Front Lines (29 page)

They run.

Rio and the rest of Fifth Platoon run from the gunfire and the intermittent
BOOM
of the tanks' cannon and the relentless
clank-clank-clank
of the tracks.

They run past Third Platoon, which promptly bails out of its shallow holes and starts running too.

They are a mob, feeding on their own fear, tensing against the bullets that can at any moment pass through their defenseless bodies, tensing against the shrapnel and flying rock that can rip and batter them to death in an instant.

Months of training and preparation, months of bragging that they are tough, that they can take it.
Hey, the Krauts better look out now that the Yanks are here.

It takes two German tanks and two hundred indifferent Italian infantry to send them all fleeing for their lives.

Behind them they hear the metallic crack of the British
antitank gun firing, joined by the hollow
ka-tooo!
of mortars firing, followed after a pregnant pause by the flat
crump!
of the shells landing amid the Italians.

But Second Squad, Fifth Platoon, as well as the other squads, and Third Platoon, all the Americans in this particular section of the Tunisian desert, all run until they run into Lieutenant Eelie Liefer in her jeep. Her driver looks scared. The lieutenant looks no better.

“Sergeant Cole!” the lieutenant yells. “What's going on?”

“We hit 'em, they hit back, and now we're running,” Sergeant Cole says, disgusted.

“Where's Garaman?”

“I thought he was with you, ma'am. We need to form up.”

The GIs have mostly paused to see what light the officer can shed on the situation, particularly whether she has any better idea than just running away. They mill around the jeep, worried glances cast back toward the shooting, now just out of sight but very definitely audible.

“There's no defensible ground here,” Liefer pronounces.

“Ma'am,” Cole says, “there's those rocks over there, we can set up firing positions, defilade the road, backstop the Tommies. And try for some air support or naval gunfire. Artillery. Something.”

Lieutenant Liefer stares at him as if he's lost his mind. “Hide in the rocks? From tanks?”

Rio can see exasperation on her sergeant's face. “Lieutenant, let's at least radio in, see if we can get some arty.”

“None of our artillery is in range, and there's no air cover,” she says, sounding as though she knows what she's talking about. “We have no choice but to pull back.”

“Ma'am, we'll be leaving the Tommies hanging.”

“They're commandos, experienced troops. They're not our concern. Our concern is the safety of our own men.”

Cole's mouth hangs open for several seconds in pure disbelief. He makes one more try. “We can carry out a fighting withdrawal, we can set up in those rocks and—”

“Sergeant Cole, I'm well aware that you used to have five stripes on your sleeve, but now you have three, thanks to your habit of insubordination. Unless you want to be minus another stripe, you will follow my orders.”

Half the GIs who've gathered around take this as a signal to keep moving. They don't run, they're tired, but they walk plenty fast, away from the sounds of a battle that has grown louder and more desperate. The British antitank gun is no longer firing, just the tanks and the mortars and rifles, lots of rifles. A terrible scream rises high in the air and is cut off in midnote. A pillar of dust rises from the direction of the fight.

“Yes, ma'am,” Cole snaps. “Where would you like us to stop running?”

“I'll have your stripes if I hear one more goddamned word from you!” Liefer yells, and points down the road, back in the direction they came from, back to the rear. Her driver guns the engine, spins into a dusty turn, and roars away, showing them all the line of retreat.

“I guess that's the other reason officers need jeeps,” Luther says. “Female officers, at least.”

Cole snaps, “Private Richlin has one confirmed kill, Geer, and another probable. What do you have?”

One confirmed kill. One probable.

Geer stares daggers at Richlin, and Suarez occupies himself lighting a smoke. Jack is there as well, and he frowns at Rio as if just noticing something about her face that troubles him.

They run and they walk and they run some more, putting all their PT to a use none of them expected. Finally, after hours, they manage to outrun the sounds of the fight. Or else the fight is lost and the Tommies are wiped out. Rio doesn't know which.

She walks fast; Jenou at her side now, a strange echo of times walking together around the square in Gedwell Falls, or halfheartedly running the track at school. Rio and Jenou, two high school girls out for a stroll, but with
slung rifles and pounds of ammo and gear, and mortal dread in their hearts.

“I never wanted to be in the fighting,” Jenou says, her teeth chattering either from cold or fear. “I lost my helmet. I'm supposed to be at a desk. Now we're going to have to surrender and spend the rest of the war in a POW camp.”

