Chapter 18: Debt Unpaid
The seven-mile trek to the Saint-Germain bridge was a study in wet misery and focused silence. The rain had settled into a persistent, cold drizzle that seeped into collars and made every leaf-slip underfoot a potential alarm. Dante moved at the head of the reduced column, Jericho a solid, grumbling presence at his flank, followed by Rogers, Reddit, Cartwright, and a jumpy Finney. The rest, including Barnes, held the line back at Crossroads, a static weight in Dante’s mind he chose to ignore.
The bridge emerged from the foggy river valley just before dawn, a hulking silhouette of iron and stone. It was a vital, ugly thing, its trestle supports dark with moss and river slime. And crawling around its base like termites, three figures in field gray.
Dante froze, a raised fist halting the men behind him. He sank into a crouch behind a thicket of alder, the others mirroring him. Through his binoculars, he tracked them. Two were placing small, boxy charges at the base of the central stone pier. The third stood sentry, scanning the woods with the lazy rhythm of someone who believed they were alone.
He lowered the glasses, turning to the men clustered close. Their faces were pale smudges in the gloom. “Hold fire,” he whispered, the sound barely carrying. “Not a sound.”
He didn’t wait for acknowledgment. Melding back into the tree line, he began a wide, slow arc, his movements a liquid contradiction to his size. He used the river’s murmur, the drip of the trees, his own controlled breath as cover. The sentry’s pattern was predictable, his attention drifting toward his working comrades.
Dante closed the last twenty feet in a blind spot of sound and shadow. One moment the sentry was turning, the next a powerful arm locked around his throat, a hand clamping over his mouth, cutting off all air and sound. There was a brief, frantic convulsion, heels scraping mud, then Dante was dragging him backward into the deeper woods, away from the bridge, away from his own men.
He didn’t stop until the river’s sound was faint. He dumped the man on the sodden ground, keeping a knee in his back, the knife at his throat. The soldier gasped, sucking in air to scream.
“Speak and you die right now,” Dante said, the German sharp and guttural in the quiet.
The man went rigid. Dante felt the fear vibrate through him.
“How many in your team?”
A whimpering silence. Dante pressed the blade. A bead of blood welled.
“S-six. Three here. Three more… upstream. Checking lines.”
“Demotion timers?”
“N-not yet. To be set… at dawn light. For midday… when the supply convoy is scheduled.”
Dante’s mind clicked through the math. They had time. “Radio contact schedule?”
The soldier trembled. “Hourly. Next check-in… soon.”
“The others upstream. Where, exactly?”
The man gave rough coordinates, his voice a wet tremor. Then, the fear seemed to curdle into something else. A defiant despair. “It does not matter,” he hissed, his voice gaining a ragged strength. “You are already dead. You think you are clever? My comrades… they will find you. They will take you apart, piece by piece. They will make you watch as they bleed your little friends dry in the mud. They enjoy it. We all do.”
Dante didn’t let him finish. His left hand snapped from the man’s mouth to his forehead, yanking his head back. The right hand, holding the knife, drew across the exposed throat in one swift, deep motion. It was not a slash. It was an execution. A hot rush soaked Dante’s glove. The gurgle was brief, silenced as the man’s face plunged into the leaf litter.
He wiped the blade clean on the dead man’s tunic, sheathed it, and moved back toward his men without a second glance.
From the edge of the thicket, he surveyed the scene. The two remaining sappers were now both under the bridge, their backs turned, focused on their work. A gap had opened between them. He caught Jericho’s eye, pointed to the sapper on the right, then to himself, and mouthed, “You take right.”
Jericho’s nod was a millimeter of movement.
Dante looked at Rogers, Reddit, Cartwright, Finney. He made a sharp, downward chopping motion with his hand. Stay. Back.
Then he and Jericho dissolved.
Dante went left, using the sound of the river over rocks. The sapper was kneeling, connecting wires, humming tunelessly. Dante’s shadow fell over him a split second before his arm hooked around the man’s neck. There was a muffled crack, crisp and final. He lowered the body quietly.
He looked across the pier. Jericho was already standing, his man a heap at his feet. He gave Dante a thumbs-up.
The next two hours were a nerve-fraying dance with death. They worked methodically, tracing wires, disconnecting primers, carefully extracting the brick-like blocks of explosive from their placements. Finney, under Rogers’ watchful eye, was put to work coiling the recovered detonation cord, his hands shaking but competent. Reddit and Cartwright provided overwatch, their rifles scanning the misty tree line. The world narrowed to the feel of cold metal, the smell of cordite and damp stone, the terrifying patience required to undo a thing built only to destroy.
