The Front Lines series

8
RAINY SCHULTERMAN—LAGUARDIA FIELD, NEW YORK, USA

Amateur.

That’s what Bayswater said of Corelli and his organization. Amateur. He’s going to get you killed. And it eats at Rainy. From her first days in the army she’s been taught that her first duty is to obey orders. She has latched onto that thought, relied on it, let it shape her thinking about the army and her job in that army.

It is comforting to be able to shift responsibility, to be able to shrug and say, I’m following orders. But what if the person giving the orders doesn’t know what he’s doing?

Rainy saw the colonel again, was congratulated, thoroughly debriefed, and sent home for two days. Then she was summoned to see Corelli a third time and given a sealed packet of orders along with instructions not to open it until she is airborne out of New York. She pats it through her overcoat as her car and its driver come to a halt on the bleak tarmac.

The C-47 is a twin-engine tail-dragger, meaning that it lands on the wheels beneath its wings and lets the tail settle down onto a third, smaller wheel. It is the workhorse of the American air forces with variant versions used to haul supplies, to haul men, to haul VIPs, and to carry airborne troops to drop zones. Its civilian version is known as a DC-3.

This plane sits tail down, with both engines running, round nose pointed optimistically toward the eastern sky. A light early morning rain falls, slicking the concrete runway and turning the green-painted fuselage almost black. The props are kicking up a horizontal tornado of mist that plucks at Rainy’s cap, so she has to hold it with one hand while hefting her light pack on one shoulder.

At least she won’t be jumping out of this plane. Hopefully.

Ground crew lead her from the colonel’s thoughtfully provided car to the doorway abaft the wings, which means passing right through that gale of backwash. She shouts a “thank you” that the ground crewman cannot possibly hear.

She is helped up the steps by a sergeant, who grabs her bag and with quick, practiced movements whips it into one of the seats and ties it down with a series of cords. The seats run down both sides, facing toward what would be the center aisle on a DC-3. Inside the plane are some crates, one quite large, lashed down with thick straps.

There is only one other passenger, a civilian, obviously Cisco Camporeale. At first glance he doesn’t look like a gangster, though there is something flash and cheap about him. He’s dark of hair, eye, and complexion, of medium height, solidly built. He’s dressed in an expensive overcoat with an equally expensive and fashionable dark suit beneath. His tie is silk, somewhat flamboyant, and carefully knotted.

Rainy is shown to a seat beside him and has her seatbelt fastened for her. A second, more careful inspection takes in the way the young gangster looks at her. His eyes are large and moist, framed by girlish lashes. His lips are thin and rest in an ironic smile. It is a handsome face, a very handsome face, but his expression, at first predatory, softens into dismissal.

Apparently, Rainy is not his type.

She breathes a sigh of relief at that. She’s been worried he might, over the course of a long mission, get ideas that would make Rainy’s job harder.

“I’d stand up, you know. I am a gentleman, but I’m strapped in,” Cisco says, and extends his hand with a languid superiority that almost suggests he expects it to be kissed rather than shaken. “Cisco Camporeale.”

His palm is damp, either with nerves or perhaps just a result of the steam rising from wet clothing.

“Sergeant Schulterman,” she says.

“What do I call you?”

“Sergeant Schulterman.” She wants to set the tone of their relationship at the start.

“Okay, Sarge, have it your way,” he says, smirking and then dismissing her.

It amazes Rainy that the uniform she wears and the stripes on her shoulder do such a very good job of transforming her from a teenaged young woman into someone who can shut down a mobster. For the very first time she has the fleeting thought that military life might be something to extend even after the war is over. For all its incessant hostility toward women soldiers, the army is one place that a bright but uneducated young woman can do important work.

But as soon as that thought pops into her head she quashes it. Good grief, become a career soldier? She’d thought of becoming a lawyer or a teacher or starting a business. None of those careers involve risking life and limb.

To which another part of her mind, using a very different tone, answers, Exactly: none of those careers involve risking life and limb. And damned if she doesn’t sort of enjoy the danger. She’s jumped out of a plane and survived a firefight without turning tail. Having walked so close to danger, some part of her wants to return, to see whether she has the courage to take it further still.

Within minutes the plane is trundling down the runway, tail rising to level, and the noise from the wheels rushing down the tarmac gives way to the whine of electric motors raising the wheels into the underbelly of the plane.

The sergeant, who explains that he is the “loadmaster,” a term Rainy has not heard before, shouts the itinerary and the rules.

