Front Lines (Front Lines #1)(27)
He nods, sticks the smoke into his mouth, and extends his hand. She shakes it formally.
“You know how to keep your mouth shut,” he says. “That’s good.” One last drag and he flicks the butt out over the track. “That’s very good.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“So, the military intelligence school for you, eh?”
“Sir, either you know where I’m heading, or you don’t.”
“Huh. All right then, PFC Schulterman. Carry on.”
He leaves her there, and by the time she makes it back to the compartment the Full sign is gone and her seat has been lost to fresh bodies.
Rainy is irritated at losing her seat. And sinfully proud of having successfully run this gantlet.
I’m going to like this game.
The next day, showered, her hair as under control as it ever is, her uniform as neat as she can make it, Rainy joins the first class of recruits in the history of the Military Intelligence Training School to number females among its complement. Twenty-seven males and fourteen females jump from their steel chairs as a gaggle of officers enter and take the stage.
Rainy is not surprised to see the erstwhile Lieutenant Janus—Captain Herkemeier—standing behind and to one side of the colonel who commands the school.
For about two minutes Rainy feels the pride of standing alongside other enlisted personnel chosen for their intelligence, discretion, judgment, and skill at languages. Colonel Derry, a small man with a thin mustache and thick glasses, throws a very big bucket of cold water on that emotion.
“The Supreme Court, in its infinite wisdom, has decreed that we must . . .” Here Colonel Derry searches for the right word and ends up spitting it out like a piece of bad meat. “. . . accept . . . Has decreed that we must accept females into this training facility.” Maybe he is naturally pop-eyed, or maybe the lenses of his spectacles make his eyes appear ready to pop like overfilled water balloons, but most likely, Rainy believes, he is actually enraged. His voice is certainly tense and high-strung. And he bounces on the balls of his feet with each word he emphasizes. It creates an odd sort of show since his choices of emphasis seem almost random.
“I have been ordered to thus accept females, and I carry out my orders. But as long as I am in command of this facility, I will exercise my discretion to the maximum, to ensure that the natural order of the sexes”—that phrase comes with three rapid bounces—“a natural order that has decreed that woman shall bear children and tend the hearth, while men shoulder the harsher burdens of life’s vicissitudes. . . .” He loses his way for a moment, but finds it quickly enough. “Females will be accorded all the courtesies of their rank, and woe to any male who treats them ill. But woe as well to any female who forgets her place or fails to exhibit the virtues of her sex!”
Throughout this Captain Jon Herkemeier stares straight ahead, neither nodding nor shaking his head.
There are suppressed snickers from some of the male soldiers. Rainy can hardly blame them. Virtues of her sex is a phrase almost designed for deliberate misinterpretation.
Rainy doesn’t look around—one does not look around when a colonel is speaking—but within her peripheral vision are two other females, neither looking pleased.
“In short,” Colonel Derry concludes, “I expect each of you to pay the closest attention to your instructors. I expect your fullest devotion to the task at hand. This is no easy course of study, and if any of you male soldiers think you’re going to avoid service overseas, I can tell you that you are likely to be disappointed. The ladies will surely stay safe, but for you men, your lives and the lives of other soldiers may well depend on the techniques and skills you learn here.”
In one five-minute speech, Colonel Derry crushes any hope Rainy has that she will be treated fairly.
Is there any point in this? No doubt there are useful assignments here in the States, but that’s not the image that’s been in Rainy’s mind, the image that’s motivated her to push through the pain and humiliation of basic training. She did not learn to qualify on rifles, machine guns, rifle grenades, and mortars in order to sit at a desk in some swampy hole somewhere safe. She did not drag her exhausted body up and down hills, through obstacle courses and live fire drills, only to end up typing and answering telephones in Arizona or some other godforsaken hole.
She cannot, will not, spend the war in a swivel chair. Not while Aryeh is chasing Japs across the Pacific Ocean.
But open defiance will get her cut from the program. Complaining up the chain of command will get her cut from the program. Trying to recruit support from male soldiers will make her look weak and cause her to be cut from the program.
There is only one way to prevail. That is to outwork, outthink, outperform every soldier in the school.
Rainy Schulterman is ready for that challenge.
9
RIO RICHLIN—CAMP MARON, SMIDVILLE, GEORGIA, USA
“Atten-HUT!”
Rio, Jenou, and two dozen other new recruits, more male than female, stand more or less straight, in rows that are more or less straight. They have just piled off a bus from the train station following a sixteen-hour trip, and they are tired, frazzled, and a bit nervous. They stretch and shake out their arms and yawn at the deep-blue sky.
In Rio’s estimation, they are in the middle of nowhere. The last town they passed had a gas station, a hardware store, a feed store even smaller than the one Rio’s father owns, a diner, and a shack that might have been a tavern. And that was pretty much the beginning, middle, and end of the town of Smidville, Georgia, a town that made Gedwell Falls look like Chicago by comparison.