The Philippine Sea
IN the darkness, noise. The stenches of fuel and seawater and close-cramped bodies, diarrhea and vomit and bilgewater. Sweat and bean-farts and sea-stink. Wet metal weeps overhead. The clink and scrape of equipment. The deafening roar of engines. Vibration, through the thin metal that surrounds them. The rush and clatter of spray. Beneath it all, the ragged breathing of burdened men and women.
The sickening, endless heave of a massive object in an ocean swell.
Night. Hector Ramos hunches crammed in the hull of an amphibious assault vehicle, an amtrac, elbow to elbow with twenty-four other marines. They’ve been here for seven hours now, boarding after a heavy evening meal as the machine squatted in the well of an air-cushion landing craft. The plan was to launch at midnight. But something delayed that, then delayed it again. Now they have to shit, to piss, but there’s nowhere to go and no room even to move.
“It can’t be long to sunrise,” someone mutters.
A tide of grumbling rises. “What’s taking so fucking long?”
“We’re gonna be hitting the beach at fucking daylight.”
“They gotta know we’re coming,” Troy Whipkey mutters, spooned next to Hector.
There’s barely room to inflate their lungs. The red interior light flickers as gear sways on the bulkheads. Someone nearby retches again. “They gotta see us on radar,” Troy adds. “This is gonna be a fucking slaughter.”
Hector’s afraid he’s right. But no point complaining. There’s no way not to go now, so he’s eager to get it over with. To find out what he’s made of, what going to war is like.
He tries not to think of the chickens, how they suddenly went quiet as they were pulled through the hole in the wall.
Hector wears baggy digital-printed trop camo utilities, with a laser ID tape and heavy boots. His old-style dog tag is backed by a hastily modified pet chip under the skin of his neck. He wears no watch, carries no radio, since his helmet will tell him the time and link him to the intraplatoon net. He wears knee and elbow pads and black tactical gloves and heavy body armor with reactive inserts.
The new lightweight integrated combat helmet has night vision and a BattleGlass interface in the goggles that feeds him data and ranges wherever he looks. Hector hugs the M240 machine gun with laser optic and a hundred rounds of linked 7.62. His secondary weapon is a pistol in a leg holster. He carries a rigger belt, notebook, pen, gas mask, and a folding multitool. On his plate carrier he has thirty more rounds of pistol ammunition, a fragmentation grenade, water-purification tablets, a compass, an LED flashlight, a green chemlight, a midazolam/atropine autoinjector, and earplugs. In the assault pack is an issue Camelbak with a hose clipped to his shoulder strap, two hundred more rounds of linked 7.62, the machine-gun-cleaning kit, a 500-ml intravenous bag with starter kit, two MREs, a poncho and liner, another undershirt, spare batteries, a pistol-cleaning kit, the personal hygiene kit the Marines refer to as “snivel gear,” and a pair of heavy leather gloves.
In his main pack he carries half a modular sleeping bag, two undershirts, two pair of socks, a knit cap, two more canteens of water, two more MREs, and a sleeping pad. Also one 60mm mortar round, a combat lifesaving kit, and range cards for the Pig.
Hector wonders how far he’ll be able to hump 135 pounds of clothing, gear, weapons, food, water, and ammo when he weighs only 148 pounds. The marines have heard about powered metal exoskeletons. But they’ve never seen one, and even if they exist, the Corps will be the last to get them. The beast they’re riding in, that they’re powering along three feet above the water in, was built forty years before. It creaks and shrieks around them as its metal skin flexes.
It’s only thin aluminum, after all.
* * *
THE brigade had been held aboard ship for weeks at sea. The officers and SNCOs went to sand-table rehearsals, but the grunts just got rumors. Until two days before, when they gathered in the hangar bay for a mass briefing by the colonel.
The operation was named Mandible.
Their target was an island.
(“Duh,” Troy had whispered.)
The island’s code name was Lifeline.
When the graphic went up, Hector leaned forward, trying to peer around the guy in front of him for a better look. It stretched southwest to northeast, shaped like a long turd. It didn’t look that big, but even smaller islands lay off to the east and north.
The colonel turned the brief over to a major. She said, “The Navy is carrying out attacks at two other points, starting now. And we have a submarine blockade between Lifeline and the enemy coast. So we don’t expect major reinforcements for the enemy, by either sea or air. The battlefield is isolated; he’ll have to fight with what he has. We’ll have the advantage of surprise and numbers.
“On the other hand, this is an over-the-horizon assault, with multiple repeat sorties by Osprey, helo, and LCAC to get the first echelon ashore. Since shipping will have to stand off, due to area-denial missiles, this will slow the buildup and place heavier demands on the lead assault elements.
“We’ll get to the enemy order of battle in a moment. But I wanted to discuss the geography first, because we’ve discovered difficulties that may not have been appreciated when we were assigned this mission.”
An aerial photo, looking down onto an undulating green carpet fringed with black rock. “Lifeline is eighteen kilometers long and roughly five kilometers wide. It is dominated by two volcanoes, Riposet, in the southeast, and Karaboban, to the north. Both are long extinct. Riposet, at a two-hundred-seventy-meter elevation, dominates the island and the airfield. Whoever holds it, holds the island.”
“Our first two objectives,” the colonel put in, “are the airfield and the commanding height to the south. We have a cruel and determined enemy. Cruel—judging from his conduct in Korea. Determined—he will not surrender easily. In China, defeated generals are shot.
