Silver Stars

by Michael Grant

  At last they emerge into an open, grassy field, and there in the moonlight lies the wreckage of a plane. The fuselage is in two pieces, the nose and most of the fuselage, and a tail section broken off at an angle and lying fifty feet away. One wing is torn off at the roots and nowhere to be seen. The other wing with its two engines is still attached to the main section of fuselage, but it has been twisted like a piece of licorice, so both engines are pointed down at the ground, with props bent all the way back.

  It is a B-17.

  This comes as a shock. Rio had formed the picture of a downed fighter, an RAF Spitfire or American P-38. She had not imagined a bomber.

  A B-17. What Strand flies.

  The odds . . .

  There must be hundreds . . .

  “Petersen, we don’t want them getting jumpy and shooting us as Krauts. Try to raise them.”

  Petersen takes to his radio again, but again there is no answer.

  “Sure that damned thing works?” Cat snarls at Petersen.

  “Okay, we approach,” Rio says. “They won’t know the password so just try to sound, you know, American.”

  “Must I?” Jack says.

  Rio pats him on the shoulder and says, “Think ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy.’”

  It’s still a twenty-minute walk, or, more accurately, creep, along the shore, in and out of the trees, before they are close enough to be able to see the fuselage clearly. They are on the side without the wing, the landward side.

  “Hey,” Rio says in a loud whisper. “Hey, B-17! Hey!”

  Nothing.

  “Hey, Americans here,” she says. Then she tries a low whistle, which she can’t quite do, so Geer whistles.

  This time Rio hears a rustling and bumping sound from the plane. But nothing more.

  “Geer, back on point,” she says, regretting that she can’t walk ahead herself. Geer is American, unlike Jack, and male, unlike Cat, and a male American voice is what the crew will expect to hear, want to hear.

  “Stay low,” Rio says.

  They advance in slow motion, soft steps, quiet steps, every weapon out and ready.

  “Don’t shoot unless you’re sure,” Rio reminds everyone. Just like Cole would. Like a cautious parent.

  “Who’s there?” a male voice calls out from the wreck.

  “Americans,” Geer says. “We’re your rescue.”

  “Prove you’re American.”

  Geer thinks it over for a moment then says, “Nineteen forty-one Series, Yankees over Brooklyn, four games to one.”

  Silence. Then, “Fug the Yankees!”

  “You’re preaching to the choir, brother,” Geer says.

  A second voice. “Who’s married to Rita Hayworth?”

  Geer turns and looks blank. “Anyone know that?”

  Cat yells, “We don’t know, except he’s the luckiest man on earth.”

  Evidently that answer is close enough, earning a short bark of laughter. “Come on,” the second voice says.

  Rio signals weapons down and they advance, ducking beneath the up-tilted nose of the plane. Rio passes beneath then takes a step back to look up. As with most planes, the pilot has named his craft and painted a logo on the side.

  The word Rio is in swirling red letters that ride just above the image of a pretty girl in a bathing suit holding an M1.

  She freezes, staring up at it. The girl is dark haired, long legged, and rather more shapely than Rio herself, but all in all it’s flattering. Flattering and . . . and terrifying.

  “Strand?” she cries. “Strand?”

  She pushes past Geer and Cat and stumbles into the little encampment the aviators have made—a tiny, well-banked campfire now out, two padded pilot’s chairs propped against the lowered front landing gear, and an array of items salvaged from the wreck.

  Two men are standing, one holding a pistol. One man lies on a blanket with a flyer’s jacket thrown over him. But his face is visible in the moonlight.

  Strand Braxton.

  19

  RIO RICHLIN—CATANIA, SICILY

  Rio drops her rifle and rushes to Strand. “My God, my God, are you hurt?”

  “Rio?” He seems strange and unfocused. But he smiles at her and touches her face as if reassuring himself that she’s real.

  “You know Fish?” one of the flyers asks.

  “My girl,” Strand says dreamily, smiling in that fuzzy way.

  “He’s got a broken ankle and a bad gash on his other leg. We gave him some morphine. Probably has some ribs broke too.”

