Front Lines (Front Lines #1)(88)

Run like hell back to boats that may or may not be there.

She freezes. Something ahead. On the road.

It takes several frazzled seconds, several tentative steps, before she recalls the hand signal for “freeze.” She cocks her left elbow, raises her left hand, and makes a fist. Nevertheless Tilo Suarez, who has been sleep-marching, plows into her.

“Hey,” he protests.

“Shut up, Suarez! Sarge!” This in urgent whispers.

Sergeant Cole holds his palm out to the soldiers behind him, then motions for them to drop and take cover. The squad, and then the rest of the platoon, takes a knee and waits. Sticklin trots off the road, drops, and readies his BAR.

“What do you see, Richlin?” Cole is at her side, hunched low.

It’s still just early morning. The hope of a colorful sunrise fades, and now the light is the gray of raw oysters as cloud covers the horizon.

Rio peers down the road through the gloom, squints, and lowers her head slightly, trying for a different perspective.

“I think it’s a man, Sarge. I think he’s got a light.”

Cole draws a deep breath. “I think you may be right. I make it a man and some kind of lantern. You’ve got good eyes, Richlin. Okay. Advance slowly.”

Advance?

“Sarge?”

“Go on, Richlin. Keep your eyes open, issue the challenge, anything happens hit the deck and we’ll open up. Stick? Heads up with that BAR.”

The man—if that’s indeed what it is—stands about two hundred yards up the road. There is a hut off to the man’s right, a low adobe structure no bigger than a garden toolshed. But there could easily be a couple of German infantrymen in there. There could be a machine gun.

It can happen so fast. Instantly. Without warning. Like it had to Kerwin.

To him. But not to me.

“Mustard!” Rio yells, louder and shakier than she intends.

No answer. She raises her rifle to her shoulder. She sights on the figure. She flicks off the safety.

Elevation? Windage?

“Mustard! Answer or I shoot!”

“Is it shallots? Do not shoot, I beg you!”

The words are heavily accented. German accent? Or Italian?

“Why shouldn’t I shoot?”

“Because I am not your enemy.”

“Put your hands up in the air!”

The lantern, if that’s what it is, rises from below waist height to above head height. This has the effect of spilling yellow light down on the head of an old man dressed in an aged uniform that he has not been able to button all the way.

“I’m moving up, Sarge.” Rio’s mouth tastes of bile. Her heart pounds, but instinct reassures her: it’s just one old man. But then again, there is the hut, a closed door, a window dark in shadow.

“Stick!” Rio yells.

“Yeah!”

“Watch that doorway.” Then, to the man with the accent, “I’m coming forward. Anyone comes out of that building, we open up.”

“You have nothing to fear, mon ami.”

I have plenty to fear.

Keeping her rifle sighted she walks steadily forward.

“It’s just a man,” Rio yells back to Cole. “One guy. He’s not armed.”

Cole barks orders for Magraff, Suarez, and Pang to rush the building. “Look out for booby traps.” Then he trots up to Rio. Together they look the man in the road over.

He is perhaps fifty-five or sixty-five years old, with weary, heavily bagged but humorous eyes, and a magnificent handlebar mustache that’s eaten the lower half of his face. He’s holding a lantern and having some difficulty keeping it up in the air. There is no weapon visible, and the uniform, while aged, carries a patch with the flag of France. The old flag, the one before the occupation. There are medals on his chest.

In the middle of the road he has placed a stone, smaller than Rio’s helmet. Leaned against this stone is a small child’s slate chalkboard with the word Barricade written on two lines. Barri and Cade.

“Okay, bud, what’s your story?” Cole asks.

“May I lower the lantern? My strength is not what it once was . . .”

“Fine. Now who the hell are you?”

“I am Sergeant Maxim LeFevre, of the army of France.”

“Okay, Sergeant Le . . . whatever,” Sergeant Cole says. “Why are you standing here in the middle of the goddamn road?” Cole still has his tommy gun trained on the man.

“I have been returned to active duty through no desire of my own, I assure you. And I have been tasked to set up a barricade to slow the advance of any American troops on the roads.”

For a full thirty seconds neither Rio nor Cole can think of anything to say to that.

Jillion Magraff calls out, “Building’s clear, Sarge.”

Rio and Sergeant Cole lower their weapons.

“You’re here to slow our advance?”

The Frenchman shrugs, and with the fine nuance of his people manages with that shrug to convey helplessness, cynicism, and amusement. “I must follow orders, yes? So I have set up a barricade. Une barricade symbolique. A symbolic barricade.”

“A symbolic barricade?”

The man indicated the rock and the sign. “Comme vous voyez. As you see.”

“And you lit a lamp so . . .”