“Okay, folks, here’s the deal. First stop is St. John’s, Newfoundland. That’s 1,130 miles. We’ll be cruising at about 180 miles an hour, so figure six, six hours and change, depending on tailwinds. We top off the fuel tanks—our range is just 1,600 miles, so we top off in Newfoundland and then head to Lajes base in the Azores, which is 1,420 miles. It’s within range, but there’s some weather up north, so we’ll assess things when we approach the point of no return.”

“The point of no return?” Cisco says, skeptical.

“Halfway. It’s the place where it takes the same amount of fuel to get back as it does to continue,” the loadmaster replies seriously. “Our motto is, ‘don’t get cocky.’ The Atlantic is a big ocean, and I’m not that good a swimmer.”

“Point of no return,” Cisco repeats in a more serious tone. “That’s good. I’ll have to remember that.”

“We’ve rigged a chemical toilet behind that draw curtain back there. It’s awkward, but at least you get a little privacy. I’ll bring you a thermos of coffee and some sandwiches in a while, and once we’re at cruising altitude you can unbuckle and sack out on the floor if you want, but it’ll be plenty cold.”

“Thanks,” Rainy says.

The vibration and engine noise make it necessary to concentrate in order to make out what’s being said, but Rainy has taken note of the flight times and the mention of coffee. She pulls her orders from her pocket. Three typewritten pages, though the last page is only a paragraph.

She reads it quickly. Reaches the end. Frowns.

She goes back and reads it more carefully, certain that she has missed something. Missed more than a few things, actually.

By the time she’s done with her second reading, her hands are trembling and her breath is short. This can’t possibly be all there is. She checks the envelope again in case she’s overlooked a sheet. Nothing.

She is ordered to appear at the airfield, to take the flight to the Azores, there to rendezvous with a Royal Navy submarine, which is to take her to Italy. She is to deliver Cisco to his uncle and receive in return a map of enemy emplacements around Salerno. She is to deliver the packet to a certain person working at the Swedish Embassy in Rome.

And then?

Her orders are silent about then.

She swallows past a rising lump in her throat and barely stops herself reading through one more time. Nothing about then. Nothing about where she is to go, what she is to do, how she is to escape.

She wants to throw up. Her face feels like it’s burning. Surely this can’t be it. Surely even an amateur would have a plan? But of course there is a plan for getting what Corelli wants, just no plan for keeping her alive and out of the hands of the Gestapo or Italian counterintelligence.

The Swede. He must have the next set of instructions, the ones explaining how she is not simply being forgotten in the middle of enemy territory.

The Swede. Sure. That’s it. He’ll help her.

But try as she might, she cannot make herself believe it, not all the way.

There’s a difference between taking risks and committing suicide.

The six hours and twenty minutes pass in relative silence. Cisco leans back and dozes, eyes half-shut. Rainy’s mind races in circles. This isn’t a plan, this is a sketch. This is espionage through rose-colored lenses. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that if she were an officer more attention would have been paid to her survival.

I’m a nobody, a buck sergeant, a GI. Expendable, like any other GI.

The Newfoundland base is a bare, scraped place beside dark water. There are rows of Nissan huts, the British version of a Quonset hut, a scattering of tin-sided administrative buildings, and a hangar. A bulldozer with a snow blade attached lies parked between two huts, but while it is chilly for summer, there is no snow.

A jeep fetches the two passengers and hustles them away to thaw out around an iron stove in a Nissan hut equipped with the usual military lack of comfort.

“Can a man get a drink at least?” Cisco asks a Canadian airman, who looks him up and down before walking away without a word. Cisco intertwines his fingers and cracks his knuckles and says, “That fellow needs a good punch in the neck.”

Rainy feels sleepiness steal over her and spends the hour’s break savoring the warmth of the stove. Then it’s back aboard the plane, another takeoff, and a rapid ascent into low clouds. They burst through into hazy, declining sunlight beneath a higher, thinner layer of cover, and take a big, sloping, rightward turn to the south. This leg of the trip is to take eight hours, a very long time to sit on what amounts to a hard bench contemplating the line between duty to the mission and the duty to stay alive.

Gestapo. That is the word that keeps pushing its way into her thoughts. Geheime Staatspolizei, the secret state police, Hitler’s enforcers, his torturers. Beatings. Beatings at the very least. The breaking of bones, the crushing of fingers, the gouging of eyes, rape, and . . .

