Silver Stars (Front Lines 2)

This is the third time, not the first, that Jenou has asked about that first killing. Rio is vaguely aware that it has become important to Jenou that Rio remain Rio. She understands that Jenou does not have the sort of home you get sentimental over, and that as a result Rio is home to Jenou. Sometimes she intercepts a look from Jenou, a passing betrayal of inner doubts. Jenou, who Rio would never have thought capable of any sort of reflection, has developed a sidelong, contemplative gaze. A judging gaze tinged with worry. And sometimes Rio looks for ways to reassure Jenou, but at this particular moment it is just too damned hot.

“Doing my job,” Rio says with a hint of wry humor. “Rio Richlin, Private, US Army, sir! Shootin’ Krauts, sir!” She executes a lazy salute.

A truck rattles by, and a dozen male GIs whistle and yell encouragement along the lines of “Hey, sweetheart!” and “Oh baby!” and “Bring those tatas here to papa!”

Rio and Jenou ignore the catcalls as just another bit of background noise, like the coughing engine of a Sherman tank lurching toward the motor pool, or the insect buzz of the army spotter plane overhead.

“Hey, I got a letter from Strand,” Rio says, wanting to change the subject and dispel her own lingering resentment.

A dozen soldiers, mostly men, march wearily past, coming in from a patrol. “Which of you broads want me between your legs?”

Jenou raises a middle finger without bothering to look and hears a chorus of shouts and laughs, some angry, most amused.

“Well, dish, sweetie. How is tall, dark, and handsome doing?” Jenou asks.

“He says he’s fine. And he’s looking for a way to get here.”

“From Algiers? Kind of a long walk.”

“I think he was hoping for a train. Or a truck. Or a plane.”

“He’d fly his own plane over here if he really loved you.”

Does he? Does he still? Am I still the girl he fell for?

Rio reaches blindly to give Jenou a shove. “I don’t think the army just lets you borrow a B-17 whenever you want one.”

“He could offer to pay for the gas.”

“Let’s roll over. This side’s parboiled.”

They roll over, Rio recoiling as bare flesh touches the metal skin of the vehicle.

Suddenly a siren begins its windup and both girls sit up fast, shield their eyes, and scan the horizon.

“Aw, hell,” Jenou says, pointing at two black dots rushing toward them from the direction of the sea.

The cry goes up from a dozen voices. “Plane! Plane! Take cover!”

They climb down quickly—much more quickly than they climbed up.

“Under the track?” Rio wonders aloud, looking toward the nearest ditch, which is already filling up with scrambling GIs.

“The Kraut will aim for the track!” Jenou yells.

“He’ll see it’s one of his own and burned out besides,” Rio counters in a calmer tone. They crawl madly for the shelter of all that steel and lie facedown, breathing dust, almost grateful for the shade. Antiaircraft guns at the four corners of the camp open up, firing tracer rounds at the dots, which have now assumed the shape of Me 109 fighters with single bomb racks.

Bap-bap-bap-bap-bap! The antiaircraft guns blaze, joined by small arms fire from various soldiers firing futilely with rifles and Thompsons.

The Messerschmitts come in fast and low, and starbursts twinkle on their wings and cowling. Machine gun bullets and cannon shells rip lines across the road and into the tents. A voice yells, “Goddamn Kraut shot my goddamn coffee!”

The planes release one bomb each, one a dud that plows into the dirt between two tents and sticks up like a fireplug, smoking a little. The second bomb is not a dud.

Ka-BOOM!

The front end of a deuce-and-a-half truck, clear at the far end of the camp, explodes upward, rises clear off the ground on a jet of flame before falling to earth, a smoking steel skeleton. The engine block, knocked free by the power of the bomb, twirls through the air, rising twenty feet before falling like an anvil out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon as GIs scurry out of the way. Rio does not see where it lands.

The planes take a tight turn and come roaring back overhead, machine guns stitching the ground like some mad sewing machine.