  Rio takes a long look at Strand. How odd that she feels she can study him more closely now than before. There is something so unguarded about him now. He’s vulnerable, Rio realizes, and there is a rush of sympathy, but along with the sympathy comes a less creditable emotion.

  He looks weak.

  Rio stands up. Everyone, the two other flyers and her own squad, even Geer, are looking at her. No . . . looking to her. She’s in charge, even with Strand here, even with his crew, both of whom are senior NCOs.

  The moment is heady and disturbing. It’s exciting, thrilling even, and yet drops a ton of weight on her shoulders. She almost feels her boots sinking deeper into the dirt.

  “We’re here to get you out. Is Strand’s—Fish’s—ankle splinted?”

  “Pablo Guttierez,” one of the crewmen says. He’s older, maybe thirty, wearing his flight suit and a bent, sweat-stained straw cowboy hat that looks as if he’s worn it punching cattle. “We figure he’s good to move. But . . .” He glances at the plane. “We had ten men. The waist gunners jumped even though we were too low. The belly man . . . I don’t think we can get him out. But we have four . . . four bodies . . . that ain’t been buried.”

  The four lie in a row. The belly gunner, who would have been in the bubble-topped ball turret beneath the fuselage, cannot be seen. That turret would have clipped treetops all the way down and then smashed like a dropped egg on hitting the ground.

  Rio shakes her head. “We didn’t bring entrenching tools. Make sure they’ve got their dog tags, and we’ll leave them for graves registration.”

  Guttierez looks defiant, though the other fellow, Joe, seems ready to move out.

  “Graves registration isn’t going near them, miss. We never delivered our payload. You understand? We’ve got four tons’ worth of five-hundred-pound bombs still in the bomb bay.”

  Rio, Geer, Jack, Cat, and Petersen all take a quick step back, as if an extra three feet of distance is all it would take to escape a blast. It produces a comic effect.

  “And you figure with four tons of HE we want to stay around digging graves?” Geer demands. “You’re fugging crazy.” He shoots a look at Rio as if expecting her to argue.

  “We need to make a stretcher for Strand,” Rio says. “Then we need to get the hell out of here.”

  “I got rank here long as the skipper is, um, off his head,” Guttierez says stubbornly.

  “All due respect, Guttierez, but this is my patrol,” Rio says. Her voice is soft but all the more definite for it. “I can’t force you to leave, but I’m taking Stra—Fish, whatever the hell we want to call him, and we’re getting out of here.” Without a pause she turns to her detail. “Petersen, try to raise someone and report this in. Tell them about the bodies and the bombs. Cat and Geer? We’re going to have to use your rifles to make a stretcher.”

  In ten minutes a scratchy, distant voice has acknowledged that they have the surviving crew, and Cat and Geer have stretched canvas salvaged from the bomber to fashion a crude stretcher. They are just carefully rolling Strand onto the stretcher when Jack says, “Shh!”

  Everyone freezes. Every ear strains. And most of those ears hear the noises that can only be men moving through the woods.

  A terse whisper. “Jack! Cat! Check it out.”

  Rio feels she should go, feels it powerfully, but that’s not what Cole has taught her. She’s in charge, and that means sending others into harm’s way.

  Cat retrieves her rifle,
and she and Jack plunge into the deeper darkness beneath the trees.

  “No one makes a sound,” Rio hisses. Spotting the pistol in Guttierez’s hand, she adds, “And no one shoots until I say so.”

  She looks in every direction, taking in the terrain in quick glances. The lake defines their northern flank with a gravel beach mere inches wide. To their west is the trail of broken trees, and beyond that either safety or a German counterattack against the Gela beachhead. And east is where the sounds of moving men are.

  South it is.

  Trees, some tall by Sicilian standards, run in every direction. Hard soil. No ditches or depressions. Strand unable to walk. They can fight from the plane, but the plane is a massive explosion just waiting for an opportunity to flatten the woods and kill half the fish in the lake.

  “Guttierez, Joe, any chance of getting one of your machine guns out?”

  “Sure,” Joe says, nodding, and moves briskly toward the plane. Guttierez has no choice but to follow.

  “Geer?” She jerks her head toward the west. “Drop back, take a look in those fallen branches and trees, see if there’s a place we can fight.”

  Geer takes off at a run.

