"Thank you, Specialist," she said with real gratitude.

"Is that gum? Do you think I could have some?"

Julia recognized the voice. It was Captain Svensden, a 'temp-one of two observers traveling in the LAV. He seemed pretty cool, but his boss, Colonel Maloney, was an asshole. Svensden sat two down and across from her, but Maloney was thankfully right at the other end of the cabin, with Second Lieutenant Chen, the platoon commander.

Even in the dim red interior light the 'temps both stood out. They wore armor, like everyone else, but neither rested comfortably within it. Svensden fiddled with his straps and Velcro tabs. And among the dozen passengers, Maloney was the only other person besides Bukowski who didn't have a powered helmet strapped on. The graphics gave him motion sickness, he said. A pool of vomit lay at his feet, and the air con was working hard to scrub the smell of it from the cabin.

Bukowski was about to toss a stick of the gum to Svensden when Julia spoke up. She didn't have to shout. She was miked up and plugged into the tac net with the troopers.

"Better not, Captain. It's not Wrigley's Spearmint. It's a drug. Probably put you to sleep, since you haven't built up any tolerance. These guys are used to it."

"What's that?"

Duffy cursed at herself. It was Colonel Maloney.

"Is somebody drinking up there? Did I hear right. And is it that woman? Goddamn, that's all we need." Maloney tried to untangle himself from the restraining web. Chen reached an arm across the man's chest, telling him to sit still.

"Get your grubby little fingers of me, Chinaman!" the colonel shouted.

Everybody in the LAV jumped at that. A few threw their hands up to their ears to deal with the shooting pain. Maloney's throat mike had picked up the yell and amplified it tenfold across the audio net.

"Fucking jerk," muttered Duffy.

"What did you say? What did that woman call me?" yelled Maloney.

A couple of marines ripped off their helmets. One reached over and unplugged the audio cabling that connected Maloney with the link.

"Shut the fuck up!" he said.

Gunny Harrison threw back the hatch. The scene inside the LAV startled Jones. A fierce argument was under way. Almost nobody had their helmets on, as per regulations, and Colonel Maloney was out of his, standing in front of that Times reporter, jabbing his index finger at her. She appeared to be laughing, when she wasn't blowing bubblegum in his face.

"What the fuck is going here!" Jones shouted, loudly enough to be heard over the earsplitting drone of the turbofans and the commotion inside the cabin. The LAV was uncomfortably close to the huge Avco Lycoming gas turbine plants and the main propulsion fans. Jones took a deep breath, sucking in trace odors of diesel, gun oil, human sweat, and bile from the pile of sick that dripped out of the cabin and onto his boots. He let rip with a blast that would have done his old drill instructor proud.

"Colonel Maloney. Sit your ass down, put your goddamn helmet on, and shut the fuck up. You are just here to watch. Nothing else. We transit the beachhead in a few minutes, and people are gonna start dying. Unless you want to give me any more grief, in which case we'll start the dying right here and now, because God help me if you endanger any part of this mission at any point I will shoot you in the fucking head and throw you overboard myself!"

Maloney stood with his mouth hanging open, like he'd been caught with his pants down. But Jones meant every word of it and the colonel must have known, because he flashed a quick, sour glare at the civilian woman before returning to his position.

A split-screen display dominated the Clinton's CIC. Real-time footage beamed back from Manila sat next to a CGI map of the same area with dozens of targets and mission objectives highlighted by flashing tags, alphanumeric codes, unit designations, and small icons. Admiral Spruance had no real idea of what it all meant, but at least he could see the burning hulks of Japanese ships in the harbor, and the dazzling emerald brilliance of more fires spotted throughout the city.

"It's fuckin' amazing, don't you think?" muttered Admiral Halsey, sitting next to him in the old antisatellite work bay.

"What, the movies themselves, or what they're showing?" asked Spruance.

"The whole fucking thing. I mean, look at the way they hit those Jap positions in Manila. It's like needlepoint or something, when you think of what the Nazis did to London with the Blitz."

"But the Krauts meant to tear up the city," said Spruance.

"True enough."

Halsey leaned over from the comfort of his chair. The medication they'd given him had effectively cleared up his shingles, and his mood had improved as rapidly as his butt. But Spruance knew him well, and the look in his eyes gave him away.

"What's up, Bull? You don't look entirely happy. The Japs are dying like flies out there. I thought you'd be in a downright festive mood."

Halsey glanced around the busy Combat Center. As much as you could be left alone in such a crowded, frenetic place, they were, at least for the moment. Kolhammer and Judge were across the room, busy coordinating the simultaneous strikes on Manila and the camps at Cabanatuan. Lieutenant Thieu was away, attending to requests from some of the reporters who'd gone out with the marines.

Spruance shook his head at that. He was used to war correspondents making a nuisance of themselves at the front, but he simply couldn't believe how deeply involved-or what did they call it, "embedded"-these people seemed to be. He doubted if you could tell some of them apart from the units they covered.

"I was just wondering," Halsey said quietly, "whether this was the right way to use these guys. I mean, look at what they're doing. They've only got so many of these super-rockets and magic bullets. Do you think a glorified prison break was the way to go?"

Spruance mulled over the question as he watched a flight of helicopters fan out over the city-the fat ones, which meant they were troop carriers. Smaller, faster gunships buzzed around them like angry wasps, swooping down on any resistance and hosing it down with rocket and cannon fire. They must be going for the railway yards, he thought.

"I don't know, Bill," he said. "You saw what happened to those boys, not to mention the poor women they used as camp whores. I don't know what the right thing was. But I do know that these people have a mania about leaving their own behind. They'll lose fifty men just to get one back. It's like a sickness for them. I doubt we could have stopped them from doing this even if we'd wanted to."

Lieutenant Thieu returned, threading his way through the banks of computer monitors and battle stations. Spruance watched a screen that showed one of those Super Harriers, zipping across the big night sky, only to stop in midair, turn around, and unleash a stream of rockets on some target at the wharves.

Halsey leaned over before Thieu made it into earshot.

"Yeah, but the thing is, Ray," he said, "we ain't their fucking people, are we?"

The industrial jackhammer of the LAV's autocannon abruptly ceased as the hatch swung open and the section poured out onto the street. Julia spat out the wad of medicated gum she'd been chewing and checked her heads-up display to make sure she was recording. She flicked her personal weapon to three-round bursts, laid her thumb on the safety, ready to click it off as soon as she was clear of the vehicle, and nodded quickly to Private Bukowski. She'd already decided to hang her story off what happened to the heavy-weapons specialist over the next few hours. Bukowski was cool with that. He wanted to send his granddad a video of himself in battle. Grandpa Bukowski had won-or would win-a Bronze Star in Korea.

Her combat goggles, a topflight set of Ray-Ban Warpigs, automatically adjusted to changing light conditions as the blast door of the armored vehicle split open and the frenzied stabbing light of the battle rushed in. She flinched as a line of tracer fire flicked across the opening, and reached out for a grab bar as Bukowski recoiled into her.