Front Lines (10 page)

“Yes, Sergeant!”

“Ninety percent of what you will say over the next thirteen weeks will be those two words:
yes
and
sergeant
.”

Rio has no confidence that she can do three push-ups, let alone twenty-five. And that is nothing compared to what might come next. She has thus far focused all her thoughts on the job of enlisting without giving a lot of thought to the question of whether she can get through training. And as much as she is worried about her own abilities, she worries still more about Jenou. Jenou, despite her curves, is built on a strong enough frame, but she is no athlete, and unlike Rio she has never slung a bale of hay or hauled a sack of fertilizer.

“Your lives are now under army control,” Mackie says. It isn't a threat, just a statement of fact. “You will fall out at 0600 every morning. Not 0615. Not 0610. Not 0601. You will dress in fatigues, stand ready, and be marched outside for PT at 0615. There the other NCOs and I will endeavor to train your bodies for the hard work ahead. Do you comprehend?”

“Yes, Sergeant!”

“After PT you will shower and shave and stand ready
to be marched to chow at 0730. At 0800 you will begin the day's assignments. You will learn drill, weapons handling, small unit tactics, and battlefield first aid. PT will get tougher with each day. Training will become more difficult with each day. Do you comprehend?”

“Yes, Sergeant!” There's a slightly desperate sound to that affirmation.

“Lights out will be at 2100 hours. That's nine o'clock p.m. for those of you who don't do so well at math. From 2100 hours until 0600, you will not smoke, talk, read, or move from your bunk except to use the latrine, which you will do one at a time during the night. Do you comprehend?”

“Yes, Sergeant!”

“If you are still awake at 2200 hours I will have no choice but to feel ashamed. I will be ashamed because it will mean that I have not worked you hard enough. That may happen once. I assure you it will not happen twice.”

She walks now in that measured, deliberate way, that pace that evokes radio plays of supernatural terror.

“The curtain separating male and female will be drawn one hour before lights out. Anyone crossing that line will be guilty of a court-martial offense. Anyone harassing a fellow soldier will be guilty of a court-martial offense. Anyone fraternizing in an improper way with a fellow soldier will be guilty of a court-martial offense. Do you comprehend?”

“Yes, Sergeant!”

“But before you have a chance to whine and beg for mercy in front of a court-martial, you will have to deal . . . with me.”

She stops in front of Private Timoteo “Tilo” Suarez, a dark-haired, sly-faced, sensuous-eyed city boy. She pivots so her face is within six inches of his and says, “Do you comprehend, Private Suarez?”

“Yes, Sergeant!”

Then she walks back to Jenou, and with her face so close to Jenou's they are breathing the same air, she says, “Do you comprehend, Private Castain?”

“Yes, Sergeant!”

Sergeant Mackie has unerringly picked out the two most likely offenders, one from each gender. Jenou has already been eyeing Tilo Suarez, and he has returned that attention. Rio has to grit her teeth to suppress the grin that's struggling to break out.

“All right.” Mackie relaxes her posture a few degrees and softens her voice. “For a lot of you this is your first time away from home. Some of you are old enough to know how to handle yourselves, but a lot of you are young. Some of you very young.” Her eyes flick toward Rio.

She knows!

“So here's what you need to do. First off, listen to the NCOs. An NCO is any sergeant, corporal, or private first class. If you see stripes on a shoulder, that's an NCO, also
known as a noncom. One stripe is a PFC, two stripes is a corporal, three stripes is a buck sergeant, four stripes, well, that's a staff sergeant and that's me. Beyond that you don't need to know except that should you ever happen to glimpse six stripes with a star in the center, then you have laid eyes upon the sergeant major, which is to say God's holy avenging angel on earth. And woe unto you if you embarrass me in front of the sergeant major.”

She's berating, she's threatening, but, Rio realizes, she's also teaching.

“Second, help each other out. Pay attention to your training, because in a very few weeks you may be the target lined up perfectly in an enemy's sights. You're going to want to know what to do in that situation so as not to end up dead. The army is a team, a team belonging to the government of this great nation, the greatest nation on earth. Am I correct about that?”

“Yes, Sergeant!”

“You are GIs. Government issue. You are all on the GI team. That team extends from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt down through the chiefs of staff, down through the generals and the junior officers, all the way down through the noncoms, and finally, to you. You.” At that moment she seems to be looking at each of them, one by one, which isn't possible, but it's how Rio feels. “One team. One purpose. What's your name, Private?”

