Silver Stars (Front Lines #2)(79)
Thirty-five dollars in cash is more than most people in Genazzano have, but most of them have jobs or farms, and all of them have local family and connections to help out.
If only she had some idea what was going on in the war. The local newspapers are censored and useless, good only for reading between the lines. It’s clear that the Allies have taken Sicily, but beyond that, no news at all. No news and of course no letters. Her parents must think she’s been captured or killed; she’s never gone this long without writing to them.
Halev . . . well, he’s surely found someone else by now. Not that they really even had more than a friendship. Halev owes her nothing, and she owes him nothing. But she cannot quite bring herself to dismiss Halev—friends, family, the memories of home have become vital to her survival.
She worries at times about her father and Vito the Sack. No doubt Tomaso and his father are furious that she’s escaped without killing the priest, but her deal was with Vito Camporeale to deliver Cisco, and she delivered Cisco. So no one should have any beef with her father.
From the stone wall, Rainy can look out over most of a mile of road. The road twists and turns along escarpments, through woods, behind occasional homes, but for the most part she can see anything or anyone coming this direction. Twice she has seen German vehicles passing on their way west to Rome.
There’s very little else to do aside from picking insects off the scraggly, never-to-ripen carrots and peppers in the garden. Her days are full of silence. Her nights are full of the small sounds that cause her to wake suddenly and check the door. She lives in fear of the sound of tires on the gravel outside, of slammed car doors and German voices.
But mostly she is bored. Somewhere the war goes on, but she is no longer in it.
Missing, presumed dead. So sorry, that girl had promise, what was her name? The little Jew with the hair like a bird’s nest and the odd name. You remember. Snowy. Or was it Breezy?
A car passes by on the road below, driving fast. Ten minutes later, an oxcart moving slow. The oxcart driver stops his beast, goes to the side of the road, and unbuttons his fly, needing a pee.
Rainy looks away, and it is this bit of delicacy that almost causes her to miss the open car. But she hears the engine and looks back, then peers intently as the car slows to maneuver past the stopped cart.
Four men in the car, none in uniform. She should breathe a sigh of relief, but something is wrong, very, very wrong about that car and those four men. She can’t see the spot where the car would have to turn off onto the driveway and reach the house, but instinct is screaming at her to run, so she races for the house. She grabs the rest of her bread and the bottle of wine, piles out of the side window, and runs to the shelter of the nearest trees.
The car pulls up when she is still exposed and in the open.
“Halt!” a voice shouts.
She runs, low bushes whipping her bare legs.
Voices yell in German. A shot! More yelling, angry, berating. Alive! she translates. Take her alive!
The suicide pill is in the pocket of her dress, but surely it’s not . . . no, it can’t be . . . She fumbles for her pistol.
She glances back. Two young men, both fit, neither hampered by women’s shoes. They’ll be on her in ten seconds.
The pill is in her fingers. The gun in her hand. My God, no, it can’t have come to that. It can’t be . . . not now . . . not yet!
She fires fast, without aiming, hoping to make them cautious.
And then, turning to run again, Rainy trips, throws out her hands instinctively. The suicide pill flies free, but she tracks it, sees it peeking from beneath a fallen pine twig. Rainy grabs for it, footsteps so close now, her fingers find the pill, raise it to her mouth, and she is hit from behind, a knee in the spine. Electric pain shoots through her body.
She has a split second to see the shoe that smashes into the side of her head, sending her consciousness spinning through the void, twirling, dragging her down and down. The second punch finishes the job.
Rainy lies crumpled, unconscious on the ground, her wine gurgling out onto the pine needles. Her gun beside her.
26
RIO RICHLIN—ABOARD LST-902, OFF SALERNO, ITALY
It is Rio Richlin’s first battle briefing as a corporal, an NCO, a noncommissioned officer. Corporals aren’t always included, but Stick has brought her along and Rio is very sensible of the compliment.
Sensible of the compliment . . . and resenting it. She had not asked to be made a corporal, had not wanted to be made a corporal, had argued with Cole and their new lieutenant, and had been told to shut up and do what she was told.
That part at least she understood.
In addition to the NCOs, their new lieutenant, Frank Stone, is there. No one knows much about Stone yet aside from the fact that he looks almost absurdly young, smokes like a fiend, blinks a lot, and seems to have a chip on his shoulder.
The main hold on the tank deck of the LST has the feeling of a warehouse made of steel. It is a vast oblong box stuffed full of Shermans, twenty tanks in all, plus two half-tracks and a couple of jeeps.
GIs are berthed in rectangular cells all around the outer edge of the boat. This ship has a nominal capacity of 217 men, which is nonsense—there are soldiers crammed everywhere. The upper deck is crawling with soldiers. The busy sailors have trouble at times pushing through the crowds of soldiers to reach their stations and genially curse the men and women in green as “sand fleas,” “lubbers,” “clumsy bastards,” and more, but never with real animus. The sailors know that soon these soldiers will be ashore . . . and they will not be.