"Jesus Christ. She killed them."
Rachel Nguyen's stuffy little room had become unbearably hot and close. They'd watched the relayed vision of the pickup with mounting concern as more and more survivors crowded around the PT boat. As they formed a thick carpet of thrashing limbs and bobbing heads, the men around her murmured that it was all going wrong, that they couldn't possibly get away before the planes turned up and spotted them. MacArthur himself had just told everyone to pipe down when the female officer from Willet's submarine grabbed a gun off a sailor, walked over to the edge, and opened up on the densely packed mass of floating men.
On the screen, the 101 was now moving again, motoring slowly through the disbursed survivors, but nobody said anything until MacArthur spoke up.
"What the hell just happened, Commander?" he asked, turning away from the screen to offer Rachel his full, glowering visage.
She looked at him quizzically. "From what I could see, the mission was in danger of failing, General," she said. "Lieutenant Lohrey acted to regain the initiative."
MacArthur's face was a dead mask. He gave away nothing of what he was thinking. But the men around him weren't so well controlled. Rachel caught some of them staring at her like she had suddenly grown a second head.
"I can see," she said quietly, "that you disapprove."