In Perfect Time Page 20

  “Gotta . . . get off.”

  “I know. Can you walk?”

  “Don’t know.” He got halfway out of his seat, moaned, and sank back down.

  “I need help! Someone!” She couldn’t carry him alone.

  Roger stepped into the cockpit, chest heaving, face flushed. “What are you doing here? I told you to evacuate.”

  “Mike’s hurt, dazed.”

  “I know. Had to get the ladies off first. That means you.”

  “Where’s Louise?”

  “Whit’s carrying her.” He shouldered past Kay and helped Mike to his feet. The copilot sagged to the side, and Roger struggled to hold on.

  “Don’t be stubborn. I’ll get his feet.” Kay did just that.

  Roger grabbed Mike under the shoulders, and they maneuvered him out of the plane, Pettas following.

  At the cargo door, Pettas took Kay’s position, and the men carried Mike toward the trees. Kay stayed on the plane and rummaged through the cargo for a medical chest. Surely they had one on board. She shoved aside crates and barracks bags until she found one.

  “What are you doing?” Roger leaned inside the cargo door. “The engine’s smoking. The plane could blow any second.”

  She opened the chest and pulled out supplies. “We have wounded.”

  Roger groaned and hoisted himself inside. “Come on. We’ll take the whole thing. We’ve gotta move.”

  They dragged the chest to the door and carried it across the field to the trees. Kay glanced behind. Smoke curled out of the right engine, puffing a message to the Nazis. How long until they were discovered? How would the Germans treat them?

  Kay stumbled over a rock but kept moving, light-headed, her life turned upside down and inside out.

  They plunged into the woods, where the rest of the party sat in a small clearing. Louise lay with her head on Mellie’s lap. Her eyes were open, and she gave Kay a weak smile.

  Kay set down her end of the medical chest and dashed to Louise’s side. “You’re all right. Thank goodness.”

  Mellie stroked Louise’s hair. “We’ll have to keep her awake in case she has a concussion.”

  Louise pointed to the medical chest. “Some aspirin would be nice. I’m sure to have a headache.”

  “I’ll say.” Kay glanced around. Mike sat up, leaning against a tree, pale but conscious. Georgie and Alice examined Vera’s leg. “Georgie, how bad is it?”

  “A long gash, not too deep. Oh, you brought supplies. Bless you.” She scooted over to the chest and pulled out gauze and sulfanilamide powder.

  Kay joined her, found an aspirin bottle, and shook out two tablets. Apparently the Lord didn’t want her to report Vera’s affair. He could have found a less dramatic way to stop her.

  “Hallo.”

  She spun around at the unfamiliar voice.

  Two men stood there, Italians in civilian clothing, with rifles strapped across their chests.

  Heart thumping, Kay eased her hands up in surrender, fingers coiled around the tablets.

  The younger of the men grinned. “Americani?”

  “Si.” Roger stepped forward, hands in front of his chest. “We surrender.”

  The younger man laughed, a boy really, a teenager. “No, we are friends. We are partisans.”

  “Partisans.” Roger’s hands drifted down. “You speak English.”

  The boy puffed out his thin chest. “Si. My uncle lives in New York. I visit him often before the war.”

  Kay relaxed her grip on the aspirin before her sweaty palms could dissolve the tablets. She slid to Louise’s side, passed her the pills, and exchanged a wary look with Louise and Mellie. In the long run, would it help or hurt them to be found with partisans?

  The older Italian man glanced around, one hand on his rifle.

  “The Germans—the Tedeschi—they’ll be here soon,” Roger said.

  “Tedeschi? No,” the boy said. “Not here. The Tedeschi put the Italian Ligurian Army in charge here. Traitors. And the Brigate Nere.”

  “Brigate Nere.” The older man spit to the side as if the words tasted foul.

  Kay knew nothing about the Brigate Nere or the Italian Ligurian Army, but they seemed to be aligned with the Nazis.

  “We see your plane.” The boy pointed to the field. “They will too. We must hide you.”

  Hide? Hope flickered, but reality doused it out. How could they hide a party of ten?

  Roger rubbed his hand over his chin—the side without the bruise. “We have wounded. We have women.”

  “Si. We want to help. Your planes bring us guns and bullets and medicine. Now we help you.” The boy made a sweeping gesture. “We have friends. The SOE, the OSS. They will take you home.”

  “SOE?” Louise whispered. “OSS?”

  “SOE—British secret agents,” Kay said. “OSS are Americans.” She’d heard of these agents, working behind enemy lines, coordinating partisan and Allied activities, rescuing downed airmen. Maybe they could rescue airwomen as well.

  “I don’t know.” Roger scrunched up his face. “Sounds dangerous. The women . . .”

  “Oh, please.” Georgie’s eyes widened. “I want to go home.”

  “I do too,” Mellie said. “Tom will worry.”

  Alice wound gauze around Vera’s leg. “Speak for yourselves. The Germans will treat us well. We’re women. And the Luftwaffe makes sure aircrews are treated well. But if we sneak around, they’ll think we’re spies and kill us.”

  “She’s got a point,” Sergeant Pettas said. “Even more so for us fellas.”

  Kay clutched a button on her overcoat. This was why Lieutenant Lambert stressed unity. In times of danger and decision and stress, division could destroy.

  She got to her feet. “Ladies, we all went through training at the School of Air Evacuation. What were we taught to do if shot down over enemy territory?”

  Mellie jutted out her chin. “As an officer in the United States Army Air Forces, I have a duty to evade capture, and if captured, to attempt escape.”

  “Lt. Georgiana Taylor, serial number O-703631. And nothing more.” Georgie clamped her lips shut.

  “Well?” Kay tilted her head at Roger and crossed her arms. “I assume you were taught the same.”

  A sharp nod, and he glanced down to the leaf-covered ground, his eyebrows jammed together. “All right then.”

  Mike pushed himself to standing. “Coop, we should see what we can salvage from the plane. She seems stable.”

  “Come on, men.” Roger plowed through the trees. “Rations, water, all we can carry.”

  Mike, Whitaker, Pettas, and the Italian boy followed.

  Kay and Georgie jogged behind them. The men wouldn’t think to get medical supplies, blankets, or extra clothing.

  “Where are we going?” Roger asked the Italian boy as they ran.

  “South. Closer to the Americani.”

  “Won’t they expect that?”

  “Si. When they ask which way you went, we point south. They