Front Lines (Front Lines #1)(110)

It takes Rio a few seconds to realize that his head is gone and when she does realize she cries out, a sound of fear and horror. She looks around wildly trying to find it, like that would help, like she might be able to reattach it.

Stafford retches. Rio wishes she could, but her stomach is empty and anyway a numbness has come over her. A distance. She’s not there, not really. She’s nowhere, in fact, a disembodied ghost of herself floating beside the appalled white-faced girl in a uniform.

I’m so young.

“Anyone see the Loot?” Sticklin asks after a minute. His voice is far away, but spirit Rio sees that the young girl is looking dutifully, scanning left and right.

“Is that . . . ?” Stafford says.

Twenty yards away there’s a lump of something black. It’s smoking like a recently extinguished campfire. There is nothing recognizably human about it, but it cannot be metal, it’s too soft in the edges.

Rio can’t look any longer. She looks up and sees two vultures circling high overhead.

How do they get here so fast? Who tells the vultures?

“I say that’s Lieutenant Liefer,” Jack says. He wipes his mouth but misses some of the vomit. He unlimbers his canteen, and Rio sees his hands shake.

“Where’s the guy from Third Platoon?”

“I think that arm . . . ,” Jack offers.

“Yeah,” Stick says. “No way we can get anyone’s dog tags.”

“No,” Rio agrees.

“So, we all agree that we identified all three bodies, right?” Stick asks. His voice is ragged, insistent.

Rio and Stafford make eye contact. Both nod.

“We can’t even . . .” Stick licks his lips and looks a little desperate. “We’ll send the info to graves registration. We’ll give them the location. They’ll come in with an engineer unit, clear the mines, retrieve the bodies.”

“I never liked her much,” Jack says of Liefer.

Rio shakes her head. “No.”

“Feels bad though.”

“Yeah.”

“Anyone see anything salvageable?” The jerry cans of fuel are burning. The ammo must have been blown clear, a good thing since otherwise it would cook off, maybe kill one of them.

Rio is back in her body, seeing the world through her own eyes. She shoots a look at the two understrength platoons. Just short of a hundred guys, well, less than that counting those who got separated during the initial rush to escape the tanks. Seventy guys? Maybe. They’re a pitiful-looking bunch. They look small in the open desert, small and scared, armed with rifles that look like toys from this distance. Like children playing war and armed with sticks. Like they’ll all just yell, “Bang! Bang!”

They’re smoking and opening cans of rations. Many are stretched out on the ground, grabbing rest while they can.

“It was quick,” Rio says. “They didn’t feel anything.”

Jack nods. “Never even knew.”

The cooking-meat smell is sickening—and all the more sickening because it starts Rio’s mouth watering.

“That could be a water can,” Jack says, pointing to something half-buried in the dirt off the track.

It could be sitting right next to a mine.

“I don’t see anything,” Stick says pointedly.

“No,” Jack says. “No, you’re quite right. Nothing.”

Without further discussion, they turn and start the long walk back out of the pass.

As they emerge, Rio sees Pang climbing with impressive confidence up a rock face, a rope tied around his waist. Cole and a private from the other platoon are ten feet below him, moving more slowly.

Rio, Stafford, and Sticklin reach the relative security of the group. Sticklin gives Helder their report.

“Three dead bodies. Nothing salvageable.”

Hansu Pang and Cole have topped the cliff. Additional ropes are being sent up, so in half an hour, as darkness falls, there are three ropes hanging down and the GIs begin to climb.

Rio and Jenou are among the last to go up. Big knots have been tied in the ropes, making the ascent easier, but still by the time she reaches the top Rio has chipped the last flakes of pink from her nails and her knees and knuckles are scraped raw.

No one has fallen. Everyone is safe atop the height. They march slowly, two men out front with bunkered flashlights trying to see any ravines, but everyone is stumbling and cursing, all making too much noise. If there are Germans on the other side of this hill, they won’t have any difficulty guessing that Americans are coming.

But after an hour of twisting ankles and curses they reach the far side and there’s nothing to be seen there, just darkness. They advance slowly down a mercifully gentle slope.

Then someone calls out, “I see lights!”

Everyone squats down, and the GIs on point switch off their flashlights. Yes, there are definitely lights, slitted headlights that cast pale pools on what must be a road.

“Could just be locals.”

“No. It’s trucks,” Garaman says.

Distance is almost impossible to gauge; the desert is just a dry ocean with few landmarks or reference points. It could be five miles, it could be twenty. The noncoms huddle with Rainy Schulterman and unfold a map, which they read in the light of a flashlight shining red through fingers.

“Could be we’re in the right place,” Garaman says. “Sheer dumb luck.”