Physics of the Crowbar

Opposing Force

Outside the little command center, he walked into a fragment of true battlefield, a skeleton left behind by an aerial bombardment. Half-high walls and broken cinder-block crisscrossed the footprint of what had been another manufacturing building. Plenty of cover. Too much cover. Too much bright sun and dark shadows, shapes that didn't add up. Walls that didn't align, ceilings that didn't cover.

There was movement in the rubble. A very dusty security guard was crouched behind a broken cement wall. He waved at Freeman, then made a flurry of motions that Freeman belatedly recognized as an attempt at sign language. He saw an A, an M and a lot of gibberish not helped by the man's black gloves. He shook his head.

The man made a series of frantic motions, then finally pointed towards the roofless corridor and mouthed Ambush.

That message he understood. He nodded once, sharply, and the guard nodded back. The guard was vaguely familiar, but between the dust on his face and the dust on Freeman's glasses, he couldn't be sure. He'd seen a lot of blue uniforms and scared faces; they were blending together.

Ambush.

This was military playground. Bombed-out bones of infrastructure, rebar spidering out of cement walls, floors becoming gaping pits. He heard soldiers moving, the crunch of dry gravel underfoot and the muffled static of radio chatter, but it was distant and several floors below. If the guard was right though, a party lay in wait. The guard's little rat maze of rubble was a closed space; the doorway straight ahead was the only way forward.

He inched towards it, bent almost double to minimize the target he presented should that doorway suddenly fill. He had the shotgun at ready and was drawing breath to spring their trap when the black needlepoint of an automatic was shoved through over his right shoulder. He snapped his arm up on it and wrenched. The shooter pulled the trigger and the bullets bit into cement behind him; he gripped uniform, twisted his hip and dragged the man through the doorway, then kneed up the soldier's chest. The man gasped and lost his grip on the automatic. Freeman threw it behind him blindly and hoped the security guard would take the hint. He shot down left-handed, catching the soldier lower in the body than he intended. He felt a stab of pity, knowing death would not be fast, but the next soldier was already on him.

The soldier was immense. Broad shoulders filled the doorway above him and huge hands reached down for Freeman's throat. The man was screaming something but Freeman didn't hear him. No room to bring up the shotgun; he dropped it and shoved the crowbar straight up into the heavy red neck. He had the curve in the palm of his right hand, the left on the shaft to steady it, his right elbow braced inside his hip. All the augmented force of the suit and his own core strength at ready to drive it through.

The soldier froze, his throat working against the point, and went silent. His hands spread wide, palms up. His eyes searched Freeman's face. More soldiers clustered behind but the man was too big and they were too close together. No one was shooting.

Freeman felt the man's pulse through the steel. He saw it in the flutter of skin on his temple, the way his eyes darted and jaw tensed. Weighing chance of speed versus likelihood of that crowbar penetrating soft tissue. Freeman watched him back. He avoided the grey eyes and scanned the pockmarked skin around them for the tension of inadvertent narrowing, for the flare of flat nostrils and the curl of lip that would signal a break in their standoff. The animal body would protect the precious eyes and bare the sharp teeth, minuscule muscle twitches inherited from a more savage past.

He held himself perfectly still, still as on the pipes above the silo, still as on the cliff face, watching the river three hundred feet below. His life was stillness, silence, control, observe. The split second between one breath and the next drew thin.