Silver Stars (Front Lines 2)

She nods.

“They’re flying you to England to get the award. Probably from some general. They’ll make a big deal about it in the press, it being the first time women soldiers have—”

“There are others?”

He nods. “Word is three women are getting it. You and two others.”

She takes this in and nods again. “That’s better. I don’t want to . . .” But her thoughts trail off and leave her words hanging.

“This is a big deal, Rainy. This will mean something.”

She nods, yes, yes it is a big deal, she understands that.

“They’ll probably ship you home, have you do interviews and sell war bonds for the duration, and—”

“No.” It comes out fast, automatic, uncensored.

“No? What do you mean no, you can’t refuse a Silver Star!”

“I’m not shipping out,” she says. “I’m not going home.”

Now Herkemeier takes a seat, pulling a chair close to her so their knees almost touch. “Rainy, you’ve been through hell. You’ve done enough, more than enough. My God, a Silver Star is barely adequate to—”

He stops when he sees that she is shaking her head, side to side.

“I’m not quitting,” Rainy says. “I’m not quitting. I didn’t enlist to sell war bonds and talk to reporters.”

“Rainy, listen to me, this is the sort of thing that advances the cause of women in the military, not to mention . . .”

She holds up a quieting hand. She tries to master her emotions and fails, so her voice is heavy with feeling and all too near to tears. “I am not done, Jon. I am not done.” The second repetition rises in tone and volume. “You think I’m going home? You think I’m just going to go back to my old life? You think I’m going to run? Like those bastards have licked me?” Tears stream down her face, unnoticed by her, but her voice is hard, even harsh. “I’m not done, Jon. I am not done!”

“Rainy, what do you mean?”

She leans forward until her tear-streaked face is within inches of his. Her eyes are bright and feverish. She knows what she must look like, what she must sound like, but she doesn’t care.

“I came to kill Nazis,” she grates. “I came because I thought killing Nazis was the right thing to do, the good thing to do, but that’s all over now, because it’s not really about right or good, is it? I’ve seen what they are. You haven’t. All due respect, I’ve seen them, I’ve seen them.” Her voice rises again, edging toward hysteria. “I’ve smelled the evil stink that comes off them. I’ve—”

Herkemeier leans back, unable to face her intensity, not knowing what to do or say in the face of this combination of rage and tears.

“Day after day, and week after week, I watched those bastards murder people, people whose blood drained down and I saw it, and I heard it, and I listened to the screams and sometimes I screamed too. I screamed and I cried, and I told myself if somehow, by some miracle, if I ever . . .” Sobs break up the flow of words. “I swore. There was a woman, Jon, they raped her, night after night. And an Italian partisan, they tore his fingernails out and . . . him screaming and crying and those bastards laughed.” She stops herself, mastering her emotions, trying to find the old Rainy, the controlled Rainy, the calmly determined Rainy. But when her words come they still tumble out, forming no sentence, and making only the rawest emotional sense. “I swore. It was a holy oath. I don’t care if . . . It was a holy oath. If I ever . . . I would not stop. Never, never, never, never! I would chase them. To hell. I would . . . I would find them . . . I would kill them. I would kill them until there were none left to kill!”

The silence that follows seems to vibrate from the walls. Her hands are twisted together on her lap. Her lips are drawn back, a dog with teeth bared.

Now too quiet, almost inaudible, so Herkemeier has to lean forward, she says, “Don’t let them do it, Jon. Don’t let them send me home. I’m not done. If they send me home, I’ll use a fake name and sign up for infantry.”

Herkemeier’s expression is shocked, but beneath that he is sad. He shakes his head slowly and looks at her with infinite pity. “Rainy, you’re not fighting this war alone.”

“Not alone,” she says. “Not alone, but I am still fighting this fugging war and no one is stopping me.”

Herkemeier sighs and stands up, moving heavily as if he were an older man. “Sergeant Schulterman,” he says, “you will go and receive this medal.”

She waits, ready to rage.

Then, with a heavy sigh, he says, “Afterward . . . well, I’m being reassigned to England myself, that’s where the action is moving. Afterward, if you still feel this way—and I hope for your sake you don’t, Rainy—but if you do, come see me.”

Rainy feels a fierce surge of some emotion that is like joy but much darker. A rational part of her knows she may be sealing her fate. A part of her even groans inwardly at what her parents or even her brother would say, if she told them. But they were not there with her in the cell, or in the interrogation room. They were not there. Herkemeier was not there. The voices screaming in the night were there, and now they were in her, in her memory, and she knows with terrible certainty that those voices will always be with her.

I will not forget you. I will kill Nazis for you. For each of your voices shrieking in the night, for each of you whose blood I watched spilling down that wall.