Silver Stars (Front Lines #2)(101)

“You didn’t step on the trigger,” Rio says, exhaling relief. “Your toes are just up against it. Don’t move, and I’ll disarm it.”

For this she needs a pin of some sort, and the only pin she can find is one from her own grenades. “I gotta toss it,” she says to Jack. “So squat down but don’t move your foot yet.”

“You think you know how to—” Jack begins, but Rio has pulled the pin and whips her grenade away, as far as she can throw it. It lands, they wait, counting, then . . .

“Dud,” Jack says. “Possibly a result of us drowning the lousy thing.”

Rio awkwardly slips the pin into the hole on the mine’s stem, just as she’d been taught to do a million years ago in basic training.

“Thank you, Sergeant Mackie,” she chatters under her breath. “It’s safe, Stafford. You can move.”

But of course they can’t move far, not in a minefield. And anyway their small reserve of ambition to move on is now all used up. Rio lies down in the mud and Jack lies beside her, and without needing to discuss it they press their bodies together to hold on to what body heat there is.

“I s-s-spose a fire w-would be bad,” Jack says.

“Not for the s-s-snipers.”

“Nothing to burn anyway.”

For a time they work at scraping out a shallow depression, but the mud just slides back in. And then the rain starts up again, rain that forms a crust of ice on their clothing but melts on contact with the soil to add to the soupiness of the mud.

“Pigs in mud,” Rio says, disgusted by the state of her own body and uniform. The only thing not black with dirt on Jack is his red hair. “We sh-sh-should sleep.”

“G-g-o ahead, I’ll keep watch.”

“Kinda doubt anyone is going to sneak up on us, Stafford; we’re in a minefield.”

“Excellent point,” Jack concedes. “You know,” he says in a lighter tone, “this could be quite romantic if you weren’t covered in filth and didn’t stink like one of my socks.”

“You’re not exactly Prince Charming yourself,” Rio says, and both stifle laughter.

For a while they lie side by side on the ground, gazing up at falling rain or away toward bright yellow explosions and the deadly streaks of tracer rounds. Both are freezing except for the places where their bodies meet.

“Do you miss England?” Rio asks after a while.

She feels his shrug. “I’ve barely been there in years, aside from our training stop. But yes, I suppose I do.”

“You could probably transfer to the British Army now.”

“Trying to get rid of me?”

She doesn’t answer directly but says, “I miss home.”

“Not enjoying scenic Italy? You live in some sort of rustic splendor, I recall.”

“Gedwell Falls. Northern California, the part where Hollywood isn’t. Small town. Me and Jenou and Strand.”

“Yes, the pilot last seen singing ‘White Christmas’ while everything around us was blowing up. I remember him vaguely. Is he all right?”

Now he feels her shrug. “I got a letter from him. He’s in England, recovered, waiting to be sent out again.”

“Bomber pilots.” He sighs. “If only I’d thought to join the Air Corps.”

“What? And miss this?”

They lie silent for a long while until Rio begins to suspect that he has fallen asleep, which outrages her: what kind of person can sleep in this? They are spooned now, Rio behind him, her body pressed to his back, one arm draped over him, and Rio thinks it’s quite nice in an awful sort of way. Then he begins to twist around, bringing them face-to-face, so apparently he can’t sleep either.

“Tell me one thing, Corporal Richlin. Are you engaged to him?”

Part of her wants to laugh. The question comes out of the blue, and she doesn’t have a ready answer.

“I don’t know,” she admits.

“Do you . . . do you intend to be?”

“That’s up to him, isn’t it?” she evades.

“I see. If he asks. If he proposes. I don’t wish to . . .” He seems unable to find words for what he doesn’t wish to do.

“I don’t know,” she says again. “I don’t know anything, Stafford. Jack. I don’t know why I’m here or what’s happening or if I’ll be around tomorrow or dead like Suarez. Or Cassel. Or Magraff. Jesus. I can’t even . . . I mean, what’s the point, Jack? What’s the point of thinking about later?”

“It’s what keeps me going, I suppose. Later has got to be better than now.”

His face is inches from hers; she can see the glitter of his eyes. They speak in whispers.

“We should catch some Zs,” Rio says, mostly as a way of shutting him up.

“Just tell me, Rio.”

“Tell you what?”

“Do you love him?”

She takes a long time to answer as she spools through memories of Strand. Their first awkward date. The plane ride they took. The picnic. Their first kiss. And the hotel room in Tunis.

What can she say? What can she say when she has slept with Strand? Can she answer anything other than, of course I love him?

In the end she says, “I’m not sure love is a thing I can do anymore.” She means it to be airy and flippant, but it sounds sad.