Once a Warrior

by Fran Baker

  Anne-Marie felt a skitter of panic as she turned her head and looked into his face. His dark hair fell over his brow and his dimple had deepened beside his smiling mouth. But it was his eyes, filled with breath-stealing tenderness, which had her shrinking away from him.

  This was all her fault, she knew. It was she who had thought he would be satisfied with a few kisses. She who had melted like warm candle wax in his arms. Now it was she who had to put a stop to this.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured.

  He shook his head to clear it. “What?”

  She scrambled to her feet. “I said—“

  “I heard you.” He stood and propped his hands on his hips, his breathing as harsh as the wind that now rose between them.

  “I can’t,” she said on a note of regret.

  Mike knew he couldn’t blame her for pulling back without also blaming himself for trying to push her too far, too fast. But that didn’t slake his pent-up lust. Nor did it keep him from behaving like a class A bastard.

  He took a menacing step closer to her and snarled, “Can’t or won’t?”

  Anne-Marie couldn’t believe the change that had come over him. His mouth had tensed, his dimple had disappeared, and his eyes had developed an edge. A dark and dangerous edge that told her what a fierce warrior he must be.

  Still, she met his challenging stare levelly. “One thing you must know about me is that I always say what I think.”

  He nodded curtly, trying his damnedest not to admire her show of spunk as he waited for her to finish.

  “I’ve never known a man.” She saw his surprise, something deep and shadowed in his eyes, and went on in a jagged whisper, “But I think you’ve known many women.”

  He couldn’t deny it. Didn’t even try. He just continued to stare at her, steeling himself against emotions he couldn’t afford to feel.

  “What do you want from me?” he finally demanded.

  “Nothing.” That wasn’t true, but it didn’t matter now.

  “Then why are you—”

  “But for myself,” she said, lifting her chin to that proud angle, “I want to be more than one of many.”

  There was a time when Mike would have lied to her. He would have taken her in his arms and told her that she was the girl of his dreams, his one and only, the woman he’d been waiting for his whole life. Hell, he’d have told her the moon was made of green cheese if it meant she’d go to bed with him.

  But that was two months and a thousand lifetimes ago. Now he could no more look into those golden-brown eyes and lie than he could sprout wings and fly. And besides, he reminded himself in a throbbing fit of frustration, there was always that barmaid.

  “Goodbye, Anne-Marie.”

  She swallowed the sting in her throat and met his eyes directly. They were remote, as if he’d already put hundreds of miles between them, and his face was so wooden that it might have been carved from one of the stately oak trees that surrounded them. But it was his tone of voice, so flat and so final, that broke her heart.

  “Adieu, Michel.”

  The wind whipped her hair across her eyes, almost blinding her as she turned and, still wearing his field jacket, ran toward her bicycle. She felt as if she’d barely avoided a tumble from a cliff. And realized she already regretted not taking the plunge.

  * * * *

  “March Order!”

  Enraged at the sudden awakening, for it was the middle of the night and he’d just barely gotten to sleep, Mike sat bolt upright in his sleeping bag.

  “Hubba, hubba!”

  Mike recognized his battalion commander’s voice. He heard men grumbling, jeeps backfiring and tank engines growling to life. Sounds that told him the peaceful interlude was over and the war was starting again.

  Rain pelted the sides of his tent as he rolled out of his sleeping bag and, telling himself that it was time to move on, began getting dressed in the dark.

  After Anne-Marie left, he’d gone to see the barmaid. With her flashing eyes and full lips, her swaying breasts and supple hips, Gi-Gi was just the ticket he needed. Or so he’d thought as he’d sat at a corner table, letting her fill his glass with wine and his head with fantasies.

  Problem was, the woman he kept picturing had honey-blonde hair instead of black. A slender body, not a blowzy one. The woman who haunted him was the one he couldn’t have.

