Silver Stars (Front Lines #2)(56)

“No,” Rio says, outraged. She gives Jenou a shove. “No. Because of my great, manly muscles, that’s why, you catty witch.”

For a wonderful moment, a golden suspended moment, they are Jenou and Rio once more. Rio feels it, feels herself back in Gedwell Falls, back at the diner stealing Jenou’s fries, and vice versa.

I was a girl. I was just a girl. And after a moment’s reflection, she silently adds, Past tense?

She is on the edge of saying to Jenou that Strand seemed quite taken with her inadequate figure and in fact spent quite some time exploring it in detail. However, that very thought, not even the memory, but the fact that she would think of saying something so vulgar, kills the fine nostalgic feeling.

Okay, Jenou: yes, I’ve changed. Happy?

This thought in turn sends Rio’s mind off inventorying the ways in which she has changed. She’s drunk alcohol with serious intent. She’s cursed. She’s killed. And she’s had sex. She strives to connect those facts to memories of herself just, what, a year ago? Back then the only connection she had to the war was via her big sister, Rachel. Even after Rachel joined the navy it had all just seemed like some distant adventure to Rio. It had not been until that terrible morning when news of Rachel’s death had reached the Richlin family that it hit home.

She remembers her mother’s collapse on the living room rug. She remembers even more clearly the way her father stood in profile against the innocent sunlight beyond the door, slumped, wounded, silent. Being a man. Being a man? Or being an ex-soldier? Will it be different for us, as Marr suggested? Or will we have to turn into them just to get through this?

The two friends sit side by side, each lost in related but separate memories, when the conversation of Sergeants O’Malley and Cole penetrates Rio’s reverie.

“We’re infantry, not search and rescue,” Cole says to O’Malley.

“That’s what I told Vanderpool, and he said that’s exactly what he radioed to the colonel, but the colonel explained that this was the goddamned army, not a goddamned knitting circle, whatever the hell that is, and he was to follow orders.” He spat undiplomatically and added, “Officers. Jesus wept.”

“Goddammit,” Cole says, and his eyes veer toward Rio, who groans.

“Three, four men, tops,” O’Malley says placatingly. “Send your corporal.”

“Stick’s foot is swollen to twice its size. Nettles,” Cole says, disgusted. He looks again at Rio, and she actually turns around to see if he’s perhaps looking at someone behind her. But no, there’s only a tree behind her. And it’s not a curious or idle stare: Cole is measuring her.

“Richlin,” Cole says at last. “If that leg of yours is okay, you are about to volunteer.”





17

RAINY SCHULTERMAN—SALERNO, ITALY

It is hot where Rainy walks as well, two hundred and fifty miles almost directly north from Gela Beach, Sicily, and perhaps a mile south of the outskirts of Salerno.

Rainy and Cisco huddle on the beach until the sun rises, not wanting to look suspicious walking in the dark. Then they climb onto the road, which runs very nearly as straight as a ruler toward the town.

At first the only traffic is a couple of Fiat trucks, both comically overburdened with open crates of vegetables and great bundles of what look like reeds. They walk far behind a donkey cart for a while, keeping pace with it until they see that it is stopped at a roadblock ahead.

“If I had a gat, I’d get up close and let ’em have it,” Cisco says. He has returned to full, swaggering arrogance during the hours since they left the Topaz. But there’s an edge to his swagger now, a defensive, angry edge.

Humiliation.

“We wouldn’t win a gunfight,” Rainy says with frayed patience. She had not liked Cisco on first meeting, she had frankly hated him aboard the sub, and so far he is doing nothing to earn a second chance. “They might have a radio or a phone. We don’t want Italians running around the countryside looking for us.”

The pistol strapped to her inner thigh chafes cruelly, and she bitterly resents having to wear the dress. Almost as bad are the shoes, which are not quite the right size and tend to crush her toes with each step.

“So what do we do?” Cisco demands. “You’re the know-it-all.”

“We have papers.”

“Forgeries!”

“And I may be able to pass off my Italian,” Rainy says.

“Yeah, well I don’t speaka de Old Country,” Cisco says.

She looks closely at him. His face is badly bruised and impressively swollen on his left side. Hers is bruised as well, and they look like they’ve either had a hell of an argument or been beaten up and . . .

“We were robbed,” Rainy says, snapping her fingers. “We were in a cart, just like that one, bringing melons to market in the city and bandits . . . And you, you’re so swollen you can’t speak.”

“But I can speak.”

“For God’s sake, Cisco, try to follow, would you?” she snaps.

“Hey, sister, we’re in my country now—”

“A country where you don’t speaka de language.”

“I won’t take that smart mouth of yours much longer,” he warns. He waves his hand back and forth in a sideways chopping motion. A threat.