Silver Stars

by Michael Grant

  Small branches pelt her helmet, and she’s up instantly, rushing, no longer firing, waiting for targets.

  There! Bang!

  There! Bang! Bang!

  Two rounds left in the clip. A German rushes in from her right firing a Schmeisser submachine gun from the hip, disciplined bursts that chop at the trees. Rio is moving faster than the Kraut can turn, and she tosses her second grenade at him, not fifteen feet away, too close—have to keep moving and crumpf!

  Something big and thick and too soft to be wood hits her in passing, but she’s beyond caring. There’s a roaring in her head, a sound like a million waterfalls crashing, her body is filled with lightning, she is unstoppable, invincible, unkillable, and she screams as she runs, screams, “Die, die, die, goddamn you!”

  Two shots come in rapid succession, two shots that sober her up like a bucket of cold water thrown in her face. The shots are from behind!

  She twists in mid-run to see the German she’d trampled earlier. He’s up, and his rifle is leveled and smoking. And just a few feet behind him, Jack’s rifle is also leveled, and also trails a faint wisp of smoke from the barrel. The German stands for what feels like an eternity, then crumples.

  Rio stops running and realizes no one is firing at her.

  “Cease firing!” she yells at the top of her lungs. With predatory alertness she strains to hear. The sound of men moving, but moving away. Are the Krauts pulling back? If so . . .

  “Jack, with me!” she yells, and barrels back toward Strand, who has blessedly fallen silent. She drops beside him, lays her rifle on his chest, and grabs his uniform fabric. Jack, beside her, does the same, and side by side they haul Strand away. But it is inch by inch. Strand is a healthy-sized man and the soil is far from smooth.

  Rio yells, “Geer, Cat, all of you fall back!”

  “Artillery?” Jack gasps.

  She nods. “Gotta be coming. They fell back to call it in.”

  They are no more than halfway back to the makeshift firing position before a whistling sound in the air proves her right. The round lands with shattering effect but off to their left, blowing the surface of the lake into a spout of water and mud.

  How long for the Krauts to call in a correction? How long for their gunners to adjust?

  They are at the fallen trees and must pull branches away before they can carry on dragging Strand. The second round of shells lands on the right line but sixty or so feet behind them.

  “Cat! Turn south!” Rio shouts.

  They are through the barrier but nowhere near escaping what Rio knows will be a murderously accurate artillery fire mission.

  Jack squirms, hauls Strand onto his shoulders. Rio grabs Strand’s legs and lifts and the three of them stumble away.

  A whistle in the air.

  “Down!”

  They fall on their faces and Jack says something, which is lost in the noise of the explosion, but in the flash of light Rio sees what Jack has seen: a decently deep hole formed by a tree that’s been ripped out by the roots. They crawl like worms and drag themselves and Strand into the hole.

  Boom! Boom! Boom!

  Shells are dropping like deadly rain, blasting trees and turf, and ripping the world apart like a giant throwing a toddler’s tantrum. Hot, spent shrapnel clatters on Rio’s helmet. Noise, noise everywhere; the ground itself is like the skin of a bass drum.

  The firing stops suddenly. Rio speaks but can’t hear herself. Jack’s mouth is moving, but the sound might as well be coming through a heavy door it’s so muffled.

  She risks rising just enough to take a quick, shaky glance around. The plane lies there still, a new crater just off its surviving wing, its skin torn by shrapnel but not burning.

  Of course: the Krauts want to take the plane intact, or at least the bombsight.

  The Germans will move up now and finish us off.

  Her thoughts are as clear as if they’d been carefully written out: with arty stopped, the Krauts will advance. They can’t outrun the Krauts, not while hauling Strand.

  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.

  He is polite, even courtly. He speaks no English, so Tomaso translates even though Rainy understands the don’s Italian perfectly well. Don Pietro has a voice that starts out hearty enough but soon grows hoarse, like many old men. He could be sixty, he could be ninety. His expression never changes. He is not startled, fascinated, puzzled, annoyed, happy, sad, or angry. He is a perfect unemotional void projected onto a hound dog’s face.

  And yet, his eyes . . . He seldom looks at her, but when he does Rainy knows, by some sub-logical sixth sense, that he is not seeing an American soldier, or a spy, or an ally; he’s seeing an object, a thing, a piece on the chessboard where he is the grand master.

  Don Pietro nods at one of his bodyguards, and the man puts down his cup and pulls an envelope from the pocket of his jacket. He slides it across to Rainy.

  Don Pietro (as translated by Tomaso) says, “You have delivered my brother’s son. We have now given you the information you sought in return. Our transaction is complete.”

  “Yes, sir,” Rainy says. “But I still have to get the information to my superiors. I have to get to Rome.”

  “We have made no bargain that includes aiding you. No bargain that includes sheltering you. Francisco”—he glances at his nephew with obvious distaste—“I am certain has also made no such promise. As I said, our business is satisfactorily concluded.”

  Panic gnaws at the edge of Rainy’s mind. This is Italy, enemy territory, a country overrun by various Fascist police forces and intelligence people, not to mention the German Gestapo. She has a little money and a pistol, and other than that, nothing but her orders—orders that direct her to contact a certain person at the neutral Swedish Embassy in Rome, or, failing that, to find some other way of passing her information along.

  I’m not the hero of this story, I’m the fool.

  “Don Pietro,” Rainy says in Italian now, hoping her use of his tongue will make him more favorably disposed to her. “It was no easy thing getting Cisco here to where he is safe with you. I had hoped—”

  “Hope is for fools,” Don Pietro says with a very slight wave of his hand.

  “Is honor also for fools?” she demands, her heart in her throat. It’s a challenge to Don Pietro, a challenge to a man who can snap his fingers and end her life.