  He’d done everything he could to forget Anne-Marie. He’d ordered more wine, trying to drown his frustrations. Bummed a cigarette from another soldier, then crushed it out after one acrid puff. He’d taken that other woman’s hand in his, let her lead him up to the loft and down to the disheveled bed where she did her “entertaining.” Tasted other men when he kissed her and told himself it didn’t matter.

  But he was wrong, dammit. It did matter. A hell of a lot more than it should have. Because when Gi-Gi’s avid mouth was on him, coaxing his body to climax, his mind wasn’t on her. When he closed his eyes and found his release, it wasn’t her face he saw behind his lids or her name that rang through his head. And when he left her with a large tip for her time and trouble, he still wasn’t satisfied.

  He still wanted Anne-Marie.

  “Moving out!”

  Thunder boomed, as loud as an artillery barrage. As violent as the beating of his heart. Now he was fighting two wars. The one with the Germans and the one within himself.

  * * * *

  Anne-Marie’s heart was pumping as fast as her legs were pedaling.

  It had quit raining at dawn.

  She knew because she’d watched the sun come up. While working with the Résistance, she had become accustomed to living on a lot of nerve and a little sleep. The fear of discovery, even more than the idea of death, had burned in her like a low-grade fever day and night. She would go to bed exhausted and get up exhausted. And tell herself, “C’est la guerre” when she didn’t think she could stand it another moment.

  But last night she hadn’t slept at all.

  She’d done her best to forget Mike, knowing there was no future for them. She’d tried a long hot bath and a little warm brandy. She’d told herself they were of the war and nothing more as she’d climbed the stairs to her bedroom. Then she’d put out the light, plunging the room into darkness. Only to see his face when she closed her eyes.

  This morning, wearing his borrowed field jacket over her dress, she had left the house before breakfast.

  Her front tire hit a rut in the road, splashing dirty water on her bare legs. She didn’t even notice. Her eyes were focused on the field she was fast approaching and her thoughts were centered on the man who had touched her where no other man ever had—her mind and her heart.

  Now she wanted him to touch her body. Touch it and teach her how to touch his in return. She wanted him to love her, if only for a little while, as she knew she would love him for the rest of her life.

  Unlike yesterday, today was beautiful. The sky was a cloudless blue, the surface of the lake sparkled in the sun and the tree branches swayed in the breeze. Birds sang. And the air, after the storm, smelled fresh and full of—

  Anne-Marie stopped her bicycle with a jerk of brakes. Her hands clutched the handlebars so hard that her knuckles went white. A soundless cry tore at her throat.

  Mike was gone!

  Her heart sank with despair as she stared at the deserted field. All that remained of the tanks and jeeps and self-propelled guns that had been parked there the day before were the herringboned ruts their tires had made in the mud when they’d departed. The grass was matted and yellowed where tents had stood and soldiers had strolled.

  Numbly, Anne-Marie pushed her bicycle toward the spot where Mike had pitched his tent. Her eyes were burning dry but, inside, she was weeping. The tears would come later, she knew, when she’d fully absorbed this terrible loss.

  Then she saw it—an empty green Coke bottle turned upside down on a stake driven into the ground, with a folded piece of paper inside.

  Anne-Marie reached for it with a tre
mbling hand. Mike was gone, yes. But he hadn’t forgotten her. For as she discovered when she shook the paper out of the bottle and unfolded it, he’d left his address and asked her to write to him.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Aachen, Germany

  The colonel commanding the engineer combat group was clearly disgusted. And with good reason. “We’ve taken that hill twice, Lieutenant Scanlon,” he grumbled to his newly assigned forward artillery observer, “and we’ve lost it twice.”

  “So I’ve heard, sir.” Mike was careful to keep his voice neutral, not wanting to sound like he was criticizing a superior officer’s performance.