She sucks air, feeling panic add volatile fuel to her misgivings, panic that seems to crush the air from her lungs. She licks her lips and glances at Cisco to make sure he isn’t watching her, isn’t seeing the sick fear she has not yet suppressed.

Rainy slips off her seat belt and stands, urgently needing to move. She explores the bare cylinder of the plane’s fuselage, locating the chemical toilet and . . . and nothing else. She uses the facility, sitting perched on the tiny seat, bent forward, face in her hands.

Soldiers die every day. Soldiers are sacrificed every day. She is a soldier.

She heads forward to the open cockpit door and looks inside at a confusing array of dials and switches. The pilot is head-back and mouth open, fast asleep, while the copilot keeps his hands on the yoke. Peering through the windshield, Rainy sees taller, darker clouds ahead.

“Boomers. Thunderstorm,” the copilot says over his shoulder, indicating the clouds with a jerk of his chin.

The piles of cloud are red in the light of the plunging sun. Darkness looms in the east beyond. Rainy returns to her seat and straps in.

Thunderstorm it is, and the C-47 is not able to rise above it and has no slack in its fuel supply to try an end around.

A flash, like the world’s biggest camera flashbulb going off and . . .

Craaaack!

Boom!

A massive fist punches the C-47 in its aluminum spine and drives it down a stomach-churning five hundred feet.

“Shit!” Rainy yelps as she is thrown against her seat belt.

Cisco looks at her, amused, and yells, “Nice language coming from a lady.”

Boom-bum-bum-bum-BOOM!

The thunderclap is louder than anything Rainy has ever even imagined hearing. The physical blow that follows shivers the thin skin of the fuselage. She’s amazed the small porthole hasn’t blown out.

The cockpit door is still open, and Rainy can see the pilots are both awake, engaged, and tense, but not so tense that one doesn’t take a moment to glance back and grin at what must be a look of terror on Rainy’s face. His face is illuminated by the sickly glow of instruments and then in blazing white as a bolt of lightning flashes and fractures and crawls across the cloud face ahead.

Wind buffets the plane, sends it slipping sideways and off-center, like a car sliding on an icy road. Thunder batters them again and again, each clap more violent than the one before. The lightning is so close and so wild it seems to pass right through the plane, turning every last rivet blazing white and leaving behind an afterimage on her retinas. Static electricity raises the hair on the back of her neck and arms.

Hour after hour. Rainy has never been one to get seasick or airsick, but she clutches the paper vomit bag close, just in case, because the lunatic elevator ride they are on kneads and shoves and twists her stomach as if determined to reduce her to shivering, puking helplessness.

But eventually the lightning comes from farther astern and the thunder falls away to a distant, disgruntled rumble. The wind, however, intensifies, and the plane is a very small piece of flotsam on a continent-wide river of turbulent air. Up . . . down . . . up . . . down, like riding the Cyclone at Coney Island.

The loadmaster comes walking back, moving easily with the lurch, and carrying a small cooler and a thermos.

“Want to try to eat something?”

Rainy glares hatred at him and his sandwiches, but Cisco says, “Sure, whatcha got?”

“I got ham and cheese on rye, and I got tuna salad on white.”

The mention of tuna salad almost does it, almost has Rainy puking, and she would have but for the fact that her stomach is empty.

“Grab me a ham and cheese,” Cisco says. “And some coffee. Black.”

“Black it is, since we got no sugar and no milk,” the loadmaster says. “We’ll be landing in an hour. Might be a bit hairy.”

“Hairy?” Rainy asks.

The loadmaster holds his hand out flat, palm down, and simulates a plane trying to land in heavy wind. It is not reassuring.

And in fact the landing is not pretty. There is an unusual amount of bouncing and tail-skewing involved, but eventually the plane comes to a stop, the door opens, and Rainy piles out just as quickly as she is able. The ground is hard and it is wet and the sky is dark, but she barely restrains herself from falling to her knees and kissing it.

Cisco? Unaffected. “Now what?”

A jeep with its canvas cover up tears across the tarmac from the direction of a squat, unimpressive control tower, bearing a woman lieutenant and a male sergeant. Rainy remembers belatedly to salute.

“I trust you had a pleasant flight?” the lieutenant asks with the gleefully malicious grin common to airmen and sailors when dealing with earthbound folk. She’s wearing a black armband that reads OD—officer of the day. Or night, in this case.

Only then does Rainy realize she’s still clutching the unused vomit bag. She crumples it and shoves it into her pocket.

