SERGEANT Hector Ramos is riding a motorized ammo cart north after three days off the line at Battalion Aid. He’s twenty. An E-5, even though he’s been in the Corps for only two years. He’s not tall, but he’s muscular. His black hair’s buzz cut under the helmet. His right temple is shaved and microstitched under a sprayed-on bandage. He wears an eagle, globe, and anchor tattoo, a red plastic rosary around his neck, and fresh, spanking-clean battle dress. The backs of his hands as he grips his carbine are slashed with dark scars from the kill room of the chicken plant he worked at before ICE gave him a choice: enlist, or be deported.
The burns on them, though, are from battle. He’s a two-island Marine now. The first was Itbayat, northernmost of the Philippines. There he earned a Purple Heart, the Combat Action Ribbon, and the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal.
Right now he’s riding a robotic weapons carrier down a winding road onto the plains of northern Taiwan. A lanky white woman in battle Cameleons and a smart helmet is clinging to the handgrips in the passenger seat. Intermittent blasts flicker and rumble on the horizon ahead.
The front. Where he’d fought for weeks, before being sent back with the walking wounded.
He’d caught a bullet in the helmet and blacked out. When he came to again he couldn’t remember his name. The platoon commander interviewed him brusquely, snapped photos of the helmet and his bleeding scalp, and told Iron Dream, the sexy-voiced intersquad AI the troops called Wet Dream, that Staff Sergeant Hector Alfonso Ramos was going to the rear for evaluation. And also, to put him in for his second Heart.
Hector had protested, and been told that he’d just gotten an order.
The next thing he remembered was a field shower, then a metal framework clamped to his head. A needling pain as a spiderlike machine click-click-stitched his torn scalp. A bandage. A shot. Then a hot meal.
Followed by an instantaneous toppling, under a tent pocked by the endless rain, into a sleep like death itself.
THE battle had ground on longer than anyone had expected, fueled by a sense on both sides that this might be the climactic campaign of the war.
Operation Causeway, the invasion of Taiwan, began with battle drones and submarines cutting off enemy reinforcements and resupply. Then the Marines landed. The first wave seized an airfield and port on the east coast. Once that toehold was covered by missile support, air defense in place, armor landed, and logistics coming in, they’d driven inland. Linking up with resistance forces, they’d punched west into the central mountains. The Army landed in the south, but was stalled by AI-controlled autonomous armor.
Since then, the Army had pinned the bulk of the enemy as the Marine Third and the Nationalist 905th went toe to toe with the Chinese First Amphibious Mechanized and the 45th Airborne Mechanized. After the first days hardly anything digital had functioned. Both sides were jamming and emping from the Ka-band down. The clouds of drones vanished, dropped like dead buzzards by the rain, the mountains, and raptor UAVs that soon expired in their turn.
The Marines cowered in the mud under furious barrages. Charlie had better artillery than the Allies and more ammo stockpiled than Intel had predicted. The result was head-to-head butting, a deadly, grueling ground game. The platoon had taken heavy casualties, dead, wounded, blown apart by creeping mines, brains scrambled by microwaves, blinded by ocular interruptors, both Marines and their robotic counterparts.
Ramos had fought side by side with one of those robots, immortalized now in Division tradition as the Last CHAD. C323 had thrown himself on a grenade, then, with wires hanging from a demolished chest, manned a machine gun post until it was overrun.
Now all the Combat Humanoid Autonomous Devices were gone, “dead” or broken. The human marines had taken heavy losses too. But they’d finally punched through the mountains, and were hitting the enemy’s last reserves. At least, Intel said these were the last.
Operation Causeway was reaching a desperate climax. From where he stood, even Hector could see that.
BUT now he’s heading back to the front, and trying to find the platoon. Scanning the sides of the road as he and Patterson jostle and bump along. Rivulets of blood, diluted by rain, slide this way and that under the cans of ammo in the cargo bed. “Why does it just fucking rain and rain,” she mutters through gritted teeth. “Have we seen the sky since we fuckin’ landed?”
Ramos doesn’t answer. He’s concentrating on the road. Looking for ambush sites, IEDs, and the creeping mines that sense movement and home on body heat.