She has come to stand in front of a young man with intelligent eyes and a widow's peak.

“Private Dain Sticklin, Sergeant.”

“What is the purpose of an American soldier, Private Dain Sticklin?”

“To kill the enemy,” he says.

For a fleeting moment an actual human expression threatens to appear on Mackie's face. “Not the worst answer, Private Sticklin. But your purpose is to obey the orders of your superiors. Obedience to orders. Obedience to orders. Obedience. To. Orders. Do you all comprehend?”

“Yes, Sergeant!”

“You will follow orders. You will learn. You will do many different jobs in my army, Privates, but before each of you leaves my care, you will have learned to obey orders. And . . .” She nods at Private Sticklin. “. . . you'll also have learned how to kill the enemy. Chow in thirty minutes; get your gear squared away. Dismissed.”

There is a collective breath, a collective sagging of shoulders, a few low whistles.

“She knows you're boy crazy,” Rio says to Jenou.

“That's ridiculous,” Jenou says with a wink. “No one in the army is really a
boy
. They're men, Rio. I'm
man
crazy.”

“I quite like our sergeant,” a young man who couldn't
have been much older than Rio says in a distinctly non-American accent. “Friendly lass.”

The man with the accent is two bunks down from Jenou. He's thin, tall, has ginger hair, blue eyes, and radiates an unmistakable sense of charm and fun. Rio knows Jenou will like him—she likes smart-alecks.

Sure enough. “And who might you be?” Jenou asks.

“I might be the prime minister of Great Britain, but sadly I'm just plain Jack Stafford. Private John Lloyd Merriwether Stafford, officially, but you can call me Jack.”

He sticks out a hand, and Jenou and Rio take turns shaking it—Jenou taking a bit longer with the motion. Because she's Jenou.

“What's with the accent?” Jenou asks.

“I might ask you the same thing,” Jack replies. “But I suppose you are remarking on the fact that I speak English as it was meant to be spoken.”

“What are you doing in our army?” Dain Sticklin asks, not confrontational, just curious. “Shouldn't you be in the British army?”

“Mmm, yes. Probably should. But this seems to be the only way for me to get back there.” In a less cheeky tone, he explains. “I was evacuated to America, me and my little sister, along with a lot of other kids, back when the bombing started. I was just sixteen at the time, and the King's army doesn't take you until you're eighteen. I've
been living with an aunt in Hagerstown since then. Now that I'm old enough, well, no way to get back home.”

“Can't your parents . . .” Rio senses the misstep before the words are all the way out of her mouth.

“Afraid not,” he says, pushing past a wobble in his voice and a small, involuntary tightening of his jaw. “German bomb took them.”

“Well, we'll go kill us some Germans together, right? Get some payback.” Tilo Suarez grins at Rio and says, “Tilo Suarez. But you can call me handsome.”

“But then you'd have to be handsome,” Rio says, deadpan. “Otherwise it would be like I was mocking you.”

There's a sharp laugh from Stafford and a stiffening from Tilo. Dain Sticklin suppresses a grin.

“Quick,” Jack says, consoling Tilo by patting him on the back. “The woman is quick.”

“Women in the army. It's a mistake,” Tilo says with a sneer, but he glances warily in the direction Sergeant Mackie has taken.

“And yet, here they are,” Jack says. “As are we all.”

“If I could find a girl to take my place, I'd sure go for it,” another young man says. He's a strong-looking boy with reddish hair, a round face, and an easygoing manner. “Kerwin Cassel, from Teays, West Virginia,” he says, and there follows still more hand-shaking.

“Well, new chums and teammates and all of that,”
Jack says. “Shall we go in to dinner?”

Tilo Suarez is not happy to be lumped in as a chum or a teammate, but in the end he can't think of a way to decline. And Kerwin Cassel seems genuinely pleased to have found anyone to talk to. Sticklin starts to move away.

Jack calls to him, saying, “Come on then, old boy, you and I are doomed to be mates, right? Jack and Stick? Or Stick and Jack, if you prefer.”

A slow smile spreads over Sticklin's serious face. “I was trying to leave that nickname behind me, but I guess there's no avoiding it.”