They are driven to a white plaster building full of unoccupied desks. Someone has thoughtfully laid out Azorean bread rolls, roast beef, a local cheese, giant cans of mustard and mayonnaise, and a dozen Cokes in a bucket of ice. The Coke settles Rainy’s stomach enough for her to recognize and feed a ravenous hunger.

“Where the hell are we, anyway?” Cisco asks.

The lieutenant answers. “Lajes Field, Azores. The island is called Terceira. It means third. There are nine islands all together. We’re about two thousand miles from New York and just under a thousand from Portugal, and no distance at all from the U-boats, although they’ve had their horns trimmed a bit. Soon as you’ve finished, we’ll drive you down to the harbor, Angra, the biggest city they got here.”

“Any action in Anger?” Cisco asks.

“Angra. Angra do Heroísmo.” Rainy recognizes a fellow linguist. The lieutenant has worked on her pronunciation, not a normal thing for American troops overseas. “It means Bay of Heroism. And to answer your question, no, no action unless you mean two bars serving bad beer, worse wine, and no whiskey.”

Cisco nods thoughtfully. “Sounds like an opportunity. You got horny GIs and . . . pardon my, uh, choice of words . . .”

“Oh, there’s a cathouse,” the lieutenant assures him, showing no sign of feminine embarrassment. “Like you said: horny GIs will find a way.”

They drive through slackening rain down a road paved with cobbles made of black lava. The road is lined with hydrangea bushes, blue and pink. The fields are small, extravagantly green rectangles marked off by low volcanic-stone fences. The road winds and curves upward before beginning to descend into Angra. They pass a donkey cart and a small civilian truck, but that’s all for the half-hour drive.

The harbor is a small, neat bowl surrounded by two-story whitewashed buildings with red tile roofs. The only prominent building is a church with twin square towers topped by neat white domes. The Americans have erected an antiaircraft tower, but no German plane has the range or the inclination to fly this far. There are two naval vessels tied up on the ocean-facing side of the protectively curved pier. One is a small destroyer or corvette, Rainy doesn’t know ships well enough to know quite what to call it. But she recognizes the long, narrow, gray dagger of a submarine.

The sub is a Royal Navy T-class, a sullen-looking beast with a strange bulge at the front where external torpedo tubes look like the nostrils of a dragon’s flared head. She’s 275 feet, about four railroad cars long, or just shy of a football field, but just a tenth as wide in the beam. There’s a superstructure divided in two bits, the higher rear portion festooned with antennae and what can only be the retracted tops of two periscopes. The lower, forward part of the superstructure is taken up by a four-inch gun that seems oversized for its environment.

Fishing boats are heading out from the shelter of the pier, chugging slowly, one after another into choppy seas gray in the faint light of dawn. The night has been shortened by their eastward progress.

“There’s your ride,” the lieutenant says. The sergeant shows his face to a bored Portuguese sailor on sentry duty, and they drive out onto the mole, coming to a stop beside the sub.

“Hey,” Cisco says. “That’s not ours, is it?”

“His Majesty’s boat, Topaz,” the lieutenant says. “They’re your ride.”

“The hell they are,” Cisco says. “There is no goddamn way I am going down underwater. No way in hell.”

“You’ll have to,” Rainy says.

“No. No.” Cisco shakes his head violently. He looks like a man ready to crawl out of his skin. Fearless through the battering airborne thunderstorm, he is transformed now. “No way. No way, no how. The hell with this! Uh-uh, no way.”

But in the end there is a way, involving quite a bit of Azorean vinho de cheiro, a red wine that smells of strawberries. And just two hours behind schedule an exceedingly drunk and raving mobster is manhandled down the hatch and lashed into a canvas hammock by wonderfully amused British submariners.

9
RIO RICHLIN—CAMP ZIGZAG, TUNISIA, NORTH AFRICA

“Richlin! Someone here to see you.” Sergeant Cole holds the tent flap back, and a tall young man bows his head to enter.

“Everyone decent?” Strand Braxton asks, grinning. He’s in an Air Corps uniform: khaki slacks and a sheep’s-wool-trimmed leather jacket that looks very dashing and is completely wrong for the heat.

Rio at that moment is carefully cleaning and oiling her M1. The pieces are laid out on her cot atop a spread-out towel. She has removed the strap. She has pulled the trigger guard forward and pulled the trigger assembly all the way out. She has separated the stock and has even disassembled the gas cylinder, laying the parts out in a neat, familiar pattern.