“But Marines have always accomplished the mission. I have no doubt you’ll make me proud.”
He nodded to the major. She picked up, “Now, enemy forces. Based on all-source intelligence, we estimate Lifeline is occupied by approximately four thousand Chinese.”
The marines stirred. Hector didn’t like that number either. There were only about two thousand men and women in the whole Second Regiment. Weren’t you supposed to land with more guys than you had opposing you?
As if sensing their unease, she said, “But most of the occupiers are not fighting troops. Many are construction crews and civilian contractors, resurfacing and extending the airfield for the next phase of their offensive. Taking it won’t just screw up their plans, it’ll position us for our next step.
“In two days, at an H-hour of 0400 local, following preparatory strikes by Tomahawk, UAV, Marine and Navy air, and naval gunfire support, Nine MEB will carry out a two-pronged attack. The Ospreys will vertical-envelop at LZ Mallet, which I am indicating with the pointer.”
The major hesitated. “It was difficult to select a landing point for the element conducting the frontal assault. The coastline is formed by steep cliffs. Rocky. Precipitous. There are only four places at all suitable, only one is on the eastern coast, and it has no beach suitable for LCACs. Actually, there aren’t any ‘beaches,’ in the sense of a shallowing hydrography shading up into a gradually climbing coastal terrain.
“To be honest, it took us a long time to figure out the best way to get you in, aside from a pure vertical assault, which wouldn’t give us a rapid enough buildup or the logistic foothold needed for resupply.”
“Then how the fuck are we getting ashore?” Whipkey muttered, fidgeting like an eight-year-old.
“Shut up, Troy, and listen,” Hector hissed.
The briefer clicked a laser pointer. “First Battalion, Second Regiment, will land on Red Beach Two. Here.” The red dot pulsated, but Hector didn’t see anything like a beach.
“AAVs, tanks, and vehicles will debark at the foot of an eroded cliff. The incline is about forty degrees. Rough going, but we believe the armor can negotiate the grade. Once the beachhead’s secure, the logistics combat element will sculpt a ramp with dozers. The rubble will form a base for a pontoon causeway, where resupply will come in starting at D plus one.
“Until that happens, though, we’ll have to hold against any counterattack with organic assets, supplemented by drone resupply. The good news is, we’ll have continuous air support from the MAG and the UAV folks. Fifty Stinger teams, antidrone squads, and Navy top cover will further protect us.
“Terrain inland is undulating, with open areas interspersed with scrub jungle in the lower elevations. You will encounter small lakes and watercourses. The former administrating country advises most of the inhabitants have left. For ROE purposes, consider the entire island as a free-fire zone. Of course, try to avoid damage to hospitals and churches, unless they’re being used as firing positions.
“Once ashore, push toward the airfield in accordance with the phase lines shown and link up at LZ Mallet. We should have local-area GPS coverage, but it’s probably better to depend on your compass and map. Push forward as rapidly as you can. Don’t give the enemy time to organize. Second Battalion, landing south of us, will take Mount Riposet. Note this shallow ravine; it will serve as a boundary line. Three-Two will be held in reserve.
“When you make contact, don’t halt. Call in supporting fire, then close with and destroy the enemy. Don’t get ahead of the phase lines. Your prep fires will be going in ahead of you. But don’t fall behind, either. Once fire lifts, the enemy’s going to have his head back up again.”
The colonel interrupted again. “Let me emphasize that: When counterattacks occur, call in support and attrite the enemy.”
His audience stirred, glancing at one another. Hector felt uneasy. If anything went wrong, they’d be stranded ashore without resupply, maybe without tanks.
The major wound up with the repeated assurance that the carriers would have their backs. But most of the marines still looked skeptical.
When she was done, Weapons Platoon went to a corner of the cavernous well deck. They settled between one of the LCACs and the canvas-shrouded bulk of a tank. Hector nodded to the other M240 gunners. He caught Orietta’s grin from the mortar section, Pruss beside her. They’d all be hitting the beach with the first wave, apparently.
Lieutenant Smalls’s usual procedure was for him to call in the three section leaders and the platoon sergeant, Hern, and let them pass the gouge on to the troops. But apparently he wanted them all together for this. “We haven’t been together long,” Smalls started. “Especially our new joins. But you heard what the colonel said. If these guys counterattack, you know where you die. In place, behind your weapon. Taking as many of them with you as you can.”
And they’d all nodded soberly. Accepting it.
It would be up to them.
* * *
NOW, in the hammering well of the LCAC, deep in the belly of the amphibious tractor, “Five minutes” comes back passed mouth to mouth. Hector tries to wriggle, to stretch cramping muscles. But after so long he isn’t sure he can get up, much less muscle up close to his body weight.
A strange, prolonged groan. A lurch, as if they’ve hit something. He grips the Pig as if it can save him. A distant thud. Then another, heavier, closer. If a shell hits them now, no way they’re getting out. The “L-cack” floats above the water, driven on a cushion of air, but if it loses power they’ll be trapped.…
“Stand by,” Sergeant Hern snarls, ducking to yell back to them. The AAV’s diesel clatters to life with a jolt and a roar. Whipkey and Ramos stiffen as above them a hatch cracks partway. An emergency exit, though every one knows only a few will be able to make it out.
