Silver Stars (Front Lines #2)(84)

CRUMP!

Crump!

Two grenades, one right here, loud enough to make their ears ring and raise a fine dust cloud, the second one outside, separated by perhaps half a second. Will the Krauts fall for it?

The hole in the wall isn’t all they’d have liked. It is not a doorway, just a hole barely big enough to crawl through. Rio points her rifle into the dark hole and fires off a whole clip, eight rounds. No response.

Rio sticks her head through the hole, calls for Jenou to hand her a flashlight, and points the beam around.

“Looks like the entrance to an apartment building,” Rio reports. “Stairs and mailboxes.” She squeezes through.

A tiny, wiry-haired dog stands its ground and barks furiously at her. “Hey, boy, relax. They should name you Lucky, pooch. I could have shot you.”

Jenou fishes a bit of cracker from her pocket, kneels, and hands it to the dog. The dog eats it greedily and immediately starts barking again.

“Ingrate.”

They repeat the process six more times. Sometimes the explosions are so closely timed they are indistinguishable. Other times there’s a full second between. Rio wonders what the Kraut sniper can possibly be making of all this.

But at last they reach a looted grocer’s, every shelf empty. Through the jagged glass-ringed hole where the store’s front window had once been she can cautiously look out and see a doorway into the sniper’s lair.

“Cat,” Rio calls.

“She found another toilet,” Jenou says.

“Okay, then you go back and tell Stick we’ve got a ten-foot gap between this spot and that door.” She points.

Jenou runs off, and Cat returns looking both embarrassed and belligerent. “Hey, if I find a toilet I’m using it.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

They wait in the dusty silence of the eerily vacant shop.

“Suarez, man,” Cat says. “That’s FUBAR.”

“Yeah.”

“He was okay. Pain in the ass and all, but . . .”

“Yeah.”

Jenou comes climbing laboriously back through the various grenade holes. Stick and Jack are with her. As the five of them contemplate their objective, Rio says, “I got the door.”

“No,” Stick says.

“What do you mean, no?” Rio demands.

“You’re not fighting the war by yourself, Richlin,” Sergeant Sticklin says, and a part of Rio’s mind marvels at the authority in his voice. He’s always been a serious, mature sort of person, but he’s becoming something more. It seems unimaginable that Rio would ever be able to master that sort of voice herself.

Jack says, “Yeah, Rio, let other people play. I’ll go.”

“Whoa,” Rio says, ready to object.

Stick holds up a hand, silencing her. “When you’re sergeant, you’ll make the call,” he says.

Rio says, “But . . .” and looks anxiously at Jack. The extremely vivid image of Tilo Suarez fills her vision. But another part of her mind takes in When you’re sergeant and files it away for later contemplation.

Jack is already in position. “You suppose that door over there is locked?” He sounds calm, even casual.

“Nah, sniper’s gotta think some of his own boys might try to get in,” Cat suggests.

“Fingers crossed,” Jack says. He winks at Rio. He takes a deep breath and leaps through the shattered window, four fast steps and he’s at the door. He turns the lever handle and is inside in less than three seconds. Rio is right behind him, not waiting for Stick’s permission.

There is no fire from above. The sniper has not seen them. Yet.

A stairwell rises to the second floor, one long flight without a landing. They creep up, Jack at the front, his M1 at his shoulder, finger on the trigger. From directly overhead they hear the German firing.

The steps end on the second floor, some kind of warehouse or storeroom. Papers and account books from the look of it—and from the fact that it hasn’t been looted. It takes a few moments for them to locate an exterior iron ladder that seems to be the only way up. Up they climb, one at a time, rifles slung, in full view of their comrades below, who have their rifles ready for covering fire.

Jack reaches the top. There’s a very narrow platform and a door. Jack waits until Rio is perched beside him on the precarious ledge, facing the low, wooden-slat door.

Jack makes hand motions: you go right, I go left. Rio nods. The door has a latch, not a handle, and Jack presses down on the piece of metal.

Locked!

A yelp from beyond the door, the sound of rapid movement. Jack says, “Grab me!” Rio grabs his shoulder, supporting his weight as he leans back far enough to fire two rounds into the door handle. The door flies inward, and Jack tumbles after it.

Bang! Bang!

Rio pushes past a crouching Jack and sees a German soldier dead, facedown across his machine gun, killed in the act of swiveling it toward them.

“See?” Jack says to Rio. “Easy.”

The intensity of Rio’s relief surprises her. “Nothing to it.”

But then a bullet comes zinging in through the shot-up door. “It’s the other one, the one who got Suarez,” Rio yells. She takes a quick peek and sees that from this angle the second sniper is in line of sight behind a roof parapet a hundred yards away.