Silver Stars (Front Lines #2)(65)

One way, just one way to be sure.

Rio snatches a grenade from Jack’s belt. She points at him and then at Strand, then chops her hand to indicate direction.

Jack is arguing, she can see it, though she still can’t make out the words.

“Do it!” she snaps. “Far as you can!”

Then, uncertain whether her voice is pitched loudly enough, yells, “Preeling and Geer! Get up here and help Stafford!”

Risking their lives to save Strand? Or just trying to complete the mission?

Jack is still arguing, but he’s nevertheless begun dragging Strand again.

Rio’s mind is a stopwatch. Tick-tick-tick. How long for the Krauts to advance from their fallback? How long for Strand and Jack to get clear?

How long for her to get clear?

Tick-tick-tick.

They’ll come from both directions this time, circling the B-17.

Don’t be a hero.

“I’m not, Dad, just trying to keep my people alive,” she mutters as if he is standing beside her.

My people.

Tick-tick-tick.

Her hearing is coming back. She does not hear the advancing Germans, but she does hear Geer’s warning, “Movement! More than before!”

Have the Krauts been reinforced already?

Geer and Cat have joined Jack, and the three of them have Strand by hand, hand, and ankle, leaving the injured ankle to drag and bang along the ground.

Strand is complaining in an aggrieved tone.

Tick-tick-tick.

Now.

Her grenades are fused for five seconds. Two grenades, her last one and the one she took from Jack.

Pull both pins. Hold down the lever. Run. Throw.

Five seconds to get away.

Impossible!

“Shit,” Rio says under her breath, and races straight for the plane. In through the open hatch, the only way, otherwise the grenades might just scar the fuselage.

She runs and suddenly there are a half dozen Kraut soldiers ahead and they won’t be bluffed a second time. She fires one-handed, from the hip, no chance of hitting anything, but maybe it will slow them down—and now the plane and the hatch and suddenly she’s there.

She releases the first lever and tosses the grenade into the darkness inside the plane. The second follows half a second later.

Four seconds left.

One.

Run, Rio!

Two.

Too slow!

Three.

The stump hole! She dives, heedless, headfirst and the whole world blows up.





20

RAINY SCHULTERMAN—SALERNO AND POSITANO, ITALY

Rainy freezes.

“Let me have a gun so I can shoot this bitch in the mouth.”

Tomaso tilts his head and looks at her quizzically.

Cisco says, “As long as she’s alive, she’s a risk!”

“If you kill me, the deal is off,” Rainy says, though her voice is like the rustling of dry leaves. Her mouth is bone dry.

“The deal.” Cisco snorts. “I’m here, I’m safe, that’s all that matters.”

But Tomaso flicks a sidelong look at him, a look full of distaste. “You don’t think her people back in New York are going to take it out on Don Vito? On your own father, Cisco? They can tell the Nigras where you are, and for two hundred dollars US they can put a hit out on you. Not to mention busting every bar, flophouse, whorehouse, and gambling joint Don Vito controls.”

Tomaso’s English is too good, despite the accent, too slang to have been learned from books. He’s been to America.

Rainy breathes.

“This is business, not personal bullshit,” Tomaso scolds Cisco. “You make a deal, you keep the deal. Otherwise there’s no business, capisce?”

Cisco is furious, furious and afraid. Rainy turns a cold stare on him and says, “Best if we all keep our mouths shut. Right, Cisco?”

It is not a subtle threat, and Cisco hears it. So does Tomaso, who raises a curious eyebrow but does not ask any questions. He says, “We’re having breakfast. Come upstairs, have some coffee and a cornetto. Don Pietro will decide what happens next.”

He sweeps his arm toward the stairs, and Rainy, followed by Cisco with Tomaso bringing up the rear, climbs a long, steep staircase that opens onto a hallway. The kitchen door is open. An old woman is brewing coffee in a stovetop espresso maker. A younger woman is washing dishes.

Past the kitchen—Rainy nods to the old woman—is the dining room. It’s a pleasant, homey room. There’s a long, mahogany oval of a table decorated with a lace runner. The table is piled generously with croissants—cornetti—and assorted pastries. There are pots of jam, a lump of yellow butter, fine china cups and plates, and expensive silver.

Three men are seated, two obviously muscle, and one, at the head of the table with his back to a window and thus haloed with sunlight, who is much older and unmistakably in charge.

Don Pietro Camporeale has less sinister energy than Vito the Sack. He’s more elderly, for one thing. But what he lacks in physical energy he makes up for in sheer, stolid, graven-image intimidation.

Rainy is tough-minded, skeptical, unimpressed, and confident in her own abilities. But Don Pietro is something she’s never encountered before. He seems to warp the fabric of space, as though he radiates an intense gravity that causes every eye to turn to him, causes every thought to focus on him, has every other person in the room hanging expectantly on his word.