Sentimental Journey (9 page)

“Five one thousand . . .” He pulled the rip cord—his favorite part—and got the crap jerked out of him by the chute, which was far better than watching the canopy collapse above him as he fell to earth at a few thousand feet a minute.

He spun for a moment or two as his risers unwound; then he floated in that great silence, the one that always followed the chute’s opening jerk.

He gripped the lines and looked above him.

Off in the distance, the plane had banked to the northeast and was moving away. Back to base. For the briefest of moments it looked like a metal crucifix hanging sideways in the sky.

By the time the plane was nothing but a flea speck in the distance, J.R. was floating through the air above the desert, some four minutes, at the very least, and God-knew-how-many-odd seconds outside the designated drop zone.

“PAPER DOLL”

Another five days had gone by, and every single one of them had been more difficult than the last. The morning after her cheery little talk with Von Heidelmann, Adolf got her up early and took her outside to walk in the courtyard.

It had been raining. She was soaked to the bone, but instead of taking her back to her room afterward, he took her directly to Von Heidelmann, who talked to her for hours. All she could do was sit in that hard wooden chair and tell herself it didn’t matter that she was wet and cold and miserable.

At first she tuned Von Heidelmann out the way she had tuned out her brothers when they would pester her to death. She answered only when she wanted to. But some nights she swore she could hear him in her sleep, that trapped inside her head was a constant drone of Nazi jargon.

A few days ago she had started her period in the middle of the night and had to tear strips from her one towel to use as menstrual rags. She tried to hide the rags. But there was no place to hide anything in her room. When she was at her weakest point, cramping and tired and drained, Von Heidelmann had battered her with propaganda all night long.

Some days there had been no dinner. Some days there had been too much food like before, but when they piled the food high on her plate, it turned out to be something that she couldn’t wrap in a napkin and save under her cot for later; it was always a type of food that would spoil easily.

Some nights, when she was sound asleep, they came and got her up, making her rush down to Von Heidelmann’s office, dazed, barefooted, and half asleep, only to spend the rest of the night listening to him drone on. He would ask her questions. She would only sit there and cry. She understood the psychological games he was playing.

She played the role of fragile female.

Let Von Heidelmann think he was winning.

She heard those familiar footsteps. A second later she was deep under the blankets and feigning sleep.

Adolf came inside. “Wake up,
Fraülein
.” He shoved at her shoulder repeatedly. When she opened her eyes, he pulled her up. “You come with me now.” He took her by the arm but didn’t yank on it. She had noticed he was less gruff with her and did not jerk her around as he had before. Perhaps Adolf was half-human after all.

“You must come now.” His voice was quieter, his actions softened, like her brothers’ response when they felt bad about something they had done to her.

She hated pity . . . had fought it like crazy for years. But this time, she took advantage of his pity and stood there for a moment. She pretended to shake out her clothes, then brushed her tangled hair out of her face. She faced him. “Let me venture a wild guess, Adolf. Herr Von Heidelmann wants to talk with me.”

“HELL’S BELLS”

He landed in a fucking palm tree.

When J.R. looked down, he was hanging some fifty feet off the ground—which was conveniently riddled with what appeared to be knife-sharp rocks. It was good to know some things never changed. Mr. Murphy came along for the ride.

He checked the position of his chute; it was secure, or securely stuck, depending upon your outlook—optimist or pessimist.

Apparently that single Hail Mary had done some good. Otherwise he might just haul down on the shroud lines and suddenly go
smash!
Right down on those rocks.

He jerked the lines. Palm dust, dates, and other palm tree crap rained down on him. He swore, then brushed the dust off his face while a few more dates hit his shoulders and head.

He gripped the lines tightly and kicked out, so he began to swing back and forth. He had the darkly amusing thought that he ought to hum carousel music.

Back and forth he swung, building momentum, dodging dates and dust and more dates. A few more good swings and he was close enough to the tree trunk to clamp his legs and one arm around it.

The damn thing was prickly as hell.

He reached up with his free arm and released his chute.

A second later he was swearing a blue streak and sliding down the rough tree trunk with all the finesse and comfort of a fireman sliding down a pole made of pineapples.

As landings went, it wasn’t his best. He hit hard and bit his tongue. He could taste the saltiness of blood in his mouth. He spit, then pulled himself up and checked his gear. Mosquitoes buzzed and swarmed around his head and bit him on the neck. He slapped it and pulled his hand away. He counted a dozen dead mosquitoes on his palm. They were everywhere. He waved them away, then gave up and let the little mothers bite him. He did the routine—patted his chest, his wrist, his crotch, and his pockets as he murmured, “Compass, watch . . . testicles, spectacles.”

Yep, all the important stuff’s here.

He took a swig from his canteen, then swiped at his mouth with his sleeve and checked out the area’s perimeter. He was in some kind of oasis—a cluster of palm trees, rocks, every single mosquito in the continent of
North Africa
, and a stone well off to the west where some vegetation grew and a few ugly white flowers were poking out of a patch of sword like weeds.

