Free Ralph Peters by The war in 202 Page A

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 huddled by a fender, breathing like an excited animal.
    The huge, unmistakable sound of helicopters swelled over the broken city. The closer sound of his men working their way forward, seizing control of the street, began to dominate the scene. He could even hear them shouting now, calling out orders, employing the urban combat drills whose repetitive practice they so hated.
    The firing and hubbub of voices from the front of the column dropped off distinctly. The gang members were going to ground.
    Pistol extended before him, Meredith began to step toward the twisted, restless figure of the boy he had just shot. His opponent's automatic weapon lay safely out of reach now, but Meredith's trigger finger had molded to his pistol. He could not seem to get enough breath, and he felt his nostrils flaring.
    He guessed the boy's age at somewhere between fifteen and eighteen. It was hard to tell through the grimacing that twisted the boy's features.
    As Meredith approached, his opponent seemed to calm. The skin around his eyes relaxed slightly, and he stared up at the tall man in uniform who had just shattered the order of his body. At first Meredith did not think that the eyes were fully sentient. But they slowly focused. On the winner in the two-man contest.
    The boy glared up into Meredith's face, breathing pink spittle. Then he narrowed his focus, locking his eyes on Meredith's own, holding them prisoner even as his chest heaved and his limbs seized up, then failed.
    " Tool, " he said to Meredith, in a voice of undamaged clarity. " You . . . think you're a big man ... " His lips curled in disgust. " You're . . . nothing but a fucking tool. "
    Meredith lowered his pistol, ashamed of his fear, watching as the boy's chain-covered chest dueled with gravity. There were no words. Only the hard physical reality of asphalt, concrete, steel, broken glass.
    Flesh and blood.
    The boy's chest filled massively, as though he were readying himself to blow out the candles on a birthday cake. Then the air escaped, accompanied by a sound more animal than human. The lungs did not fill up again.
    " Medic, " Meredith screamed. " Medic. "
    The final tally was six soldiers dead and three wounded, five civilians dead and a dozen wounded, and four identifiable gang members killed in the firefight. The Army cordon-and-sweep operation rounded up another fourteen suspected gang members in building-to-building searches—a task the soldiers hated not only because of the danger of an ambush but also because they were as likely to discover rotting corpses as fugitives from the law. Few of the supposed gang members would survive. They would all go to the internment camp at Fort Irwin, to