"Sorry," she said eventually, unable to speak above a whisper. She clutched Alonzo's sleeve. "I'm sorry, Lonz. Had to leave you. More PIA...had to try and nail them...knew where we were. No cover in there...had to try 'cuz-'cuz they-"

"Yeah, well." He stopped her. "Don't sweat it, kid. You did good."

"f.u.c.king head," she muttered when his eyes seemed to water up.

"I'm seeing three of everything."

"You got a G.o.dd.a.m.n hard head, kid. Bullet bounced right off, left you with a real nice souvenir there over your left eyebrow." Breathing more easily, Jamie smiled, thankful that he didn't seem p.i.s.sed, and reached for the wound. The bandage Alonzo had put over it felt wet and tinged her fingers red.

"Think you can stand up?" he asked.

"Weapon." She tried to look around for the E19. "Need ammo."

"Don't worry about that. Fight's over. The good guys won." He grinned again. "And you helped, kid." As Alonzo got her to her feet, several Kilo marines found them.

One was the company's commanding officer. Not just a captain but an Annapolis captain, according to the insignia on the ring he wore that Jamie was thrilled to see just one of rather than two or three. Her vision was settling down. She focused next on his nametape and tried to organize the letters she saw there. At the third "a," she brightened. Yes, the letters made sense: Cavanaugh.

Captain Cavanaugh looked them over, eyes narrowing. "You the one who fired those grenades?" he finally asked Jamie.

"Yeah," Alonzo answered, wrapping Jamie's arm across his shoulders. "She sure as h.e.l.l did."

The captain did that familiar double take Jamie had already seen * 95 *

plenty of in her almost eight months in the Corps. She? Irritating when it came from somebody who outranked her, since she had to swallow it without smart-a.s.sing back. But at least it distracted the captain from the corporal he had started to snarl at for, Jamie guessed, neglecting to call him sir. He relented and instead spoke without hint of any emotion.

"Very glad you could make it to the party." Alonzo and Jamie nodded back and responded simultaneously.

"Yes, sir," said Jamie.

"Knock on wood," said Alonzo, as impa.s.sive as Cavanaugh while he rapped the knuckles of his left hand on his head after staring pointedly at the captain's cla.s.s ring. "Maybe there's more where she came from."

The captain's eyes flared, but he chose to walk away.

Still holding Jamie up, Alonzo moved into the street. Two corpsmen bent over wounded marines while the survivors mopped up, generating sporadic fire. Third platoon remained absent. So did the snipes who were supposed to have occupied the hill to the east.

"Lonz," said Jamie like she'd just found out, "Arnie's dead."

"I know, kid. I'm sorry. Arnie was a good guy."

"Lonz." She grabbed his cammie blouse. "Arnie's dead! They slit his throat, Lonz."

"C'mon, kid, let's find you a corpsman."

RT thirty-one and on this day, for the first time, she had killed- taken five human lives for sure, probably more. On this day, for the first time, she saw close up in real time what it meant for someone to no longer exist.

"Lonz, I-I don't know what to do."

"You keep on going, kid. You just keep on going." v The mission was deemed a success. This was supposed to help account for why more than half of the ninety-eight marines involved in it were killed or wounded-a number that looked only slightly less horrendous when third platoon got counted in, raising the number of marines on the mission to 147 and reducing the casualty percentage to around a third.

It was a good sign, Alonzo declared, that off the record this was * 96 *

regarded as a jackup for which somebody needed to be held accountable.

Somewhere up there lurked an officer with a functioning brain.

But his approval didn't last long.

"What c.r.a.p!" he spat when he found out the blame had been ladled upon third platoon's hapless commander on the notion that if third platoon had gotten to San Salvacia sooner, the PIA would've been driven out faster and losses would've been much lower.

"Those mission planners are living in f.u.c.king fantasy land. PIA's got as good as us in countersurveillance technology. G.o.d knows what else they're catching up to. Means we're losing some of our best force multipliers. Only us snipes staving off attrition now. Until our bra.s.s figures that out, there'll be more San Salvacias." A couple of weeks later, word came forth: Jamie would get a Purple Heart, she and Alonzo would be awarded Silver Stars. Arnoldt's family got the flag draped on his coffin, neatly folded into a triangle.

