Following the instructions Vito the Sack provided, they now turn inland, into the heart of the city. The sides of several buildings carry the painted slogan of the Italian Fascist party: “Credere! Obbedire! Combattere!”
“Believe, obey, fight,” Rainy translates in a quiet voice.
“And there’s the bastard right there,” Cisco says. He nods toward a massive but time-faded stencil of Benito Mussolini, looking less stern than comical as someone has thrown a pot of paint at the portrait. The black paint struck Mussolini’s eye and dribbled down so it looks now like absurdly long eyelashes drooping down to his chin.
“I never would have thought you cared about Mussolini one way or the other,” Rainy says.
“The Fascists have been tough on our people. On legitimate traditional businesses.”
“Organized crime.”
Cisco shrugs. “You say potato, I say potahto.”
They take a wrong turn and end up in a cul-de-sac of a cramped square facing the cathedral. Arched breezeways are to their right and left. The cathedral, the duomo, carries through the arches on its lower level before rising to form a plain peaked-roof middle. A square tower topped by a round bell tower looms up behind the church and to the right. It’s grand by American standards, but a long way from being Saint Patrick’s, the big cathedral on Fifth Avenue.
That thought carries Rainy away for a moment, far away, to New York. The New York of her father and mother, the New York of Halev. Homesickness swells within her, and she very nearly tears up.
A file of nuns walks past in ankle-length black with their faces framed by snow-white coifs and wimples. An old man with fantastically bowed legs hobbles by, leading a thin cow on a rope. There are more people in the street as the town comes to life.
Rainy is as curious as any tourist, and there is a part of her that keeps thinking, Wow, I’m in Italy! But she keeps her head down and eyes open. Two Italian soldiers, officers, both looking as if they’ve passed a night of debauchery, lurch past, blinking owlishly in the sunlight.
After another half hour they find the street and then the house. Cisco pushes in front of Rainy and bangs on the door. It is opened quickly by a squat man dressed in rusty black, who demands angrily to know who they are and why they are banging on doors.
“I’m Cisco Camporeale,” Cisco says, and the guard’s face goes blank in surprise.
“Camporeale?”
“Yeah. Si.” Cisco points at his chest. “Me-o am Francisco Camporeale, the don’s nephew from America. You know? New York.”
Something in that convinces the man, who lets them in and checks the street before shutting and locking the door behind them. They are in a cool, mildew-smelling entryway at the bottom of a flight of stairs. From up those stairs comes the sounds of clinking dishes and conversation, the sounds of a family at breakfast.
The guard apologizes with a shrug and pats Cisco down, looking for weapons. He looks disapproving when he finds none. He searches Rainy’s bag but does not go further. He calls up the stairs, and a moment later a man in his late twenties, a sort of sturdier version of Cisco, comes galloping down, wiping his mouth with a napkin. He wears a white shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbow, dark slacks, and what appear to be very expensive leather shoes. He is tall, olive complected, with brown eyes and an amazing shock of black hair. Each strand seems weighed down somehow and yet bounces with each step, letting a long strand fall down to bisect one dark, amused eye.
In Italian he asks who they are.
Rainy answers in that same tongue. The young man glances at her, looks away, frowns, and comes back for a closer look. Then, having apparently seen all he needs to see for now, he claps Cisco on the shoulder and in heavily accented but comprehensible English says, “Welcome, I am your cousin, Tomaso.”
“Glad to meet you, Tom.”
“How was your trip?”
“Fugging awful, and she’s responsible.” He jerks his thumb at Rainy. “So as family, famiglia, right? As your cousin, and as a made man, I got one simple request: give me a gun so I can shoot this Jew bitch in her smart mouth.”
18
RIO RICHLIN—EAST OF NISCEMI, SICILY
“There’s a plane up-country, with survivors and wounded. With our usual good luck, we are closest. Pick three people to go with you,” Cole says. “Vanderpool’s giving you a radioman named Petersen.”
