The Front Lines series

And then there was the fact that she had slept with Strand.

Yes.

That fact had never quite been . . . what? Figured out? Adjudicated? Processed?

The next time she’d seen Strand she had been leading a patrol that ended up rescuing a wounded Strand after his plane was shot down over Sicily.

And that too had not been processed.

War was hell on relationships.

“Four hours?” Rio says. “Well, let’s make the most of them.” Only when the words are out of her mouth does it occur to her that he may take this as a suggestion of sex. She blushes, but at the same time, would it be such a terrible way to spend the four hours? It would distract them both from the weightier questions. A pleasant way to avoid . . . well, to avoid the very reason she had come here.

“Listen, there’s a sort of gazebo behind the building, it’s a place where couples sometimes go to be . . . to have privacy.” He winces, obviously concerned that she is misreading his intentions just as she is concerned about him misreading hers.

The gazebo is more of a lean-to, a shelter enclosed on three sides but open to the airfield. Rio sees crew working on the planes, low tractors hauling trailers loaded with bombs, boxes of machine-gun ammunition being handed up through the belly hatches. Hoses crisscross the ground, pulsing with aviation fuel.

They sit side by side on a little bench, pastoral quiet contrasting with the feverish activity on the field.

“You know, Rio, I was quite proud of you when I heard about the Silver Star. Why didn’t you tell me? I had to read about it in Stars and Stripes ! One of the fellows showed it to me.”

“It’s not such an important thing,” Rio says.

“Nonsense, it’s a very important thing. It seems you are rather brave.” He smiles. But again, it’s not quite the right smile.

Rio shakes her head. “You know how it is. Everyone does their job as best they can, and one person gets singled out for a medal.”

“You saved my life,” he says flatly. He holds up a hand to silence her protest. “I won’t deny that I’ve taken some ribbing over that. How I had to be rescued by my girl. How my girl has a Silver Star.”

There is an awkward silence. Rio doesn’t know what to say. Is she supposed to be ashamed of having carried off her mission? She glances at him and tries to read his mood from the set of his jaw. Yes, she realizes with amazement, he does actually seem to resent her, a little at least.

Or am I just imagining things?

“Should I have left you there?” Rio asks.

He shakes his head slowly. “No, sweetheart, of course not. It’s just . . .”

“Just what?”

“Well, it’s hard, that’s all. See, I’ve missed the last two missions because of mechanical problems, all perfectly proper, I was following standing orders. But on top of, well, you, there’s that, and some of the fellows take the joke a bit too far is all.”

“I’m sorry, Strand. But there’s nothing I can do about that.”

“The story in Stars and Stripes even mentioned that I was delirious and singing Christmas carols.”

True enough. When Rio’s patrol had found Strand’s plane, he had been wounded and out of his head. But the detail rankles Strand. His mouth twists at the memory.

“I should think people would find that funny and endearing,” Rio says. She frowns at the sound of her own words. Is this how she speaks? In this diffident, apologetic tone? She has the sense that “endearing” may be the first three syllable word she’s spoken in months. Her sergeant’s vocabulary tends toward words of one syllable, generally either expressed in a low mutter or an irritated shout.

Jenou’s right: I have changed.

“I’m a B-17 pilot,” Strand says heatedly. “I’m not meant to be endearing or funny, Rio. I’m the youngest officer here, even my radioman is older, so, you can imagine.”

“Well, I’m sorry.”

“I never should have let you enlist,” Strand mutters.

“It wasn’t your decision.”

“Oh, believe me, I know that! I let Jenou talk you into this madness. I can’t imagine why they haven’t sent you home to sell war bonds, you’d be a natural.” He looks at her, forces a grin and adds, “Of course, they’d doll you up.”

“They offered,” Rio says.

He stares at her. “What? You mean they offered to send you home? Did you refuse?”

Rio shrugs. “I thought I’d be more useful here looking after my squad.”

That’s not quite the whole truth. She had been tempted to go stateside and had thought especially hard of refusing the promotion to sergeant, until an Army Intelligence sergeant named Rainy Schulterman, one of her fellow medal recipients, had guilted her into it. After painting a word picture of Nazi oppression, Schulterman had talked about green kids from Nebraska landing on French beaches and going up against the Wehrmacht.

