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The Germans will move up now and finish us off.
Her thoughts are as clear as if they’d been carefully written out: with arty stopped, the Krauts will advance. They can’t outrun the Krauts, not while hauling Strand.
One way, just one way to be sure.
Rio snatches a grenade from Jack’s belt. She points at him and then at Strand, then chops her hand to indicate direction.
Jack is arguing, she can see it, though she still can’t make out the words.
“Do it!” she snaps. “Far as you can!”
Then, uncertain whether her voice is pitched loudly enough, yells, “Preeling and Geer! Get up here and help Stafford!”
Risking their lives to save Strand? Or just trying to complete the mission?
Jack is still arguing, but he’s nevertheless begun dragging Strand again.
Rio’s mind is a stopwatch. Tick-tick-tick. How long for the Krauts to advance from their fallback? How long for Strand and Jack to get clear?
How long for her to get clear?
Tick-tick-tick.
They’ll come from both directions this time, circling the B-17.
Don’t be a hero.
“I’m not, Dad, just trying to keep my people alive,” she mutters as if he is standing beside her.
My people.
Tick-tick-tick.
Her hearing is coming back. She does not hear the advancing Germans, but she does hear Geer’s warning, “Movement! More than before!”
Have the Krauts been reinforced already?
Geer and Cat have joined Jack, and the three of them have Strand by hand, hand, and ankle, leaving the injured ankle to drag and bang along the ground.
Strand is complaining in an aggrieved tone.
Tick-tick-tick.
Now.
Her grenades are fused for five seconds. Two grenades, her last one and the one she took from Jack.
Pull both pins. Hold down the lever. Run. Throw.
Five seconds to get away.
Impossible!
“Shit,” Rio says under her breath, and races straight for the plane. In through the open hatch, the only way, otherwise the grenades might just scar the fuselage.
She runs and suddenly there are a half dozen Kraut soldiers ahead and they won’t be bluffed a second time. She fires one-handed, from the hip, no chance of hitting anything, but maybe it will slow them down—and now the plane and the hatch and suddenly she’s there.
She releases the first lever and tosses the grenade into the darkness inside the plane. The second follows half a second later.
