May 1, 1942. Camp Toombs, Toccoa, Georgia.
A bead of sweat rolled down her brow. It tickled its way down her face from her temple to her chin, and finally slipped down her throat and soaked into the weave of her biosuit where it met her skin at the hollow of her throat beneath her blouse. Quinn checked the suitcase at her feet for the fifth time in ten minutes, adjusted her grip on the folder in her sweating hand, smoothed a crease from her trousers, and then glanced at her pocket-watch.
10:32 a.m.
Quinn bit back a groan and swiped at her forehead. The heat was stifling. The early summer sun beat down on her head like a blacksmith’s hammer, and the Georgia humidity was absolutely absurd. Quinn spared a moment’s longing for Scotland’s cool climate. Then she heaved a sigh and glanced at the photograph tucked into the cover of the watch.
Tam’s familiar face smiled up at her from beside her own, and the children gathered around them were all grinning. Even the two babies in Quinn and Tam’s arms had their mouths open wide in toothless smiles. There was silver at Tam’s temples, and there were lines on his face that had not been there when she had met him.
Quinn ran a fingertip down the cheek of Tam’s picture. Then she closed the watch-cover and tucked the entire thing back into the pocket of her straight trousers.
She reached up to tuck her bangs behind her ear again before she remembered that she had cropped her hair short, and aborted the motion in favor of running her fingers through the sweaty, buzz-cut bristles. It was the shortest she had ever cut it before, but the change had become necessary of late and would remain necessary for the foreseeable future. Now, if only the commanding officer would actually deign to see her as his orderly had said he would, she would be much happier.
She had already been waiting ten minutes-
“Sir?” Quinn blinked and turned at the prompting. The orderly she had met earlier had returned, and he saluted her. She returned it. “The Colonel is ready to see you, now.”
Quinn dropped the register of her voice half an octave. It left her with a husky alto rather than her natural mezzo-soprano, but it was convincing enough that the orderly did not even bat an eye at it.
“Thank you, Private.” She lowered her hand, and the private followed suit before he turned on his heel. Quinn picked up her suitcase, and the orderly led her into the administrative building and down the main hall to the first office on the left. He stopped there, knocked, and then opened the door when he received the call to enter. He stood in the doorway for a second and saluted. “Colonel, there’s a Major Thomas Winters here to see you, sir.”
“Send him in and return to your post.” A pause. “And get Major General Lee on the line. We need to change this camp’s name fast, before troops start arriving and get skittish.”
“Sir.” The orderly glanced over at Quinn, and she nodded to him.
“Thank you, Private,” she said again. She entered the office and the orderly closed the door behind her, and that was when Quinn got her first look at Colonel Robert Sink, the man who would lead the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment for the duration of World War II.
Quinn scanned him as she came to attention before his desk and saluted him crisply. Sink was middle-aged but well-maintained, with sharp, intelligent blue eyes, a chiseled jaw, an aristocratic nose, and greying, buzz-cut hair. He returned the salute, and then leaned back in his chair and studied her.
“Well, at ease, Major.” Sink tilted his head at Quinn as she returned her hand to her side and shifted her stance. He spoke with a distinct Southern drawl. “I hear you requested a transfer here, but General Lee was surprisingly close-lipped about the request, and he gave no explanation as to why I should even consider bringing in an untested Major to command an entire battalion of raw recruits. Care to enlighten me?”
“Sir.” Quinn set down the suitcase beside her and then extended to the colonel the manila envelope she was holding. He took it and flipped it open to the first page, which she knew contained her most recent photograph and service history. “My service record. If you’ll flip to the second page, I believe you will see why it was that General Lee wanted me here.”
Sink frowned up at her and flipped to Page Two- and abruptly froze as the face of a woman stared up at him with dark circles beneath her sunken eyes, which glowed like coals in her hollowed-out face. Her hair hung in lank strands about her sharp cheekbones, and there was a pallor to her skin that had not been there since that picture was taken.
“As you can see, Thomas Winters is not my real name,” Quinn continued. “My real name is Quinn Russell, and up until I was exposed in September, I was deep undercover as an officer in the German Army. After I was exposed, I was caught and… detained… until I escaped in February.” She fought back the shudder that was tingling at the base of her skull and between her shoulder blades. “After I recovered, I was transferred to the States, but General Lee thought I could serve well with this regiment, given my history and knowledge of German equipment and tactics.”
