Silver Stars (Front Lines 2)

“Goddammit,” Cole says, and his eyes veer toward Rio, who groans.

“Three, four men, tops,” O’Malley says placatingly. “Send your corporal.”

“Stick’s foot is swollen to twice its size. Nettles,” Cole says, disgusted. He looks again at Rio, and she actually turns around to see if he’s perhaps looking at someone behind her. But no, there’s only a tree behind her. And it’s not a curious or idle stare: Cole is measuring her.

“Richlin,” Cole says at last. “If that leg of yours is okay, you are about to volunteer.”

17

RAINY SCHULTERMAN—SALERNO, ITALY

It is hot where Rainy walks as well, two hundred and fifty miles almost directly north from Gela Beach, Sicily, and perhaps a mile south of the outskirts of Salerno.

Rainy and Cisco huddle on the beach until the sun rises, not wanting to look suspicious walking in the dark. Then they climb onto the road, which runs very nearly as straight as a ruler toward the town.

At first the only traffic is a couple of Fiat trucks, both comically overburdened with open crates of vegetables and great bundles of what look like reeds. They walk far behind a donkey cart for a while, keeping pace with it until they see that it is stopped at a roadblock ahead.

“If I had a gat, I’d get up close and let ’em have it,” Cisco says. He has returned to full, swaggering arrogance during the hours since they left the Topaz. But there’s an edge to his swagger now, a defensive, angry edge.

Humiliation.

“We wouldn’t win a gunfight,” Rainy says with frayed patience. She had not liked Cisco on first meeting, she had frankly hated him aboard the sub, and so far he is doing nothing to earn a second chance. “They might have a radio or a phone. We don’t want Italians running around the countryside looking for us.”

The pistol strapped to her inner thigh chafes cruelly, and she bitterly resents having to wear the dress. Almost as bad are the shoes, which are not quite the right size and tend to crush her toes with each step.

“So what do we do?” Cisco demands. “You’re the know-it-all.”

“We have papers.”

“Forgeries!”

“And I may be able to pass off my Italian,” Rainy says.

“Yeah, well I don’t speaka de Old Country,” Cisco says.

She looks closely at him. His face is badly bruised and impressively swollen on his left side. Hers is bruised as well, and they look like they’ve either had a hell of an argument or been beaten up and . . .

“We were robbed,” Rainy says, snapping her fingers. “We were in a cart, just like that one, bringing melons to market in the city and bandits . . . And you, you’re so swollen you can’t speak.”

“But I can speak.”

“For God’s sake, Cisco, try to follow, would you?” she snaps.

“Hey, sister, we’re in my country now—”

“A country where you don’t speaka de language.”

“I won’t take that smart mouth of yours much longer,” he warns. He waves his hand back and forth in a sideways chopping motion. A threat.

“Sure you will, because if you don’t I’ll give your uncle chapter and verse on how you handled the trip here.”

They are face-to-face, eye to eye. Cisco breathes violence now; he is the real thing: a gangster. She has little doubt he could beat her in a fight despite her training in hand-to-hand combat.

Although, if I caught him by surprise . . .

In the end she gets her way, but she knows that her control over him is a slippery thing. He’s not a Lucky Luciano type, which Rainy equates in her mind with a sort of general. He’s at best a green lieutenant, a hothead with too much to prove. And he is not at all pleased to take orders from a female.

Rainy keeps her pace steady, eyes trained on three sleepy-looking Italian militia in ill-fitting green uniforms. They wear odd brown caps whose shape reminds Rainy of the fancy folded napkins at the Stork Club.