He refastened the canteen to his belt, shoved aside his rope-and-toggle hook, then unsnapped his jacket pocket. He pulled out his compass and his maps. He scanned them, then looked around him.

The mountains were to the southeast. That was good. That’s where they were supposed to be.

He knew he’d overshot the drop zone, but he didn’t know by how far. He studied the map for a minute or two. From what he could calculate, he was about fifteen klicks northwest of his rendezvous, if this spot was the well marked on his map as
Robinet.

The sun was late in the sky; it was still hotter than hell. He checked his watch, then turned and took off toward the southeast at an even run.

He had only two hours to rendezvous.

“DEUTSCHLAND, DEUTSCHLAND ÜBER
ALLES
”

The sand dunes rippled across the horizon, endless and golden like thousands of tanned backs bent down to hide from the hundred-and-twenty-degree sun. Standing in his armored halftrack SdKfz 250 Greif, Feldleutnant Frederich Rheinholdt took out his 6 X30 binoculars and searched that immutable horizon for a cloud of dust or a flea like speck in the distance. He searched for some sign of the 105th Panzer Regiment coming from the west, for reconnaissance, or the unit from the 900th Engineers Battalion.

He checked his watch, a futile motion because time did not matter in the desert. Hours and minutes seemed as unchanging as the horizon. He took off his field cap and the British anti-dust goggles he’d captured at
Halfaya
Pass.
He wiped the grit and sweat off his forehead with the dusty rolled cuff on his sweat-drenched tunic, then used the hem of his tunic to clean the dust and grime off the goggles.

One of the first things you learned on the desert front was that sand was your constant comrade. It got into everything. You ate it. You drank it. You breathed it. And when you looked ahead, it was always there before you, inevitable, uncontrollable, like your destiny.

He glanced down at his driver, Obergefreiter Veith, who had finally rid himself of the ridiculous army-issue tropical pith helmet some
Dover Idiot
in Berlin thought necessary if you were anywhere near the equator. It might have been fine for hunting elephant on the plains of
Africa
at the turn of the century, but in the desert it was impractical and uncomfortable.

Veith was finally wearing the lighter, cooler field cap as Rheinholdt had suggested when they had been two hours into the desert. Callow and young, the corporal was too much of a
Neuling
yet to veer far from military convention. He had been assigned as his driver only a week before, just days after fresh troops had landed in
Tripoli
, the newest divisions and regiments assigned to the Deutsches Afrika Korps.

Rheinholdt had been with the DAK for a year, yet when he looked at Veith, he felt like it had been ten. The young blond soldier was staring at a map and sipping water from the aluminum cup of a new-issue brown felt canteen, his legs still in breeches and high boots, but stretched out into the depths of the floorboards. He looked for all the world as if he were sitting in a sidewalk cafe on Kurfurstendamm in
Berlin
, eating
Kuchen,
reading
Signal,
and sipping on coffee. Rheinholdt wondered how long it would take him to realize that the cup he was using was worthless in the desert because it would fill with sand and dust that turned the already vile-tasting, salty water to mud.

Rheinholdt put his cap back on, then unclipped his own canteen and took a drink.

“Can you find our location on the map?”

Veith did not answer right away. He was frowning into his canteen cup.

Rheinholdt smiled, then asked again.

“Thirty kilometers, Herr Leutnant.”

“Good. We have close to two hours until sunset.” Rheinholdt turned, signaled the rest of the motorized unit forward, slid on the British goggles, and sat down. “Keep heading southwest.”

“CLING TO ME”

Kitty awoke the moment a man’s hand clamped over her mouth. She struggled against him, drew back her left fist, and punched out at him as hard as she could.

Three rapid knuckle-punches that she felt hit square in his face.

“Jesus-Fucking-Christ!”

She stopped mid-punch. Good old American male swearing. The sweetest sound she’d ever heard. A small groan of relief slipped out from her mouth against his callused hand, muffled. Her throat grew tight with sudden emotion. “Thank God . . . ” she murmured.

“Quiet. Don’t make a sound, Kincaid,” he said into her ear.

She could feel tears of relief fill her eyes, and she inhaled deeply through her nose. There was a small catch in her throat as if she’d hiccupped. To her horror she was going to cry.

“Don’t start crying,” came a hissed order.

She nodded.

His arm and shoulder were across her. He was heavy. She could feel his warm breath as she lay there listening to see if anyone had heard.

From his stillness, she could tell he was listening, too.

No footsteps came down the hallway or up the stairs. There was nothing but silence. He hardly made a sound; his breathing was shallow, very evenly controlled. As she lay there on the cot in the room that had been her prison for seventeen days, she took short, sharp breaths that gave her little oxygen and wished he would take away his hand. She wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t going to make a sound.