Weapons of choice

But as he scrambled out from under Hannon's inert form, he saw that the lieutenant had died from a shot to the face. His jaw and half his nose were gone, and a gluey mess of shattered bone and brain tissue was oozing out of the massive wound.

"Up you get, Captain."

The voice in his ears was quiet but he heard it without any trouble, even as the battle raged around him. Hundreds of troops in black body armor ran forward toward the smoking breach in the prison wall. Choppers flew over them, rockets and machine guns pouring out a solid river of destruction. There was still some resistance-here and there a lone Japanese sentry, or a machine gun that had escaped the initial rocket swarm. But the marines charged forward as though nothing affected them, not rifle or machine-gun fire, not grenades or mortar rounds. He did see one or two go down, though. Killed or wounded by stray shrapnel or bullets that found flesh and bone instead of armor padding.

Shapcott started forward even as the most primitive parts of his brain screamed at him to get down, to dig the deepest hole he possibly could, and stay there.

He'd turned off the schematics in his goggles. They were just too confusing. But he left the infrared on, moving through a hellish twilight of bloody carnage. Three Japs appeared to his right, screaming incoherently.

He fired on them and they burst into a shower of entrails and bloody fog.

Jesus Christ.

"Come on, come on!" a voice yelled in his ear, almost uncomfortably loud.

Something hit him. He spun under the impact, and staggered but did not fall. It felt like he'd been punched by a prizefighter.

Bullets snapped and cracked everywhere, their passage clear to him by the heat trails that showed vividly in the infrared. Enormous volumes of fire saturated the faintest sign of enemy resistance.

He found himself panting at the breach in the wall. A tank had muscled through and was demolishing a stone building a hundred yards away with its main gun. Bright red streaks of light shot out of the rubble, but not many of them. The tank's gun boomed again, twice. Shapcott felt the pressure wave in his chest and guts, and the wreckage of the blockhouse jumped under the impact of high explosives. No more shots came from there.

Hannon's troops moved with practiced certainty through the slaughter and turmoil. They jumped and ran and fired without seeming ever to halt. It was as though they knew the terrain better than the Japs. He had to admit, it was beyond him. He slowed the pace of his advance to a walk, giving himself time to properly examine the surroundings for the first time.

He seemed to be in a large courtyard. The walls of the prison soared above him. Fires burned all around, and Japanese bodies lay everywhere. They were all hideously disfigured, as though they had been torn apart by wild beasts, not gunfire.

He became conscious of his thirst. It seemed as though he'd had no water in days. His mouth was dry and his tongue felt swollen and numb. He fumbled at his unfamiliar webbing and managed to unclip a water bottle. As he tipped the sweet, cool liquid down his parched throat he saw movement, someone waving, in the corner of his eye.

Shapcott turned and saw a woman. She was thin, and filthy, and unkempt. He suddenly realized she was also in a cage. In his tunnel vision, he hadn't noticed it before. There were others in there with her, all of them waving him over now. He held the muzzle of his gun toward the ground as he approached, but he didn't safe the weapon.

"Over here!"

"We need help."

"We need a doctor."

He stepped up the pace. The sounds of battle seemed to be falling away. He wondered whether it was over for the moment.

"Who are you?" the woman cried. "Have you come to rescue us?"

They shrank back as he drew close. Some of them looked quite fearful of him. When he thought about it, he realized he would look pretty intimidating in the armor, and they would have seen the others sweep though, killing everyone who resisted them. He carefully unhooked the strap that held his helmet in place and took it off. He pushed the goggles back up in his forehead and was surprised to discover he could see quite well by moonlight.

"Captain Thomas Shapcott, ma'am," he said. "United States Marine Corps."

41

USS HILLARY CLINTON, OFF LUZON, 0013 HOURS, 21 JUNE 1942

Dan Black couldn't believe what he was seeing.

He was standing at the counter in the carrier's main armory as his girlfriend-Julia let him call her that now-pulled on an outfit that made her look like some kind of character from a Johnny Weissmuller matinee.

"Got your paperwork all filled out, Ms. Duffy?" the chief asked.

"What the hell do you need that for," Black snapped. "You don't even have a job here."

He was tired and irritable. They'd already fought twice over this. Julia gave him a stare that said he was pushing his luck.