All You Need Is Kill

Speaking of crossing boundaries, I still hadn’t read any further in that mystery novel. I don’t know why that occurred to me then, but it did. I’d spent some of my last precious hours reading that book. I’d stopped just as the detective was about to reveal whodunit. I’d been so preoccupied with training I hadn’t given it another thought. It must have been nearly a year now. Maybe it was time I got around to finishing that book. If I killed this Mimic and made it to the next level, I’d start on that last chapter.

I readied my battle axe. Caution to the wind, I charged.

Static crackled in my headphones. Someone was talking to me. A woman. It was our savior, the Full Metal Bitch, Valkyrie reborn, Mad Wargarita-Rita Vrataski.

“How many loops is this for you?”

Chapter 3

***

1

A brilliant sun traced crisp shadows on the ground. The air was so clean you could have gotten a clear sniper shot from kilometers away. Above the field, the 17th Company’s flag snapped in a moist southerly breeze blowing off the Pacific.

The sea air held a scent that snaked its way down your nose and tickled your tongue on its way to your throat. Rita knitted her brow. It wasn’t the stench of a Mimic. More like the slightly fishy fragrance you got from those bowls of nuoc mam sauce.

Wartime tensions and the constant threat of death aside, the Far East really wasn’t so bad. The coastline, so difficult to defend, afforded beautiful sunsets. The air and water were clean. If Rita, who had about one tenth the refinement and culture of an average individual, thought it was wonderful here, an actual tourist might have considered it paradise. If there were one mark against it, it was the cloying humidity.

The weather that night would be perfect for an air strike. Once the sun had set, bombers laden with GPS-guided munitions would take to the sky in swarms to blast the island into a lifeless moonscape before the next morning’s ground assault. The beautiful atoll and the flora and fauna that called it home would all share the same fate as the enemy, if everything went according to plan.

“Beautiful day, don’t you think, Major Vrataski?” An old film camera dangled from the man’s thick neck, a redwood trunk by comparison to the average Jacket jockey’s beech-tree. Rita casually ignored him.

“Great lighting. Days like today can make even a steel-and-rivets airplane look like a da Vinci.”

Rita snorted. “You doing fine art photography now?”

“That’s hardly any way to speak to the only embedded photojournalist in the Japan expedition. I take great pride in the role I play conveying the truths of this war to the public. Of course, 90 percent of the truth is lighting.”

“Pretty slick talk. They must love you over at PR. How many tongues you figure you have?”

“Only the one the Lord saw fit to bestow Americans with. Though I hear Russians and Cretans have two.”

“Well I hear there’s a Japanese god who pulls out the tongues of liars. Don’t do anything to get yours in trouble.”

“Perish the thought.”

The corner of the training field Rita and the photographer were standing on caught the full force of the wind coming off the ocean. In the middle of the giant field, 146 men from the 17th Company of the 301st Japanese Armored Infantry Division were frozen in neat rows along the ground. It was a kind of training called iso push-ups. Rita hadn’t seen it before.

The rest of Rita’s squad stood a short distance away, their thick, bristly arms jutting out before them. They were busy doing what soldiers did best, which was mocking those less fortunate than themselves. Maybe this is how they practice bowing? Hey, samurai! Try picking up a sword after an hour of that!

None of Rita’s squadmates would go near her within thirty hours of an attack. It was an unspoken rule. The only people who dared approach her were a Native American engineer who couldn’t hardly see straight and the photographer, Ralph Murdoch.

“They don’t move at all?” Rita seemed doubtful.

“No, they just hold that position.”

“I don’t know if I’d call it samurai training. Looks more like yoga if you ask me.”

“Is it odd to find similarities between Indian mysticism and Japanese tradition?”

“Ninety-eight!”

“Ninety-eight!”

“Ninety-nine!”

“Ninety-nine!”

Staring into the ground like farmers watching rice grow, the soldiers barked in time with the drill sergeant. The shouts of the 146 men echoed in Rita’s skull. A familiar migraine sent wires of pain through her head. This was a bad one.

“Another headache?”

“None of your business.”

“I don’t see how a platoon worth of doctors can’t find a cure for one headache.”

“Neither do I. Why don’t you try to find out?” she snapped.

“They keep those guys on a pretty short leash. I can’t even get an interview.”

Murdoch raised his camera. It wasn’t clear what he intended to do with the images of the spectacle unfolding in perfect stillness before him. Maybe sell them to a tabloid with nothing better to print.