***
Suarez parked his tank at the rear of the house beside Gar’s machine. He kept his crew on station in case a hasty defense was needed. Dr. Ogilvey had said the enemy were coming to lay down their arms, but Suarez would only believe that when he saw it. At lunchtime old man Daniels brought out some sandwiches and coffee and Suarez and his men sat on the tank’s decks while they ate.
“There’s our guys from NORAD,” said Quinn, pointing at the county road. Three Humvees were moving fast in their direction. The convoy came up the drive and pulled up one, two, three in a line beside the tank. When the first man got out of the lead vehicle, Suarez couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Crom!” he sang out, jumping down from the tank and hurrying to embrace his friend. “Man!” he exclaimed, “it’s good to see you. I never woulda believed it.”
“Me neither,” Crom rejoiced, looking Suarez over like he had risen from the dead. “How did you ever pull through, Vic?”
“Individual initiative.” Suarez smiled, tapping the side of his helmet with an index finger. “I played the fox.”
Crom grinned. “Hey! I’ve got some big news for you. NORAD got through to Fort Bliss on their new radio network. Our wives are fine. Your kids are fine. El Paso’s fine. They even patched me through to Jessica for a minute. She says Maria sends her love.”
“Man,” Suarez said, letting out a deep sigh. “That’s the best news I’ve heard in my life.”
“There’s more,” Crom went on enthusiastically. “According to scuttlebutt, everyone in the unit is going up a grade. Promotions all around.”
“For those that survived,” Suarez replied soberly.
“And that’s quite a lot of us,” Crom reassured him. “Those Kra walking machines are pretty nasty tank-killers, but they tend to disable them without an explosion. Most of the crews escaped, even during the retreat. Now they’re trickling in to NORAD. Just like those guys you’ve got bivvied in the barn.”
Suarez said, “It does my heart good, seeing so many of them pull through after all that shooting.”
“Like you told me at the start of this, Vic, a soldier’s gotta follow orders and hope for the best. Seems like it all worked out pretty well.”
“Yeah,” Suarez agreed. “I guess Davis had to run the show the way he did. I don’t know if I’d have done anything different if I was in his boots. He called it like he had to.”
“And we fought it like we had to,” Crom added. “Davis and Lewis are up for new stars.”
“They deserve ’em, seeing how things turned out.”
“Captain! Er, Major Suarez!” Ed Vecchio suddenly called. “Here they come.” He scurried for his driver’s hatch and climbed in.
A line of four Kra fighter-walkers was moving down the road from the high prairie. They came on at a slow pace with their weapon arms lowered. As Suarez’s men took their stations, the Kra fighter-walkers pulled up in a line beside Gar’s machine, facing the Army vehicles. They hunkered down, and as their canopies began to open Suarez murmured, “This is gonna be interesting.”