Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

They bunch up around Passey and Stick.

“All right,” the colonel says. “I got some bangalores off the engineers, and we are getting ready to blow the wire in that draw. We need to charge that draw, cut the wire, and take out those pillboxes.”

“The draw is enfiladed six ways from Sunday,” Passey says.

“I am aware of that,” the colonel says. “But there are just two kinds of people staying on this beach: those who are dead and those who are going to die.”

Passey nods.

“All right then,” the colonel says. “Now—”

His words are drowned by an explosion. The bangalores have gone off. The unknown colonel, Passey, and Stick turn the corner into the draw.

“Let’s go!” Rio says. She blends into a stream of soldiers all following the colonel’s lead. The wire has been blown, but in the back of Rio’s mind is the likelihood of mines. The colonel and Captain Passey must also have thought of it, and they’re leading the way, so . . .

Not all officers are useless.

The draw is like a steep-sided gully. A huge concrete pillbox with sinister firing slots looms on the left. A smaller one is planted on the right. Bullets fall like a hailstorm. A man just in front of Rio is hit. She leaps over his falling body, accidentally kicking him, tripping, keeping her balance and . . . run, run, run!

Only now does it occur to Rio that she has no weapon. She had tossed aside her rifle to dive after Hobart and Ostrowiz, and the BAR she’d rescued lies back on the shale.

A man screams, twists, and falls back against the dirt wall.

Rio says, “You sit tight and give me your rifle!”

“I think they done killed me!” the soldier cries, pawing at his uniform to find the wound.

“Medic!” Rio shouts.

She grabs the wounded man’s M1 and fumbles two clips from the wounded man’s ammo pouch, then rushes to catch up. Geer is just ahead with Maria Molina and a couple of soldiers from a whole different outfit.

The draw narrows ahead, and soldiers are bunched dangerously. A single mortar round could take out a dozen people. The two big pillboxes can no longer bring their machine guns to bear, but German soldiers atop the rise now hurl grenades down.

Cat Preeling catches one in midair, looks confused as to what to do next, then at the last second throws it like a professional outfielder aiming for home plate. It explodes up above them, scattering dirt but harming no one. A second grenade blows both a man’s legs off, and within seconds all ten pints of blood in his body have made mud out of the sand.

The colonel huddles with Passey and Stick. Stick waves Rio over, and she plows toward them, stepping on the legs of soldiers now clinging in panic to the side of the draw.

“We have to take out those MGs,” the colonel says.

Passey looks at Rio. “Sticklin says he’ll try it, but he can’t go it alone.”

“Yep,” Rio says, trying not to sound as terrified as she is. It’s flattering that Stick wants her, but on the other hand, it may be a suicide mission. “How do you see it, Stick?”

Stick squints, peeks around a piece of fallen concrete, ducks back as machine gun rounds bounce where his face had been, and says, “See that crack there?”

Rio sees the crack. It looks like a washout from recent rains, just wide enough for a single soldier. It runs all the way to the top of the draw, where it is blocked by a thicket of barbed wire.

“Maybe get us one of those bangalores?” Rio says. Without waiting for an answer she yells, “Bangalores! Bring up a bangalore!”

After a few minutes, during which another man is hit, though not fatally, the bangalores are handed forward. They are five-foot-long steel tubes painted olive drab with yellow lettering and packed with explosive. They can be joined together to form a longer torpedo by use of a metal sleeve, with the leading tube capped by a steel nose to allow the torpedo to be shoved through sand and under the wire.

Stick has one bangalore, Rio the other. Stick also carries the five-inch sleeve used to connect the two segments.

“Ready?” Stick asks.

“Yep.”

They kick loose of their wedged positions, jump, and run, feet plowing loose sand. It is thirty feet to the crack, thirty feet of being chased by machine gun fire.