Whatever Gods May Be Part 9

Trying to ignore her roiling gut, Jamie grabbed her seabag and scrambled after him. Caprice, she decided; the platoon NCO had a.s.signed the new replacements to the Three-Eight scout/sniper unit's depleted squads with what seemed like random indifference. If she'd been standing a few feet to the left or the right, would she be someone else's spotter now? That's what I frigging get for chumming with Arnoldt. And why, why do I always end up in the same place as Arnoldt, anyway? Why couldn't I have ended up in Second Battalion with Rhys?

Trudging behind this grim man to whom she'd be chained indefinitely, Jamie saw Caprice as a wanton, narcissistic G.o.ddess descended from some unseen pantheon for a momentary trifle. And now frigging look at me.

Sooner than she expected, Alonzo halted at the entrance to a tent, clearly his tent. It stood in a sea of tents-large ones, small ones- arranged as though they comprised their own forward operating base.

He swung around to face her. "Whole Three-Eight's in FOB-hooches.

Don't want us getting too comfortable. Except for the ocifers, of course.

* 77 *

Their heinies are in air-conditioned wetbox CHUs." He squinted at her. "Regs say you're allowed to hooch up with another female, but if you want to be part of my snipe team, you better figure on planting your hammock here and busting hump. And I mean twenty-four seven, understand? Your call. And call it now, because I'm a busy dude." What the f.u.c.k is this? Some kind of crude come-on? Jamie studied him for a heartbeat, a.s.sessing, deciding. "Here," she said. But I'll f.u.c.king rip your face off if you f.u.c.king touch me.

His head dipped a minimal acknowledgment and he ducked into the hooch they'd now share. Bigger than a traditional field-hooch, but not even close to the size of the containerized housing units that typically filled established forward operating bases. Jamie got the hint.

Operation Palawan Liberation would be going down "in the rough."

"So this is the drill, boot," Alonzo said when she followed him in.

"I sleep on the right. You're over there. I'll find us a sheet or something to string down the middle for when I need to scratch my b.a.l.l.s or you need to"-he shot her a frowning glance-"do whatever it is you do.

And when you're sleeping, you will keep your back to me. I don't wanna hear you G.o.dd.a.m.n breathe, got it?"

"Got it, Corporal."

He glowered his command: Stand fast. "You do exactly what I say when I say and you might see your next birthday. Your job is to watch my back and follow my tracers. You see something interesting, you point it out, short and sweet. You call the wind or calc the Coriolis effect or air density or what-the-f.u.c.k-ever if and only if I request it. You position your a.s.s to give me corrections when I say. I decide where we go, how we get there. Out there, I decide when you p.i.s.s and when you s.h.i.t. Comprende? "

"Yes, Corporal, I do."

"Hmph." Once more, his eyes moved slowly down her body and back up again. "How G.o.dd.a.m.n old are you, anyway?"

"Seventeen, Corporal."

His wide, dark-featured face revealed nothing. "Stop calling me corporal. And maybe I'll stop calling you cherry...cherry. Name's Alonzo, like the nametape says." He paused for one second, two...

"Medicos shoot you up yet? They're poking everyone with a fancy-a.s.s multi-flu shot. So's we don't bring home a new pandemic. And make * 78 *

sure they give you that beta-defensin booster, paleface. Otherwise you'll end up with tropical ulcers and G.o.d-knows-what nasty jungle s.h.i.t."

"Yes, Corp-um-" Jamie stopped. Calling him Alonzo just didn't seem right. He ignored the question in her eyes; she was on her own about that.

"You got about two hours before chow. Use that nice little pole set they gave you to erect your hammock and grab some rack time. You'll need it. Tomorrow you get the rest of your new gear and we'll have to diddle with the platoon for a while. Then I start putting you through your paces."

Jamie used some of that two hours to call Rhys, but didn't get her. So it was down to textmail, and everyone knew better than to write anything truly private in a textmail destined for sifting through a military filter server.: hope u ok .. no liberty in sight .. need some beginner's luck .. jg v The new cammies felt good against the skin. Unlike what Jamie had worn at Parris Island and snipe school, this light material breathed well and its subtly redesigned camouflage pattern disappeared into the tropical forest background. Even the boonie hat's brim shaped up just right.

"The Corps ain't giving this to you just to pamper your sorry b.u.t.ts," explained a battalion supply NCO as she supervised distribution of the stuff. "It's a surveillance countermeasure. Wear it, get underneath it, behind it, and the enemy will not see you-not with thermal or infrared or radar. But our combat operations centers will see you, understand?

