Excerpted from Silent Copyright © 2017 by David Mellon and published by Merit Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Used by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.

Adi. She’s 15, half British half Indian. Her brothers have been kidnapped by a stranger who’s forcing her to play a dangerous game of riddles to find the boys. She’s not allowed to speak. In order to survive, she’s just put on the uniform of a dead French soldier.

She was down the road about ten yards past the trees when she heard the sound of the engine behind her. A motorcar! She turned to run back for the trifling cover of what was left of the trees. Never going to make it, she threw off her pack and dropped herself into the snow filling the shallow ditch. Praying they hadn’t seen her, she closed her eyes and dug in as the vehicle careened past.

She heard a shout. With a spray of ice and gravel, the car’s brakes locked up and the thing skidded to a halt. Gears grinding, it lurched into reverse and came to a stop—right in front of her.

She peeked up to see a wreck of an ambulance, boggy green with a red cross fresh-painted on the side.

She was about to make a run for it, when a voice shouted, “God’s sakes, boy! Do you want to walk? Get your ass in here!” She raised her head a bit more, snow sliding off the front edge of her helmet.

He wasn’t speaking German. Seemed like a good sign.

Scrambling to her feet, she managed to get her pack up onto her shoulder and start toward the front of the car. The driver, a little man with huge ears, was looking anxiously up at the skies.

As if on cue a high-pitched whistling came from the northeast. “Not up there!” the voice croaked from the back.

Hustling to the rear of the car, she was lifting up the canvas flap covering the rear when a hand reached out, grabbed her arm, and pulled her into the ambulance—just as the hillside exploded not 20 meters above them.

Adi fell over the back gate. Struggling to rise, she cracked her helmet against one of several shelves on the left side. Each one was heavy with wounded soldiers, some of them crying and moaning.

The man let go of Adi’s arm and banged his fist against the side wall. “He’s in, Gershom. Go!” He pulled Adi down onto a little stool, as the car backfired and lurched forward. The shriek of artillery filled the air. Through the back flap, Adi saw the road erupt in smoke and flame. The ambulance was pelted by debris as it sped away.

“Put your pack down!” barked the man, his voice low and coarse as a gravel road. Adi complied. She shoved her pack under the cot, keeping her eyes on the doctor, to avoid looking at the broken bodies all around her.

The man was older—fifties maybe—and a doctor, judging by the red cross on his arm band. Stubbled gray hair on a head like a cinder block. He grabbed Adi’s hand and pressed it hard against a twisted tourniquet tied around a soldier’s neck. It was soaked

through with blood.

“Keep the pressure on that,” said the doctor. This freed up both his hands to cut the trousers off a soldier’s leg. The limb was bent the wrong way at the knee.

“What’s your name, boy? What company you with?”

Adi tore her eyes away from the sight of the man’s leg and stared at the doctor helplessly, until he looked up from the splint he was applying.

“Not a hard question, son.”

Adi gestured to her mouth and shook her head to indicate she couldn’t talk. He glared at her for a moment, more artillery exploded to their left.

He jutted his chin at the tourniquet she was pressing on. “You can let go of that.” Adi looked down. The soldier had died.

Without a beat, the doctor said, “Grab that roll of bandage there.” Adi was still staring at the dead soldier. She looked up, choking back tears. The doctor gave her a second. She took a deep breath and then nodded. He handed her a pair of scissors, pointed to the soldier on the top cot. “Cut that sleeve away.”

Adi stood up steadying herself against the bunk. A fair-haired lad, like a schoolboy playing dress-up, opened his eyes and stared at Adi for a few seconds. She snipped at the cloth and tore the rest of the sleeve away. Skin came off with it. The young man cried once and his head fell to the side.

“He passed out,” Doc said. “Easier that way.”

The boy’s arm was horribly burned, the smell indescribable. She unrolled a length of bandage while trying to keep her stomach from rolling over.

Focus! Basic field dressing. Like Mother used to do. Which reminded Adi of how much she had hated and avoided her mother’s work.

Doc covered a soldier’s eyes with pads of cotton and wrapped gauze around his head. The man’s face and neck were spotted with frightful blisters. When he was done Doc took a flask from his pocket, held it to the soldier’s mouth and let him drink. He took a long pull himself, then offered it to Adi. She shook her head and turned to get the scissors.

“All right,” he said. “So, who are you then?” The doctor leaned forward, putting his hand into Adi’s coat. She lurched back.

“Whoa, kid. Just looking for—”

He reached very deliberately into her left tunic pocket.

“—this.”

He held up a little booklet: Paybook was stamped on the cover. He flipped it open and squinted at it by the light from one of the small windows.

“Jean Joseph Goux, of the . . . hmm, 85th Infantry.” A hard look passed across the doctor’s eyes.

Damn. She should have checked those pockets. Well, it was out there now.