  They both knew that Aachen wasn’t an important military objective. Strategically speaking, though, it was a different story. Not only was Aachen the birthplace of Charlemagne, it was a sacred symbol of the Holy Roman Empire—the First Reich. Hitler, who’d frequently prophesied that his own Third Reich would also last a thousand years, had exhorted the city’s residents to hold out at all cost. To engage in house-to-house fighting, if necessary, in order to protect their precious heritage. None of which had deterred the Allies, who’d decided that a strike at Aachen could be the fatal blow to the heart of Nazi faith.

  So the colonel had a right to be frustrated. The hills and ridges surrounding the city were the keys to reducing it. And in his first experience leading an infantry mission, he’d let those keys slip through his fingers . . . not once, but twice.

  He raised his binoculars and peered out the second-story window of the farmhouse-cum-observation post, through the steady October rain and the thick yellow smoke from the Allied dive-bombers. Then he lowered the glasses and looked directly at Mike. Beneath the brim of his steel helmet, with its dangling chin straps bracketing his gaunt face, his eyes were narrowed and his jaw was set in a determined line.

  “I want that hill back, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir.” Mike spoke without any hint of nervous apprehension, but his palms were sweaty, his stomach felt hollow and his pulse was keeping time with the heavy concentration of artillery and mortar fire that was pouring down on the dug-in city.

  Twenty-four hours with no sleep and nothing to eat could do that to a man . . . as could the knowledge that he’d already outlived the odds against forward observers.

  After leaving Ste. Genviève in the dead of night, his battalion had been reattached to their old armored division for the final battle at Argentan-Falaise. With the Gap closed and those Germans who’d escaped capture on the run, they’d spearheaded east. Tomatoes were just coming into season as they thundered through Corbeil, south of Paris, and the French civilians who’d lined the roads had generously shared the ripe, red produce with their Yankee liberators.

  They’d met some opposition when they crossed the muddy Seine River on pontoon bridges, but it was quickly overcome. Leapfrogging across northern France, they’d passed through territory that was painfully familiar in American history. In the space of twenty-four hours, they’d rumbled by Château-Thierry and Belleau wood—places where, in World War I, many of their own fathers had crawled forward foot by bloody foot.

  Now history had put them in the driver’s seat, and nothing could stop their momentum. Victory was in the air, as sure as the season’s turning. The Germans were in full retreat, the Allies in hot pursuit, and “Win the War in 44” was their battle cry.

  They were riding high when they entered the Low Countries, with hysterically happy crowds lining the roads and cries of “Allemande-Kaput” ringing in their ears.

  Going through Charleroi, Belgium, they’d looked more like the Tournament of Roses parade than a fighting unit on its way to battle. Flowers pelted their vehicles, beer flowed like water, and the people dancing in the streets slowed the armored march to a crawl. To top it all off, a group of Belgian Résistance fighters, drunk as skunks and armed to the teeth, commandeered the battalion CO’s jeep and led the military police a merry chase up and down every side road in town.

  But the joy ride had ended in September. Not with a bang, either, but with a sputter. The Allies had run low on gasoline and ammunition, giving the Germans time to regroup along their own border, and every mother’s son on the offensive front had started praying that he’d get “Home Alive in ’45.”

  And twice since the Allies had reached a stalemate at the Siegfried Line, those jagged road blocks of concrete and steel that the Germans boasted no enemy army could penetrate, Mike had thought he was a goner.

  The first time he’d been on reconnaissance, scouting out a new observation post, when an SS combat patrol had come out of nowhere. His radioman had been killed and one of his wiremen severely wounded in the firefight that followed. The second time his tank had been knocked out while breaching the “dragon’s teeth.” He’d been thrown clear with only the sharp piece of shrapnel that was still in his leg, but the rest of his crew had burned to death in the subsequent explosion.

  Now here he was, he thought grimly, sitting on Germany’s doormat like one of the milk bottles his father used to deliver, wondering when his own number was finally going to come up.

  “Do you have a plan of attack, Lieutenant?” Given his two previous failures to hold the hill, the colonel had no choice but to ask. He did so with both a lack of the hubris that normally accompanied rank and note of hope in his voice.

