Front Lines (Front Lines #1)(31)

“Yes, Sergeant!”

Sergeant Mackie has unerringly picked out the two most likely offenders, one from each gender. Jenou has already been eyeing Tilo Suarez, and he has returned that attention. Rio has to grit her teeth to suppress the grin that’s struggling to break out.

“All right.” Mackie relaxes her posture a few degrees and softens her voice. “For a lot of you this is your first time away from home. Some of you are old enough to know how to handle yourselves, but a lot of you are young. Some of you very young.” Her eyes flick toward Rio.

She knows!

“So here’s what you need to do. First off, listen to the NCOs. An NCO is any sergeant, corporal, or private first class. If you see stripes on a shoulder, that’s an NCO, also known as a noncom. One stripe is a PFC, two stripes is a corporal, three stripes is a buck sergeant, four stripes, well, that’s a staff sergeant and that’s me. Beyond that you don’t need to know except that should you ever happen to glimpse six stripes with a star in the center, then you have laid eyes upon the sergeant major, which is to say God’s holy avenging angel on earth. And woe unto you if you embarrass me in front of the sergeant major.”

She’s berating, she’s threatening, but, Rio realizes, she’s also teaching.

“Second, help each other out. Pay attention to your training, because in a very few weeks you may be the target lined up perfectly in an enemy’s sights. You’re going to want to know what to do in that situation so as not to end up dead. The army is a team, a team belonging to the government of this great nation, the greatest nation on earth. Am I correct about that?”

“Yes, Sergeant!”

“You are GIs. Government issue. You are all on the GI team. That team extends from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt down through the chiefs of staff, down through the generals and the junior officers, all the way down through the noncoms, and finally, to you. You.” At that moment she seems to be looking at each of them, one by one, which isn’t possible, but it’s how Rio feels. “One team. One purpose. What’s your name, Private?”

She has come to stand in front of a young man with intelligent eyes and a widow’s peak.

“Private Dain Sticklin, Sergeant.”

“What is the purpose of an American soldier, Private Dain Sticklin?”

“To kill the enemy,” he says.

For a fleeting moment an actual human expression threatens to appear on Mackie’s face. “Not the worst answer, Private Sticklin. But your purpose is to obey the orders of your superiors. Obedience to orders. Obedience to orders. Obedience. To. Orders. Do you all comprehend?”

“Yes, Sergeant!”

“You will follow orders. You will learn. You will do many different jobs in my army, Privates, but before each of you leaves my care, you will have learned to obey orders. And . . .” She nods at Private Sticklin. “. . . you’ll also have learned how to kill the enemy. Chow in thirty minutes; get your gear squared away. Dismissed.”

There is a collective breath, a collective sagging of shoulders, a few low whistles.

“She knows you’re boy crazy,” Rio says to Jenou.

“That’s ridiculous,” Jenou says with a wink. “No one in the army is really a boy. They’re men, Rio. I’m man crazy.”

“I quite like our sergeant,” a young man who couldn’t have been much older than Rio says in a distinctly non-American accent. “Friendly lass.”

The man with the accent is two bunks down from Jenou. He’s thin, tall, has ginger hair, blue eyes, and radiates an unmistakable sense of charm and fun. Rio knows Jenou will like him—she likes smart-alecks.

Sure enough. “And who might you be?” Jenou asks.

“I might be the prime minister of Great Britain, but sadly I’m just plain Jack Stafford. Private John Lloyd Merriwether Stafford, officially, but you can call me Jack.”

He sticks out a hand, and Jenou and Rio take turns shaking it—Jenou taking a bit longer with the motion. Because she’s Jenou.

“What’s with the accent?” Jenou asks.

“I might ask you the same thing,” Jack replies. “But I suppose you are remarking on the fact that I speak English as it was meant to be spoken.”

“What are you doing in our army?” Dain Sticklin asks, not confrontational, just curious. “Shouldn’t you be in the British army?”

“Mmm, yes. Probably should. But this seems to be the only way for me to get back there.” In a less cheeky tone, he explains. “I was evacuated to America, me and my little sister, along with a lot of other kids, back when the bombing started. I was just sixteen at the time, and the King’s army doesn’t take you until you’re eighteen. I’ve been living with an aunt in Hagerstown since then. Now that I’m old enough, well, no way to get back home.”

“Can’t your parents . . .” Rio senses the misstep before the words are all the way out of her mouth.

“Afraid not,” he says, pushing past a wobble in his voice and a small, involuntary tightening of his jaw. “German bomb took them.”

“Well, we’ll go kill us some Germans together, right? Get some payback.” Tilo Suarez grins at Rio and says, “Tilo Suarez. But you can call me handsome.”

“But then you’d have to be handsome,” Rio says, deadpan. “Otherwise it would be like I was mocking you.”