Designated Targets

Snider perked up at the news. “Better than that, Miss Duffy. It’s a fuckin’ million-dollar wound. I’m going home. Won’t be dancing too many foxtrots from now on, but who really gives a fuck, eh?”

Julia pulled up an empty ammo crate and insinuated herself into the circle of wounded men. She slipped off her backpack and leaned the MP-5 up against the wall. Snider gave her a quick introduction to all of them, bar one, whose name he didn’t know. The man introduced himself as Corporal Robert Payne, a Canadian artilleryman who had been standing near a howitzer when a shell exploded in the tube.

“You know, Sergeant,” said Duffy, “You might just dance the foxtrot again after all. It’ll take a while, but knee reconstruction wasn’t a big deal up in my day. And most of the senior Task Force medical staff have been pulled off active duty and put into teaching hospitals. Of course, I gotta tell you, the fuckin’ foxtrot is never coming back.”

Duffy waited until the men’s laughter and ribbing died down before speaking again.

“Sarge, do you think you could see your way clear to an interview? There’s already a lot of talk about what you did this morning. You want my opinion, they’re going to turn you into a hero and send you out on the road back home, selling war bonds with John Wayne and Hedy Lamarr.”

Sergeant Snider was openly surprised to hear that. “Hedy Lamarr, you say. That’s a classy dame. You think she’d want to hang out with the likes of me?”

“Buddy, when I’m finished, you’ll be beating her off with a stick. Matter of fact, you’ll be able to walk into a room full of Hollywood starlets and know there won’t be a dry seat in the house.”

Snider’s friends all broke out into catcalls and cheers, and Julia made certain to grab a few lines from each of them about what they thought of his efforts on the hill.

When she was finished she checked to make sure that the lattice memory had stored the interview, and she copied it to a spare stick, just in case.

“There’s one other thing you could do for me, Sarge, which I’d really appreciate.”

Snider pulled himself a little higher in the fold-up canvas chair, wincing as he did so. “You name it, Miss Duffy. I figure there’s no way I can repay you for drilling those guys.”

“Well, in fact, there is, Sergeant. There’s some guys from Movietone who are going to be looking for you later. Could you possibly tell ’em to fuck off?”

Snider winked theatrically. “Consider them fucked, ma’am.”

The University of Queensland sat within a great bow of the Brisbane River about seven miles from the city center. There wasn’t much to it, thought Robertson, just hundreds of acres of open fields. The area had previously been given over to the cultivation of sugar, arrowroot, cotton, maize, and pineapples. Only one building had been completed before the outbreak of war, a grand colonnaded sandstone structure with two wings, divided by a massive clock tower that also housed an imposing atrium. Before any students or teachers had had the opportunity to move in, the Commonwealth Government had requisitioned it for the advanced headquarters of all Allied Land Forces in the Southwest Pacific.

In August of 1942, it had changed hands again, becoming the theater HQ of the Multinational Force ground combat elements, which was to say, the U.S. Marine Corps’ Eighty-second MEU, and the Second Cavalry Regiment of the Australian Army.

The Abrams tanks and LAVs, Bushpigs and attack helicopters assigned to those two forces did not spend much time at the HQ, having been thrown into crucial blocking positions to secure General Douglas MacArthur’s much-vaunted Brisbane Line. The line was less a natural stronghold than a strategic concession that he didn’t have the forces he needed to hold ground any farther north. It conceded about two thousand kilometers of coastline to the Japanese. To be sure, there were significant Allied forces intact and operating to the north out of Cairns and Townsville, but they were cut off from resupply and reinforcement. They were surrounded, but the Japanese in turn hadn’t managed to land enough men and matériel to snuff them out. So the forces there were effectively under siege.

The press made great play on “the new Tobruk,” and “the new Bastogne,” even though the latter hadn’t happened yet. But that was just propaganda—what Colonel Jones called “spin.” Small teams of Special Forces were operating up and down the coast, disrupting the Japanese rear areas with great effect, and the reports they sent back of atrocities against the civilian population were enough to reduce the prime minister to tears in his private moments.