Silver Stars (Front Lines #2)(62)

Rio shakes her head. “We didn’t bring entrenching tools. Make sure they’ve got their dog tags, and we’ll leave them for graves registration.”

Guttierez looks defiant, though the other fellow, Joe, seems ready to move out.

“Graves registration isn’t going near them, miss. We never delivered our payload. You understand? We’ve got four tons’ worth of five-hundred-pound bombs still in the bomb bay.”

Rio, Geer, Jack, Cat, and Petersen all take a quick step back, as if an extra three feet of distance is all it would take to escape a blast. It produces a comic effect.

“And you figure with four tons of HE we want to stay around digging graves?” Geer demands. “You’re fugging crazy.” He shoots a look at Rio as if expecting her to argue.

“We need to make a stretcher for Strand,” Rio says. “Then we need to get the hell out of here.”

“I got rank here long as the skipper is, um, off his head,” Guttierez says stubbornly.

“All due respect, Guttierez, but this is my patrol,” Rio says. Her voice is soft but all the more definite for it. “I can’t force you to leave, but I’m taking Stra—Fish, whatever the hell we want to call him, and we’re getting out of here.” Without a pause she turns to her detail. “Petersen, try to raise someone and report this in. Tell them about the bodies and the bombs. Cat and Geer? We’re going to have to use your rifles to make a stretcher.”

In ten minutes a scratchy, distant voice has acknowledged that they have the surviving crew, and Cat and Geer have stretched canvas salvaged from the bomber to fashion a crude stretcher. They are just carefully rolling Strand onto the stretcher when Jack says, “Shh!”

Everyone freezes. Every ear strains. And most of those ears hear the noises that can only be men moving through the woods.

A terse whisper. “Jack! Cat! Check it out.”

Rio feels she should go, feels it powerfully, but that’s not what Cole has taught her. She’s in charge, and that means sending others into harm’s way.

Cat retrieves her rifle, and she and Jack plunge into the deeper darkness beneath the trees.

“No one makes a sound,” Rio hisses. Spotting the pistol in Guttierez’s hand, she adds, “And no one shoots until I say so.”

She looks in every direction, taking in the terrain in quick glances. The lake defines their northern flank with a gravel beach mere inches wide. To their west is the trail of broken trees, and beyond that either safety or a German counterattack against the Gela beachhead. And east is where the sounds of moving men are.

South it is.

Trees, some tall by Sicilian standards, run in every direction. Hard soil. No ditches or depressions. Strand unable to walk. They can fight from the plane, but the plane is a massive explosion just waiting for an opportunity to flatten the woods and kill half the fish in the lake.

“Guttierez, Joe, any chance of getting one of your machine guns out?”

“Sure,” Joe says, nodding, and moves briskly toward the plane. Guttierez has no choice but to follow.

“Geer?” She jerks her head toward the west. “Drop back, take a look in those fallen branches and trees, see if there’s a place we can fight.”

Geer takes off at a run.

“Should I call it in?” Petersen asks.

“No. The radio squawks.” She sees Joe and Guttierez manhandling an awkward-looking machine gun—its mounting hardware half-removed—out of the plane’s surviving hatch. She helps him hand it down and then takes a box of ammo from Joe. He climbs after it with a second box and a great belt of ammo over his shoulders like a shawl.

“It ain’t great,” Geer reports back, breathless from his run. “But there’s a place where we could get behind a couple trees and dig in.”

“Okay, get Joe and Guttierez set up there, and I’ll drag Strand over while—”

Cat and Jack come crashing back at a full run, holding on to their helmets and yelling, “Krauts!”

Guns fire and bullets whiz by.

“How far back?” Rio demands.

“Three seconds!” Cat yells.

“Jack, help me get Strand. Preeling, Geer’s that way, go, go! Geer! Preeling’s coming to you!”

More firing, and this time the sound is much nearer. Rio grabs the shoulder of Strand’s flight suit, Jack grabs the other, and they drag him back.

And Strand starts singing “White Christmas” in a low but audible voice.

As if spurred on by the singing, the firing becomes much more determined. A bullet plucks at Jack’s sleeve. Another one cuts a furrow across Strand’s chest.

“Shit!” Rio yells. “Strand . . .”

“. . . and children listen, to hear sleigh bells in the snow . . .”

“Leave him,” Rio says, feeling like she’s been stabbed in the heart, feeling a boiling panic within her, but relinquishing her grip, falling back onto her behind, spinning, crawling, rising, running, with Jack beside her and bullets so thick they could be a swarm of bees.

“Coming in!” Jack yells.

They reach two fallen logs, one angled over the other, forming a V with the point toward the attack. The logs aren’t big, no more than six inches in diameter, but Cat and Joe have been busy dragging anything wood-like to this makeshift barricade. Geer is on his butt kicking dirt and rock into a barrier beneath the trees with the heels of his boots and cursing a blue streak.