It’s a punch to the stomach for Rio. She does not want the responsibility. It is one thing to be chosen for a special patrol, that’s bad enough, but it was a very different thing to be left to decide who should go. It is much too similar to picking teams in sports or deciding who you’ll dance with: there is no way to avoid making someone feel left out, and no way to avoid being responsible for whatever follows.
It is a moment when Rio is suddenly called upon to offer an opinion on who is and who is not a reliable soldier. And whose life she will risk, and who she will leave in relative safety.
“Sarge, I . . . ,” Rio begins.
“What?” he snaps.
“Maybe . . .”
“This is not a debating society, Richlin. Got it?”
Rio just nods, and Cole leaves her alone with the decision. On top of everything else, it’s a test of her judgment with Cole watching and scoring. There are few things Rio wants less than to be found wanting by Sergeant Cole.
In any other circumstances it would be Stick leading the patrol. And if for some strange reason the choice had still somehow fallen to Rio, Stick would be her first choice to go along on that patrol. In her mind the hierarchy of who is and who is not a real soldier is clear: Stick, herself, Jack, Cat, and even the obnoxious Geer are soldiers now. Tilo means well despite his adolescent behavior, and he might make a soldier in time, but he’s not there yet. Pang she doesn’t trust, Magraff is worse than useless, Beebee is an unknown and green, and Jenou . . . She loves Jenou. Jenou is her lifelong friend. But in a fight?
It occurs to her to look at it from Stick’s point of view. Who would Stick choose? It’s a way out of feeling 100 percent directly, personally responsible.
What would Stick do?
Well, he’d pick Rio, of course. And obviously they were stuck with this Petersen fellow who she’d barely exchanged ten words with. And . . . and . . . Jack. Yes, Stick would pick Jack, because Jack is steady, reliable, not showy, and easy to get along with. But what would Jenou have to say about that choice? There would be many a wink and a knowing nod.
Another reason not to bring Jenou.
Jack, Jenou, Geer, Magraff, Pang, Cat, Tilo, and Beebee. Those were her possible choices. Magraff was a no. Tilo was annoying. Geer was a loudmouth jerk.
Pang? He’d done nothing wrong, said nothing wrong, and yet . . . And yet he looked like a Jap. That fact sort of squirmed around in Rio’s head, making her feel wrong and yet helpless. Japs had killed Rachel.
And farmed peaceably all around Gedwell Falls.
And bought their fertilizer from her father’s store.
And . . .
But not Pang. Not Pang. Despite . . . despite everything, not Pang.
Jack, yes, no matter what Jenou thought. And Cat. Cat was a rock.
Jenou, that was the essential problem. Jenou or someone else? Rio was not sure she could control Jenou, just as she worried about dealing with Geer. Geer was a jerk who wouldn’t take orders from a woman, and Jenou might not take orders from her best friend.
Beebee? No. Too green. Still. Just like the first time she’d thought about it.
So it came down again to Jenou versus Tilo Suarez.
And yet . . . and yet . . . some nagging instinct told her no. She was thinking of feelings again, not military necessities.
Cole had said they were pulling a search-and-rescue mission, a plane down in the hills to the northeast. The crash zone was seven miles away. Who could march seven miles and carry extra water? Who would, if necessary, shoot with intent? Who would sneak up on a Kraut or Eye-tie guard and knife him in the dark?
> Suddenly the choice was not between Jenou and Tilo. It was between Geer and Pang. Pang’s presence might create conflict, especially with the radioman who had not dealt much with him. Geer, on the other hand, would be hard to manage but probably fit in better.
“Okay, people, listen up,” Rio says in unconscious imitation of Sergeant Cole. “Jack, Cat, and Geer, we’re going for a walk. Canteens topped off, rations for twenty-four hours, extra ammo, extra water, leave everything else, we have to move fast.”
The radioman, Petersen, comes wandering over. He doesn’t look like much, with a face so narrow he could be a flounder, but then his job is just to manage the radio. He has a pistol on his hip but no rifle and no pack. He has a single canteen and no ammo other than what’s in his pistol. But of course the radio itself, the size of a backpack, weighs thirty-eight pounds, and with all that still only has a range of three miles. Three miles in open country, a few hundred yards in hill country.
