Front Lines (Front Lines #1)(85)

Rio spits sand and struggles into a kneeling position. After a moment it occurs to her that she should probably level her rifle. She adopts the textbook kneeling firing position, with one shin flat on the ground, the other vertical with her knee up, elbow on knee, rifle leveled. At Cole.

“Excellent position, Richlin,” he says, looming up out of the dark. “But if you shoot me, I will be irritated at you.”

“Sarge got the machine gun!” Suarez says, running up and kicking sand as he does. He’s excited. Giddy. “You should have seen him, it was—”

“Knock it off,” Cole snaps. “The Tommies say we’re on the wrong beach.”

“What?” half a dozen voices chorus. Followed by variations on, “Lousy navy,” and “It figures,” and assorted curses and nervous witticisms.

“We want to be that way.” Cole points with a chopping motion. “About two miles.”

“Two miles? We’re off by two bloody miles?” Jack demands. “Well, that’s a bit much, what?”

Jack is playing up his posh-sounding British accent for laughs.

“Don’t you know this is Uncle Adolf’s’s private beach here,” Cat says. “No GIs allowed.”

“Where’s Cassel?” Jenou asks, looking around at the dark faces.

Rio has the answer and it’s on the tip of her tongue, but when it comes down to it, she can’t say the words. She does not want to say that he is dead. She isn’t ready to believe it herself. Kerwin dead? No, that’s nuts. But there’s a mix of sand and blood grit between her fingers.

“Cassel’s not coming.” She doesn’t mean to sound terse but she’s feeling sick, and one more word and she might be sick. Jack makes eye contact, moves slightly as if he would comfort Rio but thinks better of it and instead pulls off his helmet to push his unruly red hair back.

The jittery smartass talk dies out then for a while. They straighten their gear, take long pulls from their canteens, cast worried looks around, and follow Cole as he feels his way forward, leaving the beach.

“Topping this dune, keep low. Don’t give them a silhouette.”

They keep low.

Cassel. Dead.

Beyond the dune there’s a dip, a sort of natural ditch partly choked with straw-like beach grass. The depression runs parallel to the beach and they follow this, relieved to be able to stand up. A low, reassuring conversation starts up again.

“Sarge blew the hell out of that machine gun.”

“Is Cassel hurt?”

“Are they evacuating him?”

“Who was shooting, was that a German?”

“Cassel bought it.”

“Bought what?”

“Just some fugging Italian, I heard, not Krauts. But Sarge got them with grenades, boom, boom.”

“Keep quiet,” Sergeant Cole says, and there’s a raggedness to his voice. “Shut up and whoever’s got their canteen banging, tighten it down. Keep your interval.”

Keeping an interval is easier said than done moving through pitch darkness where the person in front of you disappears within twenty yards.

Rio follows Jenou and, as far as she can tell, is followed in turn by Sticklin.

I’m lost. We’re all lost. Cassel most of all.

A runner from Lieutenant Liefer comes huffing and puffing up behind them and only barely avoids being shot by yelling, “Mustard, mustard!”

Jenou says, “Ketchup!” She’s the only one to remember the call sign.

Rio bends down and wipes the blood off her hands onto a sparse tuft of sere grass. But it’s on her rifle as well. So she tries to wipe that with the tail of her shirt, which is soaked with salt water and coated with wet sand. Not good for the mechanism of her rifle, but necessary. She feels wrong, feels like she’s destroying evidence of Kerwin’s life, like she’s trying to forget him, insulting his memory by needing to get his blood off her.

Luther Geer, his voice quieter than usual, asks, “Is Cassel dead?”

Rio’s stomach heaves, and she vomits off to the side. Trying to be discreet. Trying not to look weak. Like a girl.

“Let it go, Geer,” Stick says quietly.

The runner is with Cole, and in defiance of orders the squad gathers around to eavesdrop.

“Loot says this is the wrong way,” the runner announces nervously, anticipating a hostile reaction. “Go inland. She says there’s a road.”

“I’m in a nice sheltered gully here,” Cole answers. “I’ve got cover. She wants us on an open road instead?”

“Orders from the limey captain. Plus they can’t drive the jeep down this gully.”

“The half-track can do it.”

“Bit of a SNAFU there, Sarge: our only remaining half-track took a round right through the engine block. We got a jeep. One jeep.”

“Uh-huh,” Cole says, and spits. “And what squad is taking point on this little stroll down a wide-open road where we don’t know where we are?”

“You’re farthest south,” the runner says, and shrugs to show that it’s not his decision, he’s just the messenger.

“Swell,” Cole mutters. He grabs Rio’s sleeve and pulls her aside. “You all right?”

“Yeah, just like delayed seasickness or something.”