Because it's full of nanomolecules that the geeks can automatically program using downlink signals. Cammies, tarps, everything.

Understand? Means they got y'all showing up bright and shiny for our satellites and drones. So behave, boys and girls. When you're out there on an op, you're on Candid f.u.c.king Camera." Then came the IMS wraps like what the Pirates had. Wraparound eyewear with a built-in comlink and built-in integrated multiwave sensors-thermal, infrared, and radar-that Jamie had coveted ever since the c.o.c.k. But the snicker about UFOs that rolled through the * 79 *

veterans of Operation Palawan Liberation's "rough landing" on Busuanga was lost on Jamie.

"Means 'unidentified f.u.c.king out-there,'" Alonzo jeered when Jamie dared to ask him about it. "When the enemy gets their hands on surveillance countermeasures-and some already have-integrated multiwave sensors are just about useless." v "Three weeks, cherry." Alonzo sounded dire. "Ain't much time to make you into something. Next lesson commences once we finish this afternoon's combat conditioning march."

Three weeks. That's how long her platoon would train on Okinawa before helicoptering back into Busuanga ahead of the rest of the battalion.

From the first moment, she "belonged" to the laconic, cynical Alonzo, and he kept her on the job twenty-four seven as promised. No time for Rhys, who even came by once looking for her but ended up leaving a scribbled note on her vacant hammock. No time for anything but training. "When u around?" Rhys texted over and over.

"Wish I knew," Jamie had to reply every time.

Although Alonzo didn't talk at all unless their work required it, Jamie managed to put together some essentials from the sc.r.a.ps. He insisted on sharing a hooch with her only because he didn't want to end up "out there" with a raw newbie who could get him killed; she had no sense that he liked her. And certainly he didn't like officers, having recently been demoted by a whole committee of them to save some ringknocker's commission.

Over his wife's objections, he'd just started his third enlistment when everything went to s.h.i.t-the demotion, the transfer to the Three-Eight, and, only four weeks later, what he referred to just once as "the inexcusable chaos" of Operation Palawan Liberation's first salvo on Busuanga. "Embrace the suck my a.s.s," he b.i.t.c.hed. "Nothing'll get you screwed like ambitious officers planning missions off of really s.h.i.tty intel."

Like all modern Marine scout/sniper units, the one attached to the Eighth Regiment's Third Battalion Headquarters Company had long * 80 *

since been restructured into a cla.s.sic platoon made up of three sergeant-led squads, each comprising twelve people trained to work in two- or four-man teams, led by a platoon NCO, cared for by its own corpsman, and commanded by its own officer, a first lieutenant who reported to the battalion's intelligence officer.

Forty-two souls in all.

The Three-Eight's snipe platoon had lost sixteen people in the battle for a firm foothold on Busuanga before the battalion was relieved and sent back to Okinawa. Thirteen of those lost, an entire squad worth of snipes, had gone home TUIAB-t.i.ts up in a box.

It didn't take Jamie long to figure out what Alonzo never discussed.

He'd survived unscathed because he was very good at what he did.

By the fourth day of training, she appreciated her incalculable good fortune-even though Alonzo used up all her free time and smoked her ferociously when her concentration slipped, forever hollering the amount of training time left to them.

"Whatsamatter with you? Seventeen days and five hours left, cherry. I want you G.o.dd.a.m.n frosty! So stop groping your G.o.dd.a.m.n d.i.c.k-I mean your G.o.dd.a.m.n c.l.i.t-and go again. Go. Go!" About the twentieth time he said something like this to her, Jamie understood: More than self-preservation motivated Alonzo; he'd consider himself a contemptible failure if something happened to her that he might, however remotely, have prevented. He wanted to see in her the automatic, instinctive responses that would save her a.s.s during the indiscriminate, unpredictable savagery of the Real Thing.

From Alonzo she also learned more than a few tricks of the trade.

Some of it concerned techniques that hadn't yet found their way into the Corps's formal training-like how a .416-caliber round really could take down an attack helicopter if you could put even a single one into just the right place in the rear rotor housing or that particular spot on the belly of certain types of Chinese helos where a wayward hydraulic line was slightly exposed.

Occasionally it involved "just in case" workarounds: How comlinks and IMS detection gear could be taken live without the required link to the unitag ID implanted in every marine's ear cartilage-"Just in case the enemy rips your G.o.dd.a.m.n ear off." And sometimes it was about every woman for herself: How to avoid such lance coolie unpleasantries * 81 *

as latrine duty and field day cleanups, how to finagle the field meals of one's choice rather than whatever some supply sergeant shoved at you.