Through it they glimpse fog, and gray light. Slanting gray sky. Spray spatters. Marines bend, heaving into the corners. A tide of vomit slides to and fro on the deck.
The thudding becomes a drumbeat, then a howl as if the world itself is being destroyed. Black smoke stains the sky. Aircraft scream over. Jets, and the crosslike shapes of Ospreys.
Terror squeezes his heart. Hector pants.
The marines crouch as hell gapes a mile ahead. Hector can only catch shattered glimpses. Volcanoes of flame throw boulders free to leap and crash down into the surf. Earth erupts, a russet belch of gritty soil scrambled by high explosive and laced with hot steel. Shells roar overhead, detonating with deafening blasts that walk circles of concussion across the water. Farther inland, even heavier explosions shake the sky. They can’t see for the fog, but something up there is unloading destruction on the enemy.
For which they curse and pray, torn between terror and gratitude. Hector, helmet lowered, embracing the Pig, can’t pray. Can’t even think, in the pandemoniac din. Only two words tower in his mind. Last words he will die without saying, if he dies today.
Mandible.
Lifeline.
The iron stink of torn earth and explosive reaches them on the wind.
* * *
SOMEHOW a gap. Like the flicker of a strobe, and
* * *
HE’S ashore. Panting, smeared with red dirt, so somewhere in there he must have fallen or been knocked down. His Glasses have gone blank. His radio hisses empty in his earbud. He looks back down the slope, to where the LCAC …
Where the LCAC …
To where the LCAC lies beached and on fire, canted to one side like Godzilla used it to wipe his ass, then stomped on it. Huge pieces lie smoking, scattered on the rocks. Two amtracs also lie torn open and burning soundlessly. Silent explosions lift tons of white water a few hundred feet out to sea. Huddled bundles in graytan digital camo lie among them, or surge in the surf. A damaged cargo-robo whirs and bobs in circles until it finally topples, slides down into the surf, thrashes briefly, and subsides beneath the waves.
Only Hector doesn’t remember.…
His helmet rocks to a blow and his brainpan echoes. It’s Sergeant Hern, yelling into his face. Soundlessly. Hector blinks. Only after several seconds do the sounds abruptly assemble into words. Accompanied, now, by the zip and crack of incoming. Lots of incoming. Instinctively, he crouches.
“… and get set up. Hear me? Haul ass! Two hundred meters to the left and set up.”
A second face. Whipkey, tugging at his other arm. “Ramos. The fuck, man?—He got concussed, Sergeant. When the cack got hit. Had to drag him out.”
“Get him on his feet. Move him out. We got to get off this fucking beach.”
Nearer the crest the NCOs and officers, huddled in a cleft of rock, are talking on radios and assigning sectors of fire. Hector, toiling heavily past them, sees through a blankness that beyond that lies a bare hilltop, with very little cover and dirt spurting up continually as it’s raked. He feels naked. “Supposed to do this in the fucking amtrac,” he mutters. “What the fuck?”
“Forget the track, dude,” Whipkey pants, shoving him. “They had us boresighted the second we hit the sand. We were lucky to get out alive. Lots didn’t.”
Hern leads them out at a scramble, bent double, riflemen in support, and they rush in short sprints from dip to dip, panting under their loads, until they reach a rise on the left flank. Mortars start howling in as they run. The ground shakes. Earth patters over them. Jagged steel sings and whines. Air bursts. There’s nowhere to hide. They fall, digging their fingers into the ground, then leap up and sprint again. By some miracle, only one rifleman gets hit. They shout for a corpsman, and resume buddy-rushing once they see him on his way.
The sergeant sets them in overlooking a jungled valley with gray fog eddying up from tangled vegetation. There’s a little cover here, at least, stunted scrub trees studded with bare boulders. Their primary field of fire is to the left oblique with a secondary dead ahead. Hern yells, “Make sure you don’t fire on any First Battalion guys. They’ll be coming up on the far side of the valley.” Hector realizes this is the “ravine” mentioned in the briefing, the line between battalions. But where are the Ospreys, the guys coming in vertical assault? He starts to ask Whipkey, then decides he wouldn’t know either.
A huge explosion goes off in the air a hundred yards away, thumping deep in his lungs and kicking up the dirt in a huge circle below it. Besides, they have more pressing issues. Like getting dug in before one of those shells, or rockets, turns them into pulled pork.
Hector and Troy dig madly with entrenching tools. The soil’s reddish, gritty, not sand, but lighter. Their blades grate on fist-sized pumice rocks. He’s never seen anything like this stuff. As they dig it turns to powder and they start coughing. They throw up a hasty position, then spade in the Pig’s bipod legs. Roll in, and glass their front.
But he can’t see. The fucking fog covers everything. It eddies up from the trees below and hangs opaque and motionless. Still, he pings laser ranges, and Troy sketches a card. Fifteen minutes later a Javelin team arrives on their left, then a rifle squad digs in between them, accompanied by an antidrone gunner. With each arrival Hector feels reassured. They have a perimeter now. But where’s the armor? He hasn’t seen a single piece come off the beach. He hasn’t seen any enemy yet, either, but keeps searching the fog, swinging the 240’s muzzle, finger on the trigger. Now and again rain slashes down, hard, chilly, obliterating the last remnants of sight. His helmet radio tells him, “Hold fire, claymores are going out.” He clicks and rogers, but never sees movement. Either they’re really good, or visibility is shit.
