Beyond those sat giant jeeps and other unidentifiable vehicles. The weight of violence confined within the space was overwhelming. The mass of those tanks, the raw lines of their frames, the solidity . . . he’d seen a lifetime’s worth of burning, metal wreckage and he knew that nothing was invincible. But by God, those awful things did look close to it.

The Aussies were all right, but he found himself more comfortable with the company of marines who’d been detached from the Eighty-second and temporarily assigned to Halabi’s task force for the raid on Singapore. They weren’t marines as he knew them. There were even a couple of women driving those tanks, but when you got over how different they looked, and you sat down and talked to them, it turned out they loved barbecues and football season, and fishing, and baseball, and beer and the Constitution of the United States of America as much as any man or woman he’d ever met.

The giant ship was pitching slowly, making it a little difficult for him to get back to the light armored vehicle he was supposed to ride in. It was dark in the hold, but they’d showed him how to use the infrared setting on his goggles. It turned the darkest place into a world colored red and pink. It was unsettling at first, but a hell of a lot better than barking your shin.

There were very few men—or women—moving around now. He could see some of them here and there: a head popping up out of a turret, the driver sitting in the front of a Humvee, somebody checking the missile racks on a LAV. But most of the six hundred or so who were going ashore were already buttoned up in their vehicles.

A huge noise, like the sound of a speeding train in a tunnel, suddenly filled the hold. Shapcott jumped a little, but didn’t panic. It was the shore bombardment beginning. Rockets were screaming away to destroy the Japs’ gun batteries and command centers at the beachhead they were supposed to assault. The captain hurried a little faster—he didn’t want to get left behind. And he had the impression that once those big gated doors opened in the bow, there’d be no stopping these guys. They’d just roll right over the top of you if you got in the way.

He reached the LAV just as another racket joined the roar of the barrage.

“What’s that?” he asked, without raising his voice. He’d learned not to do that. A microphone in his helmet meant he didn’t have to.

“Choppers going in,” explained Second Lieutenant Biff Hannon, as he reached a gloved hand out to Shapcott to haul him inside. The captain barely had time to strap himself in before the vehicle lurched into motion.