Rio sees Jenou trying to light a cigarette, but her hands are shaking so badly that Jack does it for her. A distant part of Rio’s mind notices that her friend has acquired the habit too. How long has Jenou been smoking? Why hasn’t Rio noticed? Is there anyone left who hasn’t acquired the habit?
She looks at her brothers and sisters, peering at them each in turn, anything to distract from the fear rising inside her. This is not like staying strong in the heat of battle, this is helplessness. It is not the first time she’s been under artillery fire, but never has she had to simply walk through it, unable to shoot back, unable to take cover, unable even to run away.
“Up boat!” Rio says, trying to make the words sound like the previous twenty iterations, but to her own ear her voice sounds strained.
They run forward now, short, fast steps, feet slipping, boots so caked up with mud that each foot weighs ten pounds. No stopping this time, all the way, all the way!
BOOM! BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!
The 88s screech in, falling like meteors, sending up yards of dirt and leaving craters and mangled bodies behind. There is an eerie scream of pain off to the left, but the source is invisible because now they have at last reached the smoke. Rio glances up just as a falling shell punches a hole through the smoke and shatters a denuded tree that sends splinters flying, one striking Jillion in the stomach. It sticks out, an elongated triangle of wood. It’s as if someone has thrown a dart at her. Jillion releases her hold on the boat, and Rio does as well, rushing to her.
Jillion stands plucking at the splinter and says, “It doesn’t hurt.”
Rio tugs experimentally at the big chunk of wood, then unzips Jillion’s coat and the two of them see that the splinter has pierced her coat and blouse but somehow caused nothing more than a slight scratch.
For the first time that Rio can remember, Jillion smiles.
“Missed me!” she says.
They grab back onto their boat and shuffle forward into gloom, following Stick’s boat, which has pulled ahead, hearing the river before they see it, and stepping into it when their momentum carries them too fast down the near bank.
It’s no Mississippi, the Rapido or Volturno or whatever the hell it is, in fact it’s less than thirty feet across. But the banks are steep and the water is swift, swollen with rain. It nearly yanks the boat away from them,
and indeed Rio sees some other squad’s boat go bouncing past, empty of men.
Orders are being shouted down the line: they are to board and push off immediately. Small arms fire—rifles and machine guns—now blaze away through the smoke from the far bank. They are too near the Germans on the other side for the 88s to be used, but now the mortars get serious about their work, dropping behind the platoon and walking slowly, cautiously forward to pound troops trapped between artillery-scoured fields and the river.
Stick yells, “All set, Richlin?”
Rio says she is, and they begin to pile into the boat. A bullet hits Jillion in the eye and blows out a chunk of her skull. She falls backward in something like slow motion, landing on her back in the boat.
“Medic!” Jenou yells, but there can be no possibility of helping Jillion. She is dead, unquestionably dead, with the pink matter of her brain floating in the swamped bottom of the boat like chum.
The boat moves into the water, driven by the few oars they’ve managed to get into the water, and is instantly seized by the current, which drags its head around so all their paddling together barely straightens it out. They can do nothing to stop the boat’s momentum in the direction of the distant Mediterranean.
They row like mad but the far bank, glimpsed only in brief tears in the smoke and fog, is running swiftly past.
A machine gun finds them and half a dozen large-caliber holes are poked just below the waterline, so water begins to pour in.
“Row, row!” Rio yells. “Left side row! Right side—”
A mortar shell douses them in buckets of freezing water. More shells land behind, beside, blasting the river, knocking the oar out of Geer’s hand, twirling the boat again so now it faces upstream and the machine gun bullets pluck at the water.
Cat pushes the stunned Geer aside and paddles madly with the splintered remains of Geer’s oar, but now Rio can sense that whatever hopes they might have had are diminishing quickly. No sooner do they have the boat turned in the right direction than Rio realizes there is eight inches of water in the bottom. The boat lies lower in the water and is infinitely heavier.
“Jen! Help me bail!” Rio cries. Jenou is pulling something from inside Jillion’s coat and stuffing it in her own.
Jack yelps, “Shit!” and a red stain appears below the unit patch on his shoulder.
Jenou and Rio use their helmets as buckets, throwing water as fast as they can, and with Jack now cutting away his sleeve to get at the wound, they are down to just two oars actively slapping at the water. The boat, caught in an eddy, twirls a complete 360-degree turn before machine gun bullets turn the bow to kindling. The boat slides almost gratefully below the water.
“Get your gear off!” Rio yells, and every hand is busy shedding packs and ammo belts and coats as the water comes swiftly up over their laps.
Rio plows through to Jack and says, “Is it bad?”
His face is pale and his eyes wide, but he says, “Just a flesh wound,” like some British cowboy in the wrong movie.
Then the boat disappears beneath them, and they are swimming, though most of their motion is a result of the current, which carries them along like flotsam.