The roar of engines behind them … the second wave of cacks is coming in. They’ll have to thread in, avoiding the wrecks. With a queer-sounding pop his radio goes off, then comes back on. “What happened back there?” he mutters to Whipkey. “To the cack?”
“Fuck if I know. Just, we were there, waiting for the ramp to go down, and there’s this terrific bang and the whole side opens up. We’re spinning around, starting to go down … somebody hit the ramp button, though, and they drove the amtracs out. You don’t remember?”
“I don’t remember dick until Hern grabbed me at the top of the cliff.”
“No shit … Well, we hit the beach, then there’s this terrific whang and the track shudders and stops. The driver’s just … gone. He’s like, paste. We get out but then it’s like total clusterfuck. Major incoming. We’re trying to rush, but guys are going down. Then I look back and you’re laying there. A lot of rocks and shit were flying around.” Whipkey bends in. “Shit yeah, you got a hell of a dent here. Can see the ripped Kevlar. Probably woulda tooken your fucken head off, without that brain bucket. Sure you’re okay?”
“I think so. Kind of got a headache, though—”
“Ops, this is Whiskey actual, report Alfa Charlie Echo,” says Hector’s radio. The lieutenant, asking for an ammo, casualties, equipment report.
He peers out again over the sights. “This is Six, six hundred rounds, no casualties, operational. Visibility limited by fog, two hundred meters, no enemy observed. Over.”
“Whiskey actual, out. —Ah, wait one … Stand by … stand by to move out. Follow AAVs, one-zero-five magnetic. Threat direction, left flank. Acknowledge.”
“Fuck,” Whipkey mutters. “We just got this fucken position dug.” But he’s already packing and slinging, getting ready to move.
Hector checks his compass and frowns. “Hey, something’s fucked … am I wrong? That’s gonna take us down into that jungle.”
“No it won’t. You’re reading it wrong. We’re just gonna skate by it.” Whipkey sighs, and Hector looks to see him squatting in their hole with his trou down. “Takin’ a dump while I can,” he mutters. “Recommend you do the same.” He pulls up his pants, slings his rucks, the heavy bag with the extra barrel, and climbs out.
The thick crack of a heavy bullet shivers the air, showering them both with friable red dirt as the earth erupts between them. “Fuck,” Whipkey hisses, dropping prone. “That was some big-caliber shit. See where that came from?”
Hector swings the barrel. His finger tightens. A long burst, return fire? He peers through the optic, but sees nothing. No smoke, no motion, no vapor. Though a faint pop arrives a second after the bullet. The bullet travels twice the speed of the sound. A long shot, which was why they’d missed. Should he fire? At last he doesn’t. He keys, “Whiskey, OP Six, sniper fire from across the ravine.”
“Roger. All hands, maintain cover. Don’t move out just yet. Resupply’s on the way. Out.”
He hasn’t fired Round One yet, but already they’re being resupplied? Maybe he won’t have to worry about ammo. They keep their heads down, sensing a distant gaze on them. Drink some water, and check the Pig.
A low motor-whine, a discreet beep behind them. Whipkey pokes a shaving mirror up. “One a the mules. Water and ammo.”
Hector nods. “Stay low.”
“Know it, dude.”
But the assistant gunner’s only halfway to the cart, low-crawling, using every bush and fold of ground, when the robot beeps again. The wheels spin. It backs away. “Here, boy,” Whipkey calls. “What choo doing? Get the fuck back here!”
But the wheels are spinning in opposite directions, fighting each other. The cart backs, then rolls forward. Halts. Then, abruptly, whips in a circle, nearly tipping over, the ammo boxes and water cans atop it jolting and clattering.
It bolts forward, narrowly missing Whipkey as he buries his head under his hands, and tears past Ramos, pitching down the slope. It accelerates, individually powered wheels whining madly, heading downhill. Toward the enemy line.
“Ammo cart’s gone rogue,” someone says on the net. “Deserting.”
“Bastards cyberjacked it.”
“Six, take it out. Copy? Take it out.”
Hector can’t believe it. Fire on their own ammo resupply? Their own water, when his mouth is parched? But orders are orders. He’s lining up the sights when the cart suddenly explodes, disassembling in a cone of dirt and black smoke. “Aw fuck,” Whipkey mutters. “Now we got to worry about fucken mines, too.”
Hector eases his finger off the trigger and sets the safety. He smacks dry lips. “Hijo de puta,” he mutters. “I coulda used that water.”
* * *
A snarl of engines grows from beachward. Huge hulks strain to climb, lumbering up, then tipping down as they crest. “At last, some fucking armor,” Whipkey yells.
At the same moment trails of fire streak down from the sky. They search here and there across the ravine from Hector and Troy, who freeze, crouched, as the earth gouts in crimson flashes, as jungle and trees are hurtled skyward, turned over, fall, and are hurtled skyward again. Pulverized amid flashes of lightning. A paler cone of fire streaks skyward from amid the maelstrom, but falters, falls back. The thunder goes on and on before gradually subsiding amid flashes and heavy booms that echo away amid the hills.
“OPs, move out and follow behind AAVs,” the net says.
