Silver Stars (Front Lines #2)(46)
Click-BOOM!
Click-BOOM!
A different voice screams, a crewman, his hand crushed beneath the torpedo. Men race with rope and straps, leaping almost comically to avoid being crushed. An officer tears in yelling but in a ridiculous whisper, “What the hell?” which does nothing to help. Then, to Rainy, “Get that damned fool out of here and shut him up!”
Cisco is larger than Rainy, though not a large man. He has torn free of the broken pipe, bellowing all the while, rope hanging about him in loops. Rainy throws her arms around him, but he has the strength of panic, and it’s like trying to tackle a charging rhinoceros. In this case, the rhinoceros is at least charging in the right direction.
Rainy uses Cisco’s own momentum to bring him down. Just before the wardroom, still clinging to his neck, she times it carefully and twists with sudden violence so Cisco’s momentum slams him headfirst into the heavy steel frame of a hatch.
He falls, not quite unconscious, but stunned, too stunned to resist as she guides him into the alcove of the petty officers’ mess. He is beneath the table. Rainy is on the bench. He starts to thrash again, and Rainy lifts her weight up on one leg, aims with the other foot, and kicks the side of his head with all the force she can muster.
At last, Cisco is silent.
And now it no longer matters because the destroyer is moving off, either convinced that it has killed Topaz, or convinced that Topaz is safely away.
They run beneath the surface. The mood is relieved but apprehensive. Crewmen laugh nervously and seem to be glancing over their shoulders, often at Rainy.
Her burned hand hurts terribly, and she can actually see the blisters swelling, thin flesh filling with liquid. Her nose is unfortunately no longer numb, but painful. A look in the back of a shiny spoon confirms what her fingers tell her: that she now has a broken nose to match her big brother Aryeh’s. She touches it and is punished with a jolt of pain that takes her breath away.
There is some damage to the Topaz, and it is some time before Lieutenant Commander Alger comes to stand at the mess room opening to say, “You look somewhat the worse for wear.”
Rainy doesn’t have anything brave to say. She nods silently and presses gauze to her nose. The medic has given her a greasy cream to spread over her burned hand, but it does nothing for the pain.
“I wonder if, considering your condition, not to mention your panicky friend’s condition, you would prefer to report yourself unfit to continue . . .”
Rainy shakes her head, but not without some inner turmoil. This is not how she meant to arrive in Italy. The whole mission is mad, she sees that now. Mad to send her with Cisco into enemy territory. Mad to risk exposing Allied interest in the area around Salerno. Mad to have no plan for what she is to do after she accomplishes her mission. Colonel Corelli is a fool. Agent Bayswater said so, Lieutenant Commander Alger certainly implies as much, and her own printed orders reveal his lack of planning.
It’s a suicide mission.
My God, it really is a suicide mission!
Lieutenant Commander Alger is patient, but Rainy’s silence has stretched on for quite a while. “You need to decide.”
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.