Front Lines (Front Lines 1)

Won’t be a paper target this time.

Suddenly the jeep barrels back down the road going flat-out and kicking up a plume of dust.

The jeep brakes in a shower of dust and gravel, and Liefer yells, “Two German tanks and a whole goddamn company of Italian infantry!” before tearing away again toward the rear.

She has given no orders. She has shouted a warning and disappeared. Rio sees a dark look in Cole’s eyes. Suarez looks nervous, but Rio is pretty sure he’ll do what he needs to do. Tilo Suarez might be a pain in the butt sometimes with his tiresome Lothario act, but he’ll do what he has to do.

Will I?

The sound of tank treads grows louder and louder, nearer and nearer, like the slow approach of a movie villain. Rio manages to push about ten inches of dirt and rock in front of herself and lies down in the laughably shallow depression. She rests her left hand on the dirt and points her rifle. Suarez has followed suit. He’s twenty feet to her right.

“Set sights for two hundred yards,” Cole says.

Rio hasn’t even thought of adjusting her sights. It shames her being reminded, and she quickly clicks the elevation wheel. There is no breeze to speak of, no need to adjust for windage.

And suddenly there they are.

They seem almost to rise out of the desert, two tan steel monsters come to destroy, Panzer IIIs, two-inch main gun, two machine guns. The barrel of the lead tank’s gun is pointed directly at Rio.

It sees me!

The absurdity of facing a tank with just a rifle comes home full force. The tank doesn’t care about her pitiful rifle, or the human being holding it. The tank doesn’t care about anything made of flesh and blood.

The Italian soldiers are a ramshackle mob walking in front of the tanks with more on the flanks. If the column on the left side just keeps walking the way they are they’ll walk directly into Rio, Suarez, and Sergeant Cole.

Five hundred yards, a quarter mile. The enemy infantry are sketched figures, two legs, two arms, a circle of head, just sticks, no face, no expression, no individuality. Yet there’s an air of weariness about them, a sense of exhaustion.

“At least they didn’t spot the jeep,” Cole mutters.

“How do you know . . . ?” Rio starts to ask, but then decides she probably isn’t supposed to be asking questions at a time like this.

Cole answers anyway. “From the way they walk. They haven’t sent out flankers, their heads are down, rifles slung.”

Now that she looks more carefully, Rio sees the same thing: the Italians are not expecting to be fired upon, or perhaps they are and have just given up caring. And yet, they are coming on, and they are bringing tanks with them.

“Maybe they’ll stop,” Tilo says, which makes no sense to Rio. Of course they’ll keep coming, they’ll keep coming at the same leisurely pace until someone fires on them.

They’ll be surprised, the Italians, as well as the German tankers. But surprise wasn’t going to gain the Americans much, not with just two platoons of green troops. The enemy column stretches as far as she can see, a full company of men, easily two hundred or so. Twelve hundred Italians might be manageable by themselves, but they aren’t by themselves. They are very definitely not by themselves.

Clank-clank-clank-clank-clank.

Four hundred yards.

Rio swallows dust. Her hands sweat on the stock of her rifle. Cole is on his knees like a prairie dog, watching the enemy, glancing toward his men, glancing back at the rest of the force. The British commandos are way back, out of sight. The Americans are as dug in as they’re going to get in bare rock, sand, and pebbles.

“We’ll bang on ’em, then fall back,” Cole says.

“Right.”

“No time for a decent ambush. But make your shots count. Discourages the others if you shoot a few.”

“Uh.” That short grunt is all the speech Rio can manage. Suarez is silent.

Three hundred yards. Millican and Pang are the bazooka team, and they are roughly fifty yards closer to the enemy. Millican will fire at two hundred yards. Bazookas are pretty accurate at one hundred to two

hundred yards, not much use beyond that unless you get lucky.

Watch your breathing. Slow it down. In, out, slow.