Lance Corporal Patterson, beside him in the jolting cart, was a girls soccer coach in Pennsylvania before the war. He’s seen her broken-field sprint through barrages in two sets of jelly armor, carrying ammo and freeze-dried plasma. Today her dirty face is streaked with rain. “So how’d he get it?” she asks him.
Hector can’t remember what they were talking about. He shakes his head carefully, so as not to dislodge anything. “I don’t know, Wombat.”
“You don’t seem to know fucking shit-all these days, Sergeant.”
“Not first ’a tell me that. I thought—”
He’s interrupted by a skinny marine at the side of the road flagging them down. The guy looks shaken. No rank insignia, but no one wears them in combat. “Pull over. Halt,” Hector tells the cart. He casts a wary glance past the loner, but sees only paddies. “What’s the deal, jarhead?”
“Harlen, PFC. First ’a the Third. You got comms back to Higher?”
“Not right now. Why?”
The marine shoots an apprehensive glance over his shoulder. “Might wanta call this in. Or at least, go see.”
Hector frowns. “See what?”
“Right down this road. Half a klick?”
He glances at Patterson. She shrugs. “Climb aboard,” he tells the PFC.
He unslings his weapon and checks the seating on the magazine as the cart jolts and whines, threading a blasted village of smashed homes. The rutted road, once asphalt-paved, has been chewed into mud again by treads. It’s littered with the usual trash of war. The unmistakable possum-stink of rotting meat, garbage, shit, and smoke makes the air the cart shoves him through somehow thicker, almost liquid. A smell he barely notices anymore.
“There it is,” yells the PFC, pointing.
“Slow down,” Hector tells the cart.
“Oh, fuck me,” Patterson breathes.
A river’s engraved a shallow groove across the land, framed by perhaps four hundred meters of swampy soil on either bank. Cupped by long arcs of barbed wire, topped by rusting concertina, on the shores lie hundreds of bodies. No. Thousands. Motionless, except for the stir and flutter of quarreling crows and gulls. But atop slim steel towers, barrels still sweep the fence line.
“Halt,” Hector snaps to the cart. “Those are facial-rec MGs on those pylons.” He searches the sky, but doesn’t see anything up there. The dronehawks have done their job.
“We gotta call this in,” the joe says again.
“I’m getting video.” Patterson holds up her battle phone.
“I’ll call it in, dickhead,” Hector says, “but you need to rejoin your unit.”
“I lost them. Got separated.” The guy looks desperate. “Can I come with you?”
“Only if you wanna fight,” Hector tells him. “’Cause that’s where we’re headed.”
He nods, and Hector tells the cart, “Reverse, retrace to main road, return to loading point.” Motors whining, tires spinning in the mud, it obeys.
IT’s still raining when they get back to the platoon. The Marines are marching forward. Marching. On foot. Along a muddy, shell-blasted, waterlogged sunken road between bare paddies whose dikes have been blown apart by shells and trampled by retreating Chinese armor. Rifles and Gussies slung, a long, swaying, trudging line of men and women.
Like the Romans, Hector thinks. He didn’t learn much in school, but remembers a picture of the legions on a road. Little Lieutenant Ffoulk hikes with them, dirty as the rest, her oversized butt swaying as she marches. Blown over a cliff in the mountains, she refused evacuation. When she spots Hector she squints and signals him up. Her gaze sharpens on his uniform. “Sergeant. What, they’re not issuing Cameleons anymore?”
He doesn’t salute. That would mark out leaders for drones, for snipers. “Lieutenant. No, just these left.”
“Who’s this mutt?”
“Lost his unit. Wants to fall in with us till he can rejoin.”
“Fine by me, take him. You back in battery, Ramos?—Hey, Patterson. Lance Corporal, you stick with me.—Ramos, I say again, you with us, Sergeant?”
“Affirmative, Lieutenant. Where’s my squad, ma’am?”
“I gave Karamete your squad. We lost Glasscock. I’m gonna need a new platoon sergeant.”
“How about … how about Clay?”
