Silver Stars (Front Lines 2)

A stairwell rises to the second floor, one long flight without a landing. They creep up, Jack at the front, his M1 at his shoulder, finger on the trigger. From directly overhead they hear the German firing.

The steps end on the second floor, some kind of warehouse or storeroom. Papers and account books from the look of it—and from the fact that it hasn’t been looted. It takes a few moments for them to locate an exterior iron ladder that seems to be the only way up. Up they climb, one at a time, rifles slung, in full view of their comrades below, who have their rifles ready for covering fire.

Jack reaches the top. There’s a very narrow platform and a door. Jack waits until Rio is perched beside him on the precarious ledge, facing the low, wooden-slat door.

Jack makes hand motions: you go right, I go left. Rio nods. The door has a latch, not a handle, and Jack presses down on the piece of metal.

Locked!

A yelp from beyond the door, the sound of rapid movement. Jack says, “Grab me!” Rio grabs his shoulder, supporting his weight as he leans back far enough to fire two rounds into the door handle. The door flies inward, and Jack tumbles after it.

Bang! Bang!

Rio pushes past a crouching Jack and sees a German soldier dead, facedown across his machine gun, killed in the act of swiveling it toward them.

“See?” Jack says to Rio. “Easy.”

The intensity of Rio’s relief surprises her. “Nothing to it.”

But then a bullet comes zinging in through the shot-up door. “It’s the other one, the one who got Suarez,” Rio yells. She takes a quick peek and sees that from this angle the second sniper is in line of sight behind a roof parapet a hundred yards away.

Rio fires at him but then reconsiders. The sniper almost certainly has a scoped rifle, and she is not going to win a bullet-for-bullet exchange.

“Hey, Stick!” she yells down.

His voice comes floating up. “You okay?”

“We’re just swell,” Rio says. “Can you send up some rifle grenades?” She looks at Jack. “You have any blanks?”

He fishes in his ammo pouch and produces three. They look like regular bullets but with the end crimped down and with no slug.

“All out of antitank grenades,” Stick yells. “You want the bazooka?”

Rio looks around, considering. The space is too cramped for a bazooka—there’s nowhere to vent the back end of the bazooka, and they’re likely to cook themselves or at the very least start a fire. “We’ll try with frags,” Rio calls back.

Three grenades and an adapter come up with Jenou. The space is cramped with three of them. Rio attaches the grenade launcher. It is a steel tube about six inches long that slides over the muzzle and snaps in place like a bayonet. There are half a dozen raised rings around the launcher.

The adapter is a short, squat tube with a simple gripping spring that cradles a grenade. Rio slides a grenade into position in the adapter, sighing as she pushes it onto the fourth ring—the deeper the seating, the more power, but also the more recoil.

She crouches beside the low door, peeks at the distant sniper, and gets a stone splinter in her cheek for her pains.

“He’s good,” Stafford says. “You’ll need covering fire.”

Rio looks around, muttering, “I wish I could prop it against something. Damn recoil.”

“How about him?” Jenou suggests, indicating the dead German.

They drag the dead man into place. Rio sets the butt of her rifle against his bent back.

“Okay. On three.”

Jenou and Jack stand ready with their weapons. It’s going to be cramped and dangerous firing through the doorway while Rio is aiming the rifle grenade.

“One. Two. Three!”

Jack and Jenou blaze away, Rio sights the rifle grenade and fires. The recoil punches the dead German hard, and the three of them twist out of the line of fire.

Two seconds of flight and bam!