  “Yes, sir, I do.”

  His throat sore and scratchy from all the smoke he’d swallowed and his nerves screaming from lack of food and sleep, Mike removed his map from the leather case he’d worn in action since D-Day. He crossed the room, his boots crunching on the rubble of fallen ceiling plaster, and lit the Coleman gas lamp that was sitting on a field table he’d shoved against the wall and away from the window. The lamp hissed and sputtered as he dusted off the tabletop with his sleeve, then spread out the map and motioned his commanding officer over so he could explain the plan.

  “There’s a little valley on the other side of the hill where the Germans have dug in,” he pointed out.

  “The perfect defensive position.”

  Mike nodded in agreement but remained focused on the problem at hand. “And here, overlooking the valley, are three abandoned houses—”

  “They’re still standing after the shelling?”

  “They were when I left at daybreak.”

  “You went up there?” his CO asked, aghast.

  “Just long enough to get a look-see. Anyway, there’s a three-story house right here”—Mike put his finger on the spot—“with a half-moon window in the attic—”

  “The perfect observation post.”

  “The best I’ve seen.

  The colonel stroked his beard-stubbled chin. “How will you get into the house?”

  “Through the back door.”

  “It’s unguarded?”

  “And unlocked,” Mike confirmed.

  “It’ll take you half the night to get up there.”

  “I’ll start as soon as we’re finished here, sir.”

  The table rocked and the floor shook as one of their own artillery shells fell short of its target. A high-explosive shell, judging by the hot white and orange flickers that shadow-danced on the walls. Neither one of the men bent over the map even noticed the new plaster filtering down from the ceiling or the dust flying up around them.

  “When do we jump off?” the colonel asked.

  “At dawn.” Which meant another sleepless night for Mike.

  “Catch ’em with their pants down, hey?”

  Mike’s mouth hooked in a mirthless smile. “In a manner of speaking.”

  “How many men will you need?”

  “Three, besides myself.”

  Silently, the commander strained his red-rimmed eyes over the map. “And while you’re figuring your coordinates,” he said at last, “we can finish consolidating our positions.”

  “By this time tomorrow, sir, you’ll be king of the hill.”

  “Unless the Germans counterattack.”

  Mike had already thought
of that. “I’ll smother ’em under another blanket of hot steel.”

  “And if they figure out where you’re shooting from?”

  “I’ll head for the basement and box us in with artillery.”

  His CO gaped at him speechlessly, as if he couldn’t quite decide whether his FO was a fool or a genius.

  “Defensive fire?” he demanded when he found his voice.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Dangerous as hell.”

  “But effective.” Mike straightened and shrugged his weary shoulders. “What do you think, Colonel?”

  “I like it.” The frown he’d been sporting eased into a smile. “Like it, hell. I wish I’d thought of it myself.”

  Mike’s answering grin could have been construed as a grimace. “Wait until you’ve been at this as long as I have.”

  “No, thanks!”

  The two men laughed at his quick, heartfelt rejoinder, then spent the next few minutes reviewing the details of the plan. Mike had left nothing to chance. Besides the necessary element of surprise, it called for dovetailed timing. If it worked the way it was supposed to, the hill was theirs for the taking.

  “How’s your leg, Lieutenant?” the colonel asked before he left to get his men in position.

  “I won’t be entering any dance contests for a while, but I can still kick German butt.”

  “Yes, well . . .” The commander clicked his tongue. “I was sorry to hear about your tank crew.”

  Mike had thought he was too numb to feel. Too detached to care. But the night his tank crew died, he’d burrowed into his sleeping bag and bawled like a damn baby.

  Now he just nodded and said, “They were good men.”

  “Aren’t they all?”

  The sharp thunder of outgoing artillery was the only answer the colonel’s rhetorical question required.

  “By the way,” he said then, “our mess sergeant rustled up some hot steak sandwiches if you’d like to eat before you leave.”