“They’ll need people who know how to fight and how to keep guys from getting killed. What do we call those people, Richlin? What do we call those people, Rio Richlin from Cow Paddy or Bugtussle or wherever the hell you’re from?”

Schulterman had supplied her own answer.

“Honey, I hate to tell you, but they call those people sergeants.”

Now here I am, Rio thinks, Sergeant Rio Richlin, sitting awkwardly with her resentful . . . boyfriend? Beau?

Fiancé?

Strand looks down and shakes his head. “Do you have any idea how many of the flyers here would go home tomorrow if they could? You don’t . . . I mean, sure, I know you’ve been in the fighting, but you can’t imagine what it’s like for us.”

“You’re right,” Rio snaps, turning more sergeantly by degrees. “I don’t know what it’s like to come back at the end of a patrol to find a comfy bed and a hot shower.”

Strand waves a hand dismissively. “I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just . . . we lose men on almost every mission. You remember Lefty? You met him. Me 109, you know, Kraut fighter plane, caught him over Germany. Six of his crew were killed or injured in the first pass, two engines out. Lefty shot through the cheek but still trying to get his bird home. He went down in the Channel. Three of his crew bailed out and were picked up, but not Lefty.”

Rio is on the point of retorting that she knows quite well what an Me 109 is, having been strafed more than once, and with a list of the deaths of her own friends, but that’s nuts; surely, this is not some competition to see who is having the worst war?

“I’m sorry to hear about Lefty.”

“You’ll be sorry to hear about me soon,” he says with surprising savagery. He clasps his hands together and Rio sees that he is trembling. “Sorry. I didn’t mean . . . Never mind me. I’m usually in a foul mood before a mission.”

“There’s nothing wrong in being afraid,” Rio says. “In fact—”

“Who says I’m afraid?” he snaps.

“Everyone is afraid, Strand.”

He snorts derisively. “Everyone but you, Rio. Look at you. What would your mother have to say about that wicked knife? Have you sent them a copy of your citation? You charged a squad of Wehrmacht by yourself !” His voice rises toward shrill. “You blew up my old plane and saved the Norden bomb sight and came near to being blown up yourself. My God, Rio, you’ve become the very model for all the rabble-rousers who support this whole crazy notion!”

“Crazy notion?” The strange thing is that as she speaks those two words, she recognizes the silky menace in her tone. It’s pure Mackie, her sergeant during basic training. If things were not so tense she might laugh at the comparison. Mackie could terrify a recruit just by the way she walked.

“Yes!” Strand says. “Yes! I’ll say it: crazy notion. Just because you’ve become a good soldier does not mean that it makes any sense for women to be in this war!”

“You have women pilots, women air crew. I saw a rather pretty redhead . . .”

“Sally? At least she would have the sense to go home if the opportunity came up. She agrees with me, with, well, everyone really. Women are meant to be the gentler sex. That’s the grand design. Women aren’t meant to . . . to . . .”

“Kill Germans?” The same Mackie menace.

“My God, Rio, listen to yourself. You positively sound as if you are threatening me!”

Rio jumps to her feet. “You’re shouting at me, Strand.”

His look is cold. His hands remain clasped, squeezing to stop the trembling. “You’ve made me a laughing stock. Fellows ask me when we’re married whether I’ll be doing the cooking and cleaning.”

When we are married?

“I don’t recall agreeing to marry you. For that matter, I don’t recall you asking.”

He frowns, puzzled. “It’s understood, surely? You gave yourself to me; did you think I wouldn’t do the right thing?”

“So . . . you would marry me from a sense of obligation? Duty?”

“No, no, of course I didn’t mean that.” He retreats quickly, but the resentment still comes through. “I love you. Of course I love you. I just sometimes wish . . .” He hangs his head. “I just wish sometimes you were still the sweet, innocent young beauty I gave a ride to in my uncle’s old Jenny.”

“That was a long time ago,” Rio says. Her voice gentles at the memory. Strand’s uncle had a Jenny, a Curtiss JN-4 biplane he used as a crop duster. Strand had already known how to fly and he took her up over Gedwell Falls in what was the most thrilling moment of her life. Up till then.

