As the flow of children heading into Iliahi Elementary School, a few on their own, others dropped off by their parents, started to slow, Conan nodded at Finn. Like on patrol, they staggered their arrivals. They’d go in with the latecomers and then swing toward the back, where there was an outbuilding used for storing athletic equipment. For the past four months, Coach Moaki, the gym teacher, had allowed the Muj to stash a few boxes of grenades, stims, and ammunition there. The insurgents also slept there from time to time. It was one of many caches they used in the area. They knew a few of the other teachers were likely aware of what they were doing, but not a single one ever made eye contact with them.

“You know, before all this I used to do triathlons,” Finn said to Conan as they waited in the vegetation by the road. “Get up at oh-five-hundred for a trail run and then go twenty miles on the bike. Oh, and camping. For fun. That’s pretty much what we’re doing now, right? Well, screw that. When this is all over, I’m going to move to New York City and never go outside again.”

They had just mounted their bikes when a shot rang out.

“Pistol,” said Conan. “At the school.”

He had been to the old hotel many times before. Never to sleep; the place felt too much like a target for a truck bomb. He came every so often just to swim and drink fresh pineapple and guava juice. The beach was perfection, perhaps worth the invasion for just this stretch, Markov thought. If they had let him, he would have slept on the beach; he would have preferred it to the cheap motel by the airport that the Chinese had turned into barracks.

At the moment, he was in the wrong company for a day at the beach. Jian, as ever, dutifully followed behind.

Markov wore his Russian army fatigues, which were getting more and more faded with each day in the Pacific sun. He would rather have worn local clothes, but the few times he had done that, it had only brought him grief with General Yu.

The two men crossed the lobby, slowing their pace to take advantage of the air conditioning. As they weaved through groups of Directorate sailors, soldiers, and marines, Markov noticed that Jian had taken to walking five meters behind him. The bastard was trying to act like he was simply going in the same direction, embarrassed at his peers’ seeing him with the Russian.

As they passed one of the bars, Markov almost stopped, stricken by a sudden thirst. Then he pushed past the temptation and moved on to the intended destination.

“Hi, boys,” said the woman behind the surf desk. “I’m sorry, but your teammates took them all. No boards left.”

He was struck by the banal tone of her voice. In his whole time in Hawaii, he had never heard a local speak without some fleck of anger. But this woman sounded as if she were talking to a sunburned family of four from Chicago. Either she was on quite a cocktail of drugs or she was an utter idiot.

“It’s too bad, you know,” she said, “because today there’s a perfect swell for beginners.”

Markov walked closer to the desk and locked eyes with her.

“Regrettably, this is work,” he said. “We’re looking for information about a Directorate officer whose body was found on the beach.”

“I heard,” she said. “It’s so sad.”

The nameplate on the desk identified her as Carrie Shin. Markov walked his eyes down Carrie’s body, passing over her breasts but looking closely at her arms, searching for signs of needle tracks that might explain her demeanor. Maybe a little makeup on her forearm, but he couldn’t be sure without looking at the skin up close.

“It is sad. How did he get possession of one of the hotel’s boards?” said Markov.

“We think he took it after hours. We didn’t think we had to lock them up anymore,” said Shin. Her voice lowered and her shoulders sagged, as if even the possibility of theft saddened her.

“When did he last rent a board here?” he asked.

“I saw him once,” she said. “Maybe two weeks ago? I think that was his first time surfing. He was really excited. He asked about a lesson but I couldn’t do it then. I wish I had. Sandy Beach Park is one of the most dangerous places on the islands to surf — not a good place for a beginner.”

Markov studied the way her tanned skin seemed to give back some of the sun’s warmth. He leaned in closer for his next question, wondering just how dark the circles under her eyes were when the makeup was washed away.

“Are there any other employees whom I should talk to?” he said.

She smiled and leaned away, arching her back in a subtle stretch. “This hotel is the safest place in town, for everyone. That’s the point, isn’t it?” she said. “Why would anyone do anything to upset that?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“The one thing I never heard was how he died.” She chattered on, slaking her curiosity in a way other locals never would have dared. “What did happen to him?”

“The board’s leash got caught around his neck,” said Markov. “But it is not yet clear whether it was an accident or not.”

“Oh my God. That’s horrible,” she said. “Wasn’t there any video of the beach? Maybe a wave-cam?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all.” He paused. “But as part of the revised security measures, we will be collecting something better from all the staff here.”

“Better than pictures?” she said.

“Much better. DNA,” he said. “That way we can track our friends throughout the island,” he said.

“Friends like me?” she said.

“Exactly,” he said.

The body lay sprawled face-down on the ground. The mesh bag of soccer balls that the Chinese marine had brought for the students to play with had opened and the balls had spilled out; bright pink and yellow spheres rolled around the courtyard, leaving trails of blood behind them.

Nicks’s grip on her SIG Sauer P220 loosened for a moment, then she squeezed the pistol tighter. Her hearing returned and her field of vision widened, allowing her to take in the chaos. Parents and children screamed over the ringing in her ears.

This was what the coach had been trying to warn them about when Nicks and the three other insurgents turned left off California Avenue. The coach had smiled a welcome but had waved his hands off to the side. Nicks cursed herself for missing the cue, caught up momentarily in the flash of normalcy brought on by the giddy kids around them.

“Contact!” shouted Charlie.

“A bit late for that,” said Nicks. “You hit?”

“No, I don’t think so,” said Charlie. “There’s got to be more; where are they?”

A Chinese marine burst around the gym corner, his assault rifle spraying wildly. A shot took Charlie in the neck. Nicks, with her pistol already up, instinctively fired two .45-caliber rounds at a distance of ten feet. The marine spun and collapsed over a blue hippo sculpture in the school’s courtyard.

More fearful shouts in Chinese came from where the marine had been.

Nicks and the two other insurgents rounded the corner and found a lone Chinese civilian, evidently a member of one of the new community development units they’d been sending around to split the population from the insurgents, crying into a radio. She had a pistol but made no motion to use it; her two escorts were now dead.

They dragged her past Charlie’s still body and over to the entrance of the building, and they took cover by the doors. After a moment, the woman stopped crying, and the unsettling calm that followed close combat came over Nicks. Her ears rang, her hands tingled, and she felt like her feet were so firmly planted in the ground, she couldn’t take another step if her life depended on it. The feeling would pass, as it always did after the adrenaline waned, but in the moment, it took everything she had to stay focused and think about what was supposed to happen next.