Weapons of choice

In the back of the big chopper, Airman Toby La Salle checked the fast rope connections as the men prepared to drop the last twenty meters to the ground. The two parties wished each other good luck, and then the small special ops team was gone. Into the black.

The small compound housing civilian prisoners underwent what was technically referred to as vertical and horizontal envelopment. In lay terms the Japanese defenders were swarmed from all sides and above in one mad minute of psychotically violent but finely controlled gunfire and high-explosive bombardment.

The SEAL team signaled to the marines to cease fire and dropped into the compound. First squad assaulted the main gates, now protected only by dead men, and the rest of their unit poured through the breach. Ivanov and Rogas were already moving, running toward the first of the flimsy huts housing the prisoners. The chief grunted as a Japanese slug spun him around, but his body armor saved him and he was up again in a second. The sentry was dead before Rogas regained his feet, drilled with a three-round burst fired from the hip by Ivanov.

A Japanese officer wielding a sword charged at them from the side of the hut. But his pants were undone, ruining the effect. The Spetsnaz officer took his head off with another three-round burst.

Rogas kicked in the door of the hut and spun to his left, shooting another Jap who was coming at him from the darkened corner. Women began screaming.

"Americans! We're Americans" Rogas yelled in English. "Get down on the floor. Get down now! Anybody left standing gets shot."

The infrared night vision lent a nightmarish atmosphere to a scene that already recalled one of the lower levels of Hell. The women were naked, or clothed in scraps at best. They were underweight, covered in bruises, sores, and their own filth. Alternately moaning and screaming, they writhed and groped in the dark, unable to see what was happening, unlike Ivanov and Rogas. They could see at least eight Japs in the room, some of them naked, too.

The SEALs hunted them down one after another. Shooting each man in the back of the head as he tried to crawl along the floor. When only three were left, they jumped to their feet with both hands in the air.

"No shoot. No shoot!" one yelled.

Rogas shot him anyway.

Duffy had visited some stinking Third World cesspools in her time, but this place took the prize. She tried hard to keep the disgust from showing on her face. It wouldn't be fair to the prisoners, especially not these ones.

The reporter moved among the women of Camp 5 and let her minicam run, but they were in no state to be interviewed. She'd just bummed another stick of Zoloft from Bukowski when her flexipad signaled a message. She still had the theme from The Simpsons as her ringer.

Snatching the pad from her arm, she turned away from the marines and walked a short distance toward the camp gates. The signal was strong, which made sense. She was patched into a military-grade comm net. The caller appeared on the screen.

It was Rosanna, back on the Clinton. She'd preferred to not jump into a hot LZ, and Duffy respected the choice.

"How you doing, sweetie?" Natoli asked.

"Fucked my shoulder again, but otherwise I'm fine," said Duffy, her voice shaking a little. "This place sucks, by the way."

"Hot?"

"Not so much. We got pretty busy coming into Manila, but nothing to brag about. The shooting was mostly done within two hours. But I hopped over here to one of the women's camps after the SEALs took it. Jesus, you wouldn't believe this fucking place, Rosanna. It's like a Taliban rape camp for Americans. How's Dan, you seen him? I think I might have been a little harsh with him before I left."

Rosanna chuckled.

"He's fine. I told him you were premenstrual."

"Actually, I am, on top of everything else."

A dull thudding noise told her a chopper was approaching.

"Gotta go," she said. "I really gotta get to work. This'll be a good story if I can keep it together." Duffy signed off as a big Sea Stallion dropped down into the field just outside the camp gates.

A woman in full combat rig pounded down the ramp of the heavy lift chopper and into the compound. As she went past Duffy she appeared to be trying very, very hard to contain her fury.

Lieutenant Chen tried to talk to her as she stormed up, but she sailed right past the platoon commander. The camp women were being tended to in an emergency aid station that the marines had run up next to the former commandant's hut. He was alive, having dived under his bed when the missile attack on the divisional barracks began. Two marines stood guard over him and four other prisoners by the smoking ruins of the guard tower.

Duffy watched as the female officer spoke to the women. The contrast was striking. The marine was of average height but seemed to tower over the women in her combat fatigues and body armor. They gathered closer around her as the parlay continued. A girl of perhaps eight or nine, it was hard to tell, was brought forward.