Silver Stars

by Michael Grant

  “Yes, sir. I’ll be ready.”

  He looks at her with some affection. “You’ve done well this last week. It can’t have been easy. Unfamiliar environment . . . your recalcitrant charge . . .”

  Rainy smiles and gently touches the latest submarine-inflicted bruise on her forehead. “In another week I would have the hang of it.”

  “I’m certain you would. But there is a rather delicate matter to consider. I assume you will be going ashore in mufti. You understand that if Jerry or the Eye-ties capture you out of uniform they will likely treat you as a spy.”

  “Yes.”

  He seems taken aback by her one-word answer. “The mere fact that you are being put ashore in the vicinity of Salerno is a very dangerous thing. The Gestapo are brutes but not stupid. If they take you or Mr. Smith alive . . .”

  Rainy is aware now of a hush on the bridge. It’s never a chatty place, but there is now that hard-to-define feeling that all ears are eavesdropping.

  “Commander, I’ve been issued a suicide pill.”

  The pill is a tiny glass capsule filled with cyanide in liquid form. It is sheathed in brown rubber to minimize the odds of it being accidentally broken. And it has been cleverly concealed by sewing it into the collar of the Italian dress she is to wear ashore.

  “You seem quite sanguine about it,” Alger says with a soft concern.

  “I’m not thrilled about it,” Rainy says with a sigh. “But I’m even less thrilled about being questioned by the Gestapo. I would be a female Jewish spy, and I don’t think they would be gentle. I don’t know that I would be able to resist. And I would rather die than cause deaths that might come of me spilling the beans.”

  Someone—she can’t see who—mutters, “She’s a prime one,” in a tone she takes to be admiring.

  “And what of Mr. Smith?” Alger asks. “Surely you don’t expect him to take an equally high-minded position?”

  “No,” she admits. “I considered that possibility and, well, I have a pistol.”

  Alger tilts his head, and his eyebrows crinkle in the middle. “Have you ever used a firearm in that way?”

  Rainy shakes her head. Something about his concern combined with the doubts that have tortured her for this last week makes her throat clench.

  “I see. It could be a very difficult thing to do.”

  “I would like to think it would never be easy,” she says in a low voice. “But, Commander, with great respect, how is it different from what you do?”

  Alger takes that on board, frowns, and nods slightly before saying, “You’ll forgive me if I observe that there is regrettably a very long history of men fighting wars and doing the necessary. There is no such history with the gentler sex.”

  “You think that in a moment of crisis I’ll hesitate because I’m a woman.”

  He inclines his head in agreement.

  Rainy squares her shoulders, very aware of many eyes on her and of ears tuned carefully. “I am not a draftee, Lieutenant Commander Alger, I volunteered. I volunteered to kill Germans and to help rid the world of that monster in Berlin. I would be very sad to have to shoot Mr. Smith, though I’ve been tempted . . . But I believe if it comes to it, yes, I believe I can and will put the gun to the back of his head and pull the trigger.”

  Alger exhales long and slow. He makes a small, regretful smile and says, “Perhaps you will. I think it is a terribly sad thing to see that the madness of war has now carried women along too.”

  Rainy almost stops herself from saying more, but cannot. “There are women under German bombs in Poland and in Holland and in the Soviet Union. And more than a few in England. They never got to shoot back.”

  Alger takes Rainy’s arm and propels her gently down what Rainy has come to think of as the obstacle course and guides her into his cabin. It’s as close to private as any space on the sub.

  Without preamble he says, “You know, of course, that this mission is absolutely mad.”

  Rainy frowns and says nothing.

  “It’s hardly unique. War is a series of foolish enterprises and a study of history is not reassuring on that score. I will tell you that this may be the most foolish. Sending a young woman with an unstable gangster—”

  “I don’t believe my sex has—”

  He cuts her off with an abrupt chop of his hand. “I’m not talking about your sex, if you were an equally young man in the identical position I would still say that this is a reckless and foolish mission.”

  Rainy actually takes a step back, which brings her up against a cabinet. Even commanders have cramped quarters in a sub. She starts to defend her mission, but she can’t do it honestly. Alger is right.

  That’s the damned thing: he’s right.

  “Of course it is understood that I am not referring to the admiralty when I say this,” Alger says with a hint of irony. “But not everyone in this war has his eye equally fixed on the larger objective, or on the lives of the men—or women—under their command. Many officers are more interested in their careers.”

  She nods slowly and she agrees, but she is not ready to agree openly. She’s a soldier on a mission. She has orders. She has no choice now, no easy way out.

  He nods briskly. “Well, we shall submerge shortly and—”

  Several things happen at once. The klaxon brays. A young officer sticks his head in the cabin, excited. “Contact, sir!” Alger spins away, and Rainy follows him back to the bridge, drawn by the excitement.

  “Commander!” The sonar operator pulls one headphone back and half turns. “Screws closing fast!”

  Rainy is instantly forgotten.

  “Bearing?”

  One lookout is already sliding down the ladder, the second just behind him as Alger raps out orders to dive. Within seconds the deck begins to tilt down by the bow.

  The lookout says, “Looked like a spotter plane, Skipper, but it was just a glimpse.”

  The conclusion is obvious. A spotter plane has called their position in to either the Italian or German navy. Or both. The sonar operator confirms that he’s hearing screws of a speed and type to indicate a destroyer coming on fast on an intercept course.

  The periscope is sent up and Alger peers intently. “She’s that Greek capture, the Hermes, if I am not mistaken. Take her down to ten fathoms and come around. Sergeant Schulterman, see to your charge.”

