Silver Stars

by Michael Grant

  But Rio, and women like her, are intruding in an area that has always been reserved to men: Rio is a warrior. She and others like her have shown that girls—women—could do more than work; women could be brave and aggressive. Women could kill. And Rainy is sure that reality will change the world.

  She’s sure it will have no effect on the minds of men like Agent Bayswater, but for Rainy it feels like a challenge.

  Colonel Corelli takes charge again as the FBI man seems to have run out of steam. “You will be required to give us a full report of the contact. You must attempt to convince them to speak with me directly, but if you find yourself dealing directly with Vito Camporeale, you will prepare a full report on him and on anyone else associated with him.”

  “Of course,” Rainy says.

  “And on your father,” Bayswater adds.

  “No,” Rainy says without hesitation.

  “That’s not a request, that’s an order,” Bayswater snaps.

  Rainy turns in her chair to look the agent in the face. There’s a confident sneer on his thin lips. His head is cocked to one side, a parody of some movie tough guy. “Agent Bayswater, I’m not an informer. I will not betray my father.”

  “Well, you uppity little skirt,” Bayswater snaps. He seems to think insults will move her. Or . . .

  Or he’s deliberately trying to goad her. Is he testing her? Or is he just a deeply unpleasant man?

  “You’ll report to me, Sergeant Schulterman,” Corelli says with strained calm, glaring at Bayswater. “And I have no interest in your conversation with your father. You’ll find a connection. You may even meet with Camporeale yourself. But you will only report back, you will make no commitments. Is that understood?”

  “Perfectly, sir.”

  “I’ll have your orders cut,” Corelli says. “You are dismissed.”

  She is out on the crowded sidewalk and heading toward the subway station when Special Agent Bayswater catches up to her.

  “A moment, Sergeant,” he says.

  “Yes?”

  They are in the middle of the sidewalk, and Bayswater draws her into the relative calm of a department store doorway. The FBI man’s arrogance is undiminished, but the smug offensiveness is toned down now.

  “You don’t like me much,” Bayswater says.

  Several answers pass through Rainy’s quick mind. I don’t like you at all. And, Don’t be so modest, I actively despise you. But Rainy is a tightly controlled person when in performance of her duty. So she says nothing.

  “You’re a smart broad,” Bayswater says. “And I don’t want to have to bring your old man in to identify your body. So a word to the wise: we got Naval Intelligence, we got this new OSS spy service, and we got us, the FBI. Everybody and their aunt Tilly is playing spy all of a sudden. Bunch of amateurs mostly.”

  “I freely confess I am an amateur,” Rainy says, impatient now, not interested in another futile go-round with the annoying agent.

  “Not talking about you, sister.” He jerks his thumb back toward the door through which they have both just emerged. “You know what Corelli did before the war?”

  “Colonel Corelli?” She pointedly emphasizes his rank.

  “Professor of Oriental Languages at some college up in Vermont.”

  He lets that sink in, and it does. Rainy’s guard comes down just a little.

  Bayswater continues. “We have professors too, all kinds of professors working for the Bureau. Very helpful, some of them. But we don’t let them plan or run operations. Guy like that is way smarter than me, but he’s never done this work before. His whole outfit—your outfit—you’re supposed to be counting tanks and deciding where some bunch of Krauts will be. This is not your bailiwick.”

  That sinks in as well.

  “Word to the wise,” Bayswater says. “Do this, this meet, but no more. Amateurs get people hurt. And your colonel is the textbook definition of an amateur. I know you don’t want to hear it, but that man is going to get you killed.” He touches the brim of his fedora, nods, and walks briskly away.

  4

  RIO RICHLIN—CAMP ZIGZAG, TUNISIA, NORTH AFRICA

  “You know what I want to do today?” Luther Geer says, stifling a yawn and using the heel of his hand to grind the sleep from his eyes. “I want to go sit in a damn LC and invade that same damn beach all over again. At least I get cool and clean wading through the waves.”

  His kitten, the former Miss Pat, now renamed Miss Lion of the Sahara, blinks owlishly from her position on his chest.

