Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

They drop beside each other at the base of the crack and look up. It’s a twenty-foot climb into coils of wire.

“Kind of have to wedge ourselves in,” Stick says. Rio nods. Her mouth is full of sand, making speech difficult.

Stick pushes into the crack, leans against one side, plants his feet on the other side, and begins to ascend. It is slow and not at all easy. When he is halfway up he calls down, “Hand me one!”

Rio balances the bangalore and heaves it up to where he can grab it. He’s found a ledge, and he precariously balances the torpedo there before calling for Rio to send up the next section.

Then Rio starts to climb, mimicking Stick’s moves till she is just below his boots and eye-level with the balanced torpedo.

Then Stick climbs some more, peeks over the lip, and in a relieved voice says, “I got a little defilade up here. Send me the bangers!”

Again she hands the explosives up, and he shoves them over the lip. She shimmies until she is face-to-face with him and peeks over the edge. The barbed wire is thick here, multiple coiled strands. Beyond the wire she sees a gun emplacement, side-on, just a long rectangular slit maybe thirty or forty feet away.

She crouches back down. “What do you think, Stick?”

“I don’t think it’s an enclosed pillbox. I think it’s a reinforced trench. Figure a squad of Krauts, maybe two, maybe three embrasures connected by an open trench.”

Rio looks at him in surprise and shakes her head. “Well, you’ve been paying attention during briefings.”

“I happened to talk to one of the Canadians who was in on the Dieppe raid . . .”

Rio says, “Once we blow the banger the Krauts will send infantry out to get us.”

Stick nods. “Yeah. Be better if we could follow up strong before the smoke clears. Call some people up here with grenades. I want smoke and frag. And have someone grab my Thompson.”

“Yep.” Rio can see her soldiers down below, a huddled bunch of scared faces peeking out from behind rocks, fallen dirt, and scraps of concrete. This is not a job for one of the new soldiers. With a churning, sick feeling in her stomach she quickly does the math: not Geer, he’ll have to take the squad if she doesn’t make it.

Planning for my own death.

“Castain! Stafford!” She relays Stick’s instructions. Then she and Stick wait, face-to-face, both breathing hard, faces coated with sand and dust and congealed smoke.

Stafford is first. He hands up Stick’s Thompson and Rio’s newly acquired M1. Then he hands up a musette bag containing a dozen grenades of mixed type.

/> Jenou comes behind him, carrying her own carbine and a bag of ammo clips for the Thompson and the M1. Jenou and Jack are squeezed in the place just below the two sergeants. Ammo and grenades are parceled out.

Stick says, “When we blow the wire I want smoke up there. And we go right behind it. Right?”

Heads nod. Jaws clench.

Stick attaches the nosepiece to one of the bangalores, shoves it a few feet away, then with support from Rio manages to get the connecting sleeve in place. He pushes the long assembly forward. Then he sets the fuse and yells, “Fire in the hole!”

Boomf!

Dirt erupts upward and falls in a hard rain, clattering down the crack, sliding into collars and shirt fronts, mouths, ears, and eyes.

Jenou and Jack both pull the pins on stubby cylindrical smoke grenades and throw them overhand with a looping move.

“We’ll give the grenades five,” Stick says. Smoke grenades take a few seconds to really get going.

There’s a muted pop as the smoke grenades ignite.

“One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five!”

Stick surges up and over. Rio slips, catches herself, and drags herself up and after Stick, clawing her way over the rim of the gully. The air is still full of falling dirt and swirling smoke from the explosion, now augmented by the white smoke of the two grenades.

Stick and Rio run through the smoke, staying low as Rio hears shouted orders in German.

Barbed wire fragments tear at Rio’s boots and trouser leg. The ground is sand and chunks of concrete, leftovers dumped during the construction of the pillboxes. She cannot see the gun emplacement but charges in the direction she last saw it.