Savages

Lead car, cash car, follow car.

Escalade, Taurus, Suburban.

The Escalade is far out in front, maybe fifty yards, the Suburban is tight on the Taurus.

Ben crouches in the rocks not far from the road.

Remote controls for toy airplanes in his hand.

Two toggle switches.

They’ve been out there all night, planting the IEDs. Studied this road on Google Earth, looked for the right narrow hairpin curve, close to rocks that will contain and channel the blast.

Non-symmetrical conflict.

It won’t be self-defense this time, it will be out-and-out murder.

The men in the caravan must be fairly relaxed. They came up from the flat desert and could see any car for miles, and saw nothing.

There’s nothing out here.

Ben waits.

Hand trembles.

With adrenaline, or doubt?

224

The caravan comes into the narrow switchback.

Chon sights in. In his mind’s eye, though, he sees—

—Taliban

moving like scorpions across a similar landscape

     his own caravan blown to shit

          blood streaming from buddies

Now I’m one of them

He sights in again.

No time for

Lack of PTSD

He only hopes that

Gentle Ben

Increase-the-Peace Ben

is one of them, too, now.

Now, Ben.

Find your inner Taliban.

225

Ben peeks above the sheltering boulder and sees the three vehicles come into the pass.

The cars themselves are nothing—assembly-line products of plastic and steel, little Bunsen burners of global warming. Dinosaur carbon prints on the sere landscape. They are things, and Ben has no compunctions about things (“we are spirits in the material world”). Tries to tell himself that they are only things but he knows the truth—there are people inside the things.

Beings with families, friends, loved ones, hopes, fears.

Capable, unlike the vessels that carry them, of pain and suffering.

Which he is about to inflict.

Index finger and thumb poised on the switch.

A simple muscle fiber twitch but

There is no Undo button.

No Control Alt Delete

Ben thinks about suicide bombers

Murder is the suicide of the soul.

He takes his hand off.

226

Now, Ben, Chon thinks.

Now or never.

Now or not at all.

Two more seconds and the moment will have passed.

227

Ben flips the switch.

A blast of flame and the lead car hops sideways.

Shredded.

The cash car speeds up to pull around it but

Chon squeezes the trigger of the Barrett Model 90 and

The driver’s face disappears, red (incarnadine) with the daybreak, then

Its passenger leans in to take the wheel as

Chon slides the bolt back, reloads, sights, and shoots a big ragged hole into the would-be hero’s chest and then the car rolls into the rocks, stops, and bursts into flame.

Men, rifles in their hands, start to get out of the follow car but

Ben flips the second switch and

fragments of the Escalade become shrapnel, tearing, ripping, killing, and what it doesn’t do

Chon does.

The survivors of the blast—stunned, shocked, and bleeding—look up and around as if to ask the question

where does death come from

it comes from

Chon, sliding the bolt, pulling the trigger, and in seconds

It is quiet except for

The crackling of flames and the

Groans of the wounded.

228

Chon drops the rifle, it

Clatters on the rocks and he

Scampers down the slope, gets into the work car, pulled off on the side, covered in brush, and he races it down to where

Ben

his face lit by flame

stands among the dead and dying.