Silver Stars (Front Lines 2)

“How long?” she asks in a hoarse voice.

“They pulled us off the line three days ago,” Jack says. “Since then we’ve all been sleeping, eating, and sleeping some more, though not all at the same time. I’m told I was medically dead for twenty-four hours.”

He still has the red hair and the freckles, but the boyish mischief is gone now, or at least weighed down. His eyes are deep, sunken into his skull. There’s a twitch at the corner of his mouth, a tic in his cheek that nervously simulates a mirthless smile. He’s still Jack, but a different Jack, older, sadder perhaps, but enough of Jack that he still bothers with a wisecrack.

Rio wonders what she herself looks like. How much does her face show what she has been through? There’s a blank deadness to her emotions, a distance from the world around her as if she’s standing on the other side of a sheet of frosted glass and can see people only dimly, hear them as if from a distance, touch them not at all.

“When are we going back up?” she asks.

Jack shakes his head. “The 119th took forty percent casualties, half of those KIA. Rumor is they’re going to ship us out.”

“Out? Where?”

Jack shrugs. “Home. At least, my home, England. But it’s just scuttlebutt.”

“What happened?” She jerks her chin toward the tent opening, but Jack understands her meaning. She means the massif. She means the monastery.

She means Monte Cassino.

“Attack failed. We hold some positions, but Jerry chewed up the Frogs on our flank, and well, you know what happened to us.”

“Then they’ll send us back.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t think so. Anyway, not you.” There’s a ghost of his old smile. “The general wants to see you.”

Rio’s feeling numb, but this cuts through and makes her sit up sharply. “What?” Her first thought is that she is in trouble—very serious trouble, unprecedented trouble, if a one-star general is asking for her.

Jack shrugs. He clearly knows something he’s not saying. “Standing request for you to go see the general as soon as you wake up.”

This is even stranger: generals do not summon corporals. That’s odd enough, but if a general does summon a corporal it comes with a “right now,” not a “wait till she’s awake.” She can’t quite process the thought: A general? Wants me?

Whenever I happen to wake up?

“What the hell?” she mutters, and climbs stiffly to her feet. “What time is it?”

“About 1900 hours. It looks later than it is.”

Rio wishes for three things: coffee, a smoke, and for Jenou to somehow accompany her. It’s like being called to the principal’s office, and she wants a friend along. But of course it will never do: the summoned one goes, not the summoned one plus her friend. Anyway, Jenou is currently dead to the world.

But Rio does manage a smoke, and she swings by the mess tent and captures the last half cup of coffee, en route to the general’s tent, which is . . . no idea. She has never really seen this camp, which is a confusion of tents and vehicles and men, some rushing about, others drifting half dead.

She asks an MP and gets directions. The HQ is two tents strung together, with an MP guard at the pinned-back flap. Rio is sure she smells cooked beef inside. The general is having his dinner, a great, juicy steak no doubt, him being a general. But on being informed that a Corporal Richlin is there, the great man calls her in.

Brigadier General Rufus Valdosta is a bespectacled man with sparse hair combed over a skull that shines in the grim light of a kerosene lantern. His uniform is clean but basic GI with none of Patton’s swaggering embellishment or Mark Clark’s elite tailoring. Valdosta is a fighting general, an Army Reserve major given temporary rank and thrust into a position for which he, like most of the army, is barely prepared.

He is at a foldable table, sitting on a camp chair. Rio is obscurely pleased to see that what’s on the plate before him is not a steak as she’d imagined, but SOS: creamed beef on toast. He’s drinking coffee, and there she spots the only sign of privilege: his coffee has been lightened with milk or cream.

Valdosta stands to accept her salute, puts her at ease, and offers her coffee. “Or maybe something stronger? I don’t indulge in spirits myself, but I don’t begrudge others.”

Rio refuses both, feeling way too far from comfortable to be able to calmly sip coffee and nibble cookies. An aide brings a second camp chair, and Rio sits, moving like an old woman as joints and muscles complain bitterly.

“You’ve had a time of it,” Valdosta says.

“Yes, sir.” Rio flashes on Mackie, way back in another life, telling her new recruits that 90 percent of what they needed to say was “Yes, Sergeant.” Now it was “Yes, sir,” but the principle was the same: you never went far wrong answering in the affirmative.

“Well, Corporal, I don’t mind telling you that when the Supreme Court in its wisdom decided to send young ladies to war, I thought it was the damned foolest thing ever. I still regret it extremely. I suppose I’ve always thought of war as a male vice and was grateful that at least half the human race could be spared it.”

He takes a swig of his coffee, and though she hasn’t asked for it, a cup arrives for Rio. She is grateful for its warmth and the comfort of familiarity in this extremely unusual environment. No cookies arrive, and she is vaguely disappointed.