  “Should I call it in?” Petersen asks.

  “No. The radio squawks.” She sees Joe and Guttierez manhandling an awkward-looking machine gun—its mounting hardware half-removed—out of the plane’s surviving hatch. She helps him hand it down and then takes a box of ammo from Joe. He climbs after it with a second box and a great belt of ammo over his shoulders like a shawl.

  “It ain’t great,” Geer reports back, breathless from his run. “But there’s a place where we could get behind a couple trees and dig in.”

  “Okay, get Joe and Guttierez set up there, and I’ll drag Strand over while—”

  Cat and Jack come crashing back at a full run, holding on to their helmets and yelling, “Krauts!”

  Guns fire and bullets whiz by.

  “How far back?” Rio demands.

  “Three seconds!” Cat yells.

  “Jack, help me get Strand. Preeling, Geer’s that way, go, go! Geer! Preeling’s coming to you!”

  More firing, and this time the sound is much nearer. Rio grabs the shoulder of Strand’s flight suit, Jack grabs the other, and they drag him back.

  And Strand starts singing “White Christmas” in a low but audible voice.

  As if spurred on by the singing, the firing becomes much more determined. A bullet plucks at Jack’s sleeve. Another one cuts a furrow across Strand’s chest.

  “Shit!” Rio yells. “Strand . . .”

  “. . . and children listen, to hear sleigh bells in the snow . . .”

  “Leave him,” Rio says, feeling like she’s been stabbed in the heart, feeling a boiling panic within her, but relinquishing her grip, falling back onto her behind, spinning, crawling, rising, running, with Jack beside her and bullets so thick they could be a swarm of bees.

  “Coming in!” Jack yells.

  They reach two fallen logs, one angled over the other, forming a V with the point toward the attack. The logs aren’t big, no more than six inches in diameter, but Cat and Joe have been busy dragging anything wood-like to this makeshift barricade. Geer is on his butt kicking dirt and rock into a barrier beneath the trees with the heels of his boots and cursing a blue streak.

  Jack and Rio leap and tumble over the barrier, Rio plowing into Geer and twisting instantly to stand and fire back. Bang-bang-bang! Three quick shots to give the Germans pause.

  The German fire stops, and Rio quickly checks her position. It’s open on both flanks and behind. The beach is twenty yards to their left. The plane is mostly to their right now, a hundred yards away.

  Enfilade, defilade.

  Strand lies directly between the squad and the still-unseen Germans.

  “They’ll either come along the beach or circle the plane,” Rio says. She’s panting. They’re all panting.

  “Or both,” Geer says.

  “Petersen, make the call. Tell them we’ve made contact, force unknown. Joe, Guttierez?”

  “Five minutes!” Joe answers. The two flyers are feverishly stripping the hanging bits of mounting from the machine gun. They’ll have to rest it on the unsteady log.

  German fire resumes, bap-bap-bap-bap, with bullets tearing through foliage and sending leaves and chips of wood flying.

  “How many guys in the Kraut patrol?” Jack asks.

  “Can’t be more than a dozen,” Rio says, hearing the fear and excitement in her voice.

  “They’re keeping us occupied while they flank us,” Jack says.

  “. . . with every Christmas card I write . . .” Strand, of course, as the bullets fly inches above his nose.

  “Beach or woods?” Rio asks Jack.

  “Bloody hell,” Jack says, and crawls toward the beach cradling his rifle.

  “Petersen, anything?” Rio asks.

  No answer.

  She turns to find Petersen sitting up with his back against a tree, his radio propped in front of him. Petersen is staring. Unblinking.

  Jack’s M1 opens up, rapid firing, fast as he can squeeze them off. Rio still can’t see the Krauts, but she can guess their approximate position. They’re coming along the beach, looking for a quick conclusion.

  “Right there!” she yells to the flyers, and chops the air to show direction. A bullet dings her helmet and ricochets away.

  The flyers are ready, and their big .50 caliber blazes, stabbing tracer rounds into the trees.

  “Watch your ammo!” Rio warns. “Short bursts, they aren’t fugging Messerschmitts!”