“Is this the popular kids, or the social outcasts?” The question comes from another woman soldier. She's as tall as Rio, but broader, with a solidity of form that suggests that like Rio she's carried heavy objects at some point in her life. The sturdy shape is belied a bit by a strange, down-turned smile that shows only her upper teeth. She has strawberry hair and dark eyes that shine with humor and skepticism.

Jenou says, “Any gang I'm in is the cool kids. Who are you?”

“Cat Preeling.”

“What's Cat short for?” Tilo asks. She makes him nervous, most likely because she looks at him the way a scientist looks at germs under a microscope.

“It's short for Cat, slick.”

Rio lags a little behind as the seven of them blunder their way to the chow hall—it's hidden behind the quartermaster's building. Rio, Jenou, Cat, Stick, Jack, Tilo, and Kerwin. Rio thinks,
Only one normal name among them, and he's an Englishman.

She wonders idly who Jenou will target. Stick is not her type, too serious. Tilo is the obvious choice—he's the sort who will dance and drink and flirt—but maybe that makes him too obvious? Plus he's just about an inch shorter than Jenou, and she's never liked short boys. Kerwin? No, the hillbilly accent will put Jenou off.

No, Rio suspects that Jenou will go for the charming redheaded foreigner with the charm.

Anyway, that's who Rio would go for.

Rainy stands before Colonel Derry in his office. She is at attention. He leaves her at attention while he makes a show of looking over her file.

Rainy has a pretty good idea what he's seeing there: of the forty student soldiers in Rainy's class, she is first in German fluency, second in her command of Italian and French, fifth in the math skills that are particularly useful in deciphering coded messages, consistently scores well in her comprehension of the handbooks and lessons, and reads a map reasonably well. She seems to have an intuitive grasp of aerial photography.

On the downside—or what Colonel Derry will no doubt see as the upside—the report from basic training indicates that she can't shoot worth a damn, can barely raise the heavy M-1 to aim, and is of no use whatsoever in hand-to-hand combat.

Rainy's instructors—even the “sensible” older hands who, like Colonel Derry, believe that women have no business even being here—give her high marks for leadership. And neither the censors nor her fellow soldiers nor her NCOs nor her officers have ever gotten an indiscreet word out of her.

She can, in short, keep a secret, a fact she's inordinately proud of.

Colonel Derry is not a subtle man, and his motives are not hard for Rainy to grasp: he had obviously been hoping to wash out all the females. This is no longer basic training—basic training is almost impossible to wash out of since the army is quite keen to fill uniforms. But this is an elite school, and eliminating the weak is a legitimate part of its role. In fact, as Rainy knows very well, of the initial forty in the school, three women and five men have already been reassigned.

Rainy approves of every one of those reassignments so far. She shares the desire to graduate only the most capable. And when it comes to capable, Rainy Schulterman stands out, trading first place back and forth with Sergeant Andy Sprinter—Andy Sprinter who stands six feet three inches tall and could toss Rainy Schulterman in the air like a drum major's baton.

Rainy holds her attention stance. Colonel Derry is
willing
her to break attention. He is
willing
her to speak
out of turn. But she stands there with her arms at her side, back stiff, chin up, eyes level, barely breathing.

I can stand here all day if that's the game you want to play, Colonel.

“At ease.”

The change from full attention to at ease is slight. Proper but minimal. She will not show relief.

“Private First Class Schulterman, what do you
think
of this school?”

“I think it makes a vital contribution to the war effort, sir.” The smart, safe answer. “Sir” is replaced with “you jackass,” but only in her mind.

“And are you
content
with the course of study?” He's seated so he can't bounce on the balls of his feet, but he can jerk his head forward for emphasis.

A fractional hesitation. Then, “Sir, my opinion is that I must trust in the wisdom and integrity of my superiors and assume that this school is the very best facility of its kind anywhere, sir.”

Rainy thinks,
He despises me.

“PFC Schulterman, your
scores
are . . . acceptable. This does not alter my opinion that your
proper
role is at home working in a defense industry and raising children.”

You forgot baking cakes, you ancient, irrelevant windbag.

“And to be perfectly frank, your people are not known for their warrior spirit. Oh, I'll give you your Maccabees, but what has the Jew done since those ancient times? Your people are tailors and fruit sellers, lawyers and accountants. I daresay you cannot think of a single Jew military hero.”

