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He nods acceptance. “You have your duty.”

“Yes,” she says.

My duty to track the Das Reich. My duty to report back. My duties as a soldier.

And my duty to find Adolf Diekmann, the smiling SS monster in the command car, and kill him.

Assassin?

She will wear the word easily if she finds him.

17

RIO RICHLIN—NORMANDY, NAZI-OCCUPIED FRANCE

“It’s like we’re back in Italy, Cap’n,” Stick says to Captain Passey. He and the rest of the sergeants, along with the lieutenant platoon leaders of Passey’s company, have been called together for what Passey called a “skull session.”

“How so, Stick?”

“Well, there we’d take a German defensive line, and there was another right behind it. Here it’s the hedgerows. We take one and in the next field we’re starting all over from scratch.”

Passey nods. It is clear to Rio that the captain puts more stock in Dain Sticklin than in most of his officers, which, in her opinion, speaks highly of Passey’s good sense. The lieutenants are mostly ninety-day wonders, young men and women of little to no experience and not all that much book-learning either.

Rio’s division, the 119th, has been spared the protracted battles for the Cherbourg and the Cotentin peninsulas. And the British forces are taking on Caen. Which leaves the 119th slogging through the bocage, as the French call this countryside.

After days of fighting in the bocage, Rio has learned some lessons, and she hasn’t lost any more soldiers. Cat has had two killed, one by friendly fire from a P-38 Lightning, and she’s in a very un-Cat-like funk, saying nothing, just scowling.

“That may be,” Passey says. “But I want to know how we’re going to advance. We’re taking too many casualties and going way too slow.”

Rio knows—as everyone now does—that while the landing is a success and the beachhead is secure for now, forward progress is slow, very slow, with her platoon often doing nothing in the course of a day but fighting its way across a single field to take a single hedgerow. At this rate they’ll be in Berlin about the time Rio is ready for a rocking chair.

Stick says, “The people are behaving well, for the most part. But they still can’t get the idea of marching fire. And they still hit the ground every time they hear a loud noise.”

“The Kraut is counting on it,” Lieutenant Horne says, perhaps feeling that his platoon sergeant is taking up too much of Passey’s attention. “They fire a shot, everyone yells ‘sniper,’ they all hit the dirt, and once they’re laid out flat, in come the mortars or the 88s.”

“Yep.” A lieutenant from another platoon agrees, nodding vigorously. “They got MGs at the corners of every field, antitank guns, riflemen in the hedges, artillery support, and when all else fails they roll a Tiger up on us.”

“We need—” Rio starts before quickly silencing herself, because none of the other three-stripers are speaking up.

“Go ahead, Richlin,” Passey says. She’s acquired some standing with Passey since the breakout from the beach. Passey had shown skepticism about the women under his command, but he’s more interested in winning than in playing favorites.

“Well, sir, the best thing I’ve seen so far is this Sherman with a bulldozer blade on the front,” Rio says, feeling like the only child in a room of adults. “It can push straight through a hedgerow, which means we don’t have to come in through gaps the Krauts have zeroed in. But that was just once, I haven’t seen any more since.”

“What about antitank fire?” Passey asks. “What about mines?”

Rio says, “The mines in those fields are Bouncing Bettys and the like, mostly antipersonnel, not antitank. The 88s, as you know, sir, are usually on high ground a distance away, so unless the air corps can take them out . . .”

Passey says, “The fly-boys are scared because they say we’re shooting at them.”

Cat looks like she’s building up a head of steam to say a few things about the air corps, so Rio jumps in. “Those 88s have the roads and the entrances to fields ranged, don’t have the center of a hedgerow zeroed in, and got MGs and mortars for that. The tank-dozer I saw in action broke through in about three minutes. I’m not saying the Krauts can’t aim and shoot in three minutes, but it wouldn’t be easy and it wouldn’t be as accurate.”

Passey nods. “The only tanks in this sector are a colored battalion of Shermans. I’ll ta

lk to their colonel and see whether we can get some help from them.”

The meeting breaks up, and Stick, Cat, and Rio walk the few feet to the field kitchen. After days of C rations the stew and biscuits are a wonderful luxury.

The camp is a chaos of vehicles and soldiers and sad-looking tents. They find an unoccupied spot upwind from the latrines and sit on crates and stuff their faces, feeling guilty about their people up at the front who are opening yet another can of cold hash.