“That’s better,” Rio says.
“Your leg is bleeding again,” Jenou points out. “Why are you being stubborn, Rio? Fall out and go back to the aid station.”
“It’s just a little blood,” Rio says.
“She’s right, you know,” Jack says. “You should get that attended to properly.”
“Richlin don’t want to miss the war,” Geer says. “Isn’t that right, Killer Rick? You want more body count.”
“Shut up, Geer,” Rio snaps, not liking the nickname.
“That’s why she won’t swap out that big old M1 for a carbine,” Geer says. “Can’t shoot a man from half a mile away with a carbine.”
This is too much like an insinuation of cowardice for Rio. She grabs his shoulder and spins him around to face her. “What is it, Geer? You think I’m afraid to do it up close? Because it was pretty up close and personal when we took out that Kraut mortar team.”
Geer grins and holds up his hands in mock surrender. “Don’t shoot me, Killer Rick. I surrender. You’re right, you like killing at any distance.”
“I’m doing my job. Doing what I’m told, same as you.”
“And no reason why you shouldn’t enjoy doing your job, right, Richlin?”
Rio is considering punching him in the nose, but she spots Jenou out of the corner of her eye. Jenou is standing with head down, unwilling to show her face.
My God, does Jenou believe that too?
“Knock it off,” Stick says with the authority of his new corporal’s rank. “We got actual enemies, we don’t need to go looking for more here in the squad.”
The column starts moving again, but not for long. There’s what looks like an abandoned barn up ahead, a pile of stones with a collapsed roof. Platoon Sergeant O’Malley raises a clenched fist, calling a halt. The rest of the division is lost to sight behind a rise in the land off to their left. GIs drop to a knee or sit right down in the dirt. Rio squats and watches O’Malley, now conferring with Lieutenant Vanderpool.
Clearly the old sergeant doesn’t like something about that barn. Rio tries to figure out just what exactly it is, because the same instinct is nagging at her. The land around the barn is not unusual: dry fields lying fallow, terraced vineyards bearing only stunted young grapes, prickly pear stands, two exhausted-looking donkeys standing mute beside a water trough. The sky overhead is clear blue with a blistering sun floating toward its zenith.
She glances back and only now realizes that the road has been climbing gently. That flat fields have given way to terraced fields as they’ve moved onto higher ground. It has the odd effect of making Rio a little homesick. Parched gentle hills, vineyards, dry yellow grasses and isolated patches of green, a blue sky and bright sun, these are Rio’s natural habitat, at least whenever she gets out of Gedwell Falls into the surrounding countryside.
Then she spots something. There is a line of cypress trees, tall and narrow, like spear points lined up in a row. The line of trees would block their view of the barn if it had been extended just a half dozen trees farther. She squints and shields her eyes and sees several small disks the color of the red mud so familiar from basic training in Georgia—the raw, still-moist trunks of trees recently cut down.
Cut down to reveal the barn? No. Cut down to give the barn a clear view and field of fire over
the road.
Cole looks worried. “Okay, people, listen up. The Loot and O’Malley are worried about that barn, and I agree. It’s a perfect site for an MG. Third and Fourth Squads are going to make it look like they’ve stopped for chow. First and Second Squads are going back down the road like we’re heading for the beach. Then we’re going to circle left and right respectively, and get close enough to put some fire onto that barn.”
There are groans, but also murmurs of excitement.
“I hope it’s Krauts and not just Italians,” Cat says. “The Eye-ties might give up and then what? We’re marching prisoners back to the beach.”
First and Second Squads amble away, faux casual, rifles slung on shoulders, heading back the way they’ve come. A quarter mile down the road, around a bend, they halt. First Squad takes the left, Second Squad takes the right, which means walking off the road into a terraced hillside field. They walk upright at first, even taking time to pick the occasional very sour and unripe grape from the gnarled vines. But as they come around into sight of the barn they crouch low, walking bent over, which only exacerbates the pain in Rio’s leg.
For about two hundred yards they are exposed, though far enough distant that they may avoid being spotted, and anxiously await the zipper sound of German machine guns. Then they are once more hidden from view by the bulk of the hill and can stand up and stretch strained muscles.
Soon they are back to where they can plainly see the barn, though now the surviving cypresses partly mask it. Here the vines are gone and the hill is covered in tall, desiccated grasses set off by the inevitable prickly pears. They are perhaps two hundred yards away from the target but not directly in line with the dark, gaping, threatening door.
Cole looks it over through his binoculars. “Can’t see anything,” he says. “Can’t see any cover either. We can either go round this hill, which is going to take half an hour, or we just walk right in.” He glances at his watch. He is supposed to have his squad in place in twenty minutes. “We’d have to do it at a run. What do you think, Stick?”
“Go around,” Sticklin says without hesitation.
“What about you, Richlin?” Cole asks.
Rio actually jumps. “What? Don’t . . . don’t ask me!”