"You okay, Specialist?"

"Fine, ma'am. Somebody else got clipped up front."

The two lines of marines, which had momentarily bunched up, surged down the ramp. Duffy slapped Bukowski on the back as he stepped off. A cramped shuffle brought her to the exit, where she found the body of Colonel Maloney, half his head torn away by a piece of shrapnel. He'd tumbled off the edge of the incline. One leg had folded up underneath his deadweight; the other had caught on the edge of the ramp and now pointed skyward. He wasn't wearing his helmet.

"Dumbass," said Duffy.

Bukowski's voice came over the sound channel. "Say what?"

"Didn't mean you. Meant him."

"Oh, right. Yeah."

The specialist suddenly swiveled at the hip and poured a stream of light-cannon fire into a window across the street. Duffy was jolted into the moment. They were assaulting across a wide boulevard. Half the section, with Chen in the lead, was storming toward the colonnaded entrance of a grand colonial building, pouring selective fire into the upper-story windows. Nobody except Bukowski was firing on full auto. Discrete three-round bursts of tungsten penetrators chewed up masonry and wooden shutters, smashing glass and pulverizing brickwork.

A line of tracers lashed at them from another building two doors down. Duffy saw a trooper stagger under the impact. He sank to his knees for a few seconds before two other marines appeared to help him back to his feet and over the exposed cobblestone roadway.

Again Bukowski turned fractionally. The heavy gun rig slung at his hip turned with him. Duffy saw the muzzle elevate fractionally. His wrists flexed, and a short snarling volley of 20mm slugs punched through a sandbagged revetment on the top floor of a neoclassical mansion a hundred yards away. A dazzling spark traced the flight path of the shells. Duffy refocused the lens on her video rig, pulling in tight on the French windows the marine had targeted. Streams poured from ruptured sandbags as smoke rose from within the darkened recesses of the room. A disembodied human hand twitched on top of one bag.

Bullets zipped past her, uncomfortably close. Her C/T-weave armor was the best that money could buy. Better than Marine Corps standard issue, in fact. But you could still get yourself righteously fucked up in a free-fire zone like this. Duffy unsafed the MP5 and quickly panned up and down the road. It was a quick and dirty scan. She'd use an intelligent editing suite to clean it up later before laying down her own commentary.

She knew in broad-brush detail that they were swarming the divisional HQ of the Japanese command, that most of the enemy's strategic assets were already just scrap metal and charred meat. But beyond that, like the men and women around her, she knew only what she could see with her own eyes and imaging rig.

They were still taking sporadic, but reasonably intense small-arms fire from the surrounding buildings. It seemed more opportunistic than directed. Marines occasionally shuddered or tumbled as rounds hit them and their armored padding dispersed the kinetic energy. She knew from personal experience that it still felt like getting whacked by a Louisville Slugger. Sometimes, in the background, she'd hear a scream or gurgle over the platoon comm channel as somebody caught a bullet or a piece of shrapnel in the face or throat.

Gunships ripped overhead, pouring autocannon fire into pillboxes on street corners, popping Hellfire missiles through windows, and raking small concentrations of Japanese troops who periodically attempted desperate charges across open ground. She'd seen worse. Damascus was way tougher than this. That had been like the whole fucking city was out to kill you.

Bukowski had moved ahead, and she had to hustle to catch up. He took the steps at the front of the big white building at a run, leaping over the bloodied form of a prostrate Japanese soldier. Duffy was lining up to jump over the corpse when it unexpectedly rose from the dead, rolled up onto one knee, and leveled a ridiculously long rifle at the back of the marine's head.

"Bukowski, look out," she yelled.

The marine began an instinctive dive to the side as the guard fired. Duffy saw the big man's helmet jolt, but he kept on moving.

Her momentum carried her right up to the steps and there was no chance of avoiding a collision. She didn't have time to raise and fire her weapon, so she dipped a shoulder and crashed into the Jap with as much force as she could focus, projecting her energy right through him. He flew forward about two feet and slammed into the top step. She struggled for her balance, lost it, regained it and found herself on top of him, stamped her leading boot on top of his thigh and rammed a knee into his face. His head snapped back and as she sailed right on over his body she pointed the MP5 straight down, squeezing the trigger. She didn't even hear the muted cough of the discharge as three rounds of 9mm hollow point sliced open the guard's torso. Blowback splattered her goggles with gobbets of hot offal that glowed a bright opalescent green in low-light amplification. She felt a dull but massive impact on her hip, from a ricochet she guessed, then the ground came rushing up at her and a much hotter, searing pain exploded in her shoulder as she slammed into concrete and snapped a collarbone.

"Son-of-a-bitch!"

"Y'all right, Ms. Duffy?" Bukowski hauled her up by her good arm. "Thanks, too, ma'am. Owe you one."

"We'll call it quits for the gum," she said. "How's your head."

The marine pinched the side his helmet where a bullet had glanced off. Duffy switched to infrared for second. The track mark stood out in glowing pink.

"My circuits are okay," said Bukowski. "How's your shoulder?"

A violent crash of gunfire from upstairs drowned her out. She was about to try to speak again when a long burst of firing and the double crump of two grenades shook the building.

Lieutenant Chen's voice came in over the platoon's dedicated tac net.

"Top floor secured. No prisoners taken."

The video feed wasn't live, which made it infinitely worse. The signal came through on a fifteen-minute delay, and from the looks of the firestorm running through the streets of Manila, that was long enough for anything to happen. Lieutenant Commander Black wanted to turn away from the screen, to shut off the rush of chaotic savagery that swirled around his woman. He wanted to run from the Media Center and hop a chopper into the city to yank Julia right out of there.

Rosanna had him seated in front of a huge fat screen devoted exclusively to a delayed feed from Julia's squad. She furiously worked a keyboard and touch screen next to him, chopping footage, assigning it to dump bins for editing later, tagging significant sections, adding her own initial comments. Without an organization of her own to report to, she'd volunteered to stand in as Julia's producer. Black was impressed with the furious intensity she brought to the job. She was every bit as focused as one of Kolhammer's bullet-eyed warriors. But she was also every bit as emotionally removed. He'd tried to talk to her a couple of times when Julia appeared on screen, but she'd cut him off.

"Shut up for now, Dan. Talk later."

When the squad burst from the LAV and onto the boulevard Dan flinched, and his gut went tight. He clearly saw Colonel Maloney lose half his face. His heart hammered faster than it had at any time during the fight to Midway. He felt wretched, impotent, and ashamed of himself for sitting comfortably in safety on board the Clinton while Julia charged into the Japanese line of fire. When he saw her tackle and shoot the guard, he thought he might lose control of his stomach.

Natoli, excitedly cursing under her breath, hammered the keyboard until she'd isolated a video feed from Private Bukowski in a little pull-down window on the screen.