The explosion that tore up the nearest destroyer was so violent that he shivered in the face of it. He'd watched the dark, hypersonic bolt as it skimmed across the waves and speared into the Karukaya. But he hadn't been ready for the titanic eruption that followed. Even in bright sunshine the flash of the blast dazzled and partly blinded him. Somebody cried out.
"Allahu akbar!"
The other Japanese destroyer perished in identical fashion, ripped apart about three thousand meters off the port side. A few seconds later Damiri distinctly heard the tinkle and clatter of metal rain on the steel cladding of the Sutanto.
He gestured for the others to shut up and composed himself before keying the radio mike.
"Thank you Clinton. Thank you."
The dark, predatory blur of a F-22 streaked past about six hundred meters away.
"Buy me a beer back in Pearl, Sutanto. We've got some tall tales for you."
The fighter rolled over and accelerated away. Apart from two thick clouds of dark oil smoke, almost nothing remained of the Japanese ships.
The speakers crackled into life again.
"Sutanto, this is the Clinton. Please advise us of your status."
Damiri grinned.
"We're alive, Clinton! But we don't know what's happened. Our communications are down, our GPS is gone, we can't raise anyone. And these pirates!"
A new voice, masculine, broke in over his chatter.
"Sutanto, this is Admiral Kolhammer. Please advise us of casualties at your end."
Damiri raised his eyebrows. The infidel leader himself. Any anxiety he had felt before was gone now. He gazed contently out over the long swell of the western Pacific.
"Admiral Kolhammer, sir. I am Sub-Lieutenant Damiri, acting commander of the Sutanto. Captain Djuanda is dead. Many of the officers are dead or injured. We have eighteen killed and twelve badly wounded. Over."
Kolhammer's voice growled out of the speakers.
"Can you care for your own casualties, Ensign? I'm afraid we have a situation here, too. There's little point sending medevac out to you. Our own facilities are already swamped. Over."
Damiri didn't want to press too hard. The last thing he wanted was to have Americans coming aboard now. But he had to play for real, too.
"We'll probably lose two or three men in the next few hours, sir. Over."
"I'm sorry about that, Damiri, but you have to try to hold on. We just don't have the facilities."
Damiri rolled his eyes. That was so like them.
"Acknowledged," he said, not needing to fake the hint of bitterness in his voice.
"We'll be with you in five hours, Sutanto. And you'll have air cover for all of that time."
"Thank you, Clinton," said Damiri. It was an effort to squeeze the words out.
Was there a waking hour in the last month when she hadn't been confronted by legions of the doomed? Captain Francois couldn't recall one. From the moment she'd regained consciousness after the Transition she'd seemed to be running from one casualty to the next, an endless line of them stretching out to a vanishing point somewhere in her future.
Her fingers twitched as she half considered dialing up another shot of stimulant from her thoracic implants. But she stayed her hand. The ward was full of patients, and most of them were not combat casualties. The liberated prisoners needed treatment for starvation, suppurating jungle ulcers, malaria, fungal infections, and a hundred minor aftereffects of captivity. But unlike the rocket rush of madness that had blown through this place after Midway, these patients died more slowly and, she supposed, more comfortably. Dozens of medical staffers moved among the beds. They adjusted drips, changed dressings and bedpans, administered medicine and vitamin shots.
She was losing patients every day, seventy-six of them since she'd come on shift eighteen hours ago. But by the dismal math of her profession, that wasn't bad. She knew that were it not for the facilities available throughout the modern ships of the task force, hundreds more would succumb every day. She examined her heart and found it to be scabbed over with scar tissue and barely pushing blood through her veins.
She needed some rest.
Francois dragged her flexipad out of a coat pocket with fingers that felt numb except for a small tingling at their tips and found Commander Wassman on shipnet.
"I'm taking four hours, Helen," she said. "You have the floor."
Her new deputy nodded brusquely in the small screen. Wassman's locator chip placed her down in the burns unit.
"Got it, ma'am. If I might, Captain? You need more than four hours. I can catch an extra shift. I had a whole half night's sleep."
The chief surgeon didn't bother arguing.
"Thanks. I'll take an extra two. Call me if I'm needed."
As she signed off an alarm sounded in the distance, calling for a crash team. Francois checked her pad: a cardiac arrest in the next ward. She brought the patient's file up. An eighty-five-year-old white female from Cabanatuan.
Not a chance, she thought. The wrinklies, it seemed as if they just gave up on you as soon as they realized they were safe. It was like they'd had something to prove, getting out of that shithole, and then they checked out.
Her eyes burned as she headed back to the temporary cabin she'd taken. The short walk took her through a corridor so crowded with civilians and refugees and a disorderly mix of military personnel that she could have been in the emergency room of a public hospital. She closed the door of her small quarters with relief.
The girl was on her bunk, playing with a Mars Landing Barbie one of the marines had dug up from somewhere. She hadn't spoken again since the camp, but warm and washed and safely tucked up in bed, she favored Margie with a genuine smile.
"Hello, darlin'," said Francois.
She knew from talking to other inmates of Camp 5 that the little girl's name was Grace, and that was all. Nobody knew anything about what had happened to her parents.
The child looked much less feral than she had on Luzon. She was still underweight, and she couldn't stand having the lights out, but Francois was pleased with her progress.
"Would you like a drink, Gracie? Some bug juice?" She smiled.
The girl nodded.
Francois poured her a cup of the vile-tasting cordial.
She stroked Gracie's thin, blond hair as she drank. She really needed to sleep, but now that she was back in the cabin and the kid was awake, she didn't think she'd be able to. She didn't like palming her off on anybody else, and truth be known, Grace threw a fit whenever she tried.
As she stroked Grace's forehead, which was still scarred by deep cuts and bruises, the girl suddenly grabbed her hand. Her little voice was no more than a squeak.
"My daddy stayed with General MacArthur to help keep the lights on."
Francois's heart leapt. She hadn't expected anything like this for weeks, maybe months. It was the best thing she'd heard in days. She positively beamed, until the girl spoke again.
"Mommy and Daddy aren't coming back, are they? They shot my mommy, I think."
Her momentary spasm of joy died. She couldn't find an answer that wouldn't crush the little mite's spirit. Part of the reason she was cruising the edge of exhaustion was all the extra time she'd put into trying to get a line on what might have become of the girl's family. Now, it seemed, she had an inkling of their fate. She arranged her features as neutrally as she could.
"I don't know, honey, but I think maybe they're with God now. Did someone tell you about your mom?"
The girl's lower lip trembled and her eyes filled with tears. She shook her head. Margie, choking up, too, rubbed her cheek.
"But the thing is, darling, I know your mom and dad are happy now, because if they're looking down from Heaven, they can see you're safe here with us. And all they would ever want in the world is for you to grow up safe."