They had just extracted the final charge from the last pier when the shot tore through the valley.
It wasn’t aimed. It was panicked, from the tree line upstream. The three missing sappers, returning early.
The bullet hit Dante like a sledgehammer to the lower right abdomen. The impact drove the air from his lungs, a white-hot punch of pain that stole his vision for a second. He grunted, staggering back against the cold stone of the pier, his hand slapping over the wound. It felt wet. Hot.
“Contact!” Jericho roared, his rifle coming up.
The world erupted into sharp, echoing cracks of return fire. Reddit and Cartwright opened up, their shots disciplined. Rogers shoved Finney behind cover and joined in. Dante, blinking sweat and agony from his eyes, saw one of the enemy figures drop, then a second. Jericho picked off the third with a calm, lethal squeeze of his trigger.
Silence rushed back in, louder than the gunfire.
“Status!” Jericho barked, scanning the woods.
“Clear here,” Reddit called.
“Clear,” Rogers echoed.
Dante forced his hand away from his stomach. His glove came away dark, but the fabric of his tunic was thick, the wound concealed. He took a deep, burning breath. The pain was a focused, angry throb. He could move. He could function. He straightened up, pushing off from the pier.
“Finish the packing,” he ordered, his voice betraying only a slight tightness. “Move.”
They worked faster, the gunshot a reminder that their window was slamming shut. As they hauled the last of the explosives into a sandbagged cache off the bridge approach, a stray phosphorus round from the brief firefight, smoldering in a patch of dry grass, caught Dante’s eye. It was near where Rogers was helping Finney lug a crate.
Then he saw the glint of exposed copper wire snaking from the crate, mere inches from the creeping flame.
He didn’t think. He moved.
“Rogers!” The name was a ragged bark. Steve looked up, confused.
Dante covered the distance in three long strides, his injured side screaming. He didn’t tackle him; he planted a hand on Steve’s chest and shoved, hard. Steve flew backward, landing in the mud with a surprised oath.
The world flashed white and orange.
The sound was a physical thing, a pressure wave that punched the ears. Dante was lifted off his feet and thrown onto his back in the dirt. For a moment, there was only a high-pitched ringing and the smell of burnt hair and saltpeter.
Shrapnel – a piece of the crate, a stone, something – sliced a deep, burning line across his left forearm. Another piece zipped past his face, carving a hot gash just under his right eye. He lay there, staring at the gray sky, cataloguing the damage. The gunshot wound pulsed. The arm wound bled freely. The face wound stung like a bastard. Nothing was broken. Nothing was ending.
Hands grabbed him, hauled him up. Rogers’ face swam into view, wide-eyed. “Colonel! Jesus—”
“I’m fine,” Dante growled, shaking them off. He got his feet under him. The world swayed, then settled. He looked at the smoking crater where the crate had been. “Is everyone else clear?”
They were. Finney was pale, shaking. Rogers was checking him over. Reddit and Cartwright had taken cover.
Jericho was staring at Dante, his eyes narrowed, scanning him up and down. Dante stared back, a silent command passing between them: Not now.
“Gather the rest,” Dante said, wiping blood from his cheek with the back of his wrist. It smeared. “We’re done here. Time to go.”
---
The return to Crossroads was a forced march through a gray dawn. Dante set a brutal pace, using the motion to keep the stiffness and the true depth of his pain at bay. He walked slightly hunched, his left arm cradled against his body, the wound on his face a dramatic but distracting mask for the more serious injury beneath his beltline.
Barnes met them at the perimeter, his relief at seeing them melting into immediate concern as he took in Dante’s bloodied face and arm. “Medic!” he shouted, turning.
“No,” Dante cut him off, his voice leaving no room. “See to the others. Debrief Jericho. I’m fine.”
He brushed past Bucky, past the gathered men, and walked straight to the large, dilapidated barn that served as their main store. Inside, the air was thick with the scent of old hay, motor oil, and rats. He headed for the farthest stall, a shadowed corner cluttered with empty crates.
Alone, he let the facade crack. A sharp gasp escaped him as he sagged against a rough post. He fumbled with his belt, his fingers clumsy. Peeling back the blood-soaked layers of his tunic and shirt revealed the puckered, angry hole just above his hip. It was a through-and-through, clean entrance and exit. Bleeding had slowed, not stopped. It hurt like a sonofabitch.
