Target Lock

Crabs Claw Base 0910 Hours, Zone Time: August 25, 2008

It was amazing how a premoistened cleansing towelette could be a gift from the gods. Amanda ran its antiseptic coolness over her face, savoring the feel as it lifted the first layers of blood and grime. It wasn’t a shower or, dream of dreams, a protracted, steaming soak in a bathtub, but it was a start.

Around her in the ship pen, postassault cleanup operations were in full swing. The Sea Fighters and the LCAC shuttled between the cavern, and the task group holding offshore. The wounded, hostile and friendly alike, were being evacuated to the Carlson’s commodious and well-equipped sick bay. The dead, hostile and friendly alike, were being laid out in a row of body bags at the rear of the cave. The task force could take grim comfort that the former greatly outnumbered the latter.

Intelligence personnel were hard at the task of documentation and data collection; damage-control and amphibious-operations hands were at work aboard the Harconan Flores, keeping her afloat and puzzling how to coax the INDASAT and its trailer out of her stern gate for extraction.

Amanda tore open another towelette packet and started work on her arms. “Are you sure you don’t want to be evacuated out to the ship?” Elliot MacIntyre inquired, kneeling down beside the blanket on which she sat.

“Oh, no. A corpsman patched me up.” She held her arm out, displaying a field dressing. “I’m pretty much all right. I was just short of air for a while.”

“The secondary explosions in the far-side tunnel touched off the diesel tanks in the generator room. The fires damn near burned all of the oxygen out of the whole place. It wasn’t so good in there even with a gas mask.”

“Tell me about it, sir.” She wiped down one of her arms. “To tell you the truth, I was pretty sure I’d had it there for a minute. Then you and Stone were picking me up and putting that mask on me.” She paused and looked at Eddie Mac quizzically. “Begging your pardon, sir, but just what were you doing in there?”

“God, I don’t know.” Wincing, he sat down on the stone flooring be side her, putting his back to a convenient oil drum. “Being a damn fool, I guess — at least, that’s what every muscle is telling me just now.” He let his eyes close, lest he be tempted to look into that bruised, soot-smeared, and infinitely lovely face beside him. “Someone… under my command was in trouble. I didn’t like it and I wanted to see her out of it. And just for a change, I didn’t want to sit back and delegate and do it by the book. Christ, I am a damned old fool.”

“Neither one. Thank you.”

MacIntyre felt a cool alcohol bite against his skin as Amanda gently swabbed away the accumulated perspiration from his brow and cheeks. It wasn’t a kiss, but for the moment it would do.

The moment broke as a group of Marines in full MOPP anticontamination gear supplemented by damage-control airpacks emerged from the tunnel mouth bearing a tarpaulin-covered stretcher.

Amanda and MacIntyre both stood and crossed to where Stone Quillain was shedding his gear.

“Man, it’s really a mess in there,” the Marine stated, pulling the MOPP hood from over his head. “We got cooked ordnance scattered all over the place. I’d advise we keep the intels out till things cool down some more.”

“There’s no rush now,” Amanda agreed. She glanced over at the covered body. “He’s the last, then.”

Stone nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Ain’t no one else in there, livin’ or dead. We checked all the spaces that weren’t caved in altogether.”

The deep breath she took wasn’t quite steady. “Well, I’d better get it over with.” She turned toward the stretcher.

“Uh, Skipper… ma’am,” Quillain called after her in awkwardness. “He’s pretty bad messed up. Head hits, a lot of ’em.”

“I know. But we have to be sure of the identification. I knew him better than anyone else here.”

The three crossed to the stretcher and Amanda knelt down beside it, taking another deliberate breath. It was insane to want to weep for an enemy, one you had slain yourself. But there was and always would be one afternoon spent on a perfect beach.

And then she noted the flaccid hand and the khaki shirtsleeve that had slipped from beneath the tarp.

Harconan had been wearing a denim shirt.

She tore the tarp back, shock nullifying the nausea. Springing to her feet, she spun around, looking to where the captured corporate representatives were receiving first-aid treatment.

The five corporate representatives.

“This isn’t Harconan! It’s Valdechesfsky! The tech rep who was giving me trouble!”

“Are you sure, Amanda?” MacIntyre demanded.

“I’m positive! Stone, were there any other bodies at the end of that corridor?”

“Ma’am, there weren’t any other bodies anywhere,” the Marine replied emphatically.