Gideon's War/Hard Target by Howard Gordon Read Free Book Online

the way?”
    General Prang laughed. “I’m sure we can find something for you when we reach—”
    The explosion that interrupted the general’s sentence lifted the lead car in the motorcade into the air and tossed it into a nearby rice paddy like a Tonka truck flung by an angry child. The shock wave blew the entire windshield back into the Range Rover, shattering the safety glass, which sprayed over the two men in the front seat.
    Before the lead vehicle had even come to rest, bullets began thumping into the general’s vehicle, each one making a sharp thud, like the blow of a small hammer. Prang began shouting orders in a language Gideon didn’t understand.
    But whatever the general was telling his driver quickly became irrelevant. Blinded by the shattered windshield, the driver struggled wildly to control the wheel. The Range Rover cut sharply to the right, the left front wheel digging into the soft dirt at the edge of the road. The vehicle shuddered, listed hard to the left, and began to flip end over end.
    On a few occasions of particular stress in his life, Gideon had noticed that time seemed to slow down, to stt uádown, to retch like taffy. This was one of those occasions. The crash unfolded at a strange, leisurely pace, the Rover rotating as slow as a Ferris wheel. Once, twice, three times—the bullets whacking into the car as it bounced and flipped.
    When it finally stopped, the car lying upside down, the bullets continued to thud against the steel body. They blew out windows, bits of seat cushions, the television screen on the back of the passenger seat, and several pieces of the general’s rib cage. Miraculously, nothing hit Gideon.
    Just as suddenly as the onslaught had started, it stopped. Dead silence. Gideon’s vehicle had landed on its roof in a flooded rice paddy. Brown water leaked rapidly into the cabin.
    Gideon was hanging upside down, retained by his seat belt. He tried unbuckling the belt, but it was jammed. He shifted his weight until he managed to open the buckle, then fell into the stinking brown water that was quickly flooding the inverted roof.
    The general was also hanging upside down, blood dripping down his face and into the quickly collecting water. The corncob pipe was still clamped between his teeth. Gideon took the Benchmark knife the general had clipped on his pocket, cut his seat belt, and eased the man down into the water. Red circles bloomed where the shrapnel had sliced through his uniform and into his torso. From one of the frag wounds, blood was spilling in powerful pulsing surges, which meant the shrapnel had hit an artery.
    Prang’s rheumy eyes locked on Gideon’s. “Alun Jong,” he whispered, his voice hollow and cracked. “Go to Alun Jong. A boat pilot named Daryl Eng . . . he’ll get you to your brother.”
    Then General Prang’s face went slack, and the pipe slipped from his lips and tumbled into the water with a soft splash. It hissed, then went silent.
    Gideon heard men shouting commands and the sound of their feet sloshing through the rice paddy. How close were they? He couldn’t tell, but he could hear them getting closer.
    Gideon’s eyes fell on the general’s holstered pistol, a chromed Colt 1911 autoloader with ivory grips, cocked and locked. He grabbed the pistol, freed it from the holster, checked the chamber. A brass cartridge gleamed in the throat of the gun.
    It was the oddest sensation, how easily it all came back. The sensation of the pistol, the sound, the feel. The 1911 felt—as it always had to him—like an extension of his own hand. For a moment, he froze. It had been almost twenty years since he’d touched a gun—any gun. A complex mix of feelings flooded through him. The first sensation was of pleasure, of the rightness of the thing, the purity of it in his hand.
    Until his hand began to tremble.
    I can’t, he thought. Not even now.
    He let the gun slip from his grip and watched as it dropped into the water, leaving only a ripple, which