Front Lines (Front Lines #1)(80)

“Go, go, go!” Cole says in an urgent whisper.

The first row leaps forward, Corporal Millican taking the lead, with Tilo and Jillion flanking him. Rio is in the second row with Jenou and Stick, and the three of them surge behind the leaders.

There comes a shout from the darkness ahead, barely audible above the vehement throat-clearing sound of the engines and the shushing of the waves. A distinctly non-American shout.

Rio lands waist deep in a retreating wave. The water is like molasses, grabbing at her uniform, tugging her back toward the sea with disturbing force. It nearly unbalances her, and if she falls she’ll drown because the weight of the pack and the weight of the ammo have suddenly been doubled by the water. But Cole’s hand shoves her upright and she slogs forward, forward and up an incline, and now the water pushes with her as the wave rolls in, lets her move, lets her run up onto sand, rifle at the ready.

A noise like a very big zipper being yanked down hard and streams of tracer fire arc from the darkness, a bright line of death.

“Down! Down!” Cole yells.

“Clear the egress!” Liefer is yelling in her shrill alto, because they have to get the jeep off the boat and she doesn’t want to drive over her own soldiers.

“Go, go, go!”

“Look out!”

“Get the fug—”

“They’re shooting!”

Rio lurches to her right, three steps, four, five, ten, fifteen, counting them off, drops to her knees, plants the butt of her rifle, and lies facedown on her belly with her weapon pointing toward where she thinks the machine gunner might be.

Fifteen hundred rounds per minute. The standard German machine gun fires fifteen hundred rounds per minute.

The machine gun opens up again, loud but distant, followed by softer but way-too-near Pfft! Pfft! sounds as the bullets hit sand. Soft whimpering noises are coming from her throat, unlike any sound she’s ever made before.

A split second slower than Rio to hit the ground, Kerwin cries out. He says, “Oh!”

Just that. Oh.

Rio sees him fall backward. His head lands in the edge of the retreating foam, legs folded beneath him.

“Cassel! You hit?”

No answer.

God no, God no, God no.

The jeep roars and splashes out of the landing craft and instantly draws the fire of the enemy machine gun.

“Are you hit? Cassel! Are you hit?”

“Doc! Doc!” someone yells.

The jeep swerves left and goes nose-down in a hole, rear wheels spinning and throwing up a plume of sand.

“Richlin! Give Doc a hand with Cassel!” Cole yells. “Stick, get that BAR onto that dune there and put some fire on that machine gun, take Geer with you. Castain, Pang, Suarez, stay low and follow me!”

Rio crawls toward her stricken comrade, elbows digging, knees pushing, heart gone mad. The doc, who came ashore with Fourth Squad, is hunched over Cassel. He grabs at something in his medical kit, and now Rio sees that Cassel is flailing spasmodically, arms and legs jerking, torso heaving. An advancing wave covers his face in foam.

“Pull him back, pull him back, goddammit, he’ll drown!” the medic shouts.

Rio grabs Cassel’s legs and has to rise to her own knees in order to get leverage. She is acutely aware of her exposed back but hauls him out of the surf.

“Hold him down,” the medic says through gritted teeth as he tears open a bandage. “Gotta stop the bleeding. His neck.”

“Take it easy, Cassel, take it easy,” Rio says.

Blood pulses from Cassel’s throat, like a garden hose that someone is kinking and releasing, kinking and releasing. The blood looks like chocolate syrup in the darkness.

Kerwin is making guttural sounds, words full of urgency with no vowels.

Rio rises again, just high enough to place her hands on Kerwin’s chest and hold him down, but as she does this she feels slippery warmth and realizes that large quantities of blood are gushing from his upper chest. He’s been hit twice, not once.

“Gotta take it easy, Cassel, let Doc work.”

Would sound better if my teeth weren’t chattering.

But Kerwin isn’t hearing her. He jerks wildly, tries to say something that comes out as a plaintive grunt, then lays back down, quieting. Doc slaps a pressure bandage on, but the artery in Cassel’s neck is barely slowed.

Like trying to block a fire hydrant with your fingers.

Doc rips Cassel’s uniform shirt open and there’s the second hole near, far too near, to his heart.

The medic curses and then covers for that by telling Cassel, “It’s okay, it’s okay, soldier, you’ll be okay, going home is all, going home.” It’s a lie, but Kerwin never hears it anyway.

Rio feels his heart stop. One second there’s a wild beating thing in his chest and then nothing.

Kerwin’s last breath is a slow wet wheeze of exhalation, as if he’s sinking back into an easy chair after a long day.

The machine gun chatters and digs divots Pfft! Pfft! Pfft! in the sand near Rio, so she has to roll away, clutching her rifle to her chest with blood-slicked hands.

Kerwin is dead without even getting a chance to speak. His final intelligible word just that single syllable, “Oh.”





24

FRANGIE MARR—TUNISIAN DESERT, NORTH AFRICA

The same northern African night that envelops Second Squad on its beach covers Frangie Marr and the colored 403rd Artillery Battalion. They are not on a beach but in the shadow of a stark, bare hill with just a number for a name.