Silver Stars (Front Lines #2)(64)

“What are you doing?” Geer demands.

She doesn’t answer but crawls away toward Jack. “It’s me,” she hisses when she gets close. She finds him lying on a shore too narrow to quite hold him so his right shoulder is up against a low shelf and his left is in the water.

“You good?” she asks.

“Fugging lovely,” he says.

“Stay here, Jack,” she says.

“What are you—”

Whoompf!

Cat has loosed her grenade, and it is followed instantly by the sound of her carbine, joined quickly by Geer and the .50 caliber.

Rio pushes up, up to her feet, numb, a part of her mind dreamy and distant, while another part is focused with razor-sharp intensity. A deep breath and her feet are moving, moving, running, boots splashing the shallow water, digging sloppy divots in gravelly mud.

Branches whip at her face, thorns rip her uniform, she’s running, running, and now firing from the hip, bang-bang-bang!

The one thing the Germans won’t expect: attack!

A dark shape ahead, a gleam of starlight on the iconic gray helmet and bang-bang and the German falls straight back. She leaps his dying body, with another Kraut ahead, firing at her. She sees his muzzle flash, hears the bullets, fires, fires, runs, and the Kraut is still firing when she plows into him, trampling him in her rush. Now she sees four, maybe five muzzle flashes ahead, coming from behind trees. She yanks a grenade free, pulls the pin, and throws it. She drops to the ground, hears shouts of alarm in German and then, crumpf!

Small branches pelt her helmet, and she’s up instantly, rushing, no longer firing, waiting for targets.

There! Bang!

There! Bang! Bang!

Two rounds left in the clip. A German rushes in from her right firing a Schmeisser submachine gun from the hip, disciplined bursts that chop at the trees. Rio is moving faster than the Kraut can turn, and she tosses her second grenade at him, not fifteen feet away, too close—have to keep moving and crumpf!

Something big and thick and too soft to be wood hits her in passing, but she’s beyond caring. There’s a roaring in her head, a sound like a million waterfalls crashing, her body is filled with lightning, she is unstoppable, invincible, unkillable, and she screams as she runs, screams, “Die, die, die, goddamn you!”

Two shots come in rapid succession, two shots that sober her up like a bucket of cold water thrown in her face. The shots are from behind!

She twists in mid-run to see the German she’d trampled earlier. He’s up, and his rifle is leveled and smoking. And just a few feet behind him, Jack’s rifle is also leveled, and also trails a faint wisp of smoke from the barrel. The German stands for what feels like an eternity, then crumples.

Rio stops running and realizes no one is firing at her.

“Cease firing!” she yells at the top of her lungs. With predatory alertness she strains to hear. The sound of men moving, but moving away. Are the Krauts pulling back? If so . . .

“Jack, with me!” she yells, and barrels back toward Strand, who has blessedly fallen silent. She drops beside him, lays her rifle on his chest, and grabs his uniform fabric. Jack, beside her, does the same, and side by side they haul Strand away. But it is inch by inch. Strand is a healthy-sized man and the soil is far from smooth.

Rio yells, “Geer, Cat, all of you fall back!”

“Artillery?” Jack gasps.

She nods. “Gotta be coming. They fell back to call it in.”

They are no more than halfway back to the makeshift firing position before a whistling sound in the air proves her right. The round lands with shattering effect but off to their left, blowing the surface of the lake into a spout of water and mud.

How long for the Krauts to call in a correction? How long for their gunners to adjust?

They are at the fallen trees and must pull branches away before they can carry on dragging Strand. The second round of shells lands on the right line but sixty or so feet behind them.

“Cat! Turn south!” Rio shouts.

They are through the barrier but nowhere near escaping what Rio knows will be a murderously accurate artillery fire mission.

Jack squirms, hauls Strand onto his shoulders. Rio grabs Strand’s legs and lifts and the three of them stumble away.

A whistle in the air.

“Down!”

They fall on their faces and Jack says something, which is lost in the noise of the explosion, but in the flash of light Rio sees what Jack has seen: a decently deep hole formed by a tree that’s been ripped out by the roots. They crawl like worms and drag themselves and Strand into the hole.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Shells are dropping like deadly rain, blasting trees and turf, and ripping the world apart like a giant throwing a toddler’s tantrum. Hot, spent shrapnel clatters on Rio’s helmet. Noise, noise everywhere; the ground itself is like the skin of a bass drum.

The firing stops suddenly. Rio speaks but can’t hear herself. Jack’s mouth is moving, but the sound might as well be coming through a heavy door it’s so muffled.

She risks rising just enough to take a quick, shaky glance around. The plane lies there still, a new crater just off its surviving wing, its skin torn by shrapnel but not burning.

Of course: the Krauts want to take the plane intact, or at least the bombsight.

The Germans will move up now and finish us off.

Her thoughts are as clear as if they’d been carefully written out: with arty stopped, the Krauts will advance. They can’t outrun the Krauts, not while hauling Strand.