At least Alonzo was restored to his previous rank. But in name only. To Jamie's amazement, he remained frozen out of a leadership billet.

"Why, Lonz?" she asked him. "I just don't get it."

"Made some enemies a while back." He shrugged. "And we don't hurt enough yet for that not to matter. Won't be long, though. Fun's over. It's going to go down real nasty now. We'll be running out of snipes pretty G.o.dd.a.m.n quick, and pretty G.o.dd.a.m.n quick they won't be able to be so picky. I give it three months. Max." It occurred to Jamie that she and Alonzo could be separated, that he might be transferred to a whole other snipe platoon. The prospect clenched her belly. She could not conceive of how she would survive in this nightmare without him.

Her other problem concerned the d.a.m.n medals. People wanted her to talk about what went down. In truth, her recollection had blurred and garbled. What little she knew for sure she didn't want to discuss with anyone.

Jamie suspected, though, that Alonzo understood. She'd been convinced she'd die that day and dreaded past tolerance dying hard, dying excruciated like Arnoldt. So she chose not to wait, not to hope for the reprieve Arnoldt never got. She didn't want to know what would hit her. She tried to make it quick, sudden. An instantaneous snap of a death.

* 97 *

Chapter ten.

over that G.o.dd.a.m.n Mountain Alonzo's E112 lay beside him, as motionless as the man.

He'd taken out three PIA scouts smooth and fast, but too late Jamie's binoculars swept past the anomalous shape. Too late, she grasped what the shape meant: A fourth one. "Down!" she warned, too late.

She only imagined she saw the bullet drill into him. But she heard the splattering, crunching sound that overwhelmed her alert-the only sound, since the PIA shooter was too far away for the report of his rifle to reach them. Alonzo grunted and shivered and his head fell forward onto his rifle b.u.t.t before she could pull the nocs from her eyes.

"Lonz!" She yanked him down behind the cover of a shallow limestone ledge and leaned in close to his face, unable to cease imagining the bullet boring, churning into his body. Please, she begged mutely as the moment replayed and she fought the way it made everything stall.

She needed to move faster, faster.

He wasn't dead. He'd pa.s.sed out and was bleeding prodigiously.

But he wasn't dead. She squinched away tears. Not dead yet. "Stay with me, Lonz."

They were alone, of course. Just the two of them over the ridge of a small Busuangan mountain, slippy-sliding into what was about to become the next contested s.p.a.ce-just about the island's last contested s.p.a.ce. Her mind tear-a.s.sed. First, stop the bleeding- or at least slow it down. Then- then- How far to where I can get him some help?

She flipped her comlink to CEA-the automated Call for Emergency Aid. Frequency-hopping. Multi-spectrum. Active cancellation. For the first time, she wondered how much time all those commo scrambling * 98 *

technologies would really give her before the enemy multilaterated their position.

From her first-aid kit Jamie extracted all three packs of antibiotic coagulant powder and emptied them into the b.l.o.o.d.y, raggedly gaping wound she'd found when she tore Alonzo's blouse out of the way.

Semiconscious, he groaned. She wrapped his shoulder as tightly as she could with one, then another compression bandage. He groaned again.

The comlink's distinctive warning beeped faster. That PIA scout's trying to find us. The enemy's range-of-search for her signal was narrowing, closing in. But still getting cancelled. They still had time. I'll go left, retrace the way we came, use the concealment of those trees...

Her comlink crackled reply as she finished bandaging Alonzo's shoulder. A casevac was being dispatched. Then came the mute auto-scrolling reminder: "Maintain commo silence...casevac will find you." The comlink took itself dark. Now the enemy lacked a signal to multilaterate, but she had to get Alonzo back over the ridge and to a clearing large enough for the helo to land.

The clearing's coordinates took up residence in the corner of her eyewraps shadowscreen. Half a klick up. Another half a klick on the other side of the ridge, maybe more.

A flurry of automatic weapons fire chipped the limestone five meters to her right. Two weapons anyway: The PIA scout wasn't alone.

But they're guessing. Relief oozed through her belly when more rounds nipped the rock farther right. And they're guessing wrong.

She slipped Alonzo's E112 onto her chest and, crawling, dragged him from behind the ledge into the concealment of the forest. A quick, deep breath and she lifted him, heaved him over her shoulders. And staggered. His weight almost defeated her: He was several inches shorter than Jamie but heavier-perhaps twenty pounds heavier-and his rifle added another seven pounds.