Wheezing under their burdens, they trot after the behemoths, sucking diesel fumes. The Javelin team’s out on the flank. An attack helicopter flashes overhead, cants, unleashes streams of fire. The rockets impact on the far side of a hill, and black smoke rises along with a faint popping. Hector’s headache throbs behind his eyes. The fog and drizzle are growing heavier. Is that thump and hum from helicopters, or inside his head? The AAV dips and slews, treads flinging dirt as it hits soft patches. They’re headed down, skirting the ravine. He puffs and blows, trying to keep up. Some of the infantrymen are riding on the armor, forbidden in training, but apparently okay now. The Javelin team drops and sets up, sighting on something in the distance. A nonthreat, it seems, because seconds later they’re up and jogging forward again.
“Jeez, I can’t go much farther,” Whipkey wheezes.
“We got to keep up, Troy.”
For some reason Hector keeps thinking of the Line. Of Farmer Seth … He looks back to see Whipkey surreptitiously letting a mortar round slip to the ground. “That’s five pounds less,” he mutters.
“You aren’t ditching our ammo?”
“Think I’m stupid? I’ll drop chow before seven-six-two.”
Hector’s about to snap something back when he notices he’s walking on a smoothly paved road of bloody flesh. Something massive has rolled over the bodies, smashing them into a glistening paste that merges almost imperceptibly with the red soil. If not for the smell, he might not even have noticed. That was what made him recall the factory. The smells of fresh meat, ground-up flesh, drying blood, and crushed intestines. Arms and legs lie to the side, some charred, others with jagged pinkish-white bone sticking out. A head, facedown, still packaged in its helmet as if for shipping.
Then a nearly whole body, in dark woodland camo. The midsection’s scattered across the grass, but the upper body and legs are still there. The pale face looks serene. At first Hector thinks she’s a girl. Then realizes, no, just a smooth-faced, fine-featured boy. No older than he is, probably, but built smaller. A strange-looking rifle lies near an open hand.
“Get moving, keep moving,” rasps in his headset. Hector flinches. Lifts his boots carefully, trying not to step where it glistens. The melted fat, that’s what’ll be slippery. Just like when a vat of it spills, on the Line.
* * *
THE amtrac’s burning, popping like firecrackers as the ammo cooks off. He and Whipkey lie prone, tucked under one of its busted tracks, hastily setting up the Pig.
“Gunners, get some fire out there,” crackles in his ears. Another M240 opens up to their right, and balls of white fire arch out. Tracers! “Must be all he’s got left,” Whipkey yells. “Losing that mule fucked us bad.”
“How we fixed?”
“Getting short, Heck. Only two more belts.”
He charges the gun and bends to the optics. They’re cracked and smeared with dirt. He flips them out of the way and goes to irons. Figures move ahead, surge at the crest, sink down. “Four hundred meters,” Whipkey mutters. Hector sets the sight and snugs the butt into his shoulder. The Pig hammers his shoulder, pushing him back. But he’s braced, boots digging into the dirt, and he walks the rounds in short bursts, die, motherfucker, die, picking up the rhythm of their rushes and putting bursts where they’ll be, not where they were. Distant figures reel and drop, stagger or just fall. Brass spews. Links tinkle. The blast, confined under the hull of the wrecked tank, is deafening. The gas, choking.
A flame leaves the low hills ahead and darts faster than they can track it somewhere to their right. A heavy, ground-quaking explosion.
The gun to their right falls silent.
With a growl of diesels, another track pulls up next to them. The turret rotates, and the .50-cal and the forty mike mike began clamoring, searching for the enemy. The noise is beyond deafening.
The Pig’s barrel starts to glow. Whipkey slaps his shoulder and reaches in for the handle. Wrestles it off, sets it aside to cool, replaces it, slaps his shoulder again. “Last belt,” he howls into Hector’s ear.
“Look in my ruck.”
“We fired all that, Heck-tor. You’re blankin’ again.”
The flame darts faster than his eye can follow. It slams into the already-burning hulk above them. The metal shakes and sheer white fire surrounds them for a tenth of a second, blinding, deafening. After the blast, the darkness again.
* * *
THEY’RE riding one of the robot carts, the auto turned off so the enemy can’t hijack it. A lance corporal’s steering with the joystick. Troy and Hector are slumped in the back, the Pig between them. The wheels grind in plowed-up soil where something big’s gone off. They bump over wreckage. Between the slanted, battered tubes of abandoned, broken mortars. The fertilizer stink of explosive. Another crater, a gigundous one. Something must have hit an ammo dump. His empty gaze wanders among wrecked equipment, overturned, smoking boxes, piles of empty packing tubes, bodies.
One is helmetless, dark hair unraveled. Olive skin and a hawklike nose. One leg lies several yards away. He slides off the cart, disregarding Whipkey’s shout, and limps over. Takes a knee beside her. Touches her face.
“Orietta,” he whispers. She’s cold. Bled out. Pruss lies not far away. Also dead.
* * *
HE blinks, crouched in an emplacement he doesn’t recognize, looking over gunsights. He shakes his head, scrapes dirty nails over his eyes. Vertigo reels the world. He hasn’t dug this position. But there’s his entrenching tool, smeared with red dirt—
“Y’okay?” Whipkey snaps down the feed tray. “Loaded. Go hot.”
Without conscious thought Hector hauls on the charging handle, tests the traverse, wiggles the bipod feet to dig them in. “Where the fuck are we?” he whispers.
“You’re starting to worry me, dude. Look behind you,” Whipkey mutters.
