressed in Nomex tank suits, with balaclavas and Kevlar helmets with built-in headphones. The passenger had sleeve pockets full of pens. He had clipboards strapped to both thighs. They were all covered with notes. Some kind of score sheets.
“Marshall’s not here,” the driver said.
“So where is he?”
“Who’s asking?”
“You can read,” I said. I was wearing last night’s BDUs. They had oak leaves on the collar and
“Unit?” the guy said.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Marshall went to California,” he said. “Emergency deployment to Fort Irwin.”
“When?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Try to be.”
“Last night sometime.”
“That’s not very specific.”
“I’m honestly not sure.”
“What kind of an emergency have they got at Irwin?”
“I’m not sure about that either.”
I nodded. Stepped back.
“Drive on,” I said.
Their Humvee moved out from the space between us, and Summer joined me in the middle of the road. The air smelled of diesel and gas turbine exhaust and the concrete was scored fresh white by the passage of the tank tracks.
“Wasted trip,” Summer said.
“Maybe not,” I said. “Depends exactly when Marshall left. If it was after Swan’s phone call, that tells us something.”
We were shunted between three different offices, trying to find out exactly what time Marshall left XII Corps. We ended up in a second-story suite that housed General Vassell’s operation. Vassell himself wasn’t there. We spoke to yet another captain. He seemed to be in charge of an administrative company.
“Major Marshall took a civilian flight at 2300,” he said. “Frankfurt to Dulles. Seven-hour layover and on to LAX from National. I issued the vouchers myself.”
“When?”
“As he was leaving.”
“Which was when?”
“He left here three hours before his flight.”
“Eight o’clock?”
The captain nodded. “On the dot.”
“I was told he was scheduled for night maneuvers.”
“He was. That plan changed.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What’s the panic at Irwin?” I said.
“I’m not sure.”
I smiled, briefly. “When were Marshall’s orders issued?”
“At seven o’clock.”
“Written?”
“Verbal.”
“By?”
“General Vassell.”
“Did Vassell countersign the travel vouchers himself?”
The captain nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “He did.”
“I need to speak to him,” I said.