She had squeezed into a single cockpit with Strand, leaning back against him, feeling for the first time what a man’s body felt like.

She wouldn’t, couldn’t lie to herself: many times she had wished she was back there, back then, being that version of herself. It wasn’t her lost virginal naiveté that made her nostalgic, but rather the feeling that she had changed so much there was no longer any going back. The male soldiers would return home some day and would be seen as more than they had been, stronger, braver. But the women? No one knew how women who had been to war would be received.

Strand pictured her in an apron. So had she, once. And who knew, maybe she would see herself that way again.

Mrs. Strand Braxton?

Mommy?

Baking cupcakes for the PTA fundraiser? Wearing a nice summer dress to church? Excusing herself from men’s conversation after dinner to go to the parlor with the other ladies to talk about hairstyles and movie stars and brag about little Strand Jr.’s A-plus in algebra?

That had been her mother’s life, a life that had once been inevitable, but now felt very, very far away.

But even as she drifts toward those melancholy thoughts, a part of her mind is elsewhere, wondering if she could transfer Rudy J. Chester out of her squad; wondering if Lupé was as tough as she acted; wondering whether Geer is working them hard in her absence.

The silence stretches on too long.

“I guess we won’t figure out what’s what until it’s all over,” she says.

Strand snorts derisively. “There probably won’t be an after, Rio. The Old Man says the Luftwaffe isn’t what it used to be, but just about every mission a bird goes down. It’s a matter of mathematics. Every mission . . . a Kraut fighter, ack-ack, mechanical breakdowns . . .”

“You can’t think about that,” Rio says. “You just have to focus on your objective.” She very nearly pronounces it OB-jective, the way Sergeant Cole always did.

Suddenly Strand stands too. He turns cold eyes on Rio. “No, that’s you, Rio. Not me. Me, I think about it. I’m not a machine.” He makes an effort to end things pleasantly. “Speaking of machines, I need to go and see to mine. It’s good to see you, Rio.”

“Yes. Take care of yourself, Strand. Goodbye.”

That last word is to his back.

3

RAINY SCHULTERMAN—FOURAS, NAZI-OCCUPIED FRANCE

Rainy Schulterman—very recently commissioned Second Lieutenant Rainy Schulterman—parallels the shore in an inflatable boat paddled through the misty night by four American sailors, one of whom is seething and muttering to himself, while the other three stifle laughter beneath broad, conspiratorial grins.

Rainy is not laughing. Landing on French soil in the summer of 1944 is about as dangerous a thing as you can do short of actual combat. This is her second mission into enemy territory. The first one had been a fiasco—unqualified officers making foolish plans had landed her in the last place on earth she or any other member of Army Intelligence wished to be: a Gestapo jail.

Rainy had been afraid then. She is afraid now. Fear often speaks in her mother’s voice, asking why? Why are you doing this, Rainy? You’ll get hurt, Rainy. You’ll die, Rainy.

But she has learned something about fear: you must always listen to it, but you need not give in to it.

Rainy grits her teeth and wishes the sailors would act a little less like, well, boys. Maybe they aren’t worried about being picked up by the Gestapo or the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) or even the Abwehr, but she is. The Sicherheitsdienst, the intelligence arm of the SS, are animals like the Gestapo. From the Abwehr she would have expected firm but proper treatment—if she were wearing a uniform—the Abwehr are soldiers, after all. But Rainy is not wearing a uniform, she is dressed in widow’s weeds, a worn old black dress shaped as stylishly as a potato sack, an obviously hand-knitted black sweater, a droopy, patched overcoat and chunky black oxfords. The Abwehr might hang her on the spot as a spy, while the Gestapo or the SD would torture her and then put her up against a wall.

That thought comes with vivid memories of men and women who she had not known, shoved against a wall she had not been able to see. She had heard their cries, their pleas for mercy, and their brave patriotic songs cut short by the crash of rifle fire. But all she had been able to see from her vantage point was their blood running down over the filthy window of her cell.

The remaining member of the little boat’s crew is an older man. He’s the one seething and, from time to time, shaking his head. Rainy shifts down the bench.

“Don’t let it trouble you,” she says in a barely audible whisper near the older rower’s ear. “I don’t.”

“This new captain’s a . . .” the sailor pauses, searching for the appropriate insult before coming up with, “. . . a landsman.”