Sink glanced sharply up at her. “And why should I trust a woman with my troops? Why should I trust someone who supposedly was in the German Army for…” He glanced at the file again. “Two years? How do I know you haven’t been turned?”
Quinn stared down at him for a moment. Then she wordlessly rolled up the left sleeve of her blouse and showed him the scars on her forearm. The marks were deep and indented, and the skin puckered and pulled around them with every motion. Sink’s eyes widened.
“After I was discovered and captured, I was sent to Auschwitz Camp One, where they initially kept their political prisoners,” Quinn said, her tone bland. “The functionaries there were… brutal.” She traced the marks absently. Quinn pushed the memory away and turned her gaze back to Colonel Sink. “The first gassings took place on August third of last year. They were constructing a second camp when I escaped. They’re only going to keep killing more and more people, sir, and I was nearly one of them.”
She let him look for a second longer, and then she rolled her sleeve back down her arm and shifted her weight to her other foot.
“As to my being a woman, the men won’t even have to know.” She gestured to her file once more. “As you can see from my records, I have a lot of experience in hiding my sex.” When he still looked dubious, she continued, “I have been a soldier my entire life, sir. I have been a follower of officers and a commander of men. I have more years of combat experience than you’ve been alive, sir.”
It was the honest-to-God truth.
Sink stared down at her file for a long, long time. Then he gaped up at her for a moment before he settled back into his seat once more.
“You expect me to believe you when you say you’re- how old?”
“Sixty years, all said and done.”
“Sixty years old?” he demanded. “You really expect me to believe that? And moreover, that you’ve been a soldier for most of that time? Hell, you don’t look twenty-five.”
Quinn took a breath. “There was an experimental procedure performed on me at the age of twenty-one. I haven’t aged since that day.” She swallowed and met the colonel’s gaze directly. “Sir, I could recite my credentials all day. You could look over that file ten times. The straight-up truth of it is that you have no reason to believe any of this, or to entrust me with the lives and training of the men who will be arriving here in just under two months.”
Sink frowned up at her. He shifted his weight, and his chair creaked beneath him. A breeze wafted through the open window, bringing with it the scent of cooking meat from the mess hall down the way, and ruffled the papers on the desk. They rattled beneath their paperweight.
“You assume correctly,” he admitted. “What do you want, Major?”
She met his gaze straight-on.
“I want the chance to prove myself, Colonel,” she stated. “Let me show you what I can do, and you can make your own decision as to whether you want to keep me on or tell me to go take a hike.”
Quinn gestured to the parade ground beyond the window. “You have a cadre of officer candidates arriving within the next week. I propose that you let me take charge of training them up and teaching them the basics of unit command, and see if you like my leadership style. Let me show you how I can work the men into the best shape of their lives with a minimum of injuries and a maximum return on invested effort. You’ll have the best-trained, most adaptable regiment in the Army by the time I’m through with them.”
Sink stared her down for two interminable minutes. Then he flipped her file closed and slipped it into his desk drawer and got to his feet.
“And what do you get out of this?” he asked.
His directness was refreshing.
“Vengeance,” she replied, straight-faced, and covered the spot on her forearm that was concealed by her sleeve. “A chance to contribute to the greatest war effort this world will ever see, and the chance to track down my sister.”
Sink’s left eyebrow shot up. “Your sister?”
“Yes.” Quinn took a breath. “Her name is Kora Russell. She was an Arrowhead. Different specialization from mine,” she added when Sink frowned at her. “Saboteur, scouting, and a communications technology specialist. I was a Helljumper. That’s why General Lee sent me to you in particular. Army Ranger, Airborne Infantry. Marksmanship and guerrilla warfare specialist. Excelled in entrenched position combat and small-unit tactics.” She smirked. “Means I was at my best when I was surrounded.”
Sink and Quinn stared each other down for several seconds. Then Sink blew out a breath and held out his hand to her. Quinn shook it firmly.
“You have until July first, Major,” Sink stated with a quirk of his mustache. “Convince me.”
She had a feeling it would not be easy.
“Sir, yes, sir.”
