Lieutenant Horne decides it’s time for inspiration. “Remember, men, the American army has never been defeated. And we won’t be today! This is when you prove your worth. This is the day you’ll tell your children about!”
“Drop dead,” Geer mutters under his breath.
Lupé catches sight of Cat Preeling making a wry, upside-down smile at Horne’s exclusion of females.
The Higgins boat surges between hedgehogs, and suddenly, without warning, the ramp drops.
Just as suddenly Lupé can now see the beach itself as well as the bluff. And she sees at least a hundred feet of water between her and the sand. She sloughs off the musette bag.
“Go, go, go!” Horne yells.
Hank Hobart and Dick Ostrowiz are first off the boat. Both plunge into the water and disappear from view.
A machine gun veers its fire toward them, ping, ping all around, holes appearing in the side of the boat, puckered like popped blisters. A soldier yells and falls down. Another seems surprised and says, “Hey, I think they shot me!” and plucks at her uniform trying to see the wound that spreads red across her chest.
Rudy J. Chester heaves the BAR in the general direction of the beach and it, too, sinks from view as Chester turns and tries to push back against the surge of soldiers as if his job is done now and he is quitting for the day.
Lupé pushes past, heart in her throat, breath coming in gasps that sound like sobs. She reaches the end of the ramp and—
Rio Richlin sees two of her soldiers, Hobart and Ostrowiz, disappear beneath the waves.
Rio sees Camacho stop like she’s hit a brick wall, and fall, twisting to the side. The side of her throat is gone, a mass of blood and tattered flesh, draining blood like a cut water balloon.
“Geer! Keep ’em moving!” Rio yells.
“Go, goddammit!” Geer roars.
Rio strips off her gear, tosses her rifle to Jenou, and jumps into the water.
It’s dark under the surface, darker still in the shadow of the Higgins boat, with swirling sand everywhere and machine gun bullets punching spirals in the water. She doesn’t see either of her soldiers.
Then, a shape, a writhing form. She kicks herself toward it as the cold stuns her muscles. She grabs a handful of uniform shirt and pushes hard upward, forcing Hank Hobart into the air.
With her own lungs screaming, Rio fights through Hobart’s panicked flailing, finds Hobart’s belt buckle, drops the weight, and then releases Hobart so she can surface and suck a lungful of air. She dives again and finds Hobart floating, face turned toward her, blood billowing from his back.
Machine gun bullets tear holes in the water all around, and Rio half swims, half walks up the shale incline, feet slipping and sliding, feeling as if with each step she’s dragging the whole weight of the English Channel behind her.
Hobart. Camacho. Ostrowiz.
Three!
Rio’s lungs find air and she pushes on, kicks something hard, takes a deep breath, and plunges down to find the BAR where it sank. She lifts it, pushes it ahead of her, trips, swallows seawater, rises to one knee, and the retreating wave offers her the gift of oxygen once more.
Up and up, one foot after the other, she hauls herself and the BAR onto the sand, where she drops the machine gun, sits down behind the uncertain shelter of a hedgehog, and looks back toward the boat.
The Higgins boat is riddled with holes. Bodies lie on the tilted ramp. Bodies float facedown. Bodies surge and retreat in the breaking surf.
Tsip, tsip, tsip!
Machine gun rounds strike water all around. An explosion up the beach. Someone yelling in pain.
Ping! Ping! as bullets ricochet off the hedgehog.
“Medic! Medic!”
“Help me!”
Bullets ricochet off the hedgehog, and now two soldiers are crowding Rio, desperate for cover, one screaming, “It’s not fair! It’s not fair!” until a round catches him in the stomach and he slides away, eyes staring until the light behind them goes out.