She squints again. “The Top got his legs blown off back in Chishang, remember? Sure you’re okay, Marine?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I forgot.” He shifts his boots in the mud. “Uh, Dolan’s senior to me.”
“Blinded by an ocular yesterday. You’re getting the platoon, Staff Sergeant. Like it or not.”
“Uh-huh. Aye aye, ma’am. Uh, we brought ammo in the cart.”
“So I see.” She nods to the vehicle. “Cart: Drive up the column. Stop every hundred yards so the troops can pick up ammo. When you’re empty, return to your charging point.” The AI beeps acknowledgment and moves out.
She brings Hector up to date as they trudge on. “Armor punched through up around Heping. The Japanese allies are hitting the beach at Yilan, up to the northeast. Higher think this thing might be breaking loose.
“Here’s the plan. Pei’s trying to withdraw to the capital. If he can dig in there, make it a three-block war, we’ll pay in blood. Division wants us to drive northwest and cut him off. We get behind them, this thing’s over.” She readjusts her pack, wheezing. “So about two klicks, we’re gonna mount up and see how far we exploit the breakthrough. You and Wombat stick with me. Got a special mission if we get there. Oorah?”
“Oorah,” Hector says. But really, he cares not at all. Suddenly his head aches, and once again, he can’t remember exactly who he is.
TO his astonishment, the tanks really are waiting. Smoke rises ahead, between the green steep mountains, and the hollow high roar of jets and the crump of bombs reverberates down the valley. The rain pelts down steadily as the company climbs aboard, second platoon in the lead. No trucks, no thin-skins. Just the tanks, gray and scarred with whatever the slants have been throwing at them.
They push northward through heavy rain and desultory shelling all that afternoon. The pace isn’t exactly breakneck. The road twists and switchbacks like a fleeing rattler. The tanks growl and lurch and skid around shell and bomb craters. The marines cling like lice to the rusty rebar hastily welded on as handholds, Red Army–style. They wait while combat engineers repair a bridge. Then push on through deserted hamlets, terraced paddies, above a river that foams and swirls brown as melted chocolate as it rushes south.
They dismount in front of an enemy roadblock at some nameless crossroads. Hector sets his squads, trying to figure how the old Top would have done it. They lay down fire, but before they can advance the resistance melts, pelting away into the paddies, or just dropping their weapons and standing along the road, hands up and mouths open.
Most of these guys aren’t even in uniform, just dirty civvy clothes with red armbands. Locals? Volunteers? Hector wishes the Marines had some friendlies with them, to figure out who’s what.
Ffoulk gestures angrily for the newly surrendered troops to pick up their rifles again. She calls up an app on her tablet, and speaks into it.
“Zài dàolù shàng reng wuqì,” a speaker on the tank bellows. They hesitate, staring at the pudgy black woman perched on the Abrams. She gestures again, peremptorily, with her carbine. The turret begins to rotate toward them. They scramble to pick their weapons up and throw them into the mud.
The tank revvs again, its steel track plates crunching over rifles and machine guns, reducing them to scrap. Disarmed, their recent enemies squat along the road, hands up. Some grin and wave as the tanks speed by, though they quickly recoil, ducking, as the tracks blast mud into their faces.
The Marines run into another block five kilometers on, at a pinch in the valley. This takes calling in close air to growl off several hundred rounds of 20mm into pockets of resistance. Followed by a salvo of tank shells, this allows them to ram through again.
The valley opens. The road descends, becomes four lanes of concrete. The armor leaps ahead, their riders gripping tight as baby possums on a mother’s belly. Shaken off, they’d be smashed into paste by the vehicles behind.
Ahead, skyscrapers grow.
AS dusk creeps closer they grind into the outskirts of a city. Smoke bleeds into the sky ahead. At the far end of the highway a red and white tower lifts above a long building of the same red brick and white stucco. Ffoulk yells into the mike, and the lead tank charges for it. The streets are eerily empty, and Hector wonders where the residents have gone. To death camps, like the one he and Patterson came across?
The tank smashes through a low wall, sending blocks of granite flying, and brakes to a squealing, rocking halt in front of the building.