  Rio Richlin has not warmed up to Luther Geer. She thinks he is a bully and not very bright to boot, but she nevertheless agrees.

  Since the fighting wound down in Tunisia, the 119th Division has trained and practiced and trained some more. There has been renewed effort to improve soldiers’ effectiveness with the bazooka. There have been lectures on the necessity of actually firing one’s rifle and not just carrying it around like some family heirloom. There have been the inevitable marches around the desert—marches that had started off unpleasantly cold and then moved without seeming transition to being fiercely hot. And there have been amphibious assaults.

  They have assaulted the same beach three times already, and the weary consensus among the deeply bored GIs of Second Squad, Fifth Platoon, Company A of the 119th, was that today heralded yet another phony invasion.

  Jenou rolls upright in her canvas cot and upends her boots before putting them on. There are scorpions and snakes and things that have no name in the Tunisian desert, and many of them like to find shelter in a shady boot. Jenou is already partly in uniform and has in fact slept in it, there being no such thing as army-issue pajamas or nightgowns. And anyway, with zero privacy she’d have had no way to change without being stared at by the men of the squad, especially Tilo Suarez, who reacts to boredom by becoming even more irritatingly amorous.

  Jenou stands up and says, “I’m grabbing chow before the coffee gets cold.”

  “I’m with you,” Rio says. “I like to get the powdered eggs before they start separating.”

  “This is the life, man,” Dain Sticklin says, scratching his chest through his OD undershirt. “A thousand tents surrounded by a million square miles of sand with a million sand fleas per man—or woman.”

  “Are those sand fleas or lice?” Cat Preeling teases. “Because if it’s lice, we’re going to have to barbecue you, Stick. It’s the only way. Death by fire.”

  “I think mine are sand fleas.” Stick picks up his uniform blouse, shakes it, and begins peering closely at the fabric, searching for tiny crawling things.

  Dain Sticklin, inevitably called “Stick,” is the closest thing to a real soldier in the squad. Smart, educated, disciplined, with a prominent widow’s peak that somehow makes him look the part of the mature GI, he’s been in only as long as Rio herself and in fact went through basic training with her.

  “We’re not going to know until we put them side by side whether it’s fleas or lice,” Geer opines. Geer is a big ginger hick, the least open to the idea of women in the unit. But in battle he’s performed well, and that has become more meaningful to Rio than his daily obnoxiousness.

  “We ought to take a louse and a flea and put ’em together, see who wins.” This from Tilo, who seems vaguely excited by the idea, or as excited as a bored, doe-eyed young lothario in a deathly hot tent can get.

  “Jesus, let me out of here,” Jenou mutters. She and Rio head for the flap and throw it open onto a blindingly bright day.

  There, just arriving, is Sergeant Cole and some male private neither Rio nor Jenou recognizes.

  “Where you headed?” Cole asks.

  “The latrine followed by the chow line,” Rio answers.

  “Then the latrine again,” Jenou says darkly. There is some dysentery in the camp, and the food is the prime suspect.

  “Hold up a second,” Cole says, and the two young women back into the tent.

  Sergeant Cole is the oldest member of the squad, in his midtwenties
but with the air of an older man. He has wide-set eyes in an open face, thinning sandy hair, a gap-toothed grin, and the stub of an unlit cigar in the corner of his mouth.

  The young man with him is a mystery, so for the moment no one bothers to acknowledge his existence.

  “I got good news, and I got kinda good news,” Cole announces.

  “Oh, I do hope it’s a five-mile hike in full gear,” Jack Stafford suggests. He’s just about Rio’s height, with sparkling eyes, reddish-blond hair, and a grin that practically defines the word devilish. Jack is a displaced British boy with the luck (either good or bad) to have ended up in the American army.

  “First, the not-so-good news,” Cole says. “We got a replacement for Cassel.”

  A replacement? For Cassel?

  “This is . . . Who are you?” There’s something anticipatory in Cole’s voice.

  “Private Ben Bassingthwaite,” the young man says.

  “Tell ’em where you’re from.” Cole hides a smile by taking a sudden interest in the ground.

  The private suppresses a sigh. “I’m from Beaverton, Oregon.”