“Brevet Brigadier General Frederick Knefler, sir, promoted for conspicuous courage in leading the charge on Missionary Ridge in the Battle of Chattanooga, sir.”

That was probably too much, Rainy realizes as soon as the words are out of her mouth. It is seldom a good idea to appear to be better informed or more intelligent than one's superior officer.

But Colonel Derry just curls his lip and says, “Brevet only. It is a temporary rank, no doubt assigned in the heat of emotion following a battle. It was an emotional age.”

Rainy is just wise enough to nod and say, “As you say, Colonel.”

Derry blows out a great sigh and with obvious reluctance says, “However, according to the regulations, you are entitled to that which I am giving you today.”

“Sir?”

He takes off his spectacles, lays them on the desk, shakes his head slightly side to side, and in a mournful tone says, “You are hereby promoted to the rank of sergeant.”

He would have shown no greater regret if he'd been announcing that the war was lost.

“Thank you, sir,” Rainy says, and manages, just barely, to suppress a grin. She's been one of the lowest-ranking soldiers in the school, and now she is a peer. A sergeant.

“Is that all you have to say,
Sergeant
Schulterman?”

“Sir, I will do my best to honor the uniform, the stripes, my unit, and my commander. Sir.”

Rainy maintains a straight face until she nears the female quarters she shares with seven of the remaining women. The room is mostly empty—the colonel has deliberately scheduled the encounter during noon chow so as to deprive her of a meal—but Sergeant Amalia Peterson is there, polishing her boots.

Rainy drops to her bunk, kicks her feet up on the adjoining bench, and says, “I don't suppose you've got any spare stripes and a needle and thread?”

Peterson looks up from her work, sighs mournfully, and says, “Now you'll really be hard to take, Schulterman.”

“Yes, I will,” Rainy says, feeling quite pleased.

Peterson is in her late twenties, a grown woman with a husband she's divorcing, a college degree in anthropology, and the most luscious auburn hair Rainy has ever seen, though it is cut short. Peterson was offered a commission upon enlisting, owing to her college education, but she declined on the grounds that her father had been
an enlisted man, his father had been an enlisted man, his father in turn had been an enlisted man who died in the Civil War after someone shot him in the eye, and unless and until her father dies, she was not going to dishonor the family by becoming an officer.

Amalia jerks her head. “Foot locker. Second layer, wrapped up in a sock.”

Rainy rouses out the stripes and the needle and thread and gets to work on a clean uniform blouse.

“Did the colonel suffer a stroke when he informed you?”

“The colonel's attitude is not for me to discuss,” Rainy says in a tone that leaves very little doubt as to her true opinion of Colonel Derry.

“Uh-huh,” Amalia drawls. She is a westerner who grew up in a house that was still partly made of sod on the outskirts of Omaha, Nebraska. Her husband had sunk progressively into drunkenness, which had escalated to slaps and then to punches during the years of their unhappy marriage. War is Amalia's escape from that unwise marriage, and she has Rainy's same determination to make it, though her motives are very different.

Two other women enter laughing, see what Rainy's doing, and retreat sullenly to the far end of the room, which is not very far. The female quarters hold five double bunk beds, not all in use.

Each soldier is allowed to place one photograph on the wall by her bunk. That is the one personal touch allowed. Most of the women have pictures of boyfriends or parents. Rainy feels that is indiscreet and has simply tacked up a
TIME
magazine cover showing General Dwight D. Eisenhower framed by US and UK flags.

No sooner has Rainy finished sewing and changed into her newly admirable uniform than they have to rush to make afternoon class, which is in aerial photography, a complicated, painstaking, detail-oriented grind that Rainy enjoys. They are shown a series of photographs of an unidentified airfield somewhere in Occupied France—the same field at four different times. Rainy notes the planes on the ground, notes changes from one shot to the next, and correctly posits that a double rank of German dive bombers are actually plywood dummies placed there to fool prying eyes and draw the attentions of Allied bombers away from actual targets.

After class she is called to Captain Herkemeier's office.

“Sergeant Schulterman, reporting as ordered.”

Herkemeier comes around the desk to shake her hand. “Congratulations on the stripes, Schulterman.”

“Sir, I have a suspicion that I owe these to you.”

“You have a suspicious mind, Sergeant,” he says. “Take a seat.”

She does, and in unconscious imitation of him, tugs
at the crease in her uniform pants to keep it straight and sharp.