Anyway, the radioman is not Rio’s chief concern. Her chief concern is the carefully blank look on Jenou’s face. It’s the look Jenou gets when her feelings have been hurt but she doesn’t want to show it.
Rio feels a flash of annoyance. She shouldn’t have to be thinking about this nonsense. She shouldn’t feel like she has to defend herself or soften the blow. My God, she’s leading a patrol for the first time, which she sure as hell did not ask for, and her head is full of worry for Jenou!
Rio avoids looking at her friend and instead locks eyes with Cole, who is relighting his cigar and giving her a look of . . . what? Support? Sympathy?
They go over the map carefully, Cole, Rio, Jack, Cat, Geer, and Petersen in a circle.
“Whenever you’re ready, Richlin,” Cole says, and his tone is gentle. He knows what this means. He knows that for the first time responsibility is falling directly on Rio’s shoulders—on the shoulders of an eighteen-year-old girl.
“Yep,” Rio says. She takes a deep, steadying breath and says, “Let’s move out. Geer? Take point. Cat, on our six.”
In this, too, she is copying Cole, who always stays to the middle, the better to survive an ambush or minefield, the better to watch both ends of the line, the better to stay in touch with his squad. And she knows taking point will please Geer.
Does Cole have all these same sorts of worries about who and when and how? Does he take hurt feelings into consideration? For the first time Rio gets a glimpse of what it means to be the good sergeant her father talked about, the good sergeant whose job it is to keep you alive when an officer’s orders are sending you in harm’s way.
I am heartily sorry for any time I made your life harder, Jedron Cole.
The first mile or so is past twilit farm fields. The road is narrow but not overly rutted. Rio can see the hills rising ahead of them. Glancing back, she can see nothing of the platoon beyond Cat. Finding their first turnoff becomes a bit of a comedy as there are two very similar roads just fifty feet apart. But one turns out to lead nowhere except a tiny farm almost entirely surrounded by prickly pears, as if the farmer wants to strongly discourage visitors.
As it is the farmer comes out carrying a shotgun, but on being assured that they are amici and not Germans or Fascists, he insists on handing a wineskin around before giving them better directions.
They find the right track, but by now full dark has come. The road is barely a wagon track—at no time paved and with no convenient ditches to dive into should the need arise. They are exposed without cover, but fortunately hidden by darkness. Off to the southeast she sees distant flashes, and off to the southwest as well, but none are any more threatening than distant lightning.
After a while Geer raises a clenched fist, and they all take a knee.
“What is it?” Rio whispers.
“Hear that?”
Rio listens and breaks into a grin. “Cows, Geer.”
“You sure?”
She holds up a hand he probably can’t see and says, “Before I got calluses from humping jerry cans I got calluses milking cows.”
They move on, and after a while, after she’s sure Geer won’t resent it as coming too early, she moves him back and puts Jack on point. Jack, Cat, Rio, Petersen, Geer.
If there are mines . . .
If there’s an ambush . . .
No, she sternly warns herself. You cannot protect your “backup boyfriend.” You are in charge, Rio. You have a military objective, you have orders, you have the weight of it on your shoulders, and you cannot choose to expose only the people you don’t like.
This is not high school.
The track joins a better road for half a mile before veering away again onto what is likely a cattle path. This path meanders through prickly pears and olive trees, past ever-smaller fields of ever more random shapes. The angle of the slope increases until pretty soon Rio is feeling it in her calf muscles, and far more in her bandaged thigh. But of course she is the one to set the pace, so she cannot take it easy. She ignores the ache as best she can, and pushes out thoughts of Jenou’s tellingly blank face and the image of Jack stepping on a mine, and focuses on the job at hand, which is to not get lost and to avoid wandering into either an ambush or a minefield.
The Milky Way shines cold and impossibly distant in a mostly clear sky, and eventually a sliver of moon rises as well. But still they fail to spot the four armed men who are walking the opposite direction and carrying shotguns, until Jack yells, “Drop it!”
