The city was dead, and still the smoke refused to rise straight.
It coiled and twisted over Manila like it, too, was lost, clinging to what remained of the skyline.
Whole blocks had turned to ash and shell, yet the staff officers still used their sandbags for desks and called the rubble "headquarters."
Captain James Mallory sat with his back against a broken wall, helmet hanging from a finger, and watched the morning light bleed through the haze.
The conference room had once been a bank. Now it was a bunker, half ceiling, half sky.
He had a cup of black coffee gone cold, and a stack of reports laid out before him like a gambler's losing hand.
Brigadier General Patton, not the Patton whose corpse lied buried beneath the sands of Algiers.
But some distant cousin who enjoyed pretending he was every bit as great as his kin, paced behind the table with his riding crop tapping the floor.
His jaw was square, his hair thinning, and his temper already frayed by the humidity.