He was trying to rig a field dressing one-handed when the barn door creaked and heavy boots approached.
Jericho stepped into the stall, blocking the thin light from the door. He took in the scene: the blood-soaked rags, the exposed wound, the pale set of Dante’s jaw.
“You got fucking hit,” Jericho said, the words flat, devoid of surprise, full of cold fury.
Dante didn’t look up, continuing to press a wad of gauze against his side. “It’s nothing.”
“Nothing?” Jericho’s voice dropped to a dangerous whisper. He stepped closer. “A through-and-through in the gut is nothing? Why didn’t you say something? Why did you march back seven miles bleeding into your boot?”
“Wouldn’t have changed the march,” Dante grunted, tearing a length of tape with his teeth.
“It changes everything, you arrogant prick! You’re not a one-man army! What if you’d passed out? What if you’d bled out in the woods? You think that helps the men? You think that helps the mission?” Jericho was leaning in now, his face inches from Dante’s. “Your ‘it’s nothing’ bullshit is a liability. It’s a weakness. It’s you thinking you’re above the basic fact that you can die.”
Dante finally looked at him, his blue eyes glacial. “I didn’t die. The bridge is intact. The mission is accomplished. That’s all that matters.”
“No, it’s not!” Jericho’s control snapped. His voice, though still low, vibrated with intensity. “The men matter. I matter. I have to lead them if you drop. I can’t do that if you’re hiding mortal wounds because you’ve got some fucking cowboy complex about being invincible! That shot could have nicked your spine, your liver… you could be bleeding inside right now and just too damn stubborn to feel it!”
“I feel it,” Dante hissed, finally showing a sliver of the pain. “I feel all of it. But I make the assessment. Not you. Not a medic. Me. And I assessed that I could walk. So I walked.”
“You’re not a machine, Dante! You’re a man with a hole in him!” Jericho roared, then caught himself, lowering his voice again, seething. “Let me see it. Properly.”
“It’s handled.”
Outside the thin wooden wall of the stall, Bucky Barnes had been about to enter the barn to look for a spare part.
Outside the thin wooden wall of the stall, Bucky Barnes had been about to enter the barn to look for a spare part. The raw, furious whispers from within stopped him cold. He froze, one hand on the splintered doorframe, and listened. The voices were low, but they carried in the barn’s hollow silence.
“I’m not fucking losing you too, you big stupid ass fucking idiot!” Jericho’s voice was a shredded mix of anger and something far more desperate.
Bucky heard Dante’s response, weary and solid as stone. “Look, I did what I needed to do. If I would’ve told you I got fucking hit while we were out there, you would’ve been focused on me. The new ones would’ve been focused on you and me and would’ve been more panicked. Fuck that. We got the shit done. I’m alive. I feel like shit but I’m not fucking dying.”
A heavy pause. Bucky didn’t dare breathe.
“You are a piece of work sometimes, you know that,” Jericho said, the heat bleeding out into exhausted frustration. “Fucking ever since we were kids, you never took shit. You’d get hurt, act invincible, whatever. What the fuck are you going to do when you have a critical hit? You still gonna push through to finish the mission? Fucking Christ, Dante, that shot on your gut is a millimeter away from being a critical hit, and you just pushed through.”
Bucky’s blood went cold. A gut shot. The Colonel had marched back on a gut shot.
Inside, Dante was silent for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, flatter, a truth stripped bare. “Listen, you know damn well I’ll always finish out my mission. Fucking Christ, I’ve been like that forever. I will always fucking risk myself to save someone else. You all have people to go the fuck back home to, I don’t. I don’t have a single fucking person waiting for me when I leave this place. You know how fucking selfish it’d be for me to cut back on the shit I do even a little? I’m fully fucking capable. I’m not going to sit here fucking fearing death just so I can go the fuck home to nothing. This is what I have. I’m going to do the shit I know I can do. End of story.”
The silence in the stall was thicker than the dust motes dancing in the slatted light. Jericho stared at Dante, his friend’s words hanging in the air like the smell of blood and old hay. End of story. Like that settled it. Like it was just that simple.
It wasn’t.
“You’re not invincible, Dante,” Jericho said, the anger gone, replaced by a weary, profound frustration. He knew it was true, down in his bones. “You have to fucking speak up when you’re hurt.”
