“How about a G-4?”

“Sorry, ma’am. You’re not rated for that.”

Julia chewed her lip. Dan was ready to explode. This was nuts, the whole thing, her going in with the marines, the body armor, the guns. What sort of a reporter was she?

An unemployed one, for starters.

“You got an MP-5 back there, Chief Toohey? They don’t get in the way when I’m working. But they do have a knack for bringing unpleasant encounters to a quick end.”

“Indeed they do, ma’am.”

Toohey tapped a flexipad with his pen. It beeped once.

“How many mags you lookin’ at, Ms. Duffy?”

“Four, thanks. Taped in pairs. If I need any more, we’re all in trouble. Dumdums would be super, if you got ’em.”

The flexipad beeped as he tapped it again.

“Sidearm?”

“Mac 10.”

Beep.

“Knife?”

“Got my own. But I could use an empty helmet. I’m gonna load up with a Panasonic Twenty-three Hundred minicam rig. It snaps right in where one of your tac sets would go.”

Beep.

“Okay, then, just gimme a second I’ll grab your gear.”

Toohey disappeared into the storeroom.

“Go on, Dan. I can see you’re going to blow steam out of your ears if you don’t say something.”

Black controlled his temper with great difficulty.

“I don’t see the point, is all,” he said, his jaw tight.

Julia shrugged. “You wouldn’t. It’s my job.”

“You don’t have a job. You keep saying that yourself, about a thousand goddamn times a day.”

“That’s right,” she said, pushing off the scarred counter with a cold fury suddenly lighting her eyes. “I don’t have a goddamn job. I have nothing here. Nothing! Except that I know how to move around a firefight without getting my ass blown away.”

People started looking their way.

“I got no fucking job. No fucking life. I’m stuck in the wrong fucking century and my fucking Prozac has run out. I am far from fucking happy.”

“I don’t know why Kolhammer even agreed to let you go,” Black countered angrily as his exasperation finally got the better of him.

Duffy snorted.

“Because he knows he’s going to need a positive spin on this whole fucking disaster.”

Kolhammer, like Halabi, had corralled his guests into the now obsolete satellite warfare section of his CIC. Spruance, Halsey, and a couple of other ’temps he didn’t recognize had sat themselves down and were taking in the feverish pace of the center while Lieutenant Thieu tried to explain how it all fit together.