With clean rags, brushes, and solvent she has cleaned each and every part. She is now busy using a second clean rag to cover all moving parts with a thin coat of oil.

Her hands are greasy, and she smells of sewing machine oil and kerosene. She is dressed in dungaree trousers and a sweat-stained T-shirt. The army has spent approximately zero time considering the fact that army bras—devices with as many straps and as little sex appeal as a parachute—are only indifferently covered by the T-shirt.

The fact that she is in a shocking state of undress flashes through Rio’s mind, but that does not stop her from yelling, “Strand!”

She sets the traveler (a small, curiously shaped metal piece) down, glances furtively around to see if Jack is there. Then she runs to Strand, throwing her arms around him.

They kiss, but discreetly, a kiss that is more passionate than brother-sister, but more self-conscious than would be the case if Geer, Stick, and Cat were not watching with undisguised interest.

“Huh,” Geer says. “So Richlin is still a girl. I’ll be damned.”

“Strand, this is Stick, the one with the clean new corporal’s stripes, that’s Preeling there, and the asshole is Geer.”

The word asshole is out of Rio’s mouth before she can think it through. She sees Strand wince, then cover it up. Geer doesn’t even pretend to be offended.

“Sorry,” Rio says, genuinely embarrassed. “My language has gone to . . . I mean, well, you know . . .”

“It’s good to meet you all,” Strand says. Then he looks more closely at Rio. “Is that a bruise?”

“What, this?” Rio waves it off. “Just, um . . . I accidentally ran into a pole last week.” She avoids eye contact with her squad members, all of whom maintain what might be called a patently false silence, including Cat, who ostentatiously makes a turning key motion over her mouth.

Just then Jenou enters, spots Strand, and gives him a peck on the cheek. “Well, if it isn’t Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome. What are you doing, Lieutenant Braxton, slumming with lowly enlisted types. Did you remember to salute him, Rio?”

“She gave me a different kind of salute, and I liked it a whole lot better,” Strand says.

“What are you doing here?” Rio asks. She’s holding him by the biceps, keeping him close, enjoying the feel of him. He’s a solid reminder of a different life, and a different Rio. And she quite likes the feel of his lean muscles.

“I volunteered to fly a bird colonel over here. He and his staff were in some big hurry, and we’re stood down for a couple days. So I gassed up my plane, grabbed my copilot and flight engineer, and here I am, at least until tomorrow morning. I don’t suppose you can wrangle a twenty-four-hour pass?”

Jenou laughs, and Rio shoots her a warning look, but of course Jenou ignores that and says, “Well, we had some passes last week, and you see the results.” She aims an accusing finger at Rio’s bruise. Mock-serious she says, “I’m afraid Rio can’t handle her drink.”

“Knock it off, Jen,” Rio says, not quite playfully.

“Why, Rio told me she ran into a pole,” Strand says with a wink. “And I am honor-bound to believe her.”

“You should have been there when that big old Texan boy, the one with the bandaged ear, came after her, thinking she was easy prey, and she pulls out that big knife of hers—”

“Jen!”

“Knife?”

“It’s a keepsake,” Rio says quickly. “You know, a souvenir. I think it’s something the A-rabs carry just for show.”

“‘I will stick this in your guts and push it till the point comes out of your mouth.’ That’s what you said, wasn’t it, Rio?”

Jenou bats her eyes at Rio, who is not interested in being teased, not right then, not when she’s hoping Strand doesn’t notice that she stinks of solvent and oil, not to mention just stinking from the lack of a shower after a sweaty morning spent unloading a truck.

“Let’s get out of here,” Rio says, “Let me just reassemble my rifle.”

She sits back down and looks at the pieces laid out. It’s a complex job, but one she can do blindfolded by now. But having Strand watch with a show of interest makes her self-conscious. Her best time is four minutes and six seconds. If she does it that fast won’t she look like . . . well, like a soldier? But if she slows down the others will spot it immediately and the reaction will not be kind.

“Who’s got a watch with a second hand?” Cat asks, obviously perfectly aware of Rio’s dilemma. And that settles it. Rio can only do her best.

Slide bolt into receiver. This is always tricky and usually involves some wiggling of the piece, but Rio has it down to a single, smooth insertion. Then slot the operating rod back into the housing, slide it back to make sure it catches the rod. Then the follower assembly—drop and slide. Bullet guide, follower arm, operating rod catch, holding pin, check the movement, slide in the long spring, lever the assembly into the stock, pop in the trigger guard, lock it down, check the bolt, squeeze the trigger to earn a pleasantly layered metallic click and . . .

