John Bigmingham - Designated targets

Jones had more immediate problems to deal with, however. High strategy could wait. Six large flatscreens had been linked to provide a workable video wall that displayed theater-wide data, and it wasn't family-friendly viewing. There were seven divisions of Imperial Japanese troops infesting the eastern coast of the Australian continent, four of them pressing down on MacArthur's much-vaunted Brisbane Line. Jones didn't think they'd break through, and the Havoc had cut off any chance they had of reinforcement, but when the killing was done with, he didn't imagine he'd have much of a force left, either. Both his guys and 2 Cav were starting to run uncomfortably low on war stocks, and although they brought other strengths to the field, when you ran out of bullets, you weren't much of a soldier anymore.

Jones had been hoarding materiel for weeks now, farming out tactical and even strategic strikes to the 'temps, who'd been strengthened by a long list of quick fixes and catch-ups, such as those napalm tanks now slung beneath the local ground-attack aircraft. It was a two-way street, though. He'd just read a report of a marine company cut to ribbons by a string of claymores a few hours earlier. They'd have been completely wiped out if one of their sergeants hadn't rallied the survivors and charged right into the enemy force, which was racing downhill to finish them off.

The command bunker had gone very quiet for a minute when the microburst packet from that reporter's Sonycam had filled one of the screens on the video wall. Every marine in his Battalion HQ had at least four years' combat experience. Most of them had a lot more. There'd been some unkind talk about what a bunch of pussies and amateurs the 'temps had turned out to be, and Jones was certain he could feel some embarrassment in the room as the footage of that unholy, disorganized blood swarm filled the screen.

It was every bit as bad as anything he'd known in Damascus or Yemen. And these guys, with the exception of the embed from the Times, were fighting old school. No body armor, medevac, spinal inserts, or tacnet. It was like something out of the Dark Ages.

As he watched now, the thunder of massed artillery rolled over them; that was the barrage he had initiated just a minute earlier. Hundreds of old-fashioned high-explosive shells screamed through the air, their firing sequence controlled by an old laptop computer and designed to drop the entire load simultaneously. Hearing that rumble, he nodded in satisfaction. Air control had three dozen planes stacked up, ready to drop on the Japanese like hawks as soon as the artillery was done fucking with them. Hopefully, the New Zealanders wouldn't have much to do beyond picking off the survivors.

They'd given up investing much energy in trying to grab live prisoners. These guys had turned out to be worse than Hamas jihadi. It was like every one of them kept a grenade in his loincloth, just to avoid capture and to take a few gaijin with him.

The ground shuddered as hundreds of shells struck home.

Jones stifled a sigh as a bone-deep lassitude swept over him. It had nothing to do with sleeplessness and fatigue. Not a fatigue of the body, at any rate. He was tired in his soul. As the first flight of Kittyhawks dived away to unload their shiny new tanks of napalm on the unseen, screaming survivors of General Homma's shattered envelopment, Jones fought an urge to just walk away. For the briefest moment, the only thing keeping him at his post was a replay of Julia Duffy's video package on a small screen at an untended station.

Jones couldn't help but stare at the sergeant who had saved his entire company from annihilation. The commander of the Eighty-second Marine Expeditionary Unit was certain the man would earn a high honor for his actions. Perhaps the highest. The evidence of the video was irrefutable. He had turned that small battle from a disaster into a most unlikely victory. But that wasn't what caught Colonel Jones's attention. He knew that man from somewhere. He just couldn't place it.

A quick scan of the theater-wide threat boards informed him that nothing was about to go pear-shaped in the next few minutes. He pulled out his flexipad and called up the brief report from the action on that hill about two clicks away.

Nothing.

Oh, well. Time's a-wasting. He grabbed his G4 and helmet and called over Sergeant Major Harrison, his senior enlisted man. They were due to tour the perimeter, but the image of that 'temp sergeant, swinging his old Thompson machine gun like a baseball bat, just would not leave him alone. He'd lay money on the barrelhead that they'd met before. Christ knew where, though.

"Sir!" barked Harrison, who had been chewing the ass off a corporal from B company, no doubt for some minor sin. Aub Harrison was nearly as enthusiastic about ass-chewing as his battalion commander, which made the Eighty-second a very dangerous place to walk around with your ass hanging out for no good reason.

"Grab your shootin' irons, Aub," said Jones. "It's time for us to take a stroll."

He threw a glance back at the screen as they left. The sequence was replaying, and the marine was heaving a couple of grenades up the hill again, firing his machine gun from the hip with his other hand.

He looked angry, and Jones had that infuriating feeling that he was this close to remembering where they'd met. But then he was out the door and into the light of the day.

CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA

There would be a terrible drought in the 1980s. And another at the turn of the century. El Nino they called it, although why you'd name a drought was beyond understanding for the Australian prime minister.

"It's not the drought, sir," his adviser offered helpfully. "El Nino refers to the weather pattern which apparently causes our droughts."

Paul Robertson, the former banker who'd been recruited to the PM's staff, thought the old man looked very ill, as bad as he'd been when he'd recalled the Sixth and Seventh Divisions from the Middle East back in March. They knew now that he would die in July of 1945-or at least he would have in the normal run of events. A doctor from the Australian component of the Multinational Force had run all sorts of gizmos over the PM, and had even inserted some kind of pellet under the skin of his right elbow that was supposed to help him cope with the stress of his office. But to Robertson, John Curtin looked like he might not make it through the night. No matter what wonder drugs they gave him, he was being eaten alive by the war.

"I suppose the Japs will find this information useful when they take over the place," he muttered bleakly, dropping the briefing memo back onto his desk. "Although I'll be buggered how they expect to grow rice here."

"They won't be growing any rice here, Prime Minister. You know that," said Robertson. "They'll be beaten here. Driven back through the islands. And burned alive in their own cities. Probably a lot quicker than would have happened originally. We had that uranium dug up and shipped off to the Yanks double-quick. They're working twenty-five hours a day on this A-bomb of theirs. And they're not going to waste time running up blind alleys like they did-or would have-the first time. They have a room full of computers now. It could be less than a year before they test the first warhead."

The prime minister, a former journalist, sketched a thin, humorless smile. "Everybody is working overtime to build their own bombs, Paul. I don't imagine for a second that Hitler and Tojo haven't stripped all the computers off the ships they found. And I think the Japs are here partly because they covet our uranium-"

Robertson made to object, but the PM waved him away.

"Oh, I know, I know. They're going hell-for-leather to deny the Americans a launchpad for their counterattack in the Pacific. They can get uranium from the Russians now, anyway. Neither they nor the Germans can hope to compete with the Yanks in the end. They just don't have the industrial base needed to win a race to the bomb-" Curtin rubbed at his red eyes with a shaky hand. "-but they are here, on our soil, killing our people."