Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

But Pepper isn’t listening. Is he even conscious?

A dead woman is curled beside Frangie’s head. Frangie can hear the trickle of her blood dripping on snow.

Boots in the snow.

Frangie does not move her eyes. She does not breathe.

Bang!

Pepper’s body jerks.

Bang!

The dead woman’s face explodes outward, showering Frangie with gore.

Not a breath!

Not a blink!

The boots move away.

Frangie lies amid the now-silent dead for an eternity as snow falls and Pepper’s blood freezes into a red icicle that hangs from his mouth. His brown eyes are open, staring.

Numb in body and mind, Frangie pushes her way out from under Pepper. She rolls the dead woman aside. She vomits onto the ground and begins to sob. She cries like a child, without thought, without self-consciousness. She bawls like a baby.

She crawls on hands and knees toward the trees. The roads belong to the Germans now.

There’s a slight hill, and she tops it then rolls down the other side. Only then does she get to her feet and start to run.

26

RIO RICHLIN—CLERVAUX, LUXEMBOURG

“Lieutenant Dubrowski?”

The lieutenant is crouched behind a well-dug-in machine gun team. He’s as young as second lieutenants usually are, maybe twenty-four, maybe not. “See that big rock?” Dubrowski points. “Go left of that about two bumps.” The machine gunner adjusts and opens fire, the machine gun slurping the ammo belt like spaghetti. Dubrowski turns to Rio. “Yeah?”

Rio does not salute—officers on the front lines don’t appreciate being conveniently identified for the Germans. “Sergeant Richlin, sir. Sergeant Mackie . . . sorry, I mean Captain Mackie sent us up here.”

“What do you got?”

“Half a platoon of beat-down GIs needing a shower and a shave and about a week of sleep.”

Dubrowski looks past her at the platoon gathered below his ridge-topping position. “They look like a scary bunch. Can any of ’em shoot?”

Rio shrugs. “Maybe half are complete greenhorns, but I have a dozen good people.” Then, feeling she was being unfair, she adds, “And most of the rest will come along in time.”

“Uh-huh,” Dubrowski says. He grins, and Rio likes him immediately, on instinct. This is not Lieutenant Horne. This officer hasn’t shaved in a long time or changed his uniform, nor, from the look of his sunken black eyes, has he slept. He’s in, and obviously has for some time been in, the line of fire, right alongside his people.

Dubrowski squat-walks away from the MG, then rises to a full six feet and strides into the middle of Fifth Platoon. The first thing he says is, “You are all out of uniform: Where the hell are your neckties?”

There follows five long seconds of baffled stares, then Dubrowski slaps a soldier on the shoulder and says, “Sorry, I couldn’t resist. You are about as sorry-looking a bunch of GIs as I have ever seen. Hell, you look as bad as my own people. Damned if we couldn’t kill the Krauts with our stink alone!”

That last bit he says loudly enough to be overheard by some of those own people, one of whom says over his shoulder, “Still waiting on a bottle of perfume from Paris, Dub!”

“Perfume hell, Castro, you need a sandblaster,” Dubrowski yells back, and winks at Rio. “Welcome to Clervaux, ladies and gentlemen. Sergeant Richlin tells me you’ve been in it, and now you’re in it again. Let me tell you how it lays out.”

He quickly sketches the position. Clervaux—and, more important, the road running through it—is at the bottom of a bowl. A mishmash of American units is on the lip of the bowl. The Krauts are outside the bowl trying to get to the lip so they can, in his words, “drop 88s and mortars like a goddamn New Orleans rainstorm on the town and push us the fug out and take the goddamn road, which they need for their fugging tanks.”