It’s been burned, gutted by fire and shells. Black eyebrows of smoke stain the white stone above the windows. Palm trees lie like pick-up sticks. Chunks have been blown out of the portico, leaving windrows of shattered brick and plaster. No one’s around. “Dismount,” Ffoulk yells, and they spill off and form a cordon, setting up machine gun posts in front of the building. “Come with me,” she snaps at Hector and Patterson, and makes for the entrance.
The empty, echoing hallways are sooty with smoke and carpeted with thousands of cartridge casings. Blood splotches the walls. Used bandages litter the floor of an abandoned aid station. They jog after Ffoulk until she finds a stair leading up. This seems less damaged than the front of the building, though the stench of powder’s still thick and broken glass from the shattered windows grates under their boots. They cover each other as they ascend.
Flight after flight … at the sixth landing Hector staggers. His head swims. He can barely drag one boot up after the other. Despite the break at the aid station, weeks of fatigue and terror are catching up. He centers his carbine’s optical sight on Patterson’s back. With an effort, grimacing, he manages to slide his finger off the trigger.
At the eighth flight he halts and bends over, trying to breathe. His legs shake. Isn’t he supposed to be in better shape than this? But it’s not his body that’s going. It’s his head. For an endless moment he’s filled with utter terror. But an instant later he can’t feel anything at all. Not fear, not dread. Nor any concern for his fellow marines.
Something tickles his throat … trickles down inside his blouse … he gropes a hand into his battle dress … tiny hard seed-shapes slip through his fingers. Falling like drops of hardened blood. Small deep red plastic spheres, little rubies.
Mirielle’s rosary. The string’s rotted, broken. “No,” he whispers, and bends, grabbing uselessly for the beads as they fall and bounce crazily. “Fuck. Fuck,” he mutters as they scatter and roll away, eluding his stiffened fingers in the tactical gloves, hopping like escaping crickets down the stairwell.
“Ramos!” Ffoulk, leaning over the rail above him, stares down.
He straightens from the rolling beads. “Guarding your rear,” he mutters, then can’t help emitting a short bark of laughter. What would Whipkey have said? It would take a whole squad to man that perimeter. Yeah, that’s what Troy would’ve said.
Troy Whipkey. From South Florida. Killed on Itbayat Island by an antipersonnel drone.
He rubs his face against the rough plaster of the stairwell, relishing the pain as his skin abrades. Images and feelings jumble in his brain. A kaleidoscope of broken glass. Broken memories. Kisses from dead lips. Orietta. Clay. Whipkey. Bleckford—
“Staff Sar’n’t! Get the fuck up here!”
He straightens, and shoves off the wall. Stands panting, staring down from a window. To where a second file of armor is appearing at the far end of the avenue. One of the Marine Abramses creeps out from a side street. The turret swings. Steadies.
With a terrific bang and a streak of light like a meteor’s an antitank round goes out. It beams down the street and the lead incoming tank explodes. From the far side of the avenue other dazzling streaks lash out, accompanied by terrific bangs.
Pei is arriving, ahead of schedule.
“Ramos!” Above, Ffoulk is screaming. He flinches, and double-times up the stairs.
THE last flight, and they emerge, out in the open now, here at the top of the tower. The view is dizzying. They’re way up here. The wind feels good, though. The lieutenant’s pulling something from her pack. Shaking it out. It’s red and white. And blue too. He should recognize what it is, but doesn’t. The colors are pretty, though. It’s bright, and clean, and new.
Ffoulk is clambering up onto a ledge. Above it stands a flagpole. A red cloth streams from it in the wind. The diminutive officer gropes for it, but her hands fall short. “Fuck,” she mutters, then turns. “Ramos, can you reach this? Get up here. Pull this fucking rag down.”
“You want that down, Lieutenant?”
“What I just said, isn’t it? You still fucked up, Ramos?”
“I—”
“Never mind. Just—yeah. Do it. Haul it down.”
