Silver Stars (Front Lines #2)(36)

Laughter is spreading, even to Walter, a welcome, calming sound, though it sometimes comes through chattering teeth.

“. . . staggering around the streets in my underwear calling on Jesus to take me home. You, on the other hand—” He’s about to say something even more explicitly ribald, but he glances at Frangie and stops himself, finishing lamely with, “You, young Jasper, have experienced nothing.”

Frangie wants to ask Daddy D what he knows about the Tuskegee base where she’s heard they may be training colored pilots. But the back-and-forth is drawing the attention of other scared soldiers, giving them a few minutes of amusement in the midst of this mad circling and circling, so she makes a mental note to ask later.

“As much as I love to hear your Granddaddy Remus tales of the old days, the long, long ago when you could still interest a woman in your now withered-up—”

And on it goes until there’s a whistle blast and the boat finishes its rotation and heads toward shore. The conversation dies.

The sea is still up, not the gale they sailed through to get here but still agitated enough that boats ahead and behind can completely disappear from view in the troughs between waves. The landing craft skids down the back of one wave, settles a beat, then powers up the slope of the next one. There’s nothing but walls of black water to be seen at the bottom of the trough, and not much more at the top. Dawn has still not come, but the black of night is losing its absoluteness and there is the promise of dawn in the east.

Suddenly a nearby cruiser opens fire with its big guns, ejecting six-inch shells in volcanic eruptions of fire and smoke. They fly for long seconds . . . one . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . before blossoming as they strike a distant hill. In the dark where the hills are only shadows, the shells seem to be exploding in midair. Other shells from other ships blow up behind the small town of Gela, and sometimes land in the town itself.

“Eye-ties are catching hell,” a soldier remarks.

“More hell they catch, the less we do,” another soldier says.

Should I pray for the shells to strike true? Shall I pray for my enemy’s death? Blasphemy, surely. But I do want them to die if it means I won’t.

Now the guns of the fleet are firing with some steadiness, ship after ship enveloped in flame and smoke of its own making. Explosions that seem small compared to the moment of their eruption on the invisible hills, on the barely visible towns to the north and dead ahead. The noise rumbles across the water joining the roar of boat engines and slapping waves. The flashes illuminate faces for snapshots of expression, here an open mouth, there wide eyes, a head lowered to kiss a rosary.

With all the noise, at first no one hears the Heinkels coming in out of the northwest until the antiaircraft batteries on the ships open up too late, chattering madly and sending thousands of red tracer rounds of small-bore cannon and large-bore machine gun fire to lacerate the sky.

“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!”