Front Lines (Front Lines 1)

No, Lieutenant Helder does not. Lieutenant Helder looks like he just wants to find a warm bunk and crawl into it, a sentiment shared by 99 percent of both platoons, probably even by Stick.

The ramps of the landing craft drop to allow the GIs to board, which they do with the usual pelting disorder until the navy coxswain starts to bawl everyone out for tramping mud aboard.

“Goddammit, you fugging GIs think I’m going to swab all that mud out? Kick your fugging boots before you climb aboard my fugging boat! And if you’re smoking, toss them over the rail, I ain’t policing up your butts, neither!”

“Friendly, these navy boys,” Jack says.

Now Second Squad hunkers down in the boat, which is nothing but an open gray-painted plywood box just big enough to fit two dozen soldiers or, in this case, a twelve-person rifle squad, a jeep, and a strapped-down pile of jerry cans full of gasoline.

Lieutenant Liefer and Platoon Sergeant Garaman sit in the open jeep. Buck Sergeant Cole is offered a nice dry seat as well but opts to stay with his people. Second Squad sit on their packs, pull their ponchos over themselves, and settle in for a long, long damp ride accompanied by seasickness and the usual vomiting. There is not a man or woman in the platoon who has not puked more in the last six weeks than they have in the rest of their lives put together. They’re getting used to it.

The diesel engine roars, the water churns, and with a scraping sound the boat reverses and pulls itself off the beach. Once afloat the boat turns sharply to head southeastward, away from the faint, shrouded glow of the setting sun and toward onrushing darkness.

Rio Richlin wipes salt spray from her face. Her jaw clenches. Her fingers are cold and sore from gripping her rifle too tightly. And she wonders whether, once they reach the landing beach, she will be able to force herself to get off the boat. Already the sick dread is spreading through her like a poison. She has felt this before, but she was a child then. Since then she has aged. Matured. She has been trained. She has learned to . . .

She has not learned not to be afraid.

Her face is wet but her mouth is dry. Her heart is beating heavy and slow. Her breaths are shallow. She observes all these signs. She knows what they mean. She remembers the fear.

Am I a coward?

“Well, I guess I’ll find out,” Rio Richlin whispers.

23

RIO RICHLIN—MEDITERRANEAN SEA, OFF THE COAST OF TUNISIA

Am I a coward?

Soon now. Soon they will be there, wherever there is. It is a mission, it is a commando raid. It will almost certainly be combat.

It all leads to this.

“I do not like the water at night,” Jenou says.

“You figure it’s wetter at night?” Tilo asks, just to start an argument and have something to do.

“No, Suarez, I figure if it’s light maybe I can at least see which direction to swim in,” Jenou says, perfectly willing to spend half the night arguing nonsense with Suarez.

“If you go into the drink sharks will get you, Castain,” Tilo says.

“Nah, not Castain,” Cat says, butting in. “She wouldn’t taste good.”

“At least if they ate me they’d get a full meal,” Jenou says. “You, Preeling? You’re all bones. Just a big old shark belly full of big old bones.”

“Sharks’ll eat garbage, I’ve seen them do it,” Kerwin offers, not meaning to compare Jenou to garbage, just talking to keep his teeth from chattering. “Back on the transport, cooks’ mates would toss the garbage off the rail and in would come the sharks.” He makes some accompanying hand gestures meant to be swarming, diving sharks, but mostly lost for being largely invisible in the dark.

&nbs

p; An hour passes, during which the relative tastiness of various members of the squad is fully examined as related to sharks, and then, just for good measure, lions. Because, dammit, they are not giving up on lions, not just yet.

Then, in water that calms a little as they turn to move with the current, the smokes come out, and a deck of cards that can barely be seen. The players hold their glowing cigarettes close to read the cards, which makes for a very slow poker game, but what’s the hurry? The glow also briefly illuminates their faces, mostly young, some old, all nervous. Sergeant Garaman bestirs himself from the jeep and joins in. Garaman wants to win back some of the smokes he lost in a previous game. That plus Garaman has never seen a card game he could pass up.

Rio does not take part in the banter, the card game, or the smoking. Her stomach is touchy from bouncing along at nine knots in a craft that reeks of oil and unbathed bodies. And she cannot turn off her imagination; she cannot stop thinking of pain and death. She cannot dismiss the lurid memory of the Stamp Man. And worst of all, fear itself, just like old FDR said. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Well, maybe not the only thing.

Rio can imagine herself panicking. She can imagine refusing to get off the boat, having Jenou coax her, having Sergeant Cole pry her fingers loose, she can imagine it all in terrible detail, down to how cold her fingers will be as she cries and pleads and holds on for dear life.

But boredom begins to wear down her fear. Hours go by. The night wears on, and she falls asleep wedged between her pack and the side of the boat, waking whenever a gallon or six of cold water comes sloshing over the side, which is too often. She wakes as well when someone steps on her, and as she prepares an irritated response she sees that the sun has come up.