“I'll get right to it. There's a critical need for German translators in the field.”

“In what field, sir?”

He doesn't answer directly. “We've spent the last year in America training, preparing, manufacturing. We've killed a few Japs, but we haven't so much as laid a finger on the Krauts. That's about to end.”

Rainy's smile is slow and predatory. “I'm pleased to hear it, sir.”

Herkemeier nods. “Schulterman, you're a damned good student. Should you complete this course, you'll graduate either first or second, and at that point there will be two options open to you: you can either attend officer candidate school and be commissioned a second lieutenant, probably find yourself as an S2 at the battalion level in a stateside or rear unit that doesn't need a damned S2, and by the end of the war be wearing captain's bars. Or you can remain in enlisted rank and most likely end up staying stateside in a vital staff job. Or maybe teaching others like yourself.”

“Sir, I sense the suggestion of a third option.”

He nods and looks dubious. “Yes. As I said, the need for translators is acute. You could ship out at your present rank to a line company and—”

“I'll take that road, sir.”

“Would you mind very much if I finished what I was saying?”

“No, sir.”

“Those would be your options, all other things being equal. But frankly there's a problem with you going to officer school. A troubling fact has come to my attention. It is of no concern to me, and I have not forwarded this piece of information up the chain of command. But it could, if it became more widely known, abort your career in army intelligence.”

Rainy is baffled. She frowns, searching her memory, trying to figure out what Herkemeier can possibly be referring to.

“Rainy, what does your father do for a living?”

“My father, sir? He delivers milk in New York City.”

“Yes, he does,” Herkemeier says. “He is also a numbers runner for the Genovese crime organization.”

Rainy stares. And while she stares, her mind frantically shifts through all she has seen and heard from her father about his life, his work. A numbers runner? Gambling is illegal, though many people indulge. A numbers runner is a person who takes bets on slips of paper, collects them, and brings them to the central booking office, which tracks winners and losers. He collects from the losers and pays the winners.

Her father? A numbers runner?

Milk delivery. Door to door. A perfect cover for a numbers runner.

In her mind she compares what she knows of the family's finances against what she believes she knows of the likely income of even a successful and industrious delivery man. Her memory illuminates photos of the annual family vacation, the necklace her mother wears on special occasions, the one her father dismisses as “nothing but paste, really,” but that glitters like real diamonds. She considers the lessons the family has always been willing to pay for—violin, piano, languages. The books. The food.

Rainy feels honor compels her to protest. But honor is not analysis.

“Sir, I was not aware.”

“You don't dispute it?”

“I neither endorse nor dispute, Captain. I don't know. But I believe it is possible, and I do not believe you would have confronted me unless you felt the evidence was compelling.”

“You are not cleared to see the actual evidence,” he says. Then he lifts a sheet of paper from his desk, forms it into a funnel, takes a lighter from his pocket, and sets the paper afire.

They watch it burn, and when it is almost entirely
consumed, Herkemeier drops the last of it in his metal trash can.

“The FBI of course has a copy, and in time it may surface. If you were stationed here in the States, that might spell trouble. You might be busted out of MI and sent to a different duty. You might end up a clerk in some backwater. I think that would be a hell of a waste of a damned good mind, an army intelligence mind.”

“Sir.” She can't manage another word just then because her throat is a lump and her heart is pounding and her mind is filling with black anger.

“Half the people here, and more than half of the women, want a nice soft billet far from the shooting. Now, you? I think you want to cause damage to this country's enemies. Am I mistaken?”

“Sir, you are not,” Rainy says tersely.

Herkemeier straightens his tie, straightens the collar, and leans forward. “I don't think we win this war with protocols, Rainy. I think we win this war by ruthlessly applying a single unifying principal: killing Germans by any and all means necessary. So I don't really give much of a damn what sex you are, or whether your father is a petty crook.”

That phrase, “petty crook,” feels too harsh, too final. She loves her father; he is and will always be a great man to her, but that's not the issue now—that is for another time.

“Let me kill Germans, sir.”

Herkemeier grins. “I had a premonition you might say that. You are hereby ordered to present yourself to the transport clerk where you will show him these orders. . . .” He raises a manila envelope and hands it to her. “Whereupon he will arrange your earliest possible departure. Once you're in theater, no one will give a hoot in hell about your background. It will be up to you to make the most of that.”