Designated Targets

They had died in there, too. Surveillance drones picked them out of the background clutter, and a fearsome nighttime barrage by three hundred antique howitzers—American, New Zealand, and Australian guns under MacArthur’s command—chewed them over. It was a vindication, said MacArthur, of his Brisbane Line strategy.

Jones’s men and women were paying for it now, though. Thirty-seven KIA so far, some from hand-to-hand, but mostly through the inevitable fuckups. Two days ago, a squadron of Liberators had bombed them by mistake, wiping out the better part of a platoon at the edge of his base area. That had finally and irrevocably poisoned an already strained relationship with MacArthur’s command. In response, Jones could only say his prayers to thank the good Lord that the ’temps—as they called the contemporary forces—missed most of what they aimed for, although he did tell MacArthur, off the record, that in future any contemporary air assets that came within five thousand meters of the Eighty-second without clearance would be target-locked by his air defenses as a precautionary measure.

It hadn’t been a pleasant conversation.

His intelligence chief, Major Annie Coulthard, broke into the memory. “Colonel, we have movement in the scrub to the northwest, eight and a half thousand meters out, across a one-thousand-meter front. I make it a regimental force, advancing on a direct line toward the New Zealanders on Hill One-forty-nine.”

Jones could see the advance on a bank of flatscreens, some carrying real-time drone footage, others displaying schematic CGI with tags identifying the disposition of friendly and enemy forces.

“We got an envelopment under way?” asked Jones.

The S2 worked her touch screen, zooming out, dragging the focus box to either side of the red column that was advancing on the small hill held by the depleted Kiwi battalion. Jones could see the place in his mind, a shattered landscape of gray ash and blackened tree stumps where everybody was coated in a layer of dark charcoal that gave both the Maori and white pakeha soldiers the appearance of black ghosts crouching in their gun pits. They were going to have a hell of a time holding off a frontal assault by a Japanese regiment.

“Here we go, sir,” said Coulthard. “Two clicks farther west, sir. Another column. Five-hundred-and-fifty-meter frontage, give or take. Battalion-sized force, moving on the double. Probably hoping to infiltrate through that blind valley along the creek bed.”

“No prep fire?” asked Jones.

“None yet, sir. I think we took them all out. But it’s a laydown that they’ll set up those dinky little mortars as they get closer. Maybe even one of their mountain guns.”

“Okay. Give ’em a heads-up over on One-forty-nine. The bush has already been burned out over there, so we can hit ’em about . . . here,” he said, tapping the screen at a couple of natural choke points. “Set up some close air support just in case. And stay sharp, Major. These fuckers just will not stay ass-whupped. Could be they’re shooting for a divisional envelopment. If they knew the limits of our coverage, they’d go for it.”

“Yes, sir.”

The tempo in the dugout picked up, background chatter rising, the snap of fingers on keyboards quickening as the effects of Jones’s orders spread out through the command post. On a screen to Coulthard’s left, he could watch a video feed of ground crew around his own attack helicopters as they suddenly picked up their pace. A virtually identical scene repeated itself over at 2 Cav, except that the gunships were Arruntas, not Comanches. There was no cam coverage of the aerodrome at Brisbane, but he knew that as soon as word passed down the landline, the same burst of frenetic activity would take place there, except this time the aircraft would be old Kittyhawks and sad little Wirraways, refitted for ground attack using napalm; just one more ghastly development that had arrived before its time.

Jones turned away from the small drama that was about to play itself around Hill 149 and took in the theater-wide view. It was nothing like he’d been used to back in 2021. Drone coverage was minimal, and there was no satellite feed, of course. No satellites. He had access to two AWACS birds, safely lurking a hundred miles or so in the rear. A couple of long-range SAS patrols and Marine Recon were buried deep behind the Japanese front line and reporting by microburst. But that was about it.