Flashback

“You saying the drugrunner is a shill for the Muslims? That they want control of what used to be Arizona, Southern California, New Mexico, parts of…”

“I am saying that it is very unusual and interesting that Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev contacted Mr. Nakamura and agreed to an interview with you, Bottom-san. Insisted upon an interview with you. Have you had any dealings with him in the past that we do not know about? If so, it is very important that we know of them, Bottom-san.”

“No, nothing,” Nick said truthfully. The DPD had tried to arrange interview times with the man after Keigo Nakamura’s murder, since the late video-documentarian’s people had said that Keigo had interviewed him just days before he died, but Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev had been a ghost. They couldn’t even contact his people. The local Santa Fe cops and New Mexico highway patrol people—all of them on someone’s payroll, of course—hadn’t even tried to help. The FBI, Nick knew, had also struck out with the Russian-Chechen-Mexican-Muslim drug-and gunrunner.

“I still don’t see…,” began Nick.

“Boxcar One, Boxcar One,” came Bill’s voice from the turret of Boxcar Two, “the boy is turning his horse around… looks like a hundred and eighty degrees. Yes, he’s stopped.”

“Very well, Boxcar One,” Sato said calmly. The security chief was throwing switches on his panel. “Stand by to…”

At that instant the 120mm HEAT high-explosive antitank round struck the transparent Kevlar bubble atop the first Oshkosh, beheaded Joe in a microsecond, and poured the hypersonic lava of its shaped charge down over Joe’s immolated corpse and into the small space where Sato and Nick sat.

1.12 North of Las Vegas, New Mexico—Wednesday, Sept. 15

For nick there was only an instantaneous sensation of great heat, then a terrible pressure as a solid wall of darkness surrounded him and pressed in on him, and then nothing.

In the second Oshkosh–Land Cruiser M-ATV thirty meters behind them, the driver Willy—whose real name was Mutsumi ta—saw Sato’s vehicle get hit. The gun bubble on top shot two hundred feet into the air with a pillar of flame seemingly supporting it. Sato’s Oshkosh flipped, hit the left edge of the bridge it was crossing, and dropped down into the empty riverbed, trailing guard rail and concrete rebar behind it and rolling a dozen or so times. Pieces of flaming metal had flown off the leading Oshkosh upon impact of the tank or artillery shell and now the large back hatch sliced the air toward ta’s vehicle like a 300-pound piece of shrapnel, missing by ten inches. In the riverbed below, more geysers of flame erupted from every sprung hatch, air vent, and the entire rear of Sato and Nick’s burning, tumbling truck.

ta jerked his Oshkosh off the highway to the right so hard that the huge vehicle actually teetered on its right wheels for a few seconds before crashing all wheels back to the earth. The patch of Interstate thirty meters behind where he’d been an instant before exploded upward and outward as a second HEAT round slammed into the pavement. A third exploded just to the left of ta’s Oshkosh where it had been tilting seconds earlier.

There were at least two tanks firing.

Toby shouted in Japanese from the right seat, “I saw the flashes! Two tanks, hull down, just at the base of the hill about one klick ahead.”

ta reached the steep bank of the riverbed and drove straight off, all 25,000 pounds of the Oshkosh seeming to hang in air for an eternity before it fell below the level of the riverbanks, all the wheels compacting fully on the TAK-7 independent suspensions.

The north bank of the riverbed exploded behind them.

“Three tanks!” shouted Bill in Japanese from the gun bubble. “Saw the third flash.”

ta’s M-ATV crashed through willows and fallen cottonwoods before skidding to a teetering stop in the sand near the south bank. They should be out of direct-fire view and range of the tanks, ta knew, although mortars or artillery could get them easily through indirect fire.

“Infantry!” shouted Bill from above. Bill’s real name was Daigorou Okada. “Saw them just before we dropped. Several hundred, I think. Carrying small arms and RPGs and TOWs.”

“Where?” asked Mutsumi ta in his slow, calm voice. He’d have to find out if his boss, Sato, was alive, but that could wait a minute until they understood the tactical situation and could find a way to get into the fight.

“Coming out of holes due south about halfway to the tanks,” said Okada, his own voice more calm and professional now.

Toby, whose real name was Shinta Ishii, had been busy on the vehicle-to-vehicle comm lines, trying to raise Sato or Joe, real name Tai Okamoto, or the gai-jin with them. There was no answer.

“How did the drones and sats miss the tanks?” asked Shinta Ishii in Japanese when he broke off trying to raise Sato’s truck.