Silver Stars (Front Lines #2)(105)

Back across the river. Again.

There is no respite from the far shore, with continual German fire, so they crawl and then stand and run hunched over, Pang and Rio each with an arm around the hobbling Cole.

Behind them, the Americans draw back from the river and call in artillery, which now blasts the water and the mud and makes the ground tremble, but it does not force the stubborn Germans to fall back.

An ambulance sits with engine idling behind the scant cover of a stone wall. Medics are working feverishly to bandage and splint and pile their charges into the steaming, overstuffed ambulance.

Rio sends Pang to fetch ammo and haul it back forward. “We got plenty of .30 cal, get all the smoke grenades you can carry! And see if they have any more of those limey phosphorous grenades.”

The medics offer Cole a syrette of morphine as they quickly bandage his leg, but he waves it off. “Later. Listen to me, Richlin, Stick’s got his hands full, so get your ass back up there.”

Rio nods, overwhelmed by the stark fact that they are piling Cole into a newly arrived jeep. “You’ll be okay, Sarge,” Rio tells him. “You’ll be okay.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about,” he says. He feels in his pocket for a fresh cigar, but what appears is a swollen, soggy mass of brown leaves. “Well, hell.”

He’s leaving us.

He’s leaving me!

“Sarge,” Rio says, and emotion chokes her. “I . . .” What can she say when she has so much to express? There is not the slightest doubt in her mind that she’s gotten this far, stayed alive this long, because of the gap-toothed man before her.

Her father had told her to find a good sergeant and stick to him. She had found that sergeant. She had stuck to him.

And now . . .

Cole sticks out his hand. She shakes it.

“You’ll do fine, Richlin. You’re a natural.”

Suddenly there’s the captain cursing a blue streak. “Back up to the line, damn you all, get back forward!”

Rio ignores him until the jeep guns its engines and goes tearing off into the night bearing Sergeant Cole.

“Bye, Sarge,” Rio says.

Pang comes struggling by, loaded down with four steel ammo boxes, two in each hand, and a heavy satchel slung over his shoulder. Rio lifts the satchel, peeks inside, can’t see, so thrusts a hand in to find the familiar and somehow comforting shape of the British-made white phosphorous grenades called SIPs and nicknamed thermoses for their cylindrical shape. They go trudging forward, their hearts in their boots.

“How is he?” Stick asks anxiously when they rejoin the others.

“Million-dollar wound,” Pang says.

A lieutenant neither of them knows runs out of the gloom and says, “What platoon?”

Stick tells him, and the lieutenant says, “We’re making another push. Right now.”

“The hell we are,” Stick says. “Where’s Lieutenant Stone?”

“He caught a frag. He’ll live, but he’s gone and I’m it and my goddamned orders say to move up!”

“Shove your orders up your ass. Sir,” Stick shouts.

“Listen, Sergeant, we’ve got a whole platoon across upstream, and they’re catching it on both flanks.”

“Fug!” Stick yells.

“Now!” the officer bellows with the eerie energy of terror.

And without a word to his squad, Stick starts forward on his own, unwilling to ask anyone to follow him. Rio hesitates and sees Cat looking to her as if for guidance.

“Shit!” Rio snarls and goes after Stick.

Back to the river.

Back stumbling across GIs dead and dying.

Back to the bridge now mostly gone, but with the hand rope still in place so they pull themselves across, fighting the current, pushing floating dead men and women aside, some cursing and blaspheming, others praying, most just putting one foot in front of the other.

Again, they climb the far bank, and the Germans only then spot them. The fire is less this time. The phosphorous in the German bunker has flamed out at last, and they spill into the reeking bunker.

For the first time in an eternity, they are out of the rain. Two German soldiers lie dead. One still burns, his uniform wicking melted human fat into a flame.

With shaking fingers Rio taps out a Lucky Strike and settles it in the corner of her mouth. She pulls out her Zippo and lights it, letting the smoke fill her nostrils and disguise the stench of burning flesh.

“What now, Stick?” Geer asks.

“The Krauts will counterattack, try to push us out,” he says. “So we don’t let ’em. Castain, check that Kraut MG.”

“Barrel’s bent,” Jenou reports. “And the ammo’s mostly cooked off from the phosphorous.”

“Okay, Cat, get the BAR set up here.” Cat has inherited the BAR. He points to the crawl hole that forms the entry to the bunker. “Get as far up as you can without exposing yourself.” Then, to Rio, “Richlin, up on the roof, take Geer with you. The rest of you, dig in on both flanks.”

Rio climbs atop the bunker, up onto logs covered with mud held together by straw that had been crushed down into the seams between logs. It’s not a comfortable firing position, prone on those logs, but it gives her a good field of fire. Without needing to discuss it, Rio takes the left, Geer the right. Twenty yards away, Jenou digs a hole with Pang, and on the other side, Geer’s side, Beebee digs in with Jack. Stick stays in the bunker to help feed Cat and watch the firing hole, which now points back toward their own forces, but which might be turned by determined Germans.