Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

And what would she do with the rest of her day? Tidy up? Do laundry? Care for their children, help them with their homework, make their school lunches, attend PTA meetings and . . .

The little underground chamber seems to shrink by the minute. She has to steady herself with slow, deep breaths.

What would Mackie—Captain Diane Mackie—do after? Did she have a home? A husband? My God, did she have children? That is a startling thought.

What about Jedron Cole? What would he be doing after? Rio grins at the memory of his gap-toothed smile.

She indulges in a fantasy of locating him after the war, taking him out for beer, and giving him a gift of a box of cigars. He had been her sergeant, and she had admired him, but she’d had no notion of the weight of responsibility he had carried.

Thank you, Jedron Cole. Thank God for you.

She imagined Cole asking her what she was doing now with the war over.

Cooking dinner, Jed. I’m cooking dinner. And I’m baking a pie!

Suddenly, she hears movement outside, at least two pairs of boots trampling snow and bushes. She pulls back and goes person to person warning them to be completely silent. Geer pushes dirt over the spirit stove, plunging them into absolute darkness, with only a hint of gray coming down through the hole. Outside, day has come but there is no sunlight peeking through the eternal clouds.

Slowly, moving inch by inch, Rio pushes forward. She gathers snow and packs it onto her mesh-covered helmet. Slowly . . . slowly . . . she pushes her head out of the hole. The Germans are behind her, and she turns with infinite slowness to see two soldiers apparently brewing tea or coffee and having a snack.

Pickets—a Kraut outpost.

There is no longer any sound of gunfire from Clervaux. The town is taken, the Americans there either dead or being rounded up and marched to a POW camp.

Rio retreats into the hole and in a voiceless whisper says, “Listen up. They’ve got pickets out.” For Chester and Molina’s benefit she explains. “If they’ve got a thin line of pickets out we should be able to move come dark.”

Hours pass. Hours during which they must dig themselves a small slit trench and add to the stink of the chamber. Hours during which they take painstaking care to silently open cans of C rations. Hours during which they sleep.

At last, darkness falls. Rio slithers out to find there are still two German soldiers, though probably not the same two. Being good, disciplined German soldiers they’ve dug themselves a hole—a hole that, had they dug another

few feet, would have had them breaking through into the roof of the chamber.

Rio sees their helmets, both aimed away, downhill. She hears one man’s heavy, regular breathing.

She loosens her koummya in its scabbard. Crawl. Stop. Listen. Crawl. Stop. Listen.

She’s close enough to smell them and is grateful to realize that if the wind was blowing the other direction it would be them smelling her.

Crawl. Stop. Listen.

Crawl. Stop. Listen. Slow breathing. Draw koummya. Test grip. She wipes her hand dry on the side of her leg. Takes the koummya again.

Crawl.

Two feet. He must smell her or hear her or sense her at any moment and one gunshot will alert the Germans and dash any hope of escape.

Crawl.

And . . .

And . . .

Lunge!

She hurls herself forward, lands hard on her chest, but with her left grabbing the rim of the German helmet, yanking it hard and stabbing the point of the koummya into his throat.

She pulls the knife out and feels his blood cover her hand.

She swings her legs over the side of the foxhole and drops in as the second German snaps awake, holds up his hands to block the blow that’s coming, and cries out in pain as the koummya stabs through his upraised palm.