been burned and cut to ribbons by the Siraji missile that had ripped his helicopter from the sky.
He couldn’t be here. But here he was, staring back at Bowie.
The world had gone eerily silent. The pounding of the guns, the murmur of the CIC crew, the whisper of cooling fans, the surge of the ship through the water, were all gone. The sound of Bowie’s own breathing suddenly seemed almost painfully loud.
“You’re dead,” he said softly. It was somehow both a statement of fact, and an accusation.
The dead helicopter pilot nodded, and a long slice opened in the flesh of his left cheek — skin parting almost magically — blood spilling down the side of his face as the cut widened and the ivory-yellow of the man’s cheekbone was revealed. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I
He squared his shoulders and saluted, as though presenting himself for inspection. As he lowered his hand, it fell limply at his side, injuries manifesting instantly, leaving the pilot’s arm mangled and fractured in numerous places. “My crew are dead too. Both of them.”
The other two members of the helicopter aircrew were suddenly standing behind the dead officer: his copilot, Lieutenant (junior grade) Julie Schramm, her brown hair singed and twisted, her once pretty face scorched and nearly black with bruising and blood; and the aircraft’s Sensor Operator, Petty Officer Second Class Daniel Gilford, his right leg missing from the hip, the side of his head a mass of ragged tissue and splintered bone.
Bowie had only a second to register this hideous sight before more of the grisly figures began appearing. Commander Rachel Vargas. Lieutenant (junior grade) Alex Sherman. Seaman Terrence Archer. Petty Officer Gerald Blake. Fireman Apprentice Thomas James Keiler. Each of their bodies burned, or bleeding, or broken.
The gathering of corpses continued to grow, and Bowie recognized every one of their faces.
This was the accounting of souls. Every man and woman in that growing crowd had died under Bowie’s command.
His chest tightened until he could barely breathe. He had tried to protect them. He had done his best to lead them well. He had tried to keep them safe from harm. But they were dead, despite his intentions.
Every one of them was dead, and there was nothing Bowie could do about it.
The thought seemed to break the spell. The transition from dream to wakefulness was instantaneous. Combat Information Center vanished, and the bodies of the dead Sailors were gone with the flicker of an eyelid.
Bowie lay in the bunk of his at-sea cabin, staring up into the darkness and feeling the pounding of his heart and the gentle rolling of the ship. The sheets had gotten themselves twisted around his legs, the way they always did when he had the dream. He knew without checking that his cheeks were damp with tears.
He made no move to wipe them away. The commanding officer of a warship is not supposed to cry, but Bowie thought — as he always did after the dream — that his tears were an honest tribute to Rachel Vargas, and Alex Sherman, and Clint Brody, and the rest of them. They deserved his tears. And, like it or not, Bowie knew that he deserved the dream.
He supposed that it was technically a nightmare, but he rarely thought of it that way. In his mind, it was something different. It was a reckoning. It was a balancing of karma: a none-too-subtle reminder that human lives depended on his actions and his orders, and that he did not always wield that power with perfect judgment.
He fumbled for his watch in the darkness, found it, and pushed buttons until the dial lit up. It took him a couple of seconds to focus his eyes well enough to read the time. It was 02:07, just a few minutes after two AM.
Bowie tugged the sheets away from his legs and groaned. Two in the morning. Damn.
He could have used more rest than that, but he knew from past experience that it was no good to try again. Once it got started, the dream was with him for the night. If he went back to sleep now, the dream would come again. And again.
He climbed out of his bunk. Better to get up now, and make a long day of it. He’d grab a cup of coffee and head over to CIC. Maybe one of the civilian engineers would be up already, and he could get some more information on this
His fingers located the light switch. He flicked it on, blinking in the sudden illumination. He yawned hard, and reached for his coveralls.
The dead deserved to have their say. He couldn’t begrudge them that, no matter how much sleep it cost him. They could haunt his dreams as often as they wanted. They had earned that right. But Bowie’s waking hours belonged to the world of the living. He planned to keep it that way.
CHAPTER 1
Oleg Grigoriev should not have been alive. The part of his mind still capable of rational thought was aware of that. By all rights, he should have died back there in that alley, where those Chinese bastards had dumped his body with the rest of the garbage.
But he was not dead. Not
He staggered down the darkened sidewalk, following the pools of feeble yellow light cast by the street lamps. The dim circles of illumination had become his mile posts — the only method of measuring progress toward his destination.
The Americans… He had to reach the Americans.
His senses were playing tricks now. He could hear the whine of distant traffic, but not the scrape of his shoes on the cement. He could feel the damp of the sweat on his cheeks, but not the hot flow of blood down his ribs. Even his sense of distance had become weirdly distorted. His courier duties had brought him to Manila many times, and he had driven down this stretch of Roxas Boulevard more than once. It was only a few city blocks. But it had somehow stretched itself into an impossibly-long tunnel of darkness, punctuated by widely-spaced glows of sickly yellow.
His left knee buckled, and he tottered sideways, slumping against the windows of a car for support. He drew a long breath, doing his best to ignore the rattling gurgle in his chest.
It was getting harder to breathe, but at least the pain was gone. Most of it, anyway. The white-hot agony in his ribs had faded to a distant ache — disconnected — as though it belonged to someone else.
He wondered dimly if the lack of pain might be a bad sign. Was he in shock? Or was his nervous system shutting down as his bodily functions began to fail? Certainly his mind seemed to be slipping. He could no longer remember how many times the bastards had shot him.
That last thought brought a grim smile to his lips. They obviously hadn’t shot him
Grigoriev took another gurgling breath, and forced his eyes to focus. He could see it now in the distance, the brighter white glow of the security lights that surrounded the American Embassy.
He pushed himself upright, and swayed back to a full standing position. His knees would have to hold out a little longer. Keep walking. He had to keep walking. He had to reach the Americans.
His own people had betrayed him; that much he knew. The Chinese would not have dared to harm him without authorization from Zhukov. The bastards wanted the warheads too badly. They’d never risk blowing the deal by killing Zhukov’s courier. That could only mean that Zhukov had authorized the hit. And then he’d sent Grigoriev to Manila, to a rendezvous in a deserted alley, in this cesspool of a country where life was cheap. Straight into the hands of the Chinese killers.
Grigoriev coughed, sending a spasm of pain through his chest. He lurched forward, stumbling toward the lights of the embassy one faltering step at a time.
They wanted to throw him out with the garbage, did they? Leave him dying among the broken beer bottles
