Silver Stars (Front Lines #2)(40)

“Laudanum. Tincture of opium. Drink it down, now. It will settle your nerves.”

Cisco swallows it and grimaces. “Damn, that is bitter.”

Suddenly a klaxon sounds. A-roooo-gah! A-roooo-gah!

The loudspeaker comes on with a tense but controlled voice. “Battle stations, battle stations, dive, dive!”

The men on the gun disappear down their hatch in seconds, but it takes the medic and both lookouts—plus a moderate punch in Cisco’s kidneys from Rainy—to shove Cisco, inconveniently bent in half at one point, down to safety. They close the hatch and spin the lock seconds ahead of a rush of water that gurgles over the hastily closed hatch.

The crew has already reached battle stations so the corridor is relatively clear as Cisco is dragged, literally kicking and screaming (and cursing), to his hammock.

Finally the laudanum kicks in and Cisco’s movements become less powerful, less focused, his flow of curses and threats slows, and he offers only ineffectual resistance to being tied down again.

“This is going to be a very long trip,” Rainy mutters under her breath. “And all of it probably a fool’s errand.”

Amateur.





12

RIO RICHLIN—OFF GELA BEACH, SICILY

It is not Rio’s first rodeo.

It’s an expression she has appropriated from Cat Preeling. Ain’t my first rodeo, Cat likes to say when someone, generally a man, explains something in a patronizing tone.

Ain’t my first rodeo. Ain’t my first amphibious landing on a beach.

Rio’s landing craft has been loaded and circling for the better part of a half hour. Dawn is breaking ever so slowly it seems, allowing just enough light to see that the boats of the first wave are reaching the beach and disgorging their troops.

“All right, we’re going in,” the coxswain yells.

The circling landing craft all line up abreast and race at full speed toward shore, smacking waves and banging their passengers around. The pink of dawn begins to give shape to the island ahead. Its most prominent feature is a steep, singular mountain that dominates the eastern end of the island. There is a small but clear plume of smoke twisting leisurely up from the top, smoke turned orange as the sun peeking over the horizon touches first the highest thing in view. It reminds Rio of Jillion’s sketch, the curl of smoke at the end of Rio’s rifle.

“Etna,” Stick says. “It’s a volcano.”

“Like with lava?” someone asks.

“The whole island is just cooled-down lava. Etna created Sicily. But I don’t think it’s—”

The sea explodes around them, a vast gout of water. The defending Italians seem to be taking matters more seriously, and daybreak has improved their aim. Seawater rains down on them, running off Rio’s helmet. Geer curses and urges Miss Lion deeper into his jacket. Everyone flinches as a shell passes overhead, howling like a racing locomotive.

Just ahead is another landing craft, much like theirs, but seemingly stuck and unable to move though its engines are churning the water into a small bubble bath.

“We’re going to take some of them aboard,” the coxswain yells down from his squat bridge, chopping his hand in the direction of the stranded boat. He gentles the engine and one of his small crew perches atop the ramp, peering down into the turbulent sea, trying to locate the limits of the sandbar with a length of rope and a lead weight.

“Looks like thirty feet, Skipper!”

“Got it.”

“I make it twenty.”

“Twenty it is.”

“Getting hairy here, Skipper!”

The coxswain has his work cut out for him. He has to bring his boat in close enough to pass a line to the stranded boat, but not let the swell push him up onto the sand or send it crashing into the back of the other boat.

Geer yells, “It’s a boatful of Nigras!”

“Throw ’em a line,” the skipper shouts, and his crewman twirls a rope like a lasso before he sends it flying.

This activity, ever more visible as the sun threatens to leap into view from behind the horizon, attracts small-caliber fire from shore. At least one machine gun chatters away from a pillbox just beyond the sand of the beach, but the rounds splash harmlessly into the sea. They are beyond machine gun range, but not beyond mortar range, and someone with blessedly inadequate skill is firing, dropping rounds to their left, their farther left, behind, ahead, not yet zeroing in.

Rio is unnerved by the helplessness of being trapped in the boat, nowhere to run to, nowhere to dig a fighting hole, no cover, no control. No one to shoot. Any random shell . . . Tilo Suarez is working his rosary; Pang is mouthing silent words that must surely be a prayer. Rio thinks a quick Take care of me, Lord, but is too restless and worried to focus on divine intervention.

“Figures, fugging Nigras,” Geer mutters. “Going to get us killed.”

Pang says, “Looks to me like the guy driving the boat is white.” This earns him a shrug from Geer.

The rope is secured and drawn tight across a mere twenty feet of water. Looking over the side, Rio can see the sandbar just below the surface, revealed and then concealed by each passing wave, like a fan dancer teasing. They try pulling the stuck boat free, but a cleat breaks loose and the rope has to be reattached, and now the effort focuses on getting the trapped GIs to crawl along the rope.