When he cranes around, they’re dug in at the end of an airstrip so long it seems to stretch out forever. The fog has lifted some, and it isn’t raining, though it looks like it might again. But the fog’s been replaced by choking black smoke. Broken vehicles and crashed aircraft burn along the strip. Corpses lie around them. They wear woodland camo and Marine digital. Marines crouch with pointed rifles around a gaggle of prisoners and wounded on the far side of the tarmac. Gunfire crackles to the west, and heavier explosions boom out. The battle’s moved on. An MV-22 Osprey burns fiercely three hundred meters distant. As he stares, an amtrac noses up and begins shoving it off the strip.
“We’re there? We took the field?”
“Where the fuck you been? We dug in three times. Fired over four hundred rounds.”
Hector inspects his hands. They’re black with dirt and powder. His fingernails are broken. But they’ve taken the objective. He pounds the Pig, overtaken by joy. He’s alive!
Then he remembers Orietta, and Pruss, and the torn bodies lolling in the surf. The joy fades. He looks at his hands again. “Where are my fucking gloves?”
“I don’t know where your fucken gloves are!”
In his helmet comms. “Six, Whiskey actual, report.”
He swings the 240 across his sector. “This is Six … nothing to report.”
“Stay alert. UAV reports activity to southwest of the strip.”
He rogers, suddenly sobered again. Stay alert for counterattacks. “Southwest will be out to our left oblique,” Whipkey says, pointing. Hector orients and searches, pressing the laser button for ranges when he can pick out a landmark, but doesn’t see anything. The Glasses give him nothing. Either they aren’t working, or he isn’t getting data over the link. Once again, the lieutenant’s put them on a slope looking down. About three hundred yards, above scrub deepening to jungle. A motion to his right; he traverses; is taking up slack in the trigger when digital MARPAT registers. A dude’s dragging a spool of springy concertina. It unfolds as it unrolls across their front, expanding into a barrier a yard high laced with hundreds of razor teeth to grip and slash, but mainly to pin an attacker in the kill zone.
“This is Whiskey actual. Listen up. Word is, they’re using our chips to target.”
“What the fuck,” Whipkey murmurs.
“Apparently they can read location off them. Listen carefully. You have to remove each other’s chips.” The squawk of a transmission; a hiss; a break. “Then destroy them in the following manner; either insert into your barrels and fire a round, or heat with your MRE heaters until red hot. Copy?”
The section leaders roger up doubtfully. Hector and Troy eye each other, and Whipkey grimaces. “I hope they figured this right.”
“What do you mean?”
“The chips. They’re supposed to identify us to our own targeters, too.” But he unsheathes his KA-BAR and peels down his uniform collar. Pinches up the hard little kernel of the chip. And looks away, biting his lip as Hector inserts the tip of the knife, works it under, and pops it out. Then it’s his turn. A field dressing with anticoagulant stops the bleeding. They jack a round into the Pig, drop both chips down the barrel, and fire them at the enemy.
Suddenly he’s incredibly thirsty. Hector fumbles out a canteen and drinks half. He checks his other canteen and finds it’s already drunk dry, though he doesn’t remember doing it. His head aches as if someone is driving a log splitter through his brain. “We got claymores out?” he mutters. “How much 7.62?”
Whipkey says they do, and have two hundred rounds left. Somehow they’ve fired almost all their load and more, though he doesn’t remember doing so. He’s blacking out, apparently. Maybe he should find a corpsman. No … he’s still manning the gun. As long as he can do that, he owes it to the platoon to stay in the line.
* * *
THEY occupy that position all that afternoon. They’re exhausted, but there’s no time to sleep. Taking turns manning the Pig, they deepen the fighting hole, then extend it in a semicircle and sculpt platforms. They bolt their MREs cold, keeping watch. Whipkey jogs to the still-smoking wreck of the Osprey and drags back a fiberglass panel. With the excavated dirt piled on it, then a poncho over the raw earth, it provides some overhead cover. A Humvee comes by. They kick off two cans of linked and a case of grenades. The sergeant walks the line. Hern says they can take half-hour naps, one at a time, but to stand to at dusk. “Expect a counterattack after dark,” he advises.
“Can’t the air break that up for us?” Whipkey asks. “Or the drones?”
“They laid down most of their load in prep fires. And a lot of our UAV assets got ’jacked. We can’t depend on our computers. Or even our radios. They’re fucking with us. We’re trying to figure it out.”
Hector says, “Uh, Sergeant, is there a corpsman around?”
Hern eyes him. “There a problem?”
“Ramos got a brain rattle,” Whipkey says. “Been blinking on and off since we hit the beach.”
“I can stay on the line,” Hector says. “I’m okay.”
“I’ll send Doc over soon as I see him. Get your chips out?”
They bare their necks for inspection, and the NCO leaves. Whipkey breaks out the ammo boxes, but pauses. “Hey. Shit!”
“What?”
“Look at this crap. What is this?” He holds up a belt. Instead of brass cartridges, they’re gray. Gray steel, linked not with metal but with some kind of plastic. “Fuck’s this shit? Fuck’s this writing? What the fuck, over!”
Hector grabs it anxiously. “It looks like 7.62. Isn’t it 7.62?”
“Looks like, but what the fuck!”
“Lay it in the tray.” He cycles five rounds through. All five feed and eject. The plastic links fall out the bottom just like steel links.
