From under his blanket, Finn said: “Why don’t we just shoot the radar up on the balloon? Be a lot easier.”

“Everything worthwhile is hard,” said Conan, her voice muffled by the blanket. “An old gunny said that once to us.”

“You’re still a Marine, then, sir?” said Finn. “Then why’d you break the credo of never leaving anyone behind?”

“This is more important. Mission above the man,” said Conan. “Besides, we plink the radar, they’ll just reel the bitch in and fix it.”

“That’s why they pay you the big bucks, then,” said Finn.

“Don’t know why they want it taken out now, but I think you can imagine,” said Conan.

“I don’t need the cavalry riding in; I’d be happy with a few dozen Tomahawks. Why do you think they haven’t done that yet?” asked Finn. “Just push a couple buttons; that shit’s easy. Some days a tactical nuke would be okay by me. If Washington had just gotten off its ass when this first went down, we never would have had to fight like this. Should have just gotten it over with at once. Show your cards, motherfuckers. Instead, we draw them off the deck one by one every day. Is anybody back there afraid to die anymore?”

“You just answered your own question,” said Conan. “Nobody wants to die as bad as we do.”

It all sounded good, but she knew something Finn didn’t. She knew she was already dead. After that day on the airfield, it had all been borrowed time. Hunkering behind the Osprey wreckage, she’d decided that if she was going to die, it was going to be with purpose. That the time she had left hadn’t been the expected few seconds but had stretched into days and then months didn’t matter.

Conan’s stomach tightened and she took in a deep breath. She let it out slowly as she peeled back the woolen blanket.

“Sixty seconds,” said Finn.

Finn swatted a fly, causing Conan to flinch. She exhaled deeply, steadying her nerves.

“Damn it, Finn, keep still,” said Conan, feeling a mosquito bore into her forehead.

“Roger,” said Finn. “Ready to launch the zipper?”

Conan nodded.

“Go.”

Finn crouched and lightly tossed a Frisbee-size disc toward the aerostat. This was one of the other gifts they’d received in the duffle bag from the undersea ocean glider. As the disc took flight, a tiny lift fan whirred to life, and the device raced into the forest canopy, disappearing from sight almost immediately. The zipper could fly for only twenty minutes, but what it did during its brief electronic life was what mattered. The carbon-fiber zipper scanned for electronic signals — like from the surveillance systems surrounding the aerostat site — and then repeated those signals back until its batteries ran out. A small green light on a candy-bar-size stick beside the rifle indicated that it was functioning.

“Time to blow out the candles and make a wish?” said Finn.

A click of the rifle’s safety and Conan adjusted the aim point on the scope, a final touch to make sure.

“May all our enemies die screaming,” she whispered.

The rifle fired, the noise under the suppressor almost like a muffled sneeze. The first shot took out a camera mounted in a tower overlooking the site. The second round smashed into a mushroom-shaped antenna. A third shot shattered the lens on a camera pointed up at the aerostat. If the zipper did its job, then they could hold on to the element of surprise just a little longer.

“Let’s go,” said Conan, wedging the blanket into the webbing on her backpack. They tried to run, but the vegetation was so thick and the roots were so treacherous they could manage only a fast walk.

“Nearly there,” said Finn, holding a hand over his right eye; he’d gotten jabbed by a branch. Conan stopped to catch her breath, taking a knee. The heat and humidity, even the altitude, were crushing. Finn reached down to lift her up and dragged her along, tripping over a slimy root himself.

“Why’s the goddamn balloon still attached?” said Conan.

Tricky shrugged with a new recruit’s look of shame. She was a fourth-generation Hawaiian and had been only seventeen years old and into her second year of surfing sponsored by Billabong when the war came. That they’d brought her along showed just how thin the Muj ranks were getting. She offered Conan an ax that was nearly as tall as she was.

“You deserve the honors,” said Tricky.

“This isn’t a damn ceremony, just cut the cable!” said Conan.

Tricky shook her head no, wiping sweat from her eyes. “All right, give me the ax,” said Conan.

The support structure anchoring the aerostat’s tether cable looked like a miniature Eiffel Tower. Conan aimed the blade at the juncture where the cable attached and brought the ax down with a grunt. The ax handle was wooden, but the blade had a nano-synthetic diamond edge. It was Chinese military issue, and they’d stripped it from the back of a supply truck a month ago. Conan brought the ax down again with a loud clang that made the rest of the insurgents tense up. Finn instinctively scanned the perimeter of the clearing.

“We better hurry,” said Finn. He held out the control stick for the zipper. The light now flashed red.

She heaved again and smashed the ax into the steel cable.

“Fucker’s stuck,” said Conan, bending over to lever the blade out. She turned slightly as a volley of rounds hissed past the place where her head had been a moment ago. The angry sound of autocannon fire followed.

“Contact!” shouted Conan. A quadcopter drone appeared, leaping above the canopy around the site’s perimeter. The strobelike muzzle flashes from its cannon lit up the plateau. The NSM insurgents took off at a run away from the cable’s tether point and slid into the foliage at the edge of the clearing.

“Target the drone; it’ll track your fire, and I’ll go after the tether,” said Conan. She sprinted back to the cable’s anchor point, clutching the ax.

Finn tried to track the quadcopter but kept losing it as it ducked in and out of the forest canopy. A rapid reaction force would definitely be coming now. They might helicopter up, and if they did, it would be all over soon. If the Directorate soldiers instead drove up from the mountain’s base, then they might have a few extra minutes.

Another crash of autocannon fire from the quadcopter, which emerged again from the canopy and started to close on Conan’s position. There was a flash of red light to Finn’s right as Tricky fired a flare gun they’d scrounged from a sailboat’s emergency kit. Temporarily blinded, the drone automatically paused and stabilized itself, following its standard protocol to reset its sensors. Dumb-ass machines, thought Finn.

He took it out with his second shot, and the quadcopter spun off into the trees. Then a dark shadow passed overhead: the aerostat, its plump belly faintly lit by the flare’s dying red light, a light wind taking it west.

They ran to the tree line, joining the other insurgents. Already, they could see three sets of headlights coming up the Mount Ka‘ala road to the plateau.

Above them, the first stars were already out, joining the array of lights from Schofield Barracks in the distance. She could see all the way to the sweep of lights at Diamond Head, and she allowed herself to wonder what those who hunkered down over there thought of the far-off solitary balloon, lifting off into the night.

Then Conan heard another buzzing in the distance. It was another quadcopter, scouting ahead of the Directorate trucks in the dark.

“Let’s move,” said Conan. “Remember, we stay together this time.”

Captain Jamie Simmons walked forward past the rail-gun turret and stood at the very tip of the ship’s bow. The chisel-like bow narrowed to a fine point, but there was enough room that he could stand on steady legs and take in the view while he went over the ship’s systems on his viz.