A small supernova of fire and light blossomed from deep within the inferno. Jump jets screamed overhead, dashing in toward the coast to attack the half a dozen Japanese ships in the harbor. Jones was dimly aware of the small crew working furiously to keep them on the correct heading without the benefit of continual GPS update. They shouted course headings and detailed corrections at each other a few times every minute. At least the ride was smooth, a long gliding lope across the water.

“Five minutes until we breach the entrance, Chief,” shouted a young sailor.

“Thanks, Dolly. Better get buttoned up, Colonel,” Stavros bellowed over the cacophony. “Good luck, sir.”

Jones clapped Stavros on the back, thanked him for the lift, and hurried down to the vehicle deck where his command LAV awaited him. There was no respite from the uproar of the turbofans and engines. Although it would appear as an armored behemoth to anyone who stood in its way, the LCAC itself wasn’t a combat vessel. Its task was to drop off two platoons from A Company in a half squadron of light armored vehicles.

As Jones hustled down a corridor toward the vehicle deck, he quickly checked the flexipad that was Velcroed to his forearm. The other boats were all still in position, lying astern of his own. He strapped on his powered helmet, fitted the combat goggles, and jacked into the battalion tac net. His visual field instantly filled up with cascading streams of data. After thousands of hours of training and years of combat experience, it was a completely natural environment for him. He noted the disposition of his units, their progress toward the beach, and the condition of the enemy’s defenses without conscious thought. Small windows fed vision from the FLIR pods of the Comanche gunships. Others carried top-down footage, relayed from surveillance drones, of the dozen or so targeted sites within Manila. They were already burning fiercely, just like Corregidor. Secondary explosions erupted regularly as fuel and ammunition stocks cooked off.

Jones wondered how many people had already died.

“Colonel, sir?”

Jones pulled up just short of the vehicle deck.

“What’s up, Sar’nt?”

Cocooned within layers of monobonded filament armor, goggles, helmet, and tac set, Gunny Harrison would have been unrecognizable to most people. But he and Jones had fought together for many years, and even if he hadn’t spoken, Jones would have known him immediately.

“It’s the colonel sir, the observer.”

“Maloney.”

“Yeah. He’s not playing well with the other children.”

For about the tenth time Julia Duffy checked the tabs on the ballistic gel pockets in her body armor. Her feet tapped rapidly on the nonslip floor of the LAV, and she kept raising her hand to her mouth in a nervous reflex. She wanted to chew her fingernails, but her heavy black gloves got in the way. She swore under her breath again.

“Y’all okay, Ms. Duffy?”