Jack has his rifle leveled, and seeing this, every rifle in the squad snaps up. Even Petersen pulls his pistol. Had the Sicilian men been a bit more surprised the shooting might have started, but the men all keep their shotguns pointed cautiously down at the ground.
“Bandits,” Jack says tersely.
“Yeah,” Rio agrees, staring at four impassive Sicilian faces. “But they’re not looking for trouble with people who can shoot back.”
“Bona sira,” one of the Sicilians says in the local dialect.
“Evening,” Jack says.
“Amici,” Rio says. “Americans. Yankees.”
“Si, lu capisciu, signore, signorina.”
It sounds peaceable enough, and Rio orders her squad forward. The bandits are someone else’s problem, not hers.
After a while they reach a crossroads. Question is, is this the right crossroads?
Petersen speaks up for the first time. “Miss . . . um, Private Richlin? We could try contacting them.”
“What?”
“The plane. I thought you knew.” There’s a note of triumph in his tone. “That’s why I was sent along. The downed plane still has a functioning radio, although their signal is weak. That’s how we know where they are.”
No, no one has mentioned this fact to Rio, although it’s obvious once she thinks of it, which irritates her extremely. But there’s no point in resentment, so she says, “Okay, try to raise them.”
He swings the radio off his back onto the ground and squats before it. It’s a rectangular object, painted the inevitable olive drab. There are a few knobs on the top and a hand piece snugged into the side. Petersen fiddles with it then lifts the hand piece.
“AAC 5348, AAC 5348, this is Ditch Digger, do you copy?”
He repeats it half a dozen times, each time waiting, hearing nothing but static or garbled transmissions from other outfits on the same frequency. He fiddles with his dials and tries again.
“No dice,” Petersen says at last.
It was a waste of time, but it had been a good excuse to flop down and drink some water.
“Okay,” Rio says. “We’ll try again when we get to this lake.”
The lake in question is about a mile and a quarter long, half a mile wide. The downed plane is supposed to be on the near side, halfway up the lake. And it has supposedly set some of the trees afire, so they should either have a flame or at least the smell of smoke to guide them.
But the ground is getting rougher. Sicily in general is rock with only a scrape of topsoil, and here the topsoil is ev
en more sparse, so the ground is at least half-naked rock. The path weaves through narrower and narrower ravines, with rock and gravel and scrub grass walls rising ever higher around them.
Perfect for an ambush.
Rio scans the heights around them constantly, but unless a Kraut stands up to allow himself to be conveniently silhouetted against the stars, there is little chance of spotting anyone. In fact it is so dark they can barely keep to the path let alone spot enemies.
But then the air changes. She smells the difference immediately: water. Moisture in the dry air. It can only be the lake, and indeed the path is now dropping away. On the downslope it is Rio’s thigh and the muscle at the front of her calves that take the most punishment.
Plus, she has to pee, but somehow calling a pee break does not seem like the most Cole-like thing to do. She runs through her memories. Has Sergeant Cole ever halted a patrol to take a leak? Not that she recalls. But still, she can’t be the only one who could use two minutes behind a boulder.
“We got some tree cover here,” she says. “Let’s take care of nature’s call.”
There follows an absurd rush as men and women disappear into the copse of trees.
One more thing to worry about: I am now the bathroom monitor.
In three minutes they are back on the move and soon see moonlight sparkling on water. Here the trees are thick enough to almost merit being called a wood.
There is indeed a smell of smoke—smoke and fuel. They fan out and wander south a bit, then turn back north and the smoke smell grows distinctly stronger. Then Cat points out that there is an unusual amount of fallen branches littering the ground. They gather around and stare down at the fallen foliage. Rio crushes pine needles, smells her fingers, and says, “It’s fresh. Can’t have been like this long.”
They follow north and now it is unmistakable that the tops of trees have been sheared off.
“The plane coming in, crashing,” Jack says. “It will have lopped off some treetops.”
Silver Stars Page 18
