Silver Stars (Front Lines 2)

She decides. Stiff, pushing the words out, she says, “Sir, I have my orders.”

Thirty minutes later she is on the slick deck. The night is not too cold, the water is calm, the Topaz lies half a mile off the coast of Italy. Hurried, spooked crewmen push a narrow rubber boat up through the torpedo-loading hatch, haul it to the side, and settle it in the water. Others are bent over the side peering intently at one of the hydroplanes. Cisco, battered, seemingly exhausted now, stands silent, staring as if dazed.

Rainy has taken off and carefully folded her uniform and left it in the care of the captain’s steward. She now wears what can only be called a frumpy, faded dress of the quality one might expect an Italian woman to be wearing long into a war that has impoverished the Italian people. She wonders where Corelli’s people found it. A rag bin? A secondhand shop? She has a too-thin and nearly useless knitted scarf around her neck and a thin wool coat. Her feet are in sturdy but graceless pumps, already soaked by the spray.

And thanks to the depth charge attack, they are late. The sun will be up in an hour, and the sailors have to row ashore and return, which will be no easy task with two oars in an awkward little boat. The boat slews alongside, two sailors already sitting in it, tethered only by a rope and anxious to get going: no one has forgotten either the spotter plane or the destroyer.

“Well,” Rainy says, trying not to sound as worried as she is, “I guess this is it.”

“I’m afraid so,” Lieutenant Commander Alger says gently.

Rainy sticks out her hand, and Alger shakes it formally. “Good hunting, Sergeant.”

“Thanks, Commander. It’s been . . .”

She can’t think of the right word, so Alger says, “Yes. Yes, it certainly has.”

She is handed down into the boat where Cisco is already seated. He’s begun to revive, just a little, though he still seems abashed by the sailors and refuses to meet anyone’s eye.

He’s humiliated. That’s going to be trouble.

Rainy is wet but not quite to the bone by the time the rubber boat grinds softly onto the beach. One sailor jumps out and draws the rope to steady the boat, while the other sailor hands Rainy out. Cisco jumps eagerly onto the sand.

“Careful with him, miss,” one of the sailors says, nodding significantly at Cisco.

“Hey, screw you, pal,” Cisco says.

In less than a minute the boat is lost to sight. Rainy takes a shaky breath. She has just landed in Mussolini’s Italy on a harebrained mission with a seething, unstable gangster. Her face, hand, and shoulder all hurt.

Strapped to her inner thigh where a casual search won’t find it is a Colt 1903, weighing 1.46 pounds and holding eight .32 caliber bullets.

Concealed behind a loosely sewn seam in her collar is her suicide pill.

It is still dark, but stars are already fading in the east. The only sound is the lullaby shush-shush of wavelets. The beach is empty. The closest lights might be miles away north, she can’t tell.

“Oy vey iz mir,” she whispers, echoing her mother.

/> Oh, woe is me.

14

RIO RICHLIN—GELA BEACH, SICILY

Harassed by intermittent shelling and occasional attacks from the air, the platoon assembles on the chaotic beach. Lieutenant Vanderpool, with orders to get them off the beach as quickly as possible, leads them inland. The 119th is spread out to their left, with Fifth Platoon holding the right of the line and Second Squad on the hanging end. There is no Allied force on their immediate right, not yet, as the division assigned that position has run into trouble getting their gear ashore.

SNAFU, Rio thinks. Situation Normal: All Fugged Up.

The division, accompanied by the single light tank they’ve managed to get ashore, bypasses the town of Gela and heads directly across the dry farm fields of southern Sicily.

Rio’s first sighting of actual Sicilians occurs when three small children come running out of a farmhouse. The children are scrawny, haphazardly dressed in cheap, patched, ill-fitting clothing, and with not a shoe between them.

The nervous platoon trains weapons on them until high-pitched cries of delight, ear-to-ear grins, and manic laughter convince them that there is no danger from these three.

One urchin, a seven-year-old girl, tugs shyly at Jenou’s leg while staring in a solemn way at the blood-soaked leg of Rio’s pants.

“Give her something,” Rio says to Jenou.

“What? Tips on how to dress? That outfit goes way beyond hand-me-down,” Jenou says, but she fishes in her pockets and comes up with half a ration chocolate bar. The little girl falls to it immediately, gnawing at the rock-hard chocolate and grinning up in surprise and pure, undiluted joy.