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“Where do you want us, sir?” Rio asks. Most soldiers curse more or less constantly, but Rio had somehow expected something different from a West Pointer.

Dubrowski considers. Then he pulls Rio aside to speak privately. “Tell you what I need, Sergeant, you tell me if you can do it. What I’d like is to form a sort of flying squad I can deploy to harass the damn panzers they got trying to come up along a forest track.”

“A bazo

oka team?”

Dubrowski nods. “If the panzers break through, they can drive straight toward the main road, pivot into town, and all of us up here will be cut off and spend the rest of the war in a POW camp.”

“We haven’t done much tank-killing, Lieutenant.”

“I have a PFC you can have, good with a bazooka.” Raising his voice, “Castro! Send word to Mazur to get his ass over here!” Then again to Rio, “He’s a Polack like me, but a fresh-off-the-boat Polack, barely speaks English. But goddamn, he hates Krauts. Take Mazur, pick your best squad, see what you can do.”

Rio has several conflicting reactions. She can barely keep her eyes open, she aches everywhere, her stomach is rumbling, and she knows her people are at least as bad off.

On the other hand, as she sees the situation is desperate, she does not want to be a POW, and her chain of command now runs through Dubrowski to Mackie. And Rio would chop off her own arm rather than disappoint Mackie.

“Yes, sir,” Rio says.

Mazur comes at a run, carrying a bazooka. He’s a small man, barely over the legal minimum for enlistment, but wide and built like an upside-down triangle, with almost comically bulky shoulders.

“Mazur. Welcome aboard,” Rio says. “Okay, here’s how this goes. I am forming a flying squad to go see if we can’t annoy some panzers. Stafford, you’ll be my ASL. Sorry, Geer, Beebee can be your number two, I need Stafford.”

So much easier not to think about Jack when I call him Stafford.

Geer shakes his head and sighs, not thrilled to trade Jack for Beebee.

“Castain, Molina, Jeffords, and . . .” Rio hesitates. She needs a beast of burden, someone big and strong enough to carry bazooka rounds. She sighs. “. . . and you, Private Sweetheart. You’re all with me. Everyone else with Geer. Geer? Go report to the lieutenant.”

Geer says, “You should take me with you.”

Rio nods. “Yeah, I probably should, Geer, but I need someone back here who knows what’s going on.”

The words in case I don’t come back are unspoken but understood.

Rio squats with Dubrowski again, going carefully over the maps. “There’s a trail right here.” Dubrowski stabs the map with a finger. “Don’t know how far it goes, but it might get you as far as this.” Another finger stab. “Our guys are holding over here, so you need to watch out for friendly fire.”

“Mines?”

“The area was swept for mines when it was ours, but Fritz is a busy little fellow, so . . .”

“Swell.”

They have seven rounds of standard antitank, armor-piercing bazooka rockets and three smoke rounds. As they set off, Rio asks Mazur, “Is it worth carrying the smoke rounds?”

Mazur grins, revealing several missing teeth. “Oh, I love Willy Pete, Sarge. You light a panzer up with Willy and it blinds them. It gets mighty warm inside a tank that’s burning, and the Krauts bail out.”

“You’ve killed tanks?”

Mazur holds up two fingers and a stub of a middle finger. He laughs. “Two and a half, see? Hah! Killed two, crippled one.”

His English is almost perfect, obviously Dubrowski had been teasing. “What happened to the finger?”

“Damn dago sniper in Italy.”

Jack walks point with Corporal Jeffords, a lanky Arkansan chewing and spitting tobacco behind him scanning for mines. Molina is just behind Rio, and Rudy J. Chester brings up the rear, gasping beneath the weight of his gear plus two musette bags stuffed with bazooka rounds.

Jenou drops back a bit to match stride with Rio. “Do we know something about killing tanks?”