Melton was about to say, ‘What about Washington?’ when he remembered that Washington was gone, or empty at least. Instead he asked: ‘So, what happened? Is it sorted now?’

Shetty smiled without humour. ‘You know how I said the rules have changed? Well, of course, there ain’t nobody in Washington to prod us in the ass with no 12,000-mile-long screwdriver. General Franks, he just gets on the blower to some admiral back in Pearl – he’s like the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs or something – and Franks says, “I’m gonna kill these motherfuckers if it’s cool with you”. And the admiral didn’t have to run it past no senate committee or congressional circle jerk. He just goes, “Yeah, sure, kill ‘em all.”‘

Shetty drew in the last of his smoke, and with one quick little move, almost like a magic trick, he twisted and squeezed out the butt between his fingers, before pocketing the remains to throw away later.

‘So?’ asked Melton. ‘What happened?’

‘It’s happening right now,’ said the nuggety corporal. ‘Navy and air force turned around, dismantled the Iranians’ air defence net. Then they demolished their fields. Last I heard, Baghdad and Tehran were getting taken apart by cruise missiles, and…’ – he leaned over as if to impart some grave national secret – ‘I heard there’s a hundred or more B-52s flying in from the Pacific right now and they’re gonna carpet-bomb what’s left of both cities. None of this pinprick surgical-strike bullshit. We’re just gonna smash ‘em flat. Give those raghead motherfuckers something to think about next time they feel like pissing us off. Lets the Chinese know the big dog’s still in the yard, too. I heard they tossed a coupla missiles over Taiwan’s way this morning.’

Melton tried to take it all in. He doubted there were a hundred B-52s available now, but he suspected that Shetty probably had the broad outlines of what was happening more or less right. Everything was beginning to unravel. The politics of it were pretty much irrelevant. All that mattered now was getting the hell out and hunkering down somewhere safe. But where?

He drifted off into a long fitful doze and when he awoke, Shetty was sleeping, the ward seemed quieter and the bright, hard edge had come off the day outside. Melton felt a little better, a little less muddle-headed and fragile. He still hurt all over, but being able to identify the injuries behind his pain allowed him to put each of his many hurts into a box and file it away. It didn’t decrease the pain, but it sure helped dealing with it. Pain could be endured a lot more easily when you knew where it came from and when it was likely to recede.

‘Mr Melton, you’re awake. That’s good.’

Bret turned his head carefully towards the male voice. A thin, exhausted-looking corpsman, with deep purple smudges under his eyes, appeared to have just noticed him and was advancing with a clipboard. He looked to be of Italian or maybe Greek extraction, and was obviously running too close to the ragged edge of a complete physical breakdown. It was a look you got used to around soldiers. When you saw it on rear-echelon personnel, however, it was never a good sign.

‘What’s your name, son?’ Melton asked him. He had about fifteen years on the kid, and probably had more time in service than him too, so he felt comfortable taking the liberty.

‘Deftereos, sir. Tony Deftereos.’ Then he seemed to remember himself. ‘Hospital corpsman, 15th MEU, sir… I’ve been told to watch out for you.’

‘You’re navy? What are you doing here?’

‘Oh, you know. Chaos. Madness. The usual. My ship got hit by a jet ski.’

‘A what?’

‘A fucking jet ski, sir – pardon my language. Full of explosives. So here I am, looking after you, as per my orders.’

‘From who?’ asked Melton, somewhat nonplussed.

‘Corporal Shetty, sir. He said he’d stomp me if he woke up and found out anything had happened to you.’

Melton looked across at the maimed black soldier lying in the bed next to his, and realised that Shetty was the closest thing he had to family or friend. At least in this part of the world. Possibly anywhere. He felt that familiar, irrational swelling of affection for someone he didn’t really know, beyond having faced mortal danger with them.

‘I’m sure he didn’t mean it, Corpsman,’ Melton said with a smile. ‘Corporal Shetty is a gentle soul, a friend of lost animals and small children. He wouldn’t hurt anyone.’

Deftereos looked most uncertain. ‘Well, I promised him I’d keep an eye on you, sir. If you feel up to it, the doc would like you to answer some questions for him.’

‘I’d shrug, but I’ve got a big hole in my shoulder and it really hurts. What d’you need to know?’

Deftereos took him through a standard post-trauma questionnaire, which wasn’t all that different from the experience a civilian might have answering an ER survey at hospital, except for the questions about exposure to chemical or biological weapons and so on. By the time they were done, Melton felt a little hungry and asked if he might have something to eat.

The corpsman checked a note at the end of his bed and nodded. ‘Nothing heavy, sir. A cup of soup maybe, to begin with.’

‘Thanks. Listen… Tony, wasn’t it? You hear anything from back home about what happened? Have there been any developments in the last few days while I’ve been out of it?’

A sad shake of the head was the initial reaction to that. ‘No, sir,’ Deftereos replied. ‘Nobody’s had any word out of home. And the news coverage we were getting – you know, satellite photos, webcams and stuff – it’s drying up, because of the firestorms over there. Some whole cities have gone up. Not just a couple of blocks here and there – the whole thing, sir. They reckon the clouds are like a nuclear winter or something over Europe. Like when Saddam torched those oil wells in the last war, only much worse.’

Melton remembered that from before he checked out. He recalled resting in the alleyway, looking straight up at a hard blue sky and wishing some of those clouds would drift south and cool things down a bit. He tried to recall some more details but it was like pushing those same dirty, polluted clouds around the inside of his head. Nothing really cleared up.

‘I’m not feeling too bad,’ he told the corpsman. ‘D’you think I could get up and walk over to the mess tent for my soup?’

Deftereos grimaced slightly. ‘In fact, I was gonna ask if you could, sir. We’re real shorthanded here. Doc’s written that you should be mobile by now. You got no leg or spinal injuries, nothing internal. Just have to watch your sutures on the shoulder and some stitching on your rear end, where they took out some real big splinter. You’ll have to move slowly, is all. I’m sorry, sir…’

‘That’s fine,’ grunted Melton as he pulled himself up. ‘If you could just give me a hand up, that’d be great.’

He bit down hard on the pain that welled up as he rose from the bed. No stranger to injuries and discomfort, he knew he’d have to get used to moving around with both. He was very much a non-essential part of this operation and considered himself lucky to have made it this far. It seemed a lot of the boys he’d been covering hadn’t. A mild headspin unbalanced him and he leaned against Deftereos, but it passed with a few deep breaths.