wasn't as nice as the Hotel St. George, where Kaz had managed to get us a room when we first arrived in Algiers, but we weren't living in foxholes either. There were dinners and receptions at the villa, and once in a while Kaz and I would be invited, especially if the guest was a visiting congressman from a Polish or Irish ward. Uncle Ike didn't like having to entertain politicians, but when he did, he did it right. Harry Butcher would show them around, make sure they met some GIs from their district, take their pictures, bring them to a villa on the beach for a swim, then for a fancy dinner with the general, plenty of booze and cigars all around. There might even be one going on right now, I thought. Cocktails, maybe. Perhaps Diana was there, wearing her brown FANY uniform as if it were a gown, the wide leather belt polished to a gleam, the brass buttons sparkling like diamonds. She loved that uniform. It had been tailor-made for her, sent from England after she decided to accept the posting SOE had offered her in their North African operation. The first time she tried it on after her last mission, it hung off her thin frame, a wide gap between collar and neck. We both pretended not to notice.
FANY, the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, was an outfit that provided the Brit army with women trained to operate switchboards, drive trucks, that sort of thing. It also was a source of agents for the Special Operations Executive. Diana had volunteered after she had served as a switchboard operator with the British Expeditionary Force in 1940, and made it out of France at Dunkirk. The destroyer she was on was sunk by Stukas, and by the time she had been picked up, she'd watched the wounded who had been on stretchers slide off the deck and disappear beneath the waves. Diana had told me about that the first day we met. She'd clung to me, crying her story out, reliving the helplessness she had felt watching everyone around her die.
She'd been courting death ever since and almost caught up with it in Algeria. She was OK now, but I didn't know how we were. We'd fallen hard for each other, back in England. But after I pulled her out of that Vichy prison camp, drugged and half dead, I focused more on getting my revenge on the bastard responsible than on being with her. Not that she didn't want him dead too, but once that was taken care of, I should have stepped up and let her know I still loved her. But I'd been scared, unsure of myself, and she knew it and thought the worst: that I didn't want to be with her after all she had endured.
I'll admit, I didn't like thinking about it. So I tried, tried my best, and as the weeks passed, and she grew stronger, so did we. But I was never sure I had her full trust, and had no idea how to get it back.
That's the way things had been when I left for this island voyage. We were still in love, I guess. Something was missing though, and I was man enough to understand it was something I didn't have, but not man enough to know what it was.
Sciafani shifted his weight as he lifted his hands to put them under his arms. A rock rolled loose and started a noisy fall, dislodging gravel that flowed downhill after it, the stones hitting each other at the bottom with a sharp click-clack sound. We flattened ourselves even lower, not daring to look up to see if the soldiers heard.
' Che cio e? ' The sound of boots on gravel came scuffling across the ground, drawing closer, murmurs of cautious curiosity evident in the tone of the militiamen as they approached.
A sound like a long sheet being ripped rose in a crescendo from the sky, too fast and fierce to allow for any response. The ground shook as one shell hit, thundered, and cracked on the hill. More shrieking sounds descended, explosions that spewed earth and fire around the Italian positions. Naval gunfire, I thought. That aircraft, a spotter, had caught a glimpse of the antiaircraft gun being unloaded. Right now, sailors miles offshore were reading coordinates and loading huge shells into the cannons of a cruiser's gun turret, while a few dozen Blackshirts were being blown to kingdom come. I pulled at Sciafani, motioning down the hill. We had to get out of here now, while we could, before a shell found us.
'No,' he said, shaking off my hand. Screams pierced through all the other sounds, and he started to stand, but I pulled him down again.
The awful shrieks and explosions continued, punctuated by the agonized calls of the wounded, until they were drowned out, perhaps ended, by the next round of shells. A series of smaller explosions marked a hit on the 20mm ammo, a column of flame coloring the darkening sky as the truck's gasoline tank went up. One soldier unhurt, but with wide, panicked eyes, ran right through the shrubs, tripping on my legs as he barreled by. He rolled partway down the hill, then looked at me and screamed, running crazily away, weaving and nearly falling as he held his hands over his ears.
The shelling ended abruptly. Sciafani and I looked at each other, unsure what to make of the sudden silence. It took a few seconds for other sounds to be heard, the aftermath of a violent bombardment. The crackling of flames, moans of the wounded, the pop, pop, pop of rifle ammunition going off in the fire. We raised our heads and looked. It was nearly dark but the burning truck lit the scene with a flickering orange light. Craters filled the area where the positions had been, smoke curling up from the bottom of the ten-foot-wide holes. We stood. The machine-gun emplacement was simply gone, the men, heavy weapons, and sandbags erased from the landscape, replaced by overlapping circles of smoking dirt. The antiaircraft gun, a blackened heap of twisted metal, had been thrown ten yards from where it had been set up. I stepped over a severed leg.
'Here,' Sciafani said. 'Help me.'He had a man by his arms, buried up to his chest in debris thrown up by the explosions. He didn't seem to have a mark on him. I grabbed one arm and Sciafani took the other. We pulled and fell back, holding the top half of a man, cut through by shrapnel. The sailors who had loaded shells minutes before were probably drinking coffee by now.
We finally found someone alive, huddled in a crater where he had taken shelter after the first round of shells. He had shrapnel fragments in his back, which Sciafani picked out by the light of the fire with a knife he'd taken from the body of an officer, a sharp dagger that he sterilized in the flames before he worked the shrapnel out. The guy never blinked. He stared out into the night, his mouth open as if to speak, but he made no sound.
I searched for other wounded while Sciafani worked. I found a soldier, younger than me, younger than my kid brother, by the side of the road. He was crying as he lay in a pool of blood. I called for Sciafani as I knelt beside him. He looked at me with a question in his eyes that I didn't want to answer as he held his hands clamped tight to his abdomen. I knew what shrapnel did. It was seldom clean. Blood seeped through his fingers. I didn't know enough Italian to say anything and it didn't seem right to speak to him in English.
' Je suis desole, ' I said as I smoothed the hair away from his forehead. I am sorry. ' Je suis desole.
'
' Mi dispiace,' Sciafani said as he knelt next to me and put his hand on my shoulder. He took the boy's hands to pull them away from his wound, but stopped as a raspy, jagged breath came out. With it, all movement ceased. The hands relaxed, and Sciafani placed them crossed on the boy's chest.
'He is gone.'
I didn't know what to say or feel. I didn't want these guys firing into the GIs who might be swarming up this hill tomorrow, but I also didn't want this kid to have to suffer and die. I put my head in my hands, and repeated Sciafani's words as best I could.
' Mi dispiace,' I said.
'Look,' Sciafani said. 'Look at me. His blood is on my hands.'
He held his hands out, palms up, coated in dark red blood. 'These are the hands that did this. I did nothing to stop the Fascists, and now they are sending boys out to be killed for Mussolini. Do you know what Il Duce says about blood?'
'No.'
'Blood alone moves the wheels of history,' Sciafani quoted. 'He said that in 1914. We had quite enough warning, don't you think?
Blood alone.'
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
'Don't shoot!' I held my hands up and stepped in front of the three bandaged Italians on the floor. I knew what a glimpse of an enemy uniform might mean to the GI who had stuck the snout of his Thompson submachine through the door, not to mention what it could mean for me. 'I'm an American.'
' Non sparare, non sparare, ' sobbed one of the wounded Italians. I guessed it was basically the same request.
'Come out where I can see you,' the owner of the Thompson barked. He still wasn't showing more than the