Alonzo should have been NCO of a snipe platoon, or at least a squad, but the idiots who demoted him hadn't even given him a fire team to lead. Caprice left him only Lance Corporal Gwynmorgan, on whom he focused everything-all the knowledge, experience, and instinct of a decade in the Corps.

What Jamie learned from Alonzo caused her to worry for Rhys, whose textmails hinted at a more typical journey-from by-the-numbers training into a miserable stretch of new-guy servitude without encountering a decent noncom with the time or inclination to teach you how to get out of your own way.

v "Hey, Arnie!"

Sixteen days on Busuanga, and Jamie had seen him only once before. Not surprising. The Three-Eight's snipes spent little time at the battalion's forward operating base and rarely did they all muster at the FOB at the same time.

Instead, they went "out there," to the forward edge of the battle area or well beyond it. Working in pairs or as fire teams or entire squads, they served as guardian angels overwatching a company while it "disinfected" the island's fields, farms, and small villages. Or they slithered unnoticed through mangrove swamp or into sweltering, dripping forest to reconnoiter territory claimed by the enemy, the self-proclaimed People's Islamist Army.

"Well. If it ain't Gwyn-f.u.c.kin'-morgan."

"Whuddup, boy?"

"Just come in." Arnoldt looked and smelled raunchy after several days prowling steep, dense-growth hillsides, but he was juiced.

"Cleaned out a little fishing village called, uh- Ah s.h.i.t, who knows what it's called. Anyway, I spotted a couple of their snipes. First time for me, y'know? And my shooter nailed 'em nice and neat, one shot each." He glanced around before continuing, to make sure no one else heard him. "But jeez, Gwynnie, I hate them f.u.c.king snakes. Almost * 82 *

got bit by a temple viper yesterday. Foul green thing with white stripes, a good three feet long. I can deal with the crocs, y'know? But them snakes..."

"Alonzo catches wolf snakes sometimes when we can do a fire.

Says it's okay because they're invasive, like the PIA. Cuts 'em into strips and barbecues 'em. They kinda taste like-"

"Oh christ." Arnoldt's face scrunched. "Don't talk about it. Tell me what's for chow tonight. In the mess, I mean."

"You're in luck." Jamie winked. "Beef stew."

"Ooh-rah! When you gonna be there? Maybe we can catch up."

"I wish, but I'm out of here in like an hour. All of second squad's heading way up north with Lima Company. Clearing coastal caves."

"Done it twice. Last time, we didn't find anybody. The PIA sons of b.i.t.c.hes just get in their boats and sail away. Sure as h.e.l.l don't seem to want to stand and fight. Word is the puff is out of their dragon, and we might be out of here soon. Back to Oki. Or maybe even stateside." When Jamie mentioned all the talk about going home to Alonzo, he shook his head. "Nah. Way too easy." He squinted at her-an order.

"Don't you G.o.dd.a.m.n believe it. Once we take the coasts, we go inland, because that's where the enemy's going. Into those G.o.dd.a.m.n hills and mountains with all those caves and primeval forests. It's gonna take a while. Trust me."

"But-"

"Listen to me, kid. We're TL-ing here, understand? Which means-"

"Tee-elling?"

"Treading lightly. Being nice to the civilians, respecting where they live, to show we're on their side. Why do you think we never get any air support? Because the bra.s.s already made a G.o.dd.a.m.n mess with air support, three days after the first a.s.sault started. Took out a schoolyard full of kids. Very not cool. So now all we see, maybe, if we're lucky, is a helo or two. The high-tech fight's going on out there on the Spratly Shelf where it's all oil and gas rigs. We do this fight here with the small stuff-squad automatic weapons, rifle-propelled grenades. Rifles in the hands of riflemen. And with snipes slippy-sliding into those G.o.dd.a.m.n hills."

"But we lose all advantage, don't we?" Reading about fourth- * 83 *

generation conflicts was one thing. But having to actually fight that way... "The PIA have snipes and small arms, too, and they claim to have civilian support."

"Don't worry, kid. Our side has you and me. And we'll be ready when this G.o.dd.a.m.n thing pops."

"When's it gonna pop?"

Alonzo shrugged. "Right after the PIA get the supplies they need.

Soon."

v In boot camp, recruits counted training days. Aboard ship in the Fleet Marine Force, marines counted deployment days. During Operation Palawan Liberation, they counted RT days: How many days of the Real Thing done. n.o.body jinxed themselves by tallying out loud how many days they had left to go.