  “The hell?” Geer demands rudely.

  “That’s right,” Cole says, struggling to keep a straight face. “He’s Private Benjamin Barry Bassingthwaite from Beaverton.” And then he waits as his squad runs through various possibilities.

  “Call him Beaver?” Cat suggests.

  “But that’s what I call Castain,” Tilo says, grinning at his own wit and batting his admittedly gorgeous eyelashes at Jenou.

  “Not before I get my coffee, huh, Suarez?” Jenou says. “Coffee before bullshit: it’s in the manual.”

  “Triple B?” Cat offers.

  “Beebee,” the newcomer says. “That’s what it always comes down to. Beebee.” His tone is resigned. Not happy, but not unduly upset either.

  “I still like Beaver,” Tilo mutters. “Not that I’m getting any in this dump.”

  Jillion Magraff and Hansu Pang do not join in the banter. Magraff is either shy or sullen, Rio still isn’t sure which. And Hansu Pang is a Japanese American, and despite his good soldiering he remains deeply suspect.

  “Beebee it is,” Stick says. “Seen any action, Beebee?”

  Beebee is short, painfully thin, scrawny even, nothing at all like Cassel. He has the slightly nauseated look Rio would expect from a new guy suddenly pushed into a room . . . well, tent . . . full of new people all giving him the stink eye. For the moment at least, Beebee embodies the gap that opens up between those who have been under fire and those who have not. He is an unknown quantity, and just like the new kid in high school, people size him up, looking for vulnerability.

  Cat’s begun rolling up the side of the tent nearest her. The tent sides go up during the heat of the day and down for the chilly desert night. “Okay, that’s the bad news,” Cat says. “So what’s the good news?”

  Cole displays his uneven teeth. “Children, I got you a twenty-four-hour—”

  The word pass is lost in an eruption of cheering followed immediately by a whirlwind of GIs grabbing whatever money they’ve stashed away and pounding for the exit with such enthusiasm that Cole might well be trampled.

  “If only I could get you all to move that fast for inspection,” Cole says. “Now hold on! Hold on!”

  They freeze, forming a comical tableau, like a freeze-frame in a cartoon.

  “Do not, I repeat, do not make damn fools of yourselves. I don’t want anyone in the hospital because of some drunk bar fight, and I don’t want anyone falling out because they’ve caught the clap, and Richlin? You and Castain have custody of the new man.”

  Cassel’s replacement.

  Rio wipes her right hand down the side of her pants, unconsciously wiping Cassel’s blood from her hand. Cassel, the first to die. His final word, “Oh.”

  Oh. And two minutes later he had bled out into wet sand.

  “Aw, jeez, Sarge,” Jenou complains theatrically. “If I’ve got to babysit, at least get me someone with some shoulders on him. Dammit.” She sighs. “Okay, Booboo or whatever your name is, you got thirty seconds to drop your gear and grab your cash because we are heading for town.”

  “Wait a minute,” Rio says. “I thought being a private meant I didn’t have to babysit. I mean, that’s sergeant work, isn’t it?”

  Cole says, “Yes it is, Richlin, just like it’s my job to delegate, and hey, guess what? I just did.”

  Rio is not specifically excited to see Tunis, but she is bored to the point of unconsciousness and welcomes anything at all that breaks the routine. Tunis, Paris, or the Gates of Hell, she’s up for anything that is not this tent. She shoulders her rifle.

  “Nuh-uh-uh,” Cole says. “No weapons. Drunk GIs and weapons are not a good mix. Do you all comprehend me? I am dead damn serious: I sure as hell better not be hearing about you from the MPs.”

  Rio and Jenou, with Beebee in tow, join the others climbing aboard an open deuce-and-a-half truck whose driver has been persuaded to drive into town in exchange for half a carton of Luckies.

  It’s a dusty, bouncing, behind-pounding, spine-crunching, noisy, two-hour drive down roads choked with military vehicles. A sort of hierarchy governs the roads: at the lowest end are civilians, Arabs and Berbers with huge loads on their backs or smacking heavily laden donkeys; next, soldiers on foot; then the trucks. Jeeps carrying officers are next, and at the top of the precedence, tanks, because no one wants to get in the way of a Sherman.