It amuses and even touches Rainy that the old petty officer is concerned for her feelings. The trip down from Southampton to this insignificant town on the Bay of Biscay has not been pleasant. An undisciplined and all-male crew had run through every version of leer, wolf whistle and mangled French proposition. The phrase “voulez vous couchez avec moi ce soir, ”—would you sleep with me this evening—had been carefully learned by every serviceman with even a slight chance of reaching France, where the women were reputed to be plentiful and plenty ready. The line had been repeatedly tried out on Rainy.

There had also been a couple of unfunny practical jokes, the sort of pranks no one would have dreamed of playing on a male officer, not even a lowly second lieutenant. Not even a lowly army second lieutenant aboard a naval vessel.

Just before Rainy had gone over the side and climbed down to the waiting rubber boat, half a dozen sailors had said a cheery “farewell” by exposing themselves.

Yes. Definitely not the sort of thing enlisted men would have pulled on a male officer.

But then, Rainy reminds herself, they are boys, mostly. For most of them it is their first time at sea aside from training, the closest they have come to the war. In many cases it is their first time away from home, certainly their first time abroad.

Anyway, she has bigger worries.

They come to shallow water, with the waves piling up a bit, seizing and surging the boat forward. A single light shines in the dark village, perhaps over the church door. Off to the left Rainy sees the old Napoleonic-era Vauban fort, just like she’s seen in the aerial photographs. It is a square with stumpy towers at the corners and a squat stone keep rising in the middle. It even has a moat according to the photos.

They are to pass the fort then turn toward shore. A smaller beach will be there and—she profoundly hopes—a member of the FFI, the French Forces of the Interior, which people mostly called the French Resistance, or the maquis.

If there is no one waiting for her, the orders say she is to abort the mission and return to the destroyer. This makes sense unless the ship you’re returning to is like some disreputable fraternity house.

The contact had better be there.

The rowers are no longer thinking of giggling by the time the bow scrapes sand—it has been a long, hard row. The destroyer captain, in addition to being no disciplinarian and a landsman, is not overly brave and has kept his ship well out of sight of the shore.

To her left now a bluff blocks her view of the Vauban fort. To her right the beach curves in a perfect crescent. There are trees along the shore, but of the sort that shade homes, not of the sort that conceal machine-gun emplacements.

She hopes.

One of the sailors is panting far too loudly.

“Silence!” Rainy snaps in an urgent whisper.

“Who the fug do you think—” the sailor says in a nearly normal speaking voice which anyone—French or German—anyone within a hundred yards could hear.

Rainy puts the barrel of her Walther PPK—a German weapon, a souvenir—against the bridge of his nose. He goes cross-eyed to focus on it.

She puts a finger to her lips and says, “Shhh.”

Silence. It extends. Nothing but the soft shush shush s-i-i-i-g-h of the waves and the flapping of a decorative flag on the short pole that marks the rendezvous.

Then comes the crunch of footsteps on sand. Rainy strains to hear. Yes, just one set of feet. One person.

He appears as formless movement within shadow, then comes at last to where the fluorescence of the hissing surf illuminates his . . . no, her face.

In French Rainy says, “Où est la tortue? ” Which in English means, “Where is the tortoise?”

A girl’s voice, high-pitched despite her attempt to lower it to a husky whisper, says, “Allée à la mer. ” Gone to sea.

“Is it the season for it?”

“Tortoise is always in season.”

With the exchange of code phrases concluded, Rainy exhales. “All right, Navy. Put my gear ashore and you are free to go.” There’s some grumbling, but it’s very, very quiet grumbling.

Rainy slips the automatic pistol into the leather holster sewn into the back lining of her formless black coat.

“I’m Lieutenant Jones. Alice Jones.” She extends her hand.

The girl, a rather lovely young woman of maybe seventeen, shakes her hand firmly. “Marie DuPont.”

This, like Alice Jones, is most likely an alias.

“I have some things to carry, if you don’t mind helping,” Rainy says.

“Of course!”