  For no more than a minute both sides blaze away, a mad cacophony of explosions, the flit-flit of passing slugs, the softer thunk of bullets hitting wood, and then a cry of pain from the Germans.

  The Germans stop firing, and Rio yells, “Cease firing. Cease firing. Jack! Can you see them?” The air stinks of gunpowder, a cloud of it hovers around them.

  “Just one,” Jack yells back. “I think I got one of them!”

  If there were a dozen Germans, then there are only eleven now. But on her side she has six people, one machine gun, and four rifles or carbines. If the Krauts have a mortar, this will be over as soon as they get it set up. But what are the odds of a Kraut patrol dragging a heavy mortar through the woods?

  No, they have no mortar, and they have no machine gun either, though they have at least two Schmeisser submachine guns. But they may well have a radio and someone to operate it. Unlike Rio.

  “Geer, check on Petersen.”

  Geer crawls back, and his report comes immediately. “Shot right through the radio,” he yells and comes crawling back. “Deader than shit!”

  Pull back and leave Strand to his fate, presumably at a German POW camp for the remainder of the war? Or fight it out, risking all their lives?

  As if reading her thoughts, Guttierez yells, “I ain’t leaving the skipper behind!”

  The skipper meanwhile has lost the thread of the lyrics and is drifting into “Jingle Bells.”

  For just a split second Rio hates Strand Braxton.

  Morphine. Not his fault.

  Eleven Krauts to six, but those eleven are Wehrmacht. They could be veteran troops, men who’d fought the Russians and British.

  Professionals.

  “Preeling. Get out on our right a hundred yards, and in three minutes you start blasting away. Throw a grenade but away from the plane,” Rio says. “Jack, stay put.”

  “Certainly,” he says. “It’s damp, but the view is magical.”

  Despite herself, Rio grins.

  Within the small shelter of the fallen trees it’s the two flyers on the left, Geer and Rio in the center, with Jack on the left flank, Cat on the right. It’s all Rio can do. If the Krauts flank far to her right, they can circle around and come up from behind, but there’s nothing she can do about that. She doesn’t have the people to cover every approach.

  The math is terribly clear in Rio’s mind. T
here is no way. The barricade is a joke, there’s limited ammo for the machine gun, and she’s likely facing veteran soldiers. No way. Sooner or later the Krauts bring up more men or call in artillery or simply flank them.

  Her father’s words come back to her.

  There will come a time when you’ll have a choice between staying in your trench and crawling out of it to save a buddy . . . When that moment comes, you stay down.

  This is not a World War I trench, Father, and that’s not a buddy, it’s Strand.

  Rio loosens the pins on two grenades. She pops a fresh clip into her rifle.

  “Richlin?” Geer asks.

  “Soon as Preeling opens up,” Rio says, “you lay down fire. Keep it aimed high and to the right.”

  “What are you doing?” Geer demands.

  She doesn’t answer but crawls away toward Jack. “It’s me,” she hisses when she gets close. She finds him lying on a shore too narrow to quite hold him so his right shoulder is up against a low shelf and his left is in the water.

  “You good?” she asks.

  “Fugging lovely,” he says.

  “Stay here, Jack,” she says.

  “What are you—”

  Whoompf!

  Cat has loosed her grenade, and it is followed instantly by the sound of her carbine, joined quickly by Geer and the .50 caliber.

  Rio pushes up, up to her feet, numb, a part of her mind dreamy and distant, while another part is focused with razor-sharp intensity. A deep breath and her feet are moving, moving, running, boots splashing the shallow water, digging sloppy divots in gravelly mud.

  Branches whip at her face, thorns rip her uniform, she’s running, running, and now firing from the hip, bang-bang-bang!

  The one thing the Germans won’t expect: attack!

  A dark shape ahead, a gleam of starlight on the iconic gray helmet and bang-bang and the German falls straight back. She leaps his dying body, with another Kraut ahead, firing at her. She sees his muzzle flash, hears the bullets, fires, fires, runs, and the Kraut is still firing when she plows into him, trampling him in her rush. Now she sees four, maybe five muzzle flashes ahead, coming from behind trees. She yanks a grenade free, pulls the pin, and throws it. She drops to the ground, hears shouts of alarm in German and then, crumpf!