He steps up on the ledge, reaches, and snags the downhaul. It’s lashed with some complicated knot that takes some clumsy picking at to loosen. But at last the flag descends, slides down, and falls over him in folds of scarlet and yellow. As he fights free Ffoulk grabs the tattered cloth, stuffs it into her pack, and hands him the red and white and blue one.
“Hoist that,” she snaps.
Then makes a strange ejaculation, a puff of meaningless sound, as her head whips round. She bends at the waist, then collapses. Past her he glimpses Patterson, gone pale under the dirt, aiming her phone at them.
Belatedly he realizes what’s happened. At the same moment Patterson yells, “Sniper! Get down!”
“I gotta hoist this,” he yells back, struggling with the colored cloth, looking for some way to attach the snap hooks on the halyard. His eyes work, but his brain doesn’t engage. He stares down stupidly at the bundle in his hands.
There—a brass ring. He snaps the head onto the downhaul as a second bullet goes whack into the concrete beside him, blasting out a chunk and covering his arm with gray powder. Whatever they’re shooting, it’s heavy caliber. He can’t imagine where they’re firing from. Unless it’s that blue skyscraper over there, but that’s nearly a mile away. “Somebody’s fucking good,” he mutters, groping to attach the foot of the flag. He sways on the ledge and barely manages to pull himself back vertical with a savage yank on the halyard. If he loses it up here, it’s got to be two hundred feet down to the pavement. More shattering blasts from below tells him the tanks are still fighting it out. A machine gun stutters. Then others, but the explosions seem faint and faraway from up here.
The snap shackle clicks home. He pulls the flag free with one arm, hanging on to the pole with the other. He glimpses Patterson in the doorway, still aiming her phone. Another bullet snaps past, just missing the pole, and a hole magically appears in the flag. He flaps it free of the halyard and drops to the terrace, taking in on the downhaul, boots planted on either side of Ffoulk’s body, which is still convulsing.
The flag rises, unfurling as it catches the wind. He crouches as if pummeled by a downpour, taking in the line hand over hand, until the flag jams in the sheaves at the top and streams out over the city below, bright and lively in the wind. The red stripes lick like flames against the darkening sky. He ties it off with a clumsy knot, then bends to drag the lieutenant into the doorway with Patterson.
“I sent it,” the corporal yells over the renewed clatter of fire. She holds up her phone.
“Sent what?… never mind. She’s hurt. Need a medic. Aid station.” His knees are shaking so bad he can’t stand. So he kneels beside Ffoulk, patting the slack face. The officer’s eyes stare blankly up at the lintel. He fumbles for a field dressing. Stuffs it into the back of her skull. There’s plenty of room.
Patterson shakes his arm, then whacks his helmet. “Ouch,” he yells. “What the fuck?”
“She’s gone. Sergeant! We got to get outta here. Those tanks are gonna put a shell into this tower any fucking second.”
“We can’t leave her.”
“She’s fucking gone. We’ll come back for the body. Now!”
Reluctantly, settling Ffoulk’s head gently to rest on her pack, he lets Patterson pull him back into the stairwell. A tremendous blast rocks the tower. Fire rattles outside, building to the crescendo of a major battle. Mingled with it is the roar of jets. The hoglike silhouette of a CAS drone flashes past, level with the window. The Brrrrrr of its Gatling vibrates the air. A green comet lashes past the drone, so fast the eye can’t follow. Patterson keeps pulling on his sleeve, towing him down the steps. He shakes his head, muttering. “Not right. Should’a brought her along,” he grunts, lurching into the wall. “Leave nobody behind.”
“You’re crazy fucked, Sergeant. Just keep going.”
“Just keep going. Just keep going.”
“Now you got it. Watch that turn. Can you cover me at the landing? Hector! Can you cover me?”
“Let fucking go of me … gotta take a shit…”
“When we get down. You got me? Ramos, you fucking asshole, you covering me? Jesus!”
“Never mind … I got you. Got you.” His eyes are burning. For some reason, all of a sudden he’s crying. Though he still doesn’t feel anything except the hot tears on his cheeks.
Clumsily unslinging his carbine with numb, insensate fingers, he angles for a shot downward.
Staggering down together, covering each other at the corners, slowly and deliberately, they descend the staircase.