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“Could be,” Cole says, nodding in a sort of sideways, back-and-forth way that signals skepticism. “But there’s a lot of coastline. Lot of beach. They won’t know exactly.”

Rio looks around at her companions, her squad. Reliable Stick; obnoxious Luther; the funny and pugnacious Cat; big, friendly Kerwin; Tilo, looking startlingly young despite his tough city-boy airs; sullen, standoffish, and barely known Jillion Magraff; jaunty Jack. Hark Millican, looking sick and sad, as if he’s already been shot and he’s just waiting for someone to tell him to die; and the most recent addition, the presumed Japanese American Hansu Pang.

Jenou catches Rio’s eye and winks.

Jack catches her eye and just holds her gaze, sharing some emotion that neither of them can hope to name.

Rio breaks eye contact to look at Sergeant Cole. He’s showing nothing. He does his three-stage move where he shifts his cold cigar from side to middle to the other side of his mouth. It reminds Rio of a horse chewing on its bit.

Rio wants to hide behind Cole. She wants to grab Jenou and say, “This is all a stupid mistake; we have to go home now.”

She wants to be with Stafford.

No, far better, she wants to be with Strand, because he’s not here in this boat. She never should have spent time with Stafford.

Jack. His name is Jack, and you know it.

Those emotions—shameful, lustful, conflicted, unfaithful emotions—just add to the weight that bears down on her soul. She feels it that way, as a weight. A heaviness that crushes her heart and extends, leaden, to her limbs.

The flotilla has turned toward a shore invisible in the darkness. No one has to tell them they’re going in, they can all feel it in the air. The heaviness in Rio’s soul grows more oppressive. She closes her eyes and prays.

The prospect of imminent combat should erase all other concerns, it should leave Rio free of all doubts, all second-guessing, but of course it doesn’t. She will carry all of it with her. The picture of Strand in her pocket, the image of Jack belting out “Rule, Britannia,” the imagined images of Rachel, her lungs filling with salt water. The Stamp Man.

The sea grows more agitated; short, steep waves that slap loudly at the sides and fire fountains of spray into the air. The boat rolls, side to side, triggering a new wave of nausea. The latest card game folds up, and now, as they near the target, the coxswain calls for all cigarettes to be put out.

“Fugging German gunners see that light, and we all get blowed to hell.”

Rio has been cold, miserable, sick, and scared for twenty-four hours now, and is in no way prepared to fight. She hasn’t even started, and she’s already exhausted. She has an overpowering desire to check her rifle to make sure, doubly sure, triply sure, that it works, and she repeatedly touches the pockets of her ammo belt, reassuring herself that she has a full load. Despite the wet everywhere else, her mouth is dry.

She does a deep-knee bend then stands up, shakes out her hands, stamps her feet to get some feeling back in her numb toes. The other boats are strung out ahead and behind, all running along in almost total darkness now under a sky playing peek-a-boo with patches of cloud beneath a jeweler’s display case of diamonds. There is a single bunkered light on the stern of the lead boat with all the others following it.

The sea itself is almost as bright as the sky, with phosphorescence sparkling green from the wave tops, but these hints of color only make the underlying sea seem blacker.

The Mediterranean Sea, cradle of human civilization. All the ancient empires have fought their wars here; Rio’s heard Stick talking about it.

“The bottom of the Mediterranean is piled deep with bones and weapons and lost gold from long-ago wars between countries and empires that no longer exist,” Stick once told Rio. Rio hoped then, and hopes even more fervently now, that her bones will not be joining that vast collection.

The lead boat turns sharply to the right—starboard, as the navy boys say—toward the still-invisible shore. This brings the wind and spray around to almost directly in Rio’s face, so she shivers and drops back down behind cover. The boat is heaving and bucking, hitting wave tops and falling into troughs.

Sergeant Cole, speaking calmly, without inflection, and as usual somewhat muffled by his unlit cigar, says, “Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we are heading in. Anyone wants to throw up one last time, get it over with.”

Kerwin does exactly that, leaping to his feet in a vain attempt to project his vomit away from the boat. The wind blows it right back in his face, but the spray soon washes it away.

“No one smokes, no one talks, and sure as hell no one shoots unless I say so. You all got me?”

Cole’s probably done this before.

“Yes, Sergeant,” came the rattling-teeth responses.

Rio licks her lips, tasting salt water.

“Let’s go over the call sign. The challenge is mustard. And the response is ketchup. Do it with me.”

“Mustard.”

“Ketchup.”

“Mustard.”