Silver Stars (Front Lines #2)(100)

“I want you to know, I’m relieved you’re not suggesting we stay on this side of the river.”

“The Krauts are on this side,” Rio points out.

“Precisely,” Jack says.

It’s easy enough to say swim, but it turns out to be rather more difficult. The current is powerful, and the river bends in places so it threatens to bear them right back to the same shore farther downstream. They walk in silence, searching for a place to cross, creeping through the night, guided by the sound of water on their left and the frenzied sounds of battle and machine gun fire behind them.

The squad may be back there fighting, if any of them made it ashore, but Rio and Jack tacitly acknowledge that they will search for a ford farther from the battle, not closer to it.

He thinks I’m crazy.

No, Rio, he thinks you’re “splendid.”

At times the stumps of burned trees and the tangle of blasted shrubbery obscure their view of the river, which in any case can be better heard than seen in the deep darkness. This is a blessing because from time to time a boat or a body comes floating by. None of the bodies are German.

Rio fears looking over and seeing Jillion’s body . . . or Cat’s . . . or Stick’s.

Or Jenou’s.

She pushes that thought away as far as she can, but it doesn’t work. Jenou was in the water, the water that boiled with machine gun bullets.

Not Jenou, please, God, not Jenou. I told her she would be okay.

Rio and Jack walk for perhaps a half mile, creeping silently, alert to possible German patrols, before coming to a place where they can get at the river and where the bend ahead is toward the right, which should help them to land on the opposite shore. They fashion a sort of tiny raft out of small branches woven together and buoy it by draining their canteens and sealing them tight to act as floats. Weapons and gear, excess clothing and boots are all piled onto the raft, which rides way too low in the water to keep anything dry, but is better than nothing.

Jack strips down to just his boxer shorts, and Rio down to her identical pair plus her army bra. The night is cold, and they are shivering violently before they even touch the icy water.

“Nothing for it but to j-j-jump in,” Jack says, his teeth chattering.

“Yep,” Rio acknowledges with equal dread.

They hesitate at the water’s edge, but a machine gun opens up just fifty yards upstream and that motivates them. The water is brutally cold, just short of turning solid. They each keep a hand on the soggy raft and paddle with the other hand, but it is soon clear that paddling is irrelevant—the river will decide where they go. So they roll onto their backs, extend their legs downstream, and are carried along, pushing water rather than paddling, pushing themselves, willing themselves out of the faster current toward the onrushing far bank.

They land, teeth chattering so badly neither can speak. They empty the raft, put soaking-wet uniforms on over soaking-wet bodies, fill their canteens from the river, drop in water purification tablets, send up silent prayers that their ammo is not all waterlogged. Then they head back east, back toward the sound of guns.

Rio’s watch has stopped, and she sees condensation under the crystal. “W-w-what time you th-think?”

Jack shakes his head violently. “No idea.” His face is as white as a cotton sheet, his lips blue. Rio imagines she looks much the same—like a walking corpse.

Ahead they see distant orange and yellow flashes and hear the short, sharp explosions, the sound flattened by distance.

“That way,” Jack says, and chops the air. “If we d-d-don’t f-f-f-f, shit. Can’t t-t-alk.”

They set off across a plowed field, furrows all but invisible underfoot so they must step high and heel first or else trip.

“Fug!” Jack yells. “Freeze!”

“Already freezing,” Rio snaps in a cold-rattled voice.

“Mines.”

“What?”

“My foot hit something metal.”

The cold is forgotten. Rio looks around, considers where they are, considers that the engineers have cleared only those minefields along the main line of attack—which will not include this field—and says, “Bad.”

Jack, about ten paces ahead, kneels slowly and feels in the dark. “Yeah. Bloody hell, we’re in a minefield.”

They can try to perfectly retrace their steps—not likely to work in the dark—or sit still and hope for help when the sun comes up.

“Stay there,” Rio says. “I’ll feel my way to you.” She, too, squats down and begins to feel through the mud for the telltale touch of steel. Once her immediate circle is cleared, she sets off crawling toward Jack, who has likewise cleared his immediate area—except for the mine he’s already found.

Rio’s little finger brushes something hard and too smooth to be rock. She says, “Got one.” She carefully feels her way past it and places her helmet gently over the mine to mark it. At last she reaches Jack, and now the cold has overcome the warming effect of adrenaline, and both are shaking so badly they can barely speak.

“I think it doesn’t go off until I lift my foot,” Jack says.

“I heard that was bullshit,” Rio says as calmly as she can. She lowers herself to the ground and begins to probe with numb fingers. Jack’s mine is not hard to locate. It is a cylinder about six inches tall, topped by a stem that adds a couple more inches and holds the trigger.