  Speaking of which, there is a very odd sight by the side of the road, a Sherman pointing vertically out of a crater. A bulldozer idles beside it, and colored troops are running a thick chain from the tractor to the front of the tank.

  Beebee says, “So I guess some of you fellows have seen action?”

  Luther Geer seizes the opportunity to impress and terrify the new guy. “We have been into the jaws of death, youngster. Jaws of death! Krauts everywhere, bullets flying, blood up to our knees!”

  “And how about you girls?” Beebee asks, unconsciously drawing closer to them.

  “Well,” Jenou drawls, “we mostly just follow behind the men and bring them tea and cookies when they get tired of killing Krauts.”

  Jack emits a guffaw. Then, as if it’s the most serious matter in the world, he leans toward Beebee and says, “Of course you Yanks call them cookies, but the proper term is biscuits.”

  “I like Castain’s biscuits.” Tilo smirks. “Richlin’s biscuits haven’t quite risen, if you see what I mean.”

  “Stick, you’ve read the manual cover to cover,” Jenou says. “Is it okay if I shoot Suarez?”

  “Gonna get me some A-rab tail,” Tilo says, undeterred. “Gonna see for myself what they’ve got underneath those scarves and outfits they wear. I hear an A-rab woman will go with a GI for a dollar.”

  “I’m getting me some hooch first,” Geer says. “Then tail. What about you, Jappo?”

  Hansu Pang jerks in surprise. He is rarely spoken to directly.

  Before Pang can decide on a reply, Geer continues. “I know you Japs like pussy, what with all the raping and such your people did in China.”

  “Knock it off, Geer,” Stick says.

  “I am one-quarter Japanese,” Pang says with all the dignity he can muster as the truck rattles noisily over ground torn up by tank treads. “Half Korean and one-quarter white.”

  “Well, goody for you,” Geer says. “So you’re a half-breed who’s only one-quarter traitor.”

  No one comes to Pang’s defense, though the silence that follows is distinctly uncomfortable. It nags at Rio’s conscience, this baiting of Pang. There were Japanese (or Jappo-American, whatever, she isn’t sure what to call them) farmers around Gedwell Falls. They were just regular, hardworking farmers, no different than the various English, Scots, Italians, French, and so on in the area. She has heard about them being rounded up and sent to camps, many of them being forced to sell their farms for far less than they were worth.

  She thinks someday s
he might get annoyed enough by Geer to say something. But not now. Not yet. She tells herself she has enough trouble being a woman in the army, she doesn’t need to pick fights on behalf of Japs.

  Anyway, they have a twenty-four-hour pass. Time for fun, not for picking fights.

  Tunis is a city, not a town—a vast, sprawling maze of sun-bleached one- and two-story stucco homes, narrow crooked streets, and narrow, even more crooked alleys. Their progress is slowed by donkeys piled high with bushels of dates, big pottery jars of honey, bushels of wheat, and colorful rugs; by men with dark, suspicious faces glowering from the shade of hoods; dirty, excited, nearly naked children racing alongside yelling their few words of English, “Hey, Joe, gimme cigarette?” and “My sister love you long time—one dollar!”

  Jillion Magraff digs in her pocket, comes up with a chocolate bar—or what passes for chocolate in army rations—and tosses the bar into the gaggle of children, who instantly start fighting over it.

  Finally the truck lurches to a halt outside an intersection choked with foot traffic milling past awning-shielded stalls selling olives, grapes, dates, chickpeas, bright orange spices, and war souvenirs that run from German medals and helmets to British tea and cans of bully beef to American cigarettes.

  “Far as I go,” the driver yells, leaning out of his window.

  The squad piles out, eyes wide, voices high, various uncreditable appetites honed to desperation.

  “So what do we do now?” Rio asks Jenou. Rio is still a small-town, rural girl, intimidated by cities, especially strange cities full of people who do not look at all happy to see her.

  “We look around, I suppose, see what there is to see.” Jenou has always been the worldly-wise balance to Rio’s naiveté, though in truth Jenou is a bit overwhelmed too.