Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

Strand glances at a wall clock and says, “If I trust my first officer and crew to handle loading and fueling, I’ve got four hours free.”

Rio’s heart sinks. Four hours? It’s too long for a chat, too short a time for anything deeper. She has come here to reach a decision. To reach it with Strand, hopefully. To decide what, exactly, that they are to each other.

No promises have been made, no proposal offered or accepted. But somehow Rio has felt that it was there, implied, assumed. An understanding. But she’s not sure that’s how Strand sees it. Maybe what he understands is different from what she thinks.

More important, Rio has changed.

When she first enlisted, it had almost been a whim. Yes, her big sister, Rachel, had died fighting the Japanese in the Pacific, and yes, that formed part of her motivation, but when she is honest with herself Rio knows that she really joined because Jenou was joining, and because, like Jenou, she was bored with life in Gedwell Falls, California. And because she’d felt swept up. Like the great tide of history had risen around her and carried her off, a piece of flotsam in a flood.

She had never meant to be near the front. No one thought when the Supreme Court handed down its decision making women subject to the draft and eligible for enlistment that women and girls would end up in the thick of the action. But the army, with much internal fighting and several high-profile resignations, decided to treat female recruits just like the men. Some of that was male generals hoping to see women fail. Some of it was women (and some men) interested in equality of the sexes. Much of it was just a rigid bureaucracy not accustomed to dividing assignments by gender.

Rio had lied about her age and signed up in the autumn of 1942, at the same time as her . . . what to call it? Friendship? Her friendship with Strand Braxton began? Autumn of 1942 was almost two years ago. She’d been an average, barely seventeen-year-old girl, a girl with homework assignments and chores. Then had come basic training. And a brief sojourn in Britain for more training. Followed by Rio’s first encounter with combat during the fiasco of Kasserine Pass in North Africa.

Since then she had been to Sicily and Italy and been shot at, shelled, strafed, and bombed. She had marched many miles, carried many loads, dug many holes. She had used slit trenches and bushes, bathed in her helmet, changed sanitary pads in burning buildings.

Most profoundly she had gone from

heart-stopping panic the first time she lined the sights of her M1 up on a human target and taken his life to becoming a professional combat soldier. A professional killer.

And she had moved from a private, with no responsibility but to obey orders, to a sergeant, with her own squad of eleven soldiers to look after.

Any baby fat she’d ever had was long gone. She was tall, lean, and strong, with calloused hands and stubby, broken nails. When she moved it was with quick economy, efficient, wasting not a calorie of energy. And something had happened to her voice: it was still hers, but now it carried undertones that spoke of confidence, control, and command.

She had also acquired several unladylike habits. She still smoked less than many, but smoke she did, because when it was cold in a foxhole a cigarette was life’s only small pleasure. And she drank on occasion, not usually to excess, but with enough devotion that there was now a flask of whiskey in her pack. When she ate, it was like a starved wolf. When she spoke, it was with less and less concern for curse words.

And then there was the fact that she had slept with Strand.

Yes.

That fact had never quite been . . . what? Figured out? Adjudicated? Processed?

The next time she’d seen Strand she had been leading a patrol that ended up rescuing a wounded Strand after his plane was shot down over Sicily.

And that, too, had not been processed.

War was hell on relationships.

“Four hours?” Rio says. “Well, let’s make the most of them.” Only when the words are out of her mouth does it occur to her that he may take this as a suggestion of sex. She blushes, but at the same time, would it be such a terrible way to spend the four hours? It would distract them both from the weightier questions. A pleasant way to avoid . . . well, to avoid the very reason she had come here.

“Listen, there’s a sort of gazebo behind the building, it’s a place where couples sometimes go to be . . . to have privacy.” He winces, obviously concerned that she is misreading his intentions just as she is concerned about him misreading hers.

The gazebo is more of a lean-to, a shelter enclosed on three sides but open to the airfield. Rio sees a crew working on the planes, low tractors hauling trailers loaded with bombs, boxes of machine gun ammunition being handed up through the belly hatches. Hoses crisscross the ground, pulsing with aviation fuel.

They sit side by side on a little bench, pastoral quiet contrasting with the feverish activity on the field.

“You know, Rio, I was quite proud of you when I heard about the Silver Star. Why didn’t you tell me? I had to read about it in Stars and Stripes! One of the fellows showed it to me.”

“It’s not such an important thing,” Rio says.

“Nonsense, it’s a very important thing. It seems you are rather brave.” He smiles. But again, it’s not quite the right smile.

Rio shakes her head. “You know how it is. Everyone does their job as best they can, and one person gets singled out for a medal.”

“You saved my life,” he says flatly. He holds up a hand to silence her protest. “I won’t deny that I’ve taken some ribbing over that. How I had to be rescued by my girl. How my girl has a Silver Star.”

There is an awkward silence. Rio doesn’t know what to say. Is she supposed to be ashamed of having carried off her mission? She glances at him and tries to read his mood from the set of his jaw. Yes, she realizes with amazement, he does actually seem to resent her, a little at least.

Or am I just imagining things?