“Five minutes, thirty-eight seconds,” Geer says. “Hell, I can beat that, Richlin.”

“Not my best,” she mutters, and when she looks up, Strand’s expression is not congratulatory but serious. His forehead wrinkles, his brows lower over his eyes, shadowing them. His mouth is set in a stern, pressed line, and it takes him longer than she would like for him to ease it into a pleasant smile.

“Okay,” Rio says with false cheer to conceal her unease, “let’s see if Sarge is feeling generous.”

She takes Strand’s arm, actually clamps a hand on his bicep—and draws him outside into the light and heat and dust. She looks around for someplace private, any place, but she is surrounded by a half a square mile of tents, temporary huts, cooking fires, male soldiers naked to the waist, piles of discarded crates that once held canned food, the cans that came from those crates, parked jeeps and deuce-and-a-halfs rumbling by in clouds of dust.

One of the parked jeeps apparently belongs to Strand, at least for now, and he has a corporal dozing in the driver’s seat, helmet tilted forward to shield his eyes, feet up on the dashboard.

Sergeant Cole is sitting on a camp chair drinking coffee with O’Malley and another sergeant. Rio says, “Come on,” and hauls Strand over.

“Sarge, meet Lieutenant Braxton, a friend of mine from back home. Strand, Sergeants Cole, O’Malley, and Alvarez.”

Cole stands, pivots, salutes, then shakes Strand’s outstretched hand. “Good to meet you, Lieutenant.”

“And you, Sergeant, I’ve heard a bit about you through Rio’s letters.” He raises a finger, forestalling a response, and reaches into his inner pocket to pull out a small parcel wrapped in newspaper. “Rio happened to mention that you enjoy an occasional cigar. I don’t know if these are any good, I picked them up in a little shop in Casablanca . . .”

Strand unwraps the parcel, revealing six fat brown cigars. Cole swallows hard. “Those are Cubans. Those are the real thing!”

“Well, they’re yours,” Strand says.

“Thanks, Lieutenant. I take that very kindly. So, just what is it I can do for you in response to this very, very, very welcome bribe?”

“Well, I’m only here for twenty-four hours, and I was wondering . . .” He shrugs.

“I see.” Cole pretends to consider this carefully. “Sergeant O’Malley, I wonder if we might be able to rustle up a twenty-four-hour pass for Private Richlin.”

“Wait,” Strand says. He darts over to his jeep, feels around inside a canvas carryall, and produces a bottle of rye whiskey, which he carries back to O’Malley. “I don’t suppose you’re a drinking man?”

“I’d have thought an officer would have more sense than to even ask that question.” O’Malley hefts the bottle and says, “I do believe you’re correct that we’re being bribed, Jedron. And a damned fine bit of bribery it is too. Make it a case next time, Lieutenant, and you can have Richlin for the whole rest of the war.”

The pass appears with record speed—it’s possible the rye will be shared with the captain. Strand dismisses his corporal to the mess tent and settles behind the wheel with Rio beside him. They drive off, and then Rio sees Jack. Jack is shirtless, stripped down to his boxer shorts and boots, wielding a shovel and digging a new latrine trench. He is bathed in sweat that rolls intriguingly down his smooth, tanned chest. He spots Rio, then does a double take, eyes narrowing as he realizes who is driving.

It is the moment Rio had hoped to avoid. Strand is oblivious, Jack being just one more soldier with a shovel. Jack nods at Rio, tries and fails to smile, and ends up seeming to grimace in disgust. Rio raises her hand in a guilty, halfhearted wave and the jeep roars on by, its dust-cloud swirling over Jack.

It doesn’t matter. Strand is Strand, while Jack is just Jack.

“Where are we going?” Rio asks, raising her voice to be heard over the rush of wind in her face.

“I, uh . . . I arranged a little privacy.”

“How much privacy?” Rio asks archly.

“It’s a room in a hotel, but we can leave the door open. And I’m told there’s a shower.”

“Uh-huh.” A slow, skeptical drawl.

Strand grins at her. “You know, being in the army has made you cynical.”

“Being around men all day and night will do that to a girl.”

“I imagine that’s true. Say, how are you, Rio?” It’s a serious question, more serious than it would have been back home, more serious than it would have been on the Queen Mary. As she feared, the sight of her in OD T-shirt reassembling her weapon like an automaton has left an impression.