Silver Stars (Front Lines #2)(54)
“You admit to being seduced, but you can’t talk about the war?”
“I guess that doesn’t make sense, does it? Maybe I’m not as ashamed as I should be of having . . . you know. I mean, I’m hardly the first girl to lose her virginity before marriage. But at the time . . .” She trails off.
“Does that mean you are ashamed of what you do as a soldier?”
“No! No, it’s just that I’ve always known I would . . . you know . . . have s-e-x. I pictured it happening after I was married, and in some place more romantic than a cheap hotel room in Tunis . . . I pictured it being more . . . important . . . than it felt.”
“The war makes other things seem small.”
“Oh, fug the war!” Rio says with sudden anger. Then, abashed, “Look at my language! I never, ever even thought that word before.”
“It’s changing us, I guess,” Frangie says. She shakes her head slowly, troubled deeply by the thought. “What will we be by the time we’re done?”
“Alive, I hope.” Rio rises to her feet and offers Frangie a hand, pulling her up.
“What do you do now, Richlin?”
“Find the guy who came down with me and see if we can’t scrounge up some chow, check for mail, dig a nice hole for the night. Then in the morning, head back up.”
“To the front line.”
“It’s why they gave me the rifle,” Rio says. “You?”
Frangie holds up her bag. “Here, for now at least. It’s why they gave me the bandages.”
Rio does not find Beebee, which is no surprise in the chaos. It wouldn’t matter except that Vanderpool and Cole have made her responsible for him.
Well, I didn’t ask for that.
She cannot really dig a decent hole in the sand, so in the end she stumbles on an impromptu camp of lost or simply misplaced soldiers with a campfire in the lee of a barely head-high dune. It’s dark by this time and rather than introduce herself, which will mean identifying herself as female, she stays to the gloom at the very edge of the fire’s light, checking the faces for Beebee. When she fails again to find him, she spreads her shelter half out as a ground cover and curls up to sleep.
The night is warm, and it has been a very long day.
At first light Rio is up and once more looking for Beebee—who the day before had been trapped into doing some paperwork for their prisoners. She resents it in the extreme and walks the beach muttering about having to babysit the green kid instead of getting back to the squad and doing her job.
The beach is still a madhouse of noisy activity. A big LCU with its bow doors open disgorges a tank; planes roar overhead; a mired howitzer is being dragged and pushed out of the surf; crates and pallets lie open, disgorging their contents of ammo and food and blankets; a flexible fuel pipe is being squared away at a pumping station; a gaggle of reporters sit typing and smoking under a tent.
From farther inland come the occasional sounds of artillery or German bombs. Rio wonders idly where the American bombers are, shouldn’t they be hammering the Krauts? But just then she spots a high formation, two big Vs of B-17s. She shades her eyes and imagines Strand up there in the cockpit of one. She imagines that he’s looking down and wondering whether Rio is somewhere down on that confusing beach.
Then, finally, she spots Beebee. She has to blink twice to make out what he’s doing, and even then she can’t quite believe it. Beebee is leading a donkey cart. The donkey is small, mangy, and minus half of one ear, which looks to have been chewed off. The cart is small, a ramshackle wooden thing on what can only be bicycle tire rims. As she draws close she sees that the cart is nearly full. There is a forty-pound wooden crate of rations and a half dozen small metal ammo boxes, but it appears these are mostly there as camouflage, piled strategically to conceal the true treasure behind them: two big number-ten cans of peaches, four bottles of Sicilian wine, and dozens of tiny packs of Old Gold cigarettes.
“Hey, Rio,” he says.
“You’ve been busy,” Rio says.
Beebee shrugs, but he’s obviously pleased with himself. “Also, I came across this.” He takes something from his pocket and hands it to her. It’s heavy for its size. “It’s a whetstone for your koummya. Happy belated eighteenth.”
“Well . . . that is very kind of you,” Rio says, and means it. Her irritation at him is significantly reduced. “I guess we’d best head back to the platoon.”
The donkey is reluctant to move and no threat or entreaty seems able to motivate him, but just then two ships open up, sending salvo after salvo over their heads, and the donkey seems to think that’s a signal to advance.
It is soon clear that a serious battle is taking place a couple miles up the road. A passing jeep driver yells something about the Hermann G?ring Division and Kraut tanks. The name Hermann G?ring vaguely rings a bell for Rio—a chubby, smiling Nazi, as she recalls from newsreel footage—but the word tanks conjures up a much more compelling picture and adds hesitation to her next few steps. A Spitfire goes tearing away toward the action, flying just above treetop level. And thousands of feet above them fly three more B-17s.
Rio and Beebee (and the donkey, now named General Patton) reach the barn they’d shot up earlier. They are stopped by an MP, a thirtyish woman with the suspicious, slightly predatory look of a shopkeeper who thinks she’s spotted a shoplifter. She warns them there is fighting up ahead.