Silver Stars (Front Lines 2)

“Planes!” Jasper yells.

“They aren’t after us, we’re small fry,” Daddy D says. “We got other problems.” He jerks his thumb toward the beach, a line of shimmering surf now, like someone had trailed a dripping can of silver paint through the night.

As if to make his point, a battery on shore seems at last to notice the tiny landing craft and begins lobbing big shells that come screeching overhead with a wind like a passing freight train before ripping up acres of seawater.

“There!” a soldier yells, pointing. “Dammit! They got one of our boats!”

Frangie sees the explosion that bursts from beneath the landing craft. The boat lifts clear out of the water before its back breaks and the boat falls in two pieces, splash, all revealed in the dramatic staccato lighting of outgoing artillery.

The Heinkels roar overhead, and a ship half a mile away blows up.

Jesus, make me strong. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, make me strong.

Frangie is far from being the only one praying. She hears two voices reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

Our Father which art in heaven,

Hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done . . .

That’s fine, Frangie thinks, so long as the Lord’s will is to keep me alive and let me do what I am here to do. The navy’s chaplain, back aboard the transport, gave confession to the Roman Catholics and a few Protestants who felt it best to cover every base. And Frangie has taken communion, so she does not fear dying outside of God’s grace. But she does fear.

It is coming. It is coming. Death, riding a pale horse, death, death . . .

You’ll do fine.

She begins running through her medical supplies, performing a mental inventory, a reassuring ritual, focusing on anything but her own fear. So many of this bandage, so many of that. So many pouches of sulfa, so many ampoules of morphine, so many splints. She has the full recommended ration of everything, plus all the extras she has stuffed into ammo pouches and pockets. Extra scissors? First pouch, left side. Extra sulfa? Both pockets of her jacket.

“Get ready!” the coxswain yells in a voice that sounds like it’s coming from a twelve-year-old, but just then the boat comes to a sudden, shuddering halt, making a sound like a chalkboard being dragged over a hundred fingernails. Men fall forward and then back, staggering, grabbing for handholds. The engine dies, the coxswain curses and comes running down to look over the side.

“Goddamn sandbar!”

They are still a quarter of a mile from the beach. There are no life rafts, and there is no chance of swimming in the dark waves with their gear.

The engine is restarted and with lots of frightened cursing from the coxswain, the boat attempts to pull itself off the sandb

ar.

No dice. The water churns, the boards screech, but the boat does not move. Half a dozen soldiers strip off their gear and jump into the seething, waist-deep water and try to push the boat off, but the sand beneath their boots gives them no purchase and they are hauled back aboard, soaking and shivering.

They are a small boat, utterly helpless, a perfect target with the dawn now just beginning to paint the sky a soft and hazy navy blue.

The first shell lands fifty feet astern.

11

RAINY SCHULTERMAN—ABOARD HMS TOPAZ, NORTH ATLANTIC

“Wha . . . wha . . . where am I?” Cisco is suddenly awake.

He thrashes in his hammock and realizes he has been lashed into it with ropes, trussed up with all the knot-bending skill of a military service that has been tying nautical knots since the days of Sir Francis Drake and the Spanish Armada. Cisco is held in place by a virtual illustrated encyclopedia of knots.

Cisco’s hammock is in the torpedo room, all the way at the front of the boat. It’s a cramped, greasy space smelling of industrial solvents, unwashed bodies, stale tobacco, fresh tobacco smoke, farts, cheese, and oil. There appears to be a thin sheen of oil on virtually every surface, including on the tan canvas of the hammock.

The crew are dressed in a sort of liberal approach to uniforms, some of the men wearing neatly belted dungarees with shirttails tucked in, while others wear bulky fisherman’s sweaters or stained shirts open at the neck with sleeves rolled up. The officers are only marginally more formal.

The submarine has refueled and provisioned in the Azores, and throughout the entire boat every nook and cranny is stuffed with powdery loaves of fresh Portuguese bread, pineapples, cabbages, bananas, onions, butter, and wheels of pale-yellow Azorean cow’s milk cheese. They have also replenished their store of torpedoes, which lie sinister in steel racks just astern of the tubes, ready to be fed in. The torpedoes surprised Rainy on first sight, being much bigger than she expected, each just over 21 feet long, weighing 3,452 pounds, 750 pounds of which is the TNT warhead.