Front Lines (Front Lines 1)

“The bad part is the bazooka teams could end up having bad guys behind them as well as in front.”

“Will they be okay?” Rio asks.

“Sure, Richlin,” Cole says, a little sarcastic and a lot worried. “Day at the beach. The other bad news is worse: our right is hanging in the air. Third Platoon’s on the left, and that’s a bit better because at least they’ve got some dry gullies on their left. Our right flank is you people, Castain, Richlin, Stick, and that’s open ground.”

Day at the beach is an unfortunate turn of phrase: Rio’s most recent day at the beach ended with Kerwin’s blood in the sand. She wipes unconsciously at the blood that has long since sweated off her hand.

“Sun will be up soon, in a couple hours,” Stick says.

“Not before they get here,” Sergeant Cole says. “We’ll light ’em up with the flares. Then the bazookas and the mortar.” He squats beside Rio. “Richlin, their commanding officer is either going to be in a half-track or a staff car. He’s your target. If you can pick him out, you keep fire on him.”

Why me?

“Yes, sir,” Rio says.

Cole snorts a laugh, as he was supposed to. “How many times I have to tell you? I am not a sir. I work for a living.”

Rio, like every other soldier in the platoon, is secretly glad that Liefer is not here to direct this battle. Not that she wanted Liefer dead, not even a little, but in a desperate firefight she feels safer with cranky old Garaman and steady Cole, and Helder who’s got enough sense to let them handle things.

The thought takes her back to that evening with her father on the porch. It’s the sergeants that keep their men alive, the good ones, anyway. You find a sergeant you trust and stick to him like glue.

There’s a feeling of doom over her. A feeling that what is to come will be very bad, that this is a suicide mission, one for which they are wholly inadequate. She recalls her father’s warning that generals sitting far from the battlefield will spend her life for nothing. Isn’t that just what’s happening here?

Headquarters’ fault, the pushy little sergeant. No one asked her to drive out here and get them into this.

Cole has walked on, and now Jenou, in a stage whisper, says, “Rio? If I don’t make it . . .”

“Shut up, you’re going to make it,” Rio snaps.

Look for the officer. Keep fire on him.

Kill him.

“Yeah, well, if I don’t, promise you’ll marry Strand. And if you have a girl, name her after me. Jenou. It can be her middle name, that’s okay.”

“If I have a girl I’m going to name her Jenou, all right, but I’ll make her pronounce it with a hard j.”

There’s no laugh in response, instead a long silence in which they can begin to hear the clank of half-track treads, not as insistently frightening as a tank, but not nothing either, and the grinding of truck gears.

“I’m scared,” Jenou says in the voice of a much younger self.

“We’re all scared.”

“Yeah, but I’m too cute to die,” Jenou says. “And, uh, I’m sorry I got us into this. It’s just . . .” She shakes her head. “My home isn’t like yours, honey. I needed to get away.”

Rio has long sensed something dark about Jenou’s family, but though they have talked of many things, shared many things, Jenou has seldom spoken about her parents other than to dismiss them as a pair of drunks. Jenou has built a wall around whatever her secret is.

Someday I’ll get her to tell me, Rio thinks. If there’s a someday.

“You didn’t twist my arm, Jen.”

“Goddammit, Rio. This was not what I had in mind.”

“FUBAR,” Rio says.

Jenou manages a short laugh. “How did we ever get by without that word in civilian life?”

“Folks weren’t shooting at us.”