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“Americans, my arse.”
“You fight like women. Oh, too right: you are women.”
Rio does her best to ignore the taunts. She ignores, too, the unsettling mix of respect and resentment that comes from being the only one in the squad to provably hit an enemy soldier.
She watches it in her memory. She sees the Italian through her sights. She feels the pressure of her finger on the trigger. He trips. He falls. Just a stumble.
No, he’s hit. He’s fallen. He’s bleeding into the sand. Just like Cassel.
She wants to walk with Sergeant Cole, but she resists. It would be like clinging to her parents, and she’s past that, she’s not a little girl needing her father. She’s a soldier, right? A soldier.
Instead she walks with Jenou, good old Jenou who can always perk her up with chatter about boys and girls and clothing and hairstyles and . . .
“What was it like?” Jenou asks her.
There’s no doubt in Rio’s mind what her friend means. “It’s my job, right? I just did my job.”
Jenou lets a few paces pass. “You were pretty cool under pressure.”
“No different than anyone else,” Rio says, trying to shut her friend down. She’s feeling, feeling way too much now that the fight is past. She’s like a steam boiler, pressure building up inside, a churning feeling. She wants to scream.
Everyone just shut up.
“Bet there’s lions out here, up in those rocks. Mountain lions.” Cat walking just a few steps behind.
Again with the lions. Give it a rest, Preeling, shut up, just shut up and let us march.
“Probably eating the guts out of that Italian you shot,” Cat says.
Rio spins to face her. Rio is vibrating, all of her body straining to contain the pressure. She wants to snarl at Preeling, but can’t find the words. Her clenched and cocked fist hovers, trembling, before dropping to her side.
Rio grits her teeth and starts walking again. Jenou has at last realized her friend is upset. “Don’t pay any attention, Rio. Let it go.”
Rio pulls out her canteen. Why are her hands trembling now when they were so steady before? She can feel the lightness of the canteen. There’s no more than two inches of water in it. Save it, don’t drink until you can’t stand it.
But she drinks, just a mouthful, just enough to wash some of the grit from her teeth.
“Sarge,” Sticklin calls out. “Off to the left at eight o’clock.”
Cole halts, and the squad bunches up behind him. He’s like a mother duck with newborn ducklings; they follow him, go where he goes, stop when he stops.
They all turn to look.
“It’s a car,” Jillion Magraff says. “Probably coming to get us to surrender.”
“It’s not German, it’s a jeep,” Hansu Pang says quietly.
Geer unlimbers his rifle. “If the Jap says it’s a jeep, it’s for sure a German.”
Sticklin levels the BAR at the approaching dust plume.
“Hold your fire,” Cole says. “It’s a jeep.”
Rio sees two people in the vehicle, a man and a woman. She looks ahead up this endless dirt road to nowhere. The Tommies are no longer in sight. Lieutenant Liefer has stopped. She’s shading her eyes, staring at the approaching vehicle. Behind them in the direction they’ve come from, Helder and Third Platoon. They, too, are watching the jeep, which pulls up in a skid.
A female buck sergeant jumps out. “Are you from the 119th?”
Lieutenant Liefer glares at her. “Have you forgotten how to salute an officer, Sergeant?”
