‘Sit down, Colonel,’ he said. ‘Give it to me as quickly as you can without losing track of the story.’

The intelligence officer nodded brusquely, snapped a sheaf of paper in his hand and worked down a series of bullet points. ‘Both of our alliance partners in the AOR have either activated their treaties, or will have within twenty-four hours. Land elements of Japan’s Self Defence Force have been recalled to barracks, their naval forces are making preparations to put out to sea, and the air force is already flying CAP over the home islands. The Aussies have called up their Reserves and moved all of their remaining high-readiness forces onto alert -’

‘Remaining?’

‘Yes, sir. They have a special forces group, a squadron of Hornets and a naval task force in the Gulf with us, for Iraq.’

Ritchie nodded.

‘All of the other regional powers have gone to varying states of high alert,’ Maccomb continued. ‘Taiwan has been placed under martial law and the armed forces there have put Plan Orange into effect. South Korea has declared that a curfew will come into effect as of 2200 hours tonight. Their forces and ours are ready, watching the DMZ, but Pyongyang is sitting very, very still. There’s been nothing on their media at all.’

‘And China?’

Maccomb gnawed at the inside of his mouth like a man with a lifelong chaw habit, before replying. ‘They’ve put a lot of troops onto the streets, sir, and our satellite cover shows a lot of activity around the Taiwan Strait batteries, but the force projection capabilities they do have remain dormant for the moment. They’re as spooked as anyone, and they know we still have the forces in theatre to check them if necessary.’

Ritchie nodded, feeling a headache building behind his eyeballs. ‘That’s a dreadfully dangerous amount of hardware and armed men moving around.’

‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Maccomb. ‘It is.’

‘It just reached out and took him,’ said Kwan, a little breathlessly. ‘Like, I dunno, like a sort of liquid metal blob or something. Faster than anything I’ve ever seen.’

Musso nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak just yet. His heart was still going like a rat in a trap, and he recognised the hollow, shaky feeling of having dodged a bullet, or something just as nasty. Musso had been a Marine for longer than he had been anything else in his life. He knew war from the inside, the way an addict knows their poison. He knew what it was like to make a ball of himself, tight and small, like a clenched fist, as death zipped like a swarm of bees through the air all around him. He knew too well the fragility of the human body, the way that war respects not age, not courage, gender, righteousness, intelligence or any of the limitless personal touchstones that everyone thinks will get them through, just before everyone starts dying. He had held in his arms grown men, reduced to bloodied rags and cooling meat by a few dumb grams of flying metal. He had carried a little Somalian girl in his hands, no more than two she would have been, her poor tiny body burnt and disintegrating as he ran for a medic. He knew the filth and horror of war as a contagion buried just beneath the surface of his own skin. He knew fear.

But he had never known it as he had in the few seconds after Eladio Nuсez was consumed. Fear like a rancid, suppurating pustule that suddenly burst all sweet and bilious in his guts, flooding his mouth and throat and stomach with a distillation of terror in its primal state. He was going to take a few moments to get over it.

The Cubans, he saw, had freaked the hell out, but were holding it together under the lash of Nuсez’s deputy, Captain someone-or-other. Musso couldn’t recall his name. His own people were no less upset, although they were hiding it a little better. Everyone had withdrawn back up the road towards Guantanamo, pulling over to the side about five hundred metres from their original position. The energy wave hadn’t altered in the slightest.

Musso released a ragged breath. ‘Okay. As of now, nobody gets within five hundred metres of that thing, okay? I can’t tell the Cubans what to do, of course, but I’m guessing they won’t argue.’

Kwan nodded and looked around for the nameless captain. ‘I don’t even know if he speaks English, sir.’

‘Me neither, Lieutenant,’ he said. ‘Get someone to translate. Your sergeant, Gutteres, he’s sharp. Put him on liaison if you can spare him.’

‘Guilio’s specialty is binary nerve agents. I don’t think I’ll be needing him,’ she replied flatly.

Kwan saluted and turned away to find their new translator. Musso took a sip of chilled sports drink from an insulated bottle. They had withdrawn to a spot on a slight rise where a small clearing allowed all of the vehicles to pull off onto the shoulder. The Americans still tended to their equipment, attempting to take readings from something that their equipment told them wasn’t there. The Cubans had gathered into a loose line under the watchful, if anxious, gaze of their latest commanding officer. They were sure getting through them at a fair clip.

Musso calmed his breathing. His heart rate had dropped back to something a little more reasonable and the unpleasant low-grade voltage that had been buzzing away just under his skin had finally died down. He couldn’t help but wonder where Nuсez had gone. If anywhere. That thought led naturally to thoughts of his wife and kids and what had happened to them. His stomach turned over again. Another slug from the drink bottle and he put it away, pushing himself off the side of the Humvee and walking over to his radio man, determinedly trying to ignore his personal anxieties.

‘Corporal, can you hook me up with Pearl, via Gitmo?’

‘No problems, General. Just give me a moment.’

Musso left him to it, taking a minute to go off and talk to the Cubans’ new CO. Jenny Kwan and Sergeant Gutteres were deep in a three-way conference with the scared-looking officer, who snapped rigidly to attention when he saw Musso approaching. The marine gave him a tired smile and a nod in reply.

‘How’re we doing, Lieutenant?’ he asked Kwan.

‘Pretty good, sir. Captain Бlvarez here speaks pretty good English. A hell of a lot better than my Spanish, at any rate. Sergeant Gutteres is filling in the blanks.’

Musso addressed the Cuban directly. ‘I’m sorry about Major Nuсez. He seemed a good man and an excellent officer.’

‘He was,’ Бlvarez replied. ‘We liked him. All the men like him very much.’

‘Well, Captain, I’m about to seek guidance from my superiors, but for myself, I’d like us to keep talking, to help each other out if and when we can. I’d suggest you try and find someone further up your chain of command to report to, but son, you need to prepare yourself for the possibility that you are it.’

Sergeant Gutteres had begun translating quietly as soon as he’d seen Бlvarez struggling to keep up with Musso. He finished a few seconds after the general.