“Surrender?” Rio tries the word out and doesn't like it at all, but maybe Jenou is right. They're licked, aren't they? They've been sent packing. Where are the American lines, even? None of them really knows where they themselves are right now, aside from it being a miserable place in a country they'd never even heard of before arriving here.

They keep moving, moving, always away from the German tanks, which they can no longer hear, fleeing an enemy that is farther and farther behind them. Fleeing to . . . where? Where is safety?

“We just have to get back to our lines,” Rio says.

“We have to get back to Gedwell Falls,” Jenou says savagely.

“You shot one of them?” Tilo Suarez asked Rio.

She shrugs.

“She killed one for sure,” Hark Millican says. “I saw him drop. Sarge saw it too. Mighta been two. Maybe.”

“Probably just tripped,” Rio says through gritted teeth.

“Like hell,” Millican says. “You shot him. You shot him good.”

Confirmed kill.

Rio accelerates her pace, wanting to get away from him. She feels panicky, more panicky than when she was running away from actual enemy fire.

“I probably got me one or two,” Luther says. He's angry as well as scared. Scared of the Germans, angry that Rio has a confirmed kill and he does not. “Maybe more, I mean, I was shooting like crazy, but the smoke and all . . .”

Something is buzzing. Jillion Magraff and Cole yell at the same time. “Plane!”

And there it is, a plane, coming in low. Hopefully it will make short work of the tanks and save the Tommies, who sure weren't going to be saved by Fifth Platoon.

“Scatter!” Cole yells.

A few seconds pass before it dawns on Rio that no, this is not Strand Braxton flying out of the clouds to rescue her, nor any friendly pilot.

She glances left, right, no holes, no shelter. She starts to run, sees that Jenou is frozen, runs back to grab her friend's shoulder, a handful of uniform, pulls her along, and the two of them plunge off the road, run a few steps, and hit the dirt.

The Stuka—unmistakable once it is close enough—fires
its twin wing-mounted machine guns and rips up a quarter of a mile of dirt road like some devil-possessed backhoe, and the plane roars by overhead, the black-and-white crosses and the swastika on the tail all too visible.

The Stuka flies on, and Rio sees two bombs detach from the undercarriage.

Out of sight, but in the area where they last saw the commandos, the bombs explode, a single massive earth-shaking detonation.

“Move out!” Cole yells. “He may come back around!”

But the German plane has lost interest in them and now circles to rain more machine gun fire on the commandos. The Americans leap up out of the dirt and start walking fast again, glancing over their shoulders every few steps to see if the plane is coming back.

But it isn't the Stuka chasing them now, it's the tanks, that terrible
clank-clank-clank
distant but audible. The tanks were slowed by the determined resistance of the British commandos, but the bombs have taken care of that.

They run and when exhausted slow to a walk and then, hearing the distant
clank-clank-clank
, start moving again. Some packs are shed by the road, abandoned to buy more speed. Ammo is dropped, even rifles.

They run and walk for five miles, and there at last is Liefer and her jeep again, and beyond her three dusty
trucks. The Americans pile gratefully into the trucks and join what will turn out to be a much larger rout.

The Germans had been squeezed between Field Marshal Montgomery's fabled Eighth Army and the cocky-but-green American forces to the west and, by all logic, should have either given up or run for the nearest beach to seek a desperate escape. Instead, they have attacked, pushing west against the Americans and north toward Tunis.

They're tougher than we are.

“Colonel Clay wants you, PDQ.” The news is delivered to Rainy by a lieutenant who is the spitting image of her brother, Aryeh, just with less muscle.

“Yes, sir.” PDQ—pretty damned quick—means now, so Rainy jumps up, grabs her notation pad, and fast-walks down a busy hallway past women at typewriters and men shuffling papers; past tea being brewed by the dark-skinned batman of the British liaison officer; and past two majors laughing loudly and smoking like chimneys.

In addition to Colonel Clay there are two men Rainy recognizes but has never met in his office, and one who openly grins at her.

She manages to avoid letting her mouth hang open and salutes properly.

“Sergeant Schulterman,” Captain Herkemeier says.

“Captain, it's good to see you. I didn't know you were in theater.”

“Just a week behind you, Sergeant.”

They shake hands while Colonel Clay looks on in disdain. He says, “I understand I have Captain Herkemeier to thank for your services here,” he says.

“Yes, sir,” Rainy says. Thus far she assumes this is just some sort of awkward reunion, though Colonel Clay would be the very last person she'd suspect of arranging any sort of social event.