Dante leaned his head back against the post, closing his eyes. A slow trickle of blood from the cut under his eye traced a path through the grime on his cheek. “I never fucking claimed to be invincible,” he said, his voice a low, rough scrape. “I know what I can fucking handle. I know if I show the smallest bit of weakness, of fucking pain from an injury, all the fucking new recruits get panicky. Then they’re off their game because they’re fuckin’ worried about me. I’m not doing that shit.”
Jericho crossed his arms, his shadow falling over Dante. “So you just bleed out quietly? That’s your grand plan? What happens when you misjudge? What happens when that ‘handle’ slips?”
“Then I fall,” Dante said, opening his eyes. They were bleak, like a frozen lake. “But not before the job is done. Not before you’re all clear.” He sighed, a long exhale that seemed to cost him. “I know I can die, Jericho. I know I don’t care how it ends for me, either way. I know I have to do my fucking best to get every goddamn one of you home. Me being hurt and stopping a fucking mission to tend to my wounds isn’t helping any fucking one.”
Outside the thin wooden wall, Bucky Barnes stood frozen. He’d heard everything. Rogers and Reddit were a few paces behind him, having drifted closer, their own tasks forgotten. Rogers’ face was a mask of conflicted understanding; Reddit’s was pure, unvarnished shock. They listened, baffled, to the casual, brutal calculus of their commander’s value.
Jericho looked at Dante for a long moment, taking in the stubborn set of his jaw, the pain he was so obviously compartmentalizing. A strange, reluctant respect warred with the urge to knock him unconscious and force a medic on him.
“You’re a stubborn asshole sometimes, Dante,” Jericho finally said, shaking his head. “Get some fucking rest.”
He turned and left the stall, his boots echoing in the hollow barn. He pushed past the door into the weak daylight, ignoring Barnes, Rogers, and Reddit who were pretending to be very interested in a broken crate. He said nothing, his face an unreadable stone, and headed for the farmhouse.
The men scattered like startled birds.
Inside the barn, the quiet returned. Dante remained slumped against the post, one hand pressed to his side. He was a monument of exhausted pain.
After a minute, the main door creaked open a fraction, then wider. Bucky Barnes slipped inside, letting it close softly behind him. He moved silently across the packed-earth floor, the scent of rot and oil filling his nose. He stopped at the entrance to the stall.
Dante didn’t look up. “I told you I’m fine, Barnes.”
Bucky said nothing. He just looked. He took in the bloody gauze, the makeshift bandage, the pallor underneath the dirt and blood. He saw the tremor in the hand Dante thought was still.
“You saved Steve,” Bucky said, his voice quiet in the vast space. “At the bridge. Shoved him clear.”
Dante grunted. “He was in the way.”
“You were in the way,” Bucky corrected softly. He took a careful step closer. “Jericho’s right, you know. About you being an asshole.”
This time, Dante did look up. His icy eyes met Bucky’s. There was no anger there, just a deep, unshakeable resignation. “Noted.”
Bucky knelt, ignoring the damp hay. He reached for the medical kit Dante had been fumbling with. “Let me see it. The one in your side. Not the showpieces.” He nodded toward Dante’s face and arm.
For a moment, Dante seemed to consider arguing. Then his shoulders dropped a fraction, the slightest surrender. He moved his hand away from the soaked, bunched-up fabric of his shirt.
Bucky worked with a quiet, methodical efficiency, his hands steadier than he felt. He cleaned the entrance and exit wounds, the skin around them an angry, mottled purple. The wounds were clean, but they were deep. They needed stitches, real ones, and rest. He packed and bandaged them as best he could, his fingers careful against Dante’s hot skin.
“You don’t have to do this,” Dante muttered, his gaze fixed on the rafters above.
“I know,” Bucky said, tying off the bandage. He sat back on his heels. “You don’t have a person. Waiting for you.” He said it as a simple fact, not a question.
Dante’s jaw tightened. “No.”
“We are,” Bucky said, standing up. He brushed the hay from his knees. “We’re your people. Right now, whether you like it or not. So maybe stop trying to die for us and try just… staying alive with us. It’s harder. But we’re kinda counting on you being here tomorrow.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. He picked up the soiled gauze and the empty antiseptic bottle, turned, and walked out of the barn, leaving Dante alone in the dim, fragrant dark with a new, unsettling silence and a bandage that felt, for the first time, like something other than a failure.