Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

“Going west,” Rainy says, her voice genuinely ragged now. “Truck drivers going west toward Cognac. Stick to that story and you’ll be all right. This is maquis business, not yours. But if you betray the Resistance . . .” She lets the threat hang.

Three minutes later they are panting and gasping in the truck and driving at average, unremarkable speed toward the east, toward the pleasant woods of the Périgord Limousin.

“We should have taken their guns,” Étienne says, speaking for the first time.

“No, you imbecile,” Marie rages. “We should not have stopped to see your mistress, and you should not have found a way to make her angry!”

“If we took the guns, it’d look like maquis to the Krauts for sure,” Rainy says, her voice far calmer than her heart or brain. “Drunk truck drivers getting in a bar fight don’t take Schmeissers.”

Silence. Then Étienne says, “You didn’t have to kill Marianne.”

An even longer silence. Then in slow, measured, but furious tones, like slow-motion violence, Rainy says, “Your arrogance ends right here, right now, Étienne. You screwed up. You could have gotten us all arrested or killed.”

“You have no—”

“Shut up,” Rainy snaps. “This is my operation from here on in.”

“We do not take orders from the American—”

“Stop it, Étienne.” Marie’s voice, like Rainy’s, is tense and barely under control. “She’s right. You were careless. That woman died because of you. And we all nearly ended up in an SD interrogation cell! Because of you and your . . . your needs.”

Étienne does not argue further. He continues driving and stares straight ahead.

Rainy uses the silence to put herself back together. The crisis is always easier than the aftermath; she has learned that. In a crisis it is all about speed and decisiveness. The aftermath, the sick feeling that comes with each obsessive mental replay of digging broken glass into a man’s neck, feeling his blood, smelling it . . .

And the hole that appeared not quite perfectly centered in the mistress’s chest.

Her hands tremble, so she sticks them in her coat pockets. How long will it take the milice to show up on the scene? Would the SD get there first? Did the patron and the French couple have the nerve to lie to the SD?

No. But they might just repeat what she’d said about heading west. That very small ruse might just work.

But deep inside her a voice says, “No.”

No, they would not convince the SD, not for five minutes. So make a plan, Rainy! They had a good ten minutes’ head start, but the SD could radio ahead, they could call in planes, they could mobilize the entire French police force as well.

Which meant the likelihood was they are not going to make it to Limoges. That was just the reality.

Time to hide.

And what better place than the middle of the Das Reich division?

“We’ve got a cargo of cognac,” Rainy says, “and a bunch of thirsty Germans somewhere around here, right? So let’s go make a sales call.”

6

RAINY SCHULTERMAN—NEAR LIMOGES, NAZI-OCCUPIED FRANCE

They drive the truckload of cognac and black market cigarettes around for a full day. Rainy’s thought had been to use the cognac as proof of innocence, as proof that they were just smugglers, black marketeers. Surely, she figured, surely they would be stopped at a roadblock and then could negotiate a deal for the cargo. It had seemed so terribly clever when she’d thought of it.

They have three transport barrels of cognac, 350 liters or roughly 90 gallons each, plus 200 cartons of cigarettes of ten packs each. The Das Reich might be Nazi fanatics, but in war no one ever has enough alcohol or smokes, and Rainy is reasonably sure that an offer to sell and, crucially, a promise to return with more will get the attention of any divisional quartermaster.

There is only one flaw in the plan: they encounter no roadblocks. Twice they pull off the road to avoid German staff cars racing by, perhaps in pursuit of them, perhaps not.

The first night after killing the soldiers, Rainy, Étienne, and Marie sleep rough, driving the truck down a dirt track deep into the Limousin forest. Étienne and Marie sleep cramped, in the truck’s cabin, and Rainy wedges herself into a place between two of the barrels in back. It is not comfortable, not even by army standards, and she sleeps very little. When she does sleep she is kneeling beside a river of blood, washing her hands in it.

The next morning, chilled, aching, and frowzy, they stop at a small café for coffee and croissants.

“The croissants are good,” Rainy observes, politely saying nothing about the coffee.