They divide the weight: a radio encased in a rubberized, waterproof container; a locked tin box containing five thousand dollars’ worth of counterfeit Vichy French francs and German Reichsmarks; a satchel containing thirty-two pounds of TNT in half-pound blocks helpfully labeled, “High Explosive” and “TNT” in red block letters on tan cardboard, and, “Dangerous;” a separate, smaller canvas pouch with thirty-two fuses; and a broken-down-for-easier-shipping Fusil Mitrailleur Modèle 1924 M29, the standard French infantry light machine gun, with two hundred rounds of ammunition.

All told it is something like a hundred and twenty-five pounds of gear and it is a struggle for the two of them to drag and haul most of it across the beach to the road. Waiting there is an aged Renault, still with wooden spoked wheels, which has been somewhat crudely remodeled as a panel truck.

Seeing them struggling, a man emerges from the Renault to help, gathering what they’ve left. A burning cigarette butt illuminates a craggy, whiskered face. They dispense with introductions and quickly load the gear into the back and drive off.

They go through town which takes very little time, Fouras being no metropolis, then they head east, keeping near to the north bank of the Charente River, and come at last to a small wood and tin shack beside a tiny jetty.

They unload the gear onto dirt and the Renault promptly drives away.

“Do not move, mademoiselle,” Marie says. “They will wish to look at you.”

Rainy nods. She raises her hands above her head and slowly turns a complete circle. She can’t imagine what the unseen watchers will be looking for, but she generally applauds caution.

The door of the shed opens. It is dark within.

“After you,” Marie says.

Rainy hesitates for a moment to let her senses take in the scene, the area, the placement of a row boat at the jetty, a second shed a few dozen feet away. She notes deep tire tracks in the mud at her feet, too big to be the little Renault. Then, satisfied, she steps into the shack.

Hands grab her, twist her around to face the wall, and begin a rude examination of her body. The searching hand quickly finds her Walther and draws it out. Then they find the knife strapped to her thigh beneath the dress.

A match flares and a flame glows from an oil lamp set on a small table. The dim light reveals two people. One is an older man, short, dark complexion, pitted as if by smallpox or an adolescent bout of severe acne. He wears a shabby gray suit that looks as if it was cut for a man two sizes larger. His eyes are yellowed but alert, suspicious, cautious, skeptical.

Rainy is obscurely gratified to see that he is wearing a dark blue beret, just exactly what she expects of a maquis fighter.

The second man is younger, perhaps midtwenties, a bare inch taller than Rainy herself. He has an impressive pile of dark hair, clear dark eyes, an idealist’s wide brow, and a nose that looks as if its lines were drawn by an artist. He’s a good-looking fellow, or would be if not for the surly expression on his lips. He strikes Rainy as wishing to convey that he is not impressed by her. Which is fine, since she’s not bowled over by him either.

Marie does introductions. The younger man is her big brother, Étienne. The older man is called Monsieur Faisan, literally Mr. Pheasant, yet another cover name presumably.

Faisan jerks his head at Étienne and Marie and they scuttle off to haul the boxes of weapons and explosives inside. Rainy keeps the box of currency with her. She eyes the Walther on the table, noting the way the butt is turned, rehearsing a desperate grab, should it be necessary. Passwords are all well and good, but many an agent has been picked up in this region. She can assume nothing.

No one has yet spoken directly to Rainy and she’s content to leave it that way as Marie and Étienne unwind oilcloth and take out weapons and explosives and the precious radio.

Faisan when he speaks, speaks only French.

“Des beaux cadeaux,” Faisan says. Nice presents.

Rainy’s French is not as good as her German. Good enough to fool the average Wehrmacht soldier manning a checkpoint, but not a true Frenchman.

“You’re welcome,” she says in French.

“You’re a woman,” Faisan says, looking as though he’d like to spit.

“And you’re a smuggler,” Rainy says.

Faisan’s brow rises. Étienne moves slightly forward as if he’s going to do something, then subsides.

“Why do you say that?” Faisan asks.

Rainy shrugs. “Isolated shack by a river, a second shack with a padlocked door, tracks made by a heavy truck. And you seem cautious but not paranoid, meaning you feel fairly safe here. So you are a smuggler, and I’m guessing the Germans know it.”

“Why would you guess that?”

Rainy shrugs. “You’re not nervous enough. The Germans know you’re a smuggler, and they don’t mind because I’m guessing they get a cut.”