“What’s up, Bull? You don’t look entirely happy. The Japs are dying like flies out there. I thought you’d be in a downright festive mood.”

Halsey glanced around the busy Combat Center. As much as you could be left alone in such a crowded, frenetic place, they were, at least for the moment. Kolhammer and Judge were across the room, busy coordinating the simultaneous strikes on Manila and the camps at Cabanatuan. Lieutenant Thieu was away, attending to requests from some of the reporters who’d gone out with the marines.

Spruance shook his head at that. He was used to war correspondents making a nuisance of themselves at the front, but he simply couldn’t believe how deeply involved—or what did they call it, “embedded”—these people seemed to be. He doubted if you could tell some of them apart from the units they covered.

“I was just wondering,” Halsey said quietly, “whether this was the right way to use these guys. I mean, look at what they’re doing. They’ve only got so many of these super-rockets and magic bullets. Do you think a glorified prison break was the way to go?”

Spruance mulled over the question as he watched a flight of helicopters fan out over the city—the fat ones, which meant they were troop carriers. Smaller, faster gunships buzzed around them like angry wasps, swooping down on any resistance and hosing it down with rocket and cannon fire. They must be going for the railway yards, he thought.

“I don’t know, Bill,” he said. “You saw what happened to those boys, not to mention the poor women they used as camp whores. I don’t know what the right thing was. But I do know that these people have a mania about leaving their own behind. They’ll lose fifty men just to get one back. It’s like a sickness for them. I doubt we could have stopped them from doing this even if we’d wanted to.”

Lieutenant Thieu returned, threading his way through the banks of computer monitors and battle stations. Spruance watched a screen that showed one of those Super Harriers, zipping across the big night sky, only to stop in midair, turn around, and unleash a stream of rockets on some target at the wharves.

Halsey leaned over before Thieu made it into earshot.

“Yeah, but the thing is, Ray,” he said, “we ain’t their fucking people, are we?”