  But Don Pietro doesn’t blink. “Honor requires keeping to the deals we make. This I have done.”

  She sees that he is ready to move on to a different topic. If that happens, she’s very likely done for. He won’t risk letting her fall into the hands of carabinieri or the Gestapo, she realizes in a moment of startling clarity: that could end up making trouble for him. So he’ll have her killed. Maybe not right away, maybe not until he can pin it on someone else, but she will be killed—of that there is no doubt.

  For a moment she is paralyzed by this realization. She is bargaining for her life, not just her mission. While she’s frantically searching for something to say, Tomaso steps in.

  “Perhaps there is some other service she could perform.”

  Her first reaction is gratitude. But then, despite the fear growing inside her, she realizes this is planned. Don Pietro has made clear her likely fate: death; and Tomaso now offers a way out.

  “What other service?” she asks, dreading the reply.

  “The don grows tired,” Tomaso says, though Don Pietro has shown no evidence of weariness, merely boredom. “Let’s discuss this between ourselves.”

  They make their polite good-byes to the evil old man and pass by a glaring Cisco. They walk down worn stone steps into a pleasant, walled garden. There is a hedge of well-tended roses and a fig tree whose fruit is just a week or two from ripeness. There isn’t much to see in the garden, but there is a stone bench in the shade, and it is there that Tomaso explains.

  “You are not Catholic, I take it,” Tomaso says.

  “No. I’m Jewish.”

  “Then you would have no particular objection to dealing with a difficult priest.”

  “You want me to talk to a priest?”

  “No,” Tomaso says, smiling at the thought. “We want you to eliminate him.”

  Rainy stares at him, dumbfounded. She has expected any number of possibilities, largely having to do with sexual services. And now, absurdly, she is almost abashed to find that this plays no part in the don’s considerations, or apparently in Tomaso’s.

  “I’m not an assassin.”

  Tomaso shrugs. “No, but Francisco is. He very much wants you gone and silenced forever.”

  “He’s claustrophobic.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know that word.”

  “Cisco has a deep-seated terror of confined spaces. He panics. I mean, really panics. Raving, screaming, pants wetting.” She owes Cisco nothing and getting the information out there alters his motivation.

  “And you arrived by submarine.” Tomaso smiles privately and nods. “Yes, he’d want you dead for having witnessed that. And by telling me you think you’ll eliminate his need to eliminate you. Clever, but not very clever. Cisco is not a great believer in reason.”

  “No,” she admits. “But I’m still not a killer.”

  “Not yet,” Tomaso says, and pats her knee. “It’s something that’s only really difficult the first time. It becomes easier. And this priest really is a very bad fellow, he’s getting his flock up in arms against certain businesses we wish to extend into his village.”

  “You’re moving in on a new territory, and the priest is trying to stop you.”

  “Exactly. You’re very quick, you know, very quick for a . . .”

  “For a woman?”

  Tomaso laughs his easy, genial laugh. “I was going to say for an American. No Italian man needs to be schooled on the subtlety of women.” He laughs at some private memory. “But sometimes feminine delicacy may cause women to be slower to reach unpleasant conclusions.”

  “What unpleasant conclusion?”

  “Come now, we don’t need to be explicit.”

  “Kill or be killed,” Rainy says. “That’s the conclusion, isn’t it?”

  Tomaso sighs and shakes his head, but it’s not a negative, it’s amusement and disapproval. “I abhor threats.”

  “Me too, when they’re directed at me,” Rainy snaps.

  Her heart is thudding in her chest. She has difficulty breathing without gasping or sobbing, but her mind is still alert. There is a door in the garden wall. And there is a man armed with a shotgun beside that door, and probably another just
outside on the street. She has a pistol that will be very awkward to draw from beneath her dress with Tomaso beside her. Anyway, a pistol versus at least one and likely two shotguns is not a good bet. Then, too, even if she somehow escapes into the streets, how long before they find her? Minutes? A half hour at best?

  Two things are obvious. She can refuse and die right now, if not by Tomaso’s hand then by Cisco’s. Or she can stall for time by agreeing.

  Option two seems a much better choice.

  First she has to struggle some more, pretend to be appalled, pretend to come slowly to the idea, pretend to talk herself into it. Too-quick agreement will just show she’s planning a double cross.

  Tomaso waits patiently—or is it cynically—as she makes a show of convincing herself, complete with expressions of outrage, which do not move Tomaso at all.

  In the end she is driven in a beat-up tricycle truck from Salerno by Tomaso and one of his thugs. The passenger compartment is absurdly cramped, so she is squeezed miserably between the beefy driver and the compactly muscular Tomaso.

  Despite the impossibility of her position, Rainy is aware that the drive is spectacularly beautiful. The road winds north out of Salerno before turning west along the coast. It is a narrow, even precarious road, which at places lances through small, steep, seaside towns, creeping down streets so tight that at one point Tomaso simply reaches out of the window to grab an orange out of a shop display. He peels it with a pocketknife, cuts a dripping section, and hands it to Rainy.

  In other places the road seems to almost hang in midair. There’s usually a low stone wall along the seaward side, but the ground drops away so steeply that she can’t see anything below but the sparkling Mediterranean. A single careless turn and the little tricycle truck will likely plow straight through or over the wall and go tumbling down onto picturesque homes.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Tomaso asks.

  There’s no point lying. “The most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.”

  This earns her a thoughtful look. “Have you traveled much?”

  Rainy hesitates—it is in her nature to reveal as little as possible—but she can’t see the harm and she needs Tomaso’s friendship, if such a thing is even possible. “I’m from New York City. It’s a different sort of beauty, more man-made, larger, grittier, but still beautiful at times.”