Silver Stars (Front Lines #2)(82)

They creep down the alley, which opens onto a narrow street. This street seems less damaged—it’s still possible to see patches of cobblestone not covered by rubble. But they proceed cautiously since they cannot see beyond a curve ahead. But then they happen on an extraordinary sight, a surreal sight: there are dozens of big, white and tan loaves of Italian bread, and many more fragments of bread outside a burned-out bakery. It’s like a snowstorm of bread crumbs. A solitary crow has found this bounty and casts a jaundiced eye at the advancing GIs, following it up with a harsh warning croak.

“Someone blew up the bakery,” Tilo says. “If we find a cheese shop and a wine store, we’re set for the duration.” He stuffs a fat, crusty loaf in his shirt. The heel sticks up under his chin.

The alleyway being only moderately filled with rubble, they advance, Rio hugging the left side, Jack and Tilo on the right. They measure each step, one foot in front of the other, heel to toe, heel to toe, rifles at waist height, training side to side, eyes scanning ahead, up, right, left.

“I’ll be damned,” Tilo says. “There’s my bottle.”

Rio hears him.

Rio says nothing. She is focused on a sound from ahead, maybe a rat, maybe a civilian, maybe . . .

Suarez grabs the bottle, which is sitting quite undisturbed on a dusty table outside what must be a bar.

Bang!

To ears accustomed to everything from tank fire to 88s to the massive explosions of naval gunfire, it sounds slight. Slight but terribly close and intimate.

Rio slams her body against the wall and yells, “Stafford, Suarez, down!”

“Shit!” Jack yells.

Rio spins to look and sees Jack rushing to Tilo, who sits on the ground. His face is black with soot. His uniform is smoking. His right arm hangs twisted all the way around, like he’s trying to reach the far side of his lower back. Blood gushes from the chewed meat of his shoulder.

Rio rushes to him, but bam-bam-bam! a German rifle drives her back.

Tilo says, “I think I’m all right.”

Rio on her belly now, Jack on his, both pressed against their respective walls, bullets everywhere, and Tilo stares blankly ahead. He looks baffled and amused, as though something unexpected but entertaining has occurred.

The firing stops.

Rio glances frantically around, looking for a way to get to Tilo, maybe to grab and drag him to cover. But there is no cover, not close enough.

A single bullet hits Tilo’s half-severed arm, knocking it free of the arteries and tendons holding it. The arm lies on the cobbles, seeming to point at Rio.

Seconds tick.

“What do we do?” Jack calls to her in an anguished voice.

A second, carefully aimed bullet hits Tilo in the chest. There is the cleaver sound of steel on flesh and paradoxically it knocks Tilo forward so he sits bent over as if examining his shoes or doing a sit-up back at Camp Maron.

A pause. The sniper is waiting for the pressure to mount, hoping a new target will present itself.

“Stay put,” Rio tells Jack. If she can just time it perfectly, grab Tilo’s shoulders, haul him back over the cobbles to the door opening . . . She calculates the time. No way it’s less than seven or eight seconds, more likely ten or fifteen.

Suicide.

Jack drops back down the street, back to where he can cross without being shot, and sidles up to Rio’s side.

“No way,” he says, panting.

The sniper fires a third time. And a fourth. Tilo falls backward now. The loaf of bread in his shirt is soggy with blood.

“You fugging Kraut *, he’s already dead!” Rio cries.

The unseen German sniper shoots Tilo a few more times, maybe hoping to goad them. And Rio is ready to be goaded, panting and sobbing in frustration and rage, but feeling Jack’s arm on her shoulder, hearing his voice, “He’s dead, Rio, he’s dead. We can’t help him.”

“I’ll kill that Kraut bastard,” Rio says. The threat is hollow, and she knows it. They may well get the sniper, but Tilo will still be dead.

“We have to go back and warn Stick that Jerry’s booby-trapped the place.”

“Goddammit, Suarez,” Rio says, half like she’s yelling at him, half like she’s mourning. But she turns away into the shelter of the alley and in a few minutes finds Stick and the squad, much where she left them.

“Where’s Suarez?”

“Stayed behind,” Rio says with a quick, furious wipe of her eyes. “Booby trap and then a sniper.”

“Suarez bought the farm?” Geer asks, an almost tender note in his usually abrasive voice. He reaches to the cat—no longer a kitten—that rides inside his shirt.

“We have to get out of here,” Jillion says in a trembly voice. Like all of them, her face is covered in dirt, grease, sweat, and plaster dust. It makes the terror in her wide eyes even more insistent. “We gotta go back and tell Sergeant Cole we can’t get through.”

She’s not wrong.

Jesus Christ, I lost Suarez!

Stick says, “We pull back, that Kraut up there’ll see it and have an MG sitting down on this very rock, and we’ll have to pay twice for the same rubble. No, we are not pulling back, to hell with pulling back, we’re finding a way through!”

If only I’d seen Suarez reach for that bottle.

Should have. Could have.