But he still doesn’t trust it.
* * *
HE tries to get his head down but can’t close his eyes. Too wired. Images. Pink paste. Vats of blood. Detached heads. The shudder of chickens being electrocuted. Instead he cleans the Pig. He feels better when it’s finally clean and lubed. So much better that he cleans it all over again.
At dusk they stand to. But nothing happens other than flares, or something, that light up the sky now and then to the north. Somebody’s getting his shit hammered there, that’s for sure. But it’s far away. He decides not to worry about it.
Worry about their front. About whether the funky ammo will feed if they get hit.
An hour after dark comms go down. Suddenly, no warning, with the dull pop they’ve heard before. Only this time they stay down. Half an hour later a runner jogs along the perimeter. Hissing, “Stand to. Stand to. Motion to the front.”
“Fuck they think we been doing?” Whipkey mutters sourly. But he flips down his NVGs. Clicks them on and off. “Fuck. Gotta op check these things too. Yours work?”
Hector slides his down and turns them on. But instead of the familiar seething green all he gets is black. “Nada.”
“Whatever fried our comms got them, too.”
He pats the Pig. No matter what, the Pig will keep them safe. He loosens his pistol in its holster too. Not much, but a last resort.
Distant chugs echo. “Fuck,” Whipkey mutters, and they dive for the bottom of the dugout.
The earth rocks. The detonations walk up and down the line as if the enemy knows exactly where they are. A near miss shovels dirt over them and sucks the air out of their lungs. Hector lies with eyes and asshole squeezed tight, praying for it to be over. Then not praying, just enduring. His arms are wrapped around the assistant gunner. Another near hit blows the overhead cover down, burying them. Fumes choke him. He screams and claws at the dirt until he gets just enough airspace to breathe. Starts to dig out, then stops. Let the earth cover him. Let it bury him. Until this is over.
The detonations go on and on. Far from waning, they’re succeeded by deeper, more violent ones. The sides of the hole quake, battering them. Someone’s moaning, barking in his ear. He can’t tell if it’s himself or Whipkey. There no longer seems to be any difference.
* * *
FLARES trickle down, shedding a glaring unearthly illumination that makes the shadows all the darker. Beneath the lurid light the ground’s pocked with bomb craters, shell craters, still smoking. Between them figures creep. They drop into cover and vanish, while others pop up and rush forward. Drones buzz overhead, their own or the enemy’s Hector doesn’t know. A steady wink of fire gutters from Chinese guns, and trails of fire from RPGs or something like the marines’ Javelins flash toward and over the battalion’s line, succeeded by hollow explosions. Something deep red flickers back and forth, over there, in the night.
Hector hunches his shoulders, sets the sights by feel, and squeezes the trigger.
The Pig fires five rounds, bam bam bam bam bam, and jams. Hector drags the operating handle back, ejects the bad round, and recharges. Fires eleven more rounds before it jams again.
The deep red flickers. It reaches out, searching among the craters.
He’s fumbling at the action, trying to clear it, but the cartridge is jammed in hard, caught on the bolt face, when a deep carmine brilliance bursts, fragments, echoes and resounds all around him. It smears cobwebs over his vision. His whole brain turns red.
“Laser!” Whipkey screams, and claws at his face. He keeps screaming, staggering up.
“Get down!” Hector shouts, grabbing for him, shielding his eyes with his other hand. But bullets crack, whiplashing across the hill, and then something buzzes overhead, whining in, dreadfully close.
It cuts off suddenly and Whipkey screams again, a choked-off burst of animal terror. Ramos catches the flicker of a muzzle flash, frames it in the sight, and fires, fires, fires until the gun halts again, jammed once more.
When he looks back his assistant gunner lies half in, half out of the caved-in fighting hole, chin back at an unnatural angle. In the light of the falling flares a scarlet well pulses at his throat, in which is wedged something small and black, with stiff stubby wings. His open eyes stare up at the stars.
* * *
HE’S lying in the open, on his side, hugging the Pig. Somehow he knows he’s out of ammo. Something heavy weighs down his right hand. When he lifts it the flare-light shows him his pistol, smeared with blood.
* * *
HE’S in a hole with three other marines. A rifle in his hands. No idea where it came from. Where’s the Pig? He has to find it. But right now he’s slapping in magazines, firing them out. The others are firing too, as fast as they can. One is Lieutenant Smalls. Face contorted, snarling, he’s firing his pistol two-handed, double-tapping Chinese after Chinese. The rifle barrels glow and smoke in the darkness. They’re not built to fire burst after burst, mag after mag. But the shadows keep coming. One ducks, straightens, flings out an arm. Smalls yells “Grenade” in a strange hoarse voice. He dives to the ground just before the explosion, and his body jumps, humps up, as Hector fires a burst over him into the grenadier.
* * *
HE’S hammering at something in the darkness. Without looking, he knows it’s the Pig. Hammering its butt down again and again. Grunting. With rhythmic force. Then a flashlight illuminates the thing he’s flailing at. A face. A mashed-in, concave mass of blood and bone now. But still breathing. Bubbles burst and slide. It’s still trying to get up.
“Stand back,” Hern orders. Hector sledgehammers twice more, slowing, exhausted, and finally obeys, staggering to his feet.
The flat final report of Hern’s rifle.
