LITMIR.BIZ

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particular sort of cargo.

      Sergeant Cole rubs sleep from his eyes and looks at the MP, then at the bodies piled and intertwined in the cart. Eight of his soldiers—the new guy Beebee, plus Suarez, Stick, Stafford, Castain, Preeling, Magraff, and Richlin—are in various states of consciousness. They are bleeding, bruised, groaning, and trying unsuccessfully, in the case of the marginally conscious ones, to climb out.

      “I’m Cole,” he admits, with disgust in both syllables.

      “I think these belong to you.” The driver jerks a thumb over his shoulder.

      “You can drive ’em right on back to the stockade,” Cole snaps.

      The corporal laughs. “No can do, Sarge, stockade is full. So’s the city jail. And anyway, the dark-haired one there slipped me a fiver to get them here. There’s been some roughhousing. Your bunch were in a fight with some Frog colonials. Then, best as we can tell, they went on to get into a second round with a Texas outfit.”

      “Dammit,” Cole says, which is about as extreme as his language gets unless there’s shooting going on.

      Rio rolls off Cat, tumbles, and slams hard into the dirt. She lays there, face down, for quite a while, arms and hands flattened on the ground. She might just as well have fallen out of a passing plane.

       How did I get here?

      The ground does not feel quite solid to Rio, in fact it is spinning, spinning, and sort of falling away, like one of those boards they use to ride the waves at Stinson Beach. Oh, she wishes she were there right now, wishes she were far away, lying on some beach. And also really wishing hard that she had not started drinking that ouzo they got . . . somewhere.

      Her tongue is a dead rat coated in tar; her muscles are both limp and sore; her stomach . . . oh, she doesn’t even want to think about that because she’s got nothing left to puke up unless she’s going to start puking up her liver.

      Also, her face hurts. She almost remembers the punch that connected with her right cheek. And she can vaguely trace the soreness in her throat muscles to an armlock, possibly from an MP, that part is not at all clear. The one thing she does remember with a certain satisfaction is that the sprain in her right ankle is from the impact of her boot tip on a sensitive area of a male Texan’s person.

      “All right, you useless bunch of clowns, crawl off and shower. Who knows what bugs you picked up, and I won’t have them in my tents. And, Suarez, for God’s sake pull up your pants!”

      Cat says, “Hey, I lost a tooth.”

      By reveille they have showered and caught ninety minutes of sleep. Rio returns only very reluctantly to consciousness because consciousness is pain. Her head. Oh God, her head. And her eyes! Oh no, that’s even worse.

      Like a zombie she dresses and runs a comb across a head that has become a big bass drum pounding, pounding.

      “You okay?” Rio says to Jenou through gritted teeth.

      “Unh,” Jenou answers.

      “You have a black eye,” Rio points out.

      “Unh,” Jenou agrees.

      The squad shuffles miserably toward the assembly area. They feel that their misery must be obvious to all, but as Rio blinks in the painful sunlight she notices that the same misery afflicts at least two-thirds of the forty-seven—now forty-eight—men and women who make up Fifth Platoon.

      Sergeant Cole lines up with them, no one too concerned with spit and polish given that this is now a veteran platoon with a number of experiences in combat.

      Phil O’Malley, the new platoon sergeant who has replaced Garaman, is an ancient forty-five-year-old veteran of the last war. He’s a man who gives an impression of being almost as wide as he is tall, but the width is in the shape of solid muscle and gristle. He has a salt-and-pepper buzz cut, a tan face, and slitted brown eyes that could be amused or cruel, depending. O’Malley stands a little ahead of the formation.

      Rio assumes this is the usual morning ritual, with the usual pro forma assurances that all are present and accounted for. But it’s already gone on too long and the thought that maybe she should force herself to pay attention begins to form in the woolly depths of her hungover brain.

       Or I could just sit down right here in the dirt. That would be nice.

      There are two lieutenants up there now in the eye-searing light. One Rio recognizes as the headquarters company lieutenant who has been filling in until a new lieutenant can arrive to replace the deceased-but-not-mourned Lieutenant Liefer.

      This would explain the second lieutenant who is shaking hands now with the acting lieutenant, who salutes pleasantly and ambles off.

      “Better put them at ease, Sergeant O’Malley, some of them look about ready to keel over,” the new lieutenant says.

      He’s young—they always are—twenty-three or twenty-four years old. His uniform is perfection, creases all crisp and ruler straight, lapels starched and ironed to a knife’s edge, cap set to the correct angle with just a bit extra for a hint of swagger. He has a patrician face with high cheekbones, smooth peaches-and-cream complexion, and eyes the color of a calm sea on a sunny day.

      “Now we’re getting somewhere,” Jenou says voicelessly.

      The lieutenant is gorgeous.

      “I’m Lieutenant Mike Vanderpool, I’m your new platoon commander.”

      Despite the dandy’s uniform, he stands easy, a slight tilt to his head, and neither his voice nor his expression mark him as any kind of martinet.

      “I’m a West Pointer, I’ll just confess that right from the start.”

      There is a rustle of low laughs, quickly quashed.

      “Yes, I am one of them. And this is my first time in the actual war. So I am relieved to find that I have under me some of the finest NCOs in the army. Sergeant O’Malley, Sergeant Shields, Sergeant Cole, and Sergeant Alvarez, I will rely on your experience as we work together.”

      Rio almost smiles to see Cole standing a bit taller before self-consciously relapsing to an unimpressed slouch.

      “You men—and women—I will come to know each of you in time. Give me a chance, and I’ll return the favor. Sergeant O’Malley? Anything you or your NCOs would like to say?”

      Jack suddenly collapses, but he picks himself up and is diplomatically ignored by the new lieutenant.

      Cole speaks up. “Sir, I don’t know if this is the right time, but I’m down a corporal and I’d like to replace him out of my squad.”

      “You have someone in mind?”

      “I’ve got a man who’s been filling the role temporarily. Stick. I mean, um, what the hell is your actual name, Stick?”

      “Dain Sticklin, sir.” He winces noticeably, perhaps because his jaw is bruised a yellowish blue and may not be quite centered. But he looks better than Jack, who may well have died, been buried, and only recently been disinterred.

      Lieutenant Vanderpool steps over, hands behind his back, interested. “You seem to have been injured, Private Sticklin.”

      “Sir, we had a pass and . . . well, those back streets get pretty dark, with stairs and all, so I tripped.”

      “Ah.”

      “Landed on my face, sir.”

      “Well. Maybe we could issue more flashlights. This tripping problem seems to be something of an epidemic in the platoon.”

      “Yes, sir,” Stick says, his expression that of a man straining not to throw up.

      “I will also require more attention to your uniforms in the future. The general is a stickler for proper uniform, including ties and shined boots. I would rather not be chewed out by General Patton.

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