I grabbed my gear and squeezed behind the stacked cases of grenades, figuring the way I came in was the best way out. I lifted the canvas flap. The cool evening air washed over my face. It was quiet. I pushed my helmet, pack, and Thompson out under the flap, then slid myself out. On one knee, I blinked, trying to adjust to the darkness. I reached for the helmet. My hand felt the netting and the steel beneath it. With that touch, a name came to me. Harding. Major Harding. Sam Harding. He was the one who had told me about shiny helmets, and aimed fire, and…
The surge of joy at recalling this name ended as a sharp stabbing pain erupted at the base of my skull. Then, darkness.
CHAPTER FIVE
I awoke with a throbbing head and a name on my lips. Harding. I opened my eyes and found myself back inside the tent, face-down on the ground. I'd been hit by someone who knew what he was doing. It had been a sharp rap, the same as the one I'd given Rocko. All in the wrist, enough for lights out followed by a pretty good chance of waking up again.
Harding. Sam Harding. Major Sam Harding. I saw his face, sharp angles and squinty eyes. Close-cropped dark hair, traces of gray flecked across the temples. I knew him. I remembered him.
Great, but what was I doing here, and who'd given me that smack on the skull? And why? I pushed myself into a sitting position and rubbed my head. There was a bump behind my ear that hurt like blazes when I touched it. I had to stop getting hit in the head. That's what Punchy had always said. Punchy. Pauly Hawes, but we called him Punchy from the pounding he'd taken in the ring. I saw his face, broken nose and all, but that was it. I didn't know where he was from or where I'd seen him fight, but I knew he was a welterweight, and that I was right about those hits to the head.
My arms were wet. Soaking wet, it dawned on me, as I felt my sleeves. Water dripped from the cuffs. I stood, trying to make sense of things and how I had gotten here. Here was in the back of the tent, near the opening in the wall of cartons that led to Rocko's secret bathtub. Steadying myself with one hand on a pile of crates, I took tentative steps around the corner. I was dizzy. I stumbled.
Rocko was in the tub, feet sprawled out over the sides, face up, eyes and mouth wide open, underwater. His hands were still tied, palms facing out, in that same supplicating gesture he'd made to me. The expression on his face was pure surprise. But it could also have been panic, when he realized his next breath was going to be of water. I'd seen drowned faces before, in that water scene that had flashed through my mind. Water, Harding, Punchy. I was building up quite a scrapbook of memories.
Water puddled at my feet as I stared dully at Rocko. I knew I shouldn't be standing here. Something was very wrong, but with the strange images and hints of memory that were all I had, I couldn't think clearly. My one specific memory, of Harding, felt like a crack in an old wall; the others crowding behind it were building up pressure, ready to flood through. But not yet. I was confused and afraid. Afraid of what would come tumbling through that crack when it opened.
Later, I told myself; now you've got to get out of here. You've been set up. As the idea took hold I got my feet to move. There were voices in the darkness outside, then inside the tent, advancing on me. There were two of them, and in a heartbeat, they'd reached the narrow passageway, blocking my only way out.
"Hey, who the hell-" The first guy, a PFC, stopped in his tracks. The second, a lieutenant, almost knocked him over. The lieutenant had a. 45 automatic, but the unarmed PFC was between us.
"Omigod, omigod," the PFC said, staring at Rocko in the tub, then at me, standing there, soaked to the shoulders. He backed away from me, maybe afraid I was going to grab him too and give him a bath. He bumped into the lieutenant, who started swearing, waving his pistol in my general direction. I knew I had about five seconds before he shot me or took me prisoner; it was no accident he'd come in with his weapon drawn. I put my shoulder down and ran forward, crashing into the wide-eyed PFC and knocking them both to the ground. I stepped on one body and heard a cry as I pushed off and ran as fast as I could out the front of the tent. I didn't have time to worry about who might be waiting out there or if they would follow me. Panic took over as I imagined the lieutenant steadying his aim and lining up the sights on my backbone. I kept going, digging my heels into the sand, keeping my head down, fleeing from the murder scene, my pursuers, and the growing crack in the wall that held back my memories.
I ran onto the hard-packed road leading up from the beach, straight into a crowd of GIs. Some were coming up from the water, others running toward it from tents and bivouacs strung out along the coast road. They were yelling, pointing up toward the night sky over the Mediterranean.
No one was chasing me; no one paid me any mind. I stopped running and fell in with the throng moving toward the beach, melting into the crowd of dogfaces. I felt oddly safe and secure in the midst of dozens of guys dressed exactly like me, cloaked by darkness, a formless mob, moving without orders or direction. We crossed the steel mesh laid down by the engineers, left the trees behind us, and got the first view of what the fury was all about.
Our ships were letting loose on a group of German bombers. I couldn't see them, but tracers lit the night sky, reaching from the flat of the sea across the wide curve above. Steady booms and fainter rat-tat-tats echoed over the water as the faraway drone of aircraft engines came closer, growing louder and more ominous. I thought I saw a meteor, then realized it was a bomber going down, a trail of yellow flame glowing in its descent until it vanished suddenly into the dark water. An explosion ripped the sky, closer now, a huge fireball falling in a gentle arc, disintegrating into a thousand pieces, each drifting its own slow way down to the waiting sea.
All the ships in the fleet must have been firing every weapon they had. Close to the horizon, the air was electric, bright white phosphorous tracers shining like neon lights on Main Street. Reflections from exploding and burning planes glowed in the awed, uplifted faces all around me. Except for involuntary gasps, everyone was silent. The firepower dancing across the star-drenched sky was too awesome, too catastrophic, too thick with death for words.
I watched the antiaircraft fire and wondered why the German aircraft hadn't dropped any bombs. I didn't see a single explosion near our ships. The planes were headed our way, but why would they fly over the fleet if they were coming to bomb us? They would've come from the opposite direction anyway-north not south. They only thing south of us was more of the Mediterranean, then Tunisia.
No, it couldn't be.
"Look, look, look!"
Hands pointed, heads swiveled, searching overhead to pick out what someone was yelling about in the midst of all the noise and explosions. I saw it, coming in low, less than a thousand feet off the water was my guess, a twin-engine plane trailing a long flame from its port engine. As it neared the shoreline, white parachutes blossomed behind it. Five, six, seven. Then, with the plane's engine on fire, the wing, folded up and broke off, pieces flying off wildly. The plane corkscrewed over our heads, spinning out of control as it vanished behind us. An explosion thundered in my ears, the sounds of steel hitting hard earth, and gas and ammo erupting, mingling into a horrible, unbelievable, wrenching sound.