* * *
RUNNING. Staggering. Figures in front of him, fitfully illuminated by explosion-flashes.
The wreck of a mule. Hundreds of cartridges lie scattered across the dirt. Brass ones, he notes dully. The driver blown into shreds of meat where he’s been perforated from above. Strips of flesh hanging.
* * *
AN interminable night. A night that never ends. That never will end, in the memories of those who survive it.
* * *
DAWN. Somehow, they’re overlooking the water. Dimly he understands they’ve crossed the island’s waist during the night. Fought their way here, to a new sea. Crouched in a shallow fighting hole, he’s obsessively, compulsively cleaning the Pig. Scrubbing burnt carbon off the bolt. Lubricating it. Reassembling it. No idea where the gun came from; at some point during the night there it was again, after he thought he’d lost it. Inexplicable. Or maybe it’s someone else’s. And maybe it doesn’t matter.
The waves walk out of the fog, shattering on the red sand.
The dawn is old silver. Mist seethes above the surf.
An unfamiliar sergeant walks along, straightening the line. A net bag of liter bottles hangs off his shoulder. Two young women trail him, belts of cartridges draped around their shoulders like golden shawls. He tosses down a water bottle. Hector catches it in midair, tears the cap off, fastens his mouth to it greedily, and beckons for another. The sergeant tosses him a second liter. “Tail on to him,” the NCO tells one of the marines with him, the black woman. Then, to Hector, “A ship went down out there. Some of ’em might try to make it to shore. Gunner, your new assistant. Private Phelps.”
“Aye aye, Sergeant. Oorah, Phelps.”
“Oorah,” the woman mutters.
“Ammo’s on its way. Keep an eye to seaward. Phelps, get this hole dug deeper.”
Hector nods, fastened again to his bottle like a baby to a nipple. The private eyes him, then unsheathes an entrenching tool. The sand caves in nearly as fast as she shovels it out. But she keeps working, piling it up in front of them.
Faintly, out of the sea-mist, voices are shouting. Many voices, raised in what sounds like pleading.
Hector drains the first bottle and flips it over his shoulder. Eyes the second, but doesn’t open it. He sets up the Pig and slaps in a belt. “The King fucks the Queen,” he mutters.
“What?” says the private. She stops digging, looks at Ramos. Then at the sea, then back at the blood-caked, dirt-smeared, crazily mumbling gunner.
“M’name’s Sheeda,” she says tentatively.
“Safety on ‘F,’” Hector says. “Bolt to the rear.”
“What?”
“Double link at the open end. Free of dirt and corrosion.”
The shouting from seaward is growing louder. The private resumes digging, faster now.
“The sear holds the bolt open,” Hector mutters. He slots the charging handle back and flips up the cover assembly. Ensures the feed tray, receiver assembly, and chamber are clear. He slaps it down and pulls the cocking handle again. Where’s Troy? Oh yeah. Troy’s dead. Orietta. Pruss, too. Smalls. Hern. All dead.
“Gun one, Condition One, ready to fire,” he slurs.
She frowns. “What?”
“Now listen up. We only got the one barrel. You’re gonna pour that water on it, once I start firing, got that? Pour it on. Don’t matter if it gets in the action. It’ll cook out. But you got to keep that barrel cool. Hear me?”
She nods, looking scared. He swings the muzzle this way and that, making sure the bipod’s dug in. Should be on a tripod in a fixed position like this. Somewhere, during the night, the optic has disappeared too. Doesn’t matter. “Fucking optics gonna go south on you,” he mutters. “Learn the fucking irons. Fuck the Queen.”
“Huh?” Phelps looks concerned. Then shrugs as she slides into the hole next to him. “Whatever.”
He barely notices. Out in the mist, dim figures are taking shape. They wade forward through the uneasy surf. They call out, voices plaintive, hands in the air. They stagger like zombies as they advance. Only a few carry weapons.
“Open fire,” someone yells.
The Pig jackhammers his shoulder as other guns along the beach open up too. He traverses, picking out clusters. Geysers of white spray burst up. Those few who still carry weapons throw them away, raise their hands too. They cry out, pleading, but he keeps firing. Under the impacts they wilt, spin, drop, sink back into the sea. The water turns red beneath the silver mist. Screams reach them. The other guns fall silent. Someone grabs his shoulder, but he shakes it off and keeps firing.
“Cease fire. Cease fire,” comes down the line. A few rifle shots crack out, then they too cease.
But Hector Ramos keeps firing. Traversing. Firing again, as a few belated figures coalesce from the sea-mist, staggering, wounded, some with only one hand stiffly raised.
“What are you doing?” Phelps screams into his ear. “They’re surrendering. Cease fire. Stop!”
But he fires that belt out and reaches for the next. She grabs his wrists to keep him from loading it.
Then others are standing above them. The sergeant who assigned her. An officer. Hector whispers something to the ghosts around him. “What did you say?” the woman screams over the ringing in his ears.
“You got to learn,” he mutters.
“What?”
“Learn to hate. Learn to kill. Bring your buddies back. Make sense of it later.”
“He’s fucking lost it,” the officer says. “Get him out of there. Phelps, take the gun.”
Someone helps him out of the fighting hole. He sways, head bent, hands to his face. Mind echoing. Lightning in his head. He tears off his helmet and throws it into the surf. Where the bodies bob and wash. So many. Where did they all come from? But before he can ask, the hands lead him away.