Weapons of choice

Old Doc Brumm and ADA Crew, they weren't much help. Not that he could blame them. There was a ton of pressure coming down from above on this case. The chief himself had called Buster and told him to break as many arms as it took to wrap the fucking thing up as quickly as possible. He was taking heat from the military, no doubt about it. And that heat was being applied directly to Buster, like a blowtorch to the belly.

Well, fuck them.

If they couldn't see how dangerous these fuckers were, they were go

Buster hunched his giant shoulders against the seething press of the crowd. Hundreds of men were crammed into the Dog. They were mostly drunk and stupid. They stank. They roared. They shoved and pushed and elbowed each other. But they were mostly good guys when you got down to it. They were going off to die, a lot of them. And for what? A country that was go

Buster threw down the last of his drink and was just about to pour another when the roaring bedlam of the crowd dipped unexpectedly. He turned away from the bar as a general push toward the doors began. There must be a fight outside. He would have ignored it. After all, it was none of his goddamn business, and he'd seen enough ignorant fucking drunks beating on each other over the years that the prospect held no interest for him, now.

But the tidal flow surging out of the door, and the increasingly furious sounds coming back in from the street, told him this was no ordinary brawl. It sounded more like a riot.

Buster checked his gun and the heavy leather blackjack he carried in a back pocket, and then he headed out.

He was right.

It seemed to him that the dusty, sunbaked street was choked with thousands of brawling men, most of them in uniform, but not all. The sound was deafening, like the blast of a huge crowd at a sports stadium when you emerged into the open, having gone to get a beer and a hot dog. Smoke and fire poured from the upper windows of two buildings across the street. A thick mass of struggling men surged around two jeeps in the middle of the street. Buster saw a flash of white helmets in the center of the melee. Normally he would have walked away. A man can get himself killed very easily in a shit fight like that. But the bourbon and the resentment he felt toward that snooty fucking lady doctor lit his fuse, which was admittedly short at the best of times.

Somebody ca

He didn't bother to check on the man he'd just knocked out. Buster was vaguely aware of the body falling away into the threshing machine of arms and legs that now surrounded him. But he was locked into his own narrow world. He slipped the blackjack out of his pocket: eight inches of stitched leather with a solid lead weight sewn into one end. It felt like an extension of his hand. He didn't have a lot of space in the violent, heaving mass of brawlers, but he didn't need much. He began to lay into the crowd around him.

Eddie Mohr could hardly see through the blood and sweat ru

The riot wasn't breaking up, but it was spreading out. Eddie didn't like the way every breath felt like he was sucking in fire. He'd broken a knuckle on somebody's head and was limping from a kick to the back of his knee. It was time to get going. The MPs would be here in force soon, breaking heads with their nightsticks. And if they brought any reinforcements from the Multinationals with them, they'd be carrying those electric batons. He didn't fancy getting one of them stuck in his ass.

He'd lost contact with the other guys. Last he'd seen of Pete Craven the dumb bastard was pounding on a corporal from the engineers. Hundreds of men still fought like that, piled atop each other, gouging, biting, and knocking heads. Nothing like the fights you saw in the movies. He'd fought his way clear by using a trick his old man had taught him. Swinging a bar stool like a club, he'd made as though he was going to brain any bastard who challenged him. When they instinctively threw up their hands, Mohr swung the stool low and fast into their knees, knocking them down like cornstalks. The stool had broken after the fourth time, but by then he was outside.

Smoke and dust, hot ash and the sounds of the riot filled the air.

He felt dizzy and tired.

He started to move off, closing up like a prizefighter and taking a couple of poorly aimed hits on his shoulders and arms. A section of burning wooden sunshade crashed down in front of him. Men jumped away from it, cursing and shouting. Mohr altered his course, heading for a side street that seemed a little quieter.

He turned the corner at a bar called the Black Dog and recognized one of the chiefs from the Leyte Gulf. The guy's face was badly banged up, but he was pretty sure it was Jose Borghino, or Borgu, or something. He was leaned up against a car, obviously in trouble. Mohr started to move toward him when a man in a torn, bloodied suit crashed into him and knocked him to the ground.

He heard somebody call out, "Get away from the car, asshole."

And then a big gun, a.38 or.45, boomed twice, so loud it deafened him.

Half blinded by blood and grit, Mohr looked up as Borghino fell away from the car. His mouth full of dirt, his ears ringing, he was about to scramble up and confront the suit. That guy had to be the shooter. But a white-hot bomb went off inside his head, and he tumbled down into darkness.

Restricted to camp after the riot, Slim Jim Davidson was anxious to hear from Big Itchy. The confinement was driving him nuts. He feared the dumb gangster would be so preoccupied by the destruction of his clubs on Hotel Street that he wouldn't have followed through on the plan to clean out the stateside bookies. Slim Jim was stretched out in his rack, cursing his luck and the suck-ass pattern of his so-called life, when the cry of "Mail call" went up.

Moose Molloy Jr., who was resting on his cot, leapt to his feet.

"C'mon, Slim Jim. Mail's here," he enthused.

"Big fucking deal," said Slim Jim flatly.

"Oh don't be like that. We'll be out of here soon. I even heard they're go

"Yeah?" said Davidson. "They go

Moose didn't pick up on the sarcasm.

"No," he answered ingenuously, "I didn't hear nothing about the lady sailors. I don't reckon they'd let us keep them, though. There'd be another riot if everyone thought we was getting girlfriends and a new ship."