“Search the village,” Dog told Freah. “Secure it.”
“What about the atoll? I’d like to check it out ASAP.”
“All right, I’ll talk to Woods. If you’re looking for force backup—”
“I have what I need,” said Danny. “We’ll use the Marines here.”
“Not without Woods’ okay.”
“They’re authorized to secure the island.”
“Not the atoll.”
“Right,” said Danny. “One other thing. I want us to move the people in that village when we’re done. If we just turn them over to the Filipinos, they’ll be slaughtered.”
“I doubt that’s true. I …”
“We can move them ourselves. I’ll scout a new spot for them on the south part of the island. We can have them there tonight,” Danny said firmly.
“Let’s find out what’s in the village,” said Dog. “Inspect it, then contact me.”
“Can we move them? I have to know what I’m going to do with them.”
“It’s not my decision,” Dog said. “It’s up to Admiral Woods, and probably Admiral Allen. They’ll deal with it.”
“But they’ll take your advice.”
“They may, they may not,” said Dog. “More likely the latter.”
“You don’t like her at all, do you,” said Zen, rolling alongside Breanna as she walked to the Navy’s mess tent.
“Please, Jeff, we’ve been over this a million times,” she said. “Let’s talk about something else, okay?”
“Green-eyed jealousy. Hell hath no fury like a jealous lady.”
“At least you know your clickés.” Breanna swung through the door without holding it for him. A fresh batch of pancakes was just being put out; she loaded a double-high stack on her plate.
“Packing it in, huh?” said Zen when she returned to the table. He was sipping a cup of black coffee.
“On a diet?” she asked, taking a bite of her pancakes.
“Trying to get back my girlish figure.”
“These are good,” she said. She tried changing the subject. “How’s FDR?”
“We’re fighting the Depression,” said Zen. “You know what’s amazing?”
“The fact that you’re actually reading?”
“I read all the time before I met you,” said Zen.
“Sports Illustrated and Penthouse don’t count.”
“Penthouse Letters,” he told her. “Big difference.”
“I was wondering where you picked up your technique.”
“Roosevelt never really gave up trying to walk, not until he was in the White House,” said Zen, suddenly serious. “I think he really thought he would walk again. He kept telling people, next year. Next year. You know the thing he did with his legs, leaning on people? I bet he really thought he was walking. I bet he did.
“Geez, Bree, you got to chew those things.”
She stopped mid-bite—half a pancake slipped form her mouth.
Zen laughed and took a sip of coffee.
“Me, I’m a realist. I know I’m not going to walk again.”
“Except when you were in ANTARES.”
“Yeah. Well, the drugs did that,” he said. He looked into his coffee cup, then put it down and picked up a spoon, fishing out a fly. It was a minute or so before he began speaking again. “I understand what Frank was thinking.”
“Frank?”
“Hey, all that reading gets me an’ old Franklin on a first-name basis,” said Zen. “Except only his enemies called him Frank. I think.” Another bug dive-bombed into his coffee. “These flies must love this coffee.”
Jeff held it out, laughed—then tapped the spoon at her as if tossing the bug.
“Hey!”
He’d actually slipped the bug off the spoon, which he delighted in pointing out.
“You shoulda seen your face.”
“Ho, ho,” said Bree.
“Finish eating and let’s go recreate. I have to practice the Piranha controls in an hour.”
“Oh, you’re suave,” she said.
“Comes from reading Penthouse Letters.”
Philippines
1103
They ran is as a classic encirclement, using four squads of Marines as well as Danny’s people. Two groups were dropped east of the village, each led by one of Danny’s Whiplash troopers, while two other groups came down from the ridge. Using so many people decreased the likelihood they would achieve surprise, but Danny reasoned the available resources made it the way to go. It was a conservative choice, one that couldn’t be faulted. As he boarded the Quick Bird helo to supervise the mission from the air, he realized he’d probably chosen to do things this way to compensate for screwing up earlier.