The forward operating base smelled of diesel and antiseptic and the thin, metallic tang of old blood.
Dawn had leeched the jungle's red into a grey wash; the airfield's dust lay in the seams of boots and the folds of uniforms like an accusation.
Erich rode in the back of his command vehicle as it entered through the gates, the hull rattling, the engine coughing.
Men clambered down with the sort of automatic slowness that comes when a body has been made to do terrible things and must do them again tomorrow.
They were mud and soot, ash and oil; faces streaked with the night's fire so that even their mothers might not have recognized them.
Weapons hung from tired shoulders or were slung, still warm with use. The radio nets blinked alive in the distance; engineers already fussed over antennae and the newly repaired repeater sites.
The northern airfields in Luzon, seized intact on the first morning of the drops, hummed now with life.