  Rainy spins away and runs up the corridor to find that the torpedo room crew has already taken Cisco’s hammock down and the gangster has been made fast to a vertical bit of pipe.

  It is a good thing he’s tied because within minutes things go from merely claustrophobic to catastrophic.

  The first salvo of depth charges explodes.

  Rainy has seen a movie called We Dive at Dawn, which purported to show a depth charge attack. In the fictional submarine there had been a sound like distant thunder. Then lights had flickered, and the actors had swayed back and forth, and there had been a sound of galley pots rattling.

  The reality bears almost no resemblance to that.

  The exploding depth charges do not sound like distant thunder; the pressure wave hits like a hammer, like some angry god is hurling great boulders at the Topaz. A gigantic aquatic beast is kicking the sub, and with each kick the bulkheads and deck and every gauge, wheel, bolt, and section of pipe strike at Rainy, as if the walls around her are trying to batter her to death.

  The floor beneath her punches up at the soles of her feet, collapsing her knees. She falls sideways against the legs of one of the torpedo room crew. Somehow in the midst of what seems to Rainy like the end of the world, the crew is hauling on a length of cable, drawing a massive long torpedo toward its launch tube.

  And suddenly the explosions stop.

  Rainy climbs to her feet, muttering an apology to the man she’d fouled. There’s blood coming from her nose, which feels numb.

  The cessation of the catastrophic noise of the depth charges allows Rainy to hear Cisco. He is screaming, screaming, all self-control gone, scre
aming, head tossing from side to side, which gives his screams a rhythm, softer, louder, like a French ambulance siren.

  One of the torpedo men snaps, “Gag ’im, miss, gag ’im. We’ll be rigging for silent running soon!”

  Rainy has no gag and her wits are scrambled. She grabs at the blanket peeking from the stowed hammock. But of course she can’t tear it, the wool is too tough.

  The word comes down, mouth to mouth, in loud stage whispers, “Rig for silent running!”

  Cisco screams, incoherent gibberish sounds, lunatic sounds.

  Rainy is wearing her borrowed Royal Navy peacoat. She shoves her right arm into Cisco’s open mouth. He bites down hard, and she feels it, but right now the pain in her arm is the least of her problems. The second salvo of depth charges is sinking toward them even as the Topaz tilts precipitously downward. She can barely keep to her feet against the slope and leans into Cisco, arm still gagging him and . . .

  Click-BOOM!

  Click-BOOM!

  The twin explosions hit harder, much harder. The torpedo being hauled forward is knocked from its cradle and smashes onto the deck. Twenty-one feet long, 3,452 pounds: it lands like a dropped bank safe.

  For a terrifying moment Rainy freezes, expecting it to explode, but of course it has not yet been fused. The torpedo rolls slowly, inexorably left with men leaping over it to avoid being crushed. Then it rolls to the right, so Rainy has to grab the pipe Cisco is tied to and haul herself up and out of the way. The torpedo slams against that same pipe, and the whole thing pulls free and . . .

  Click-BOOM!

  Click-BOOM!

  Steam everywhere, it scalds the back of Rainy’s hand, she cries out, lands atop the torpedo with Cisco’s weight atop her and Cisco screaming madly in her ear, thrashing and . . .

  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.

  “Hey, screw you, pal,” Cisco says.

  In less than a minute the boat is lost to sight. Rainy takes a shaky breath. She has just landed in Mussolini’s Italy on a harebrained mission with a seething, unstable gangster. Her face, hand, and shoulder all hurt.

  Strapped to her inner thigh where a casual search won’t find it is a Colt 1903, weighing 1.46 pounds and holding eight .32 caliber bullets.

  Concealed behind a loosely sewn seam in her collar is her suicide pill.

  It is still dark, but stars are already fading in the east. The only sound is the lullaby shush-shush of wavelets. The beach is empty. The closest lights might be miles away north, she can’t tell.

  “Oy vey iz mir,” she whispers, echoing her mother.
/>   Oh, woe is me.

  14

  RIO RICHLIN—GELA BEACH, SICILY

  Harassed by intermittent shelling and occasional attacks from the air, the platoon assembles on the chaotic beach. Lieutenant Vanderpool, with orders to get them off the beach as quickly as possible, leads them inland. The 119th is spread out to their left, with Fifth Platoon holding the right of the line and Second Squad on the hanging end. There is no Allied force on their immediate right, not yet, as the division assigned that position has run into trouble getting their gear ashore.

  SNAFU, Rio thinks. Situation Normal: All Fugged Up.

  The division, accompanied by the single light tank they’ve managed to get ashore, bypasses the town of Gela and heads directly across the dry farm fields of southern Sicily.

  Rio’s first sighting of actual Sicilians occurs when three small children come running out of a farmhouse. The children are scrawny, haphazardly dressed in cheap, patched, ill-fitting clothing, and with not a shoe between them.

  The nervous platoon trains weapons on them until high-pitched cries of delight, ear-to-ear grins, and manic laughter convince them that there is no danger from these three.

  One urchin, a seven-year-old girl, tugs shyly at Jenou’s leg while staring in a solemn way at the blood-soaked leg of Rio’s pants.

  “Give her something,” Rio says to Jenou.

  “What? Tips on how to dress? That outfit goes way beyond hand-me-down,” Jenou says, but she fishes in her pockets and comes up with half a ration chocolate bar. The little girl falls to it immediately, gnawing at the rock-hard chocolate and grinning up in surprise and pure, undiluted joy.

  “Careful it doesn’t give you the runs,” Jenou says pointlessly since there is no chance of the child understanding.