The same subtle, narrow pathway they'd spent hours carving out with their machetes loomed above her; she'd have to drag him over the really steep parts. She inhaled a couple more quick, deep breaths. Can't think about how long this is going to take. Just go. GO!

She adjusted his weight on her back and checked the time as she started climbing. Behind her, more bullets a.s.sailed the limestone ledge.

1451 hours, just past the peak of the sun and heat.

* 99 *

v Exhausted, trembling, and sweat-soaked, Jamie laid Alonzo down as carefully as she could just on the other side of the ridge, behind real cover at last. His breathing was shallow and choppy, but he was alive.

1532 hours.

Where's that G.o.dd.a.m.n helo? Why can't I hear it yet?

She chugged much-needed water and hoisted Alonzo onto her back again. They both groaned from the effort. Although she was still on the path they'd made earlier, she knew the descent would be even tougher than the climb.

Soon Jamie strained to stay centered under his weight, to keep them both from careening down the rough incline. Her legs, her back, her arms, her abdomen all screamed and burned their complaints, but she kept going, each step bringing her closer to the helo rendezvous point.

At last she heard it, that unmistakable thump of rotor blades, and realized the sound had been there for a while, building. It tempted her to halt, that sound, but she was nowhere near the clearing yet and Alonzo didn't have much time. So she stumbled on, stopping and laying him down only when she saw three cammie uniforms running toward her.

She knelt over Alonzo and studied him. Still breathing, color going from white to gray. 1609 hours.

v Jamie lingered at the field hospital while the docs pumped blood back into Alonzo and operated on his shoulder. Refusing to return to her platoon until she was sure he was okay, she silently hovered as near to him as she could get.

After two days, one of the nurses took pity on her, gave her a medical excuse to bring back to her unit, and let her stay awhile with Alonzo before he was medevacked out. She stood at his bedside for almost an hour, wordless and shuffling, waiting for his eyes to open and find her.

"Hey, kid," he mumbled at last. "I'm going to Oki. Then home."

"Yeah." Jamie nodded, smiling. "That's real good, Lonz."

* 100 *

"Hauled me back over that G.o.dd.a.m.n mountain, didn't ya?" She frowned at the floor, thumbed her boonie hat. I'm the reason you got whacked, Lonz. She said nothing, but that's when she became aware of her back aching and his blood all over the cammies she hadn't taken off for five days.

"Got my baby?" he asked.

Jamie nodded again.

"You hang on to it. See it earns its keep."

"But-"

"They're gonna make you a snipe. Sorry I won't be here to see it." Alonzo managed to lift a hand for a high-five. Jamie slid her hand along his and held it, trying to keep the sadness out of her eyes. "You stay safe, kid."

"I will, Lonz," Jamie replied as a hospitalman began moving his stretcher. "You too." She released his hand.

Alonzo was right. Promoted to corporal, she also became leader of a fire team, which outraged her. She, not Lonz, got a fire team ?

Then she found out that her fire team would include a transfer from Second Battalion, the newly promoted Lance Corporal Martina Rhys.

* 101 *

Chapter eleven.

operational risK ManaGeMent Heard about Arnie."

"Yeah." Rhys drawled it carefully, the same way she might countersign a sentry's challenge when she lacked confidence about the correct pa.s.sword.

Of course, Jamie knew Rhys had heard, but not from her. Jamie had refused to talk with anyone about what happened to Arnie, and that wouldn't be changing. Not now. Probably not ever. She needed to make sure Rhys understood that. Head lowered, hands burrowed into her pockets, Jamie waited. Rhys said nothing.

"Don't get me wrong." Jamie nodded just slightly before she lifted her eyes to glance at Rhys's b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "I'm sure as h.e.l.l not complaining.

But isn't it kinda odd that they put two women together on a snipe team?"

"G.o.d, Gwynmorgan, I worry for you." Rhys sighed in mock consternation. "Don't you ever talk to anybody?"

"Guess not."

"Haven't been eating much either, huh?" Rhys's gaze moved down and back up Jamie's length.

"They keep making beef stew." Jamie fidgeted and threw Rhys a don't-go-there glance. "Can't eat it anymore."