Front Lines (Front Lines 1)

Sticklin’s eyes widen in shock. “I’m not a noncom, I’m—”

“I don’t really give a goddamn,” Garaman snaps, his patience worn out. “It’s a three-man job. And, Cole, before you give me any crap about your squad doing the hard part, your man volunteered. I want him to have people he knows. Pick your team, Stick. Pang, get a fugging rope.”

“Sorry,” Stick says to Rio.

Rio is flattered, but she’s more tired. She groans. So does Jack when he intercepts Sticklin’s abashed look.

“Oh, lovely,” Jack says. “Just bloody lovely.”

The idea is simple enough: stay strictly within the jeep’s tire tracks. But those tracks are only about eight inches wide and the distance to be covered is a quarter mile.

Sticklin takes point. He’s handed off his BAR to Geer, both because it’s an ungainly weight to carry when trying to walk a perfectly straight line, and because they can’t risk a useful weapon.

Jack is next in line, with Rio behind him. They keep a hundred-foot interval. If Sticklin hits a mine it will only kill him and not the two behind him.

Heel, toe, heel, toe. Rio wobbles. Rights herself. Heel, toe. Like walking a balance beam. Like a tired, thirsty, exhausted gymnast walking a balance beam.

And with each step they are closer to a devastation that Rio does not want to see. She never liked Liefer, but she never wanted her blown up.

Sticklin stops.

Rio freezes. Advances slowly, cautiously.

Something on the sand. Just to the right. Just ten feet beyond the safe zone. A charred object, black, tattered.

An arm.

A human arm. It can’t be anything else given the length, given the way it bends in the middle. Given the way it ends in what looks like a bird’s claw more than a hand but must nevertheless be a hand, a human hand.

“Who is it?” Jack asks. His voice is hushed. It’s a church voice.

Sticklin shakes his head slightly.

They move on, no longer keeping an interval because they need each other’s presence for what lies ahead. The terra-cotta-colored walls of the canyon are close around them now, the ground steep and the walls steeper. The passage is narrow at this point, no more than thirty, forty feet from wall to wall. The jeep lies upended, engine down, wheels in the air. It’s bent, as though it were one of those die-cast metal toys, and twisted in the middle.

It’s burning, but not all of it, mostly just the rear wheels, sending up a column of black smoke, filling the air with the stink of burning rubber. Burning rubber and a smell that’s just a little like bacon.

Corporal Seavee is still in his seat. It seems impossible, but he slumps there, bent over the twisted frame of the windshield. His arms hang down like he’s pointing at the ground. His back is burning.

It takes Rio a few seconds to realize that his head is gone and when she does realize she cries out, a sound of fear and horror. She looks around wildly trying to find it, like that would help, like she might be able to reattach it.

Stafford retches. Rio wishes she could, but her stomach is empty and anyway a numbness has come over her. A distance. She’s not there, not really. She’s nowhere, in fact, a disembodied ghost of herself floating beside the appalled white-faced girl in a uniform.

I’m so young.

“Anyone see the Loot?” Sticklin as

ks after a minute. His voice is far away, but spirit Rio sees that the young girl is looking dutifully, scanning left and right.

“Is that . . . ?” Stafford says.

Twenty yards away there’s a lump of something black. It’s smoking like a recently extinguished campfire. There is nothing recognizably human about it, but it cannot be metal, it’s too soft in the edges.

Rio can’t look any longer. She looks up and sees two vultures circling high overhead.

How do they get here so fast? Who tells the vultures?

“I say that’s Lieutenant Liefer,” Jack says. He wipes his mouth but misses some of the vomit. He unlimbers his canteen, and Rio sees his hands shake.