For the first week or so, Jamie had tried not to count, but that didn't work. Every time she sent Rhys a message, or received one, all she could do was count. And yearn. So she allowed herself to think about the count just once a day, real quick when she woke up, right before she opened her eyes.

RT thirty-one. No chance to text Marty today.

Today Kilo Company would sweep PIA from the market town of San Salvacia. Kilo's three platoons would descend from three directions-first platoon moving up the only hard-surface road from the south, second platoon coming in off Guro Bay from the west, third platoon approaching from the north through the forest via a much longer, more rugged route that began on the banks of the winding, swampy Busuanga River.

An odd a.s.sortment of Three-Eight snipes had night-inserted some twenty-seven hours earlier to scout and run overwatch for Kilo.

Satellite-borne cameras scanned from afar, but there'd be no air cover.

Helicopters had a way of revealing to the enemy that marines might be in the neighborhood.

Working as a two-man team, Alonzo and Jamie had spent the night a kilometer northwest of the village in a tree hide that enabled them to overwatch the arrival of both second and third platoons as dawn lit the eastern sky. Alonzo and Jamie always worked as a pair, always on the * 84 *

toughest a.s.signments that put them far "out there." Most of the time they were on their own, free of the worst follies of military hierarchy.

Jamie believed it was the closest the platoon leaders could get to a demotion workaround for Alonzo.

The last two missions had kept them at the edges of small hamlets where they set up hides from which they targeted PIA, especially snipers and those with rifle-propelled grenades. But this mission took them once again into Busuanga's breathtakingly exotic forests and swamps.

To Jamie, at first, the island had seemed like a dramatic and strange Magic Kingdom. Then, in a matter of days, it started coming after her.

Compared to the wetlands of the Carolinas, Busuanga was like another planet. But a month in, Jamie had begun to think of herself as acclimated. To the heavy, clouded nights that robbed the sky of stars. To the rancid humidity, to the intense, unrelieved sweating, the perpetual thirst, the immense effort required to draw in a full, satisfying breath.

To the unremitting attacks by insects, some huge and bizarre, others tiny and insidious, all of them escapees from some science fiction horror flick.

She had fought it at first. Tried too fervently to get dry and clean every day or two, needed too desperately to ease the endless itching that moved from one body part to another, always preferring locations with hair. All day, every day, she envisioned armies of many-legged monsters consuming her flesh.

After a while her crotch always itched and, yes, she scratched. Until Alonzo ordered her to stop and gave her antihistamines, hydrocortisone, and a coldpack. Once she obeyed, she adapted.

Sort of. She learned how to always be thirsty, always be sore and tired and just a little breathless. And itchy.

RT thirty-one and it had gotten a bit better. She'd become accustomed to the dull dread greeting her first waking awareness, didn't let it devolve into that longing for home that ate up so many of the marines around her.

It was because of their dreams, this longing. Jamie was sure of that after hearing so many conversations drift into descriptions of dreams rife with flawless portraits of everyday moments that once seemed so mundane-riding a bus through the same familiar streets, eating a favorite kind of ice cream, watching old videos. Regular, boring day- * 85 *

to-day life was what they dreamed about. Then they'd wake up in a h.e.l.l ruled by mosquitoes and crocodiles and snakes and sweat and weird rashes.

For the first few days on the island, Jamie dreamed about Marty Rhys. Vivid s.e.xual dreams that kept her squirming for hours. Not anymore, though. Jamie didn't dream at all anymore, which made Busuanga a little easier to cope with.

RT thirty-one and the plan called for Jamie and Alonzo to stay put.

Which was okay with Jamie. Their hide had the virtue of being well off the soggy ground and free of snakes. They'd picked it for its elevation, for its superior burn-through qualities toward the east and south, for its ability to support their hammocks, for its strong, climbable branches that meant they could shift position quickly and evade being spotted by the enemy.

By 0700, however, combat operations center chatter and downlinked satellite visuals received via the comlink in their IMS-wraps made clear that third platoon had almost immediately bogged down north of the village in river swampland made deeper than expected by heavy monsoon rains. Worse, the snipe teams a.s.signed to the hills east of the village had gone dark-no commo, no tracking signals.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n," said Alonzo. "That's it. We're outta here. Gear up.

Weapons, ammo, water. Leave the rest."

They'd received no orders, but Jamie knew better than to question him. So she was ready when the order came moments later: Head northeast on the double to suss out a better route for third platoon and scout for PIA.