pad, leaving a sharp mark like a ricochet.
'Words twice, Dog Victor, words twice,' the guy next to him shouted, grimacing at the noises that made him ask for the transmission to be repeated. Mortars maybe?
Tension throbbed in the hot air trapped under the canvas roof, the smell of sweat, cigarette smoke, and stale coffee making me wish I hadn't come in.
'Anything from Love Mike?' A lieutenant, his sleeves rolled up above his elbows, leaned over the operator who had been listening for Love Mike's call sign.
'Nothing. Maybe their radio's out. Maybe.'
'Dog Victor?' the officer asked the other GI.
'I couldn't make him out,' he said, a weary sigh escaping his lips. 'Explosions. Then gunfire. They're off the air.'
'Where is all this going on?' I asked. The operators went back to their headphones as the lieutenant took notice of me for the first time.
'Gangi, north of Enna. Those call signs are the First and Second Battalions of the Sixteenth Regiment, and they're in trouble. Who the hell are you?'
'Billy Boyle, from Seventh Army HQ. I have a few questions about Lieutenant Andrews. You have a minute?'
'Sure,' he said, extending his hand. 'Frank Howard.'
'You in charge here?'
'I have the Operations Platoon. We do most of the work here, except for coding. Captain Stanton takes care of that. Let's talk over here.'
Howard was a second lieutenant, just like me, the lowest of the high. Close-cropped sandy hair, a sharp nose, and blue eyes with dark bags drooping below them. He had a distinct New York accent, the word 'work' coming out 'woik,' the way the Three Stooges said it. I'd taken enough guff about my Boston accent that I didn't comment on it. I figured if he dropped a few r's, we added them in Boston, so it all worked out. Maybe we could argue baseball, though. That might be fun except that, last I heard, the Yankees were leading the division.
'You're from New York?'
'Neither of us can hide where we're from, can we?'
'You got that right. What did you do before the war?'
'Crane operator, mostly on the docks. My old man was in the union, so I got my card and managed to work fairly regular. How about you?'
'I was a cop. My dad too.'
'Doesn't hurt to have connections, especially when times are tough.' True enough. Plenty of guys without them got no work at all during the Depression. Depending on family connections might not be fair, but it sure beat standing in a soup line.
Howard stopped to talk to a noncom and went over a sheet of orders with him. He had a few years on me and seemed firmly in control of this operation. He finished with the noncom and I followed him to the end of the tent, where he had his office set up. An empty spool of communications wire on its side supported a field desk, one of those portable boxes that opened to show a variety of drawers and cubbyholes, big enough to hold all the forms, stamps, and red tape needed to run a company. A field telephone and tools rested on another upturned spool, and a wool blanket hung heavily from a line strung from the end pole, half hiding a cot stuck in the corner of the tent.
'All the comforts of home,' I said, as he sat in a swivel chair that looked like it came from a lawyer's office. He pointed to a crate of rations, 10-in-1, for me to perch on.
'Nothing like you boys at HQ enjoy, I'm sure,' Howard said, lighting up a Lucky without offering me one, and blowing blue smoke above my head. He eyed me with a studied wariness that told me he hadn't found lieutenants from headquarters of much use in this war.
'I've been too busy lately to check out the accommodations,' I said, ignoring the jibe. 'I've been looking into something that may involve Lieutenant Andrews. Did you know him well?'
'We went through training together at Camp Gordon. He had the Supply Platoon, and did a fine job. We weren't close, but friendly enough. Poker games, baseball, stuff like that.'
'You don't seem surprised I'm asking about him,' I said.
'I knew somebody would, sooner or later.'
'Why?'
'Because of what he did to my corporal. He got him killed.'
I tried not to jump out of my seat. This was more than a lead, it was a real clue. 'Do you mean Hutton? Aloysius Hutton?'
'Yeah, Hutton. He didn't like his first name much.'
'I thought it was a good solid name,' I said, thinking about what it had been like to be without a name, when I gave Hutton's to Clancy and Joe, and how speaking it had felt like ashes in my mouth.
'You know what happened to him?' Howard asked.
'I was there when he died,' I said. 'But first, tell me what Andrews had to do with getting him killed.'
'So they even shanghaied a headquarters louie up on Biazza Ridge?' He gave out a sad laugh as he shook his head in disbelief at the thought of a staff officer on the front line. 'Andrews was in charge of our supplies, obviously. Rocko Walters was a sergeant who ran the division's Supply Company, and I mean ran it. His CO was a goof-off who left him in charge of the whole show.'
'I met Rocko too. When a paratroop officer came looking for men and supplies for Biazza Ridge, he vanished.'
'Sounds like him. He was a rat, and someone finally caught up with him.'
'I know,' I said, letting it go at that.
'Anyway, Andrews had to go through Rocko for our requisitions.
Back in Tunisia, I noticed radios starting to go missing. They were marked down as lost or broken, but I knew we'd never gotten them.'
'Rocko was selling them on the black market,' I suggested.
'That would have been my bet, but I couldn't prove it. I think Rocko gave Andrews a big payoff and did all the work, to get him hooked.' He ground out his cigarette and spit out a piece of stray tobacco.
'And then put the squeeze on him,' I said.
'You got it, junior.'
'But how did Hutton fit in?'
'Hutton was a genius with radios and telephones. He could repair any damn thing, using spare parts from German equipment if he had to.' 'But what would that mean to Rocko?'
'My guess is, it meant Rocko could communicate with anyone he wanted, anywhere.'
'You mean anywhere you had wire strung, right?'
'Come with me. It's easier to show you,' he said.
I followed him out to a smaller tent, about eight by ten feet, not far from Howard's office at the end of the Message Section tent. He pulled open the front flaps and tied them back. Except for a cot stuck in a corner, it looked like a warehouse for radio and telephone parts. A workbench at the far end was littered with tools, wire, tubes, and the guts of gadgets I couldn't identify. A switchboard sat next to an SCR-300 radio, and other electrical hardware encased in canvas or wood with U. S. Army markings stood stacked shoulder-high. I looked more closely at a device connected to the switchboard. It was a long wooden case with black dials set into it and connectors for a dozen or so wires along the top. The faceplate was marked in German.
'What the hell is all this?' I asked.
'Hutton was a loner, and he liked to tinker, so I gave him his own workshop. He came up with some ingenious stuff. This is a BD-72, our standard field switchboard. We can bring in twelve lines and route calls between them. But, like you said, it's only for calls on our wire. We can connect two of these and increase the capacity, but it's still a closed loop.'
'But Hutton tinkered with it, right?'
'He sure did,' Howard said, with a hint of pride as he tapped the unit next to the switchboard. 'This has some god-awful long German name, which translates to something like Special Exchange Telephone Interface. See the line coming out of it?'