“He speaks highly of you,” Clay allows, studying papers in his hands. “Says you come from criminal stock.”

“Sir, I—”

“Which I consider to be a plus,” the colonel goes on. “There are far too many well-bred gentlemen in military intelligence and not nearly enough aggressive Jewesses with a potential for criminality.”

The first part of that was a shot at the other two officers, both of whom Rainy knew to be from upper-crust families and schools. The second part is by all rights offensive and derogatory, but Rainy is sure it wasn't intended that way, and also indifferent, because it sounds like the prelude to something worthwhile.

Still, she's a bit at a loss for how to respond so she falls back on the always reliable, “Yes, sir.”

“Captain, proceed.”

Captain Herkemeier has a map, which he unfolds and spreads across the colonel's desk. All five of them form a
circle, heads down, eyes searching.

“My division is in full retreat, getting hit hard, hoping to dig in and make a stand here.” The captain taps the map and they all nod. “But we picked up some radio chatter from the enemy; we didn't have any German speakers on the radio, but I speak some Italian.”

Rainy blinks, and Herkemeier notices. “Yes, Sergeant, Herkemeier is a German name, but my father never spoke it, while my mother is an Italian immigrant.”

“Yes, yes,” the colonel interjects impatiently.

“The short of it is that I sent what we had to HQ, where I understand Sergeant Schulterman was able to make some sense of it. We got some triangulation on the signal, not very good, unreliable frankly, but nevertheless, we have a working theory.”

“A supply column,” Rainy said. “Probably crossing open desert. A rendezvous with some element of the German armored thrust.”

The colonel's eyebrows shake hands with each other again at that, and the other men equally stare in open disbelief, all but Herkemeier, who winks at Rainy.

“Where would you guess that rendezvous would take place, Sergeant?”

It's a challenge, a sign of his confidence in her. He is showing off his star pupil.

Rainy takes several minutes to study the map,
muttering to herself as if no one else is in the room. “He'll send his flanking force right across open desert, this wadi here. German supply depot . . . this road . . . say they make thirty miles an hour . . .” She taps the map. “The two roads intersect here . . . crossroads . . . middle of nowhere . . .” Rainy shrugs and steps back, suddenly self-conscious.

Captain Herkemeier is keeping a straight face, and anyway it's Colonel Clay's reaction that matters.

The major clears his throat and gets a nod. “Sir, we have nothing to put up against that armored column. If we had air cover we might be able to intercept the supply column, and that would likely stop 'em dead in their tracks. But we have nothing in the area but a few scattered elements.”

Now it is the lieutenant's turn to clear his throat—very polite, very upper-crust, Rainy thinks, very much not the aggressive Jewess with criminal tendencies. “Sir, there's a small force. Two platoons that were sent in to buttress a British commando mission. The commandos have been beaten up pretty badly, and what's left of them are heading out cross-country to try to circle back to the beach, but they last saw our two platoons on this road, heading back toward Sidi Bouzid, which means they'll most likely run right into the Kraut main force.” He shakes his head doubtfully. “They aren't much, but if the Brits are right,
they're within ten miles, give or take.”

“Who's in command?” Colonel Clay asks.

“A Lieutenant Liefer and a Lieutenant Helder. I believe Liefer is senior, so with the Tommies out of the picture, she'd be in command. But, Colonel, we have no radio contact. Their set must have been knocked out.”

“We could send someone,” the major says, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “A German speaker with a radio might just make it; he could stay in touch and monitor any continuing chatter.”

“See who we have,” Colonel Clay says.

“Sir,” Rainy interrupts.

She's forgotten now that the officers are speaking. Sergeants in the company of senior officers are like children: best seen and not heard. But something about having been labeled an aggressive Jewess . . .

“Sir,” she repeats when the conversation continues uninterrupted.

“Yes, Sergeant, what is it?” the colonel snaps.

“Sir, we have someone who can get there with a radio and who speaks German.”

Out of the corner of her eye she sees Captain Herkemeier, concerned, shaking his head slightly and mouthing the word
no.

“Me, sir,” Rainy says. “Get me a jeep and a driver, I'll carry the orders.”

“Very commendable,” Colonel Clay snaps dismissively. “But this isn't a drive in the country. In fact, it won't be a drive at all. It would mean jumping.”

“Jumping, sir?”

“Out of an airplane,” Colonel Clay says.

And before Rainy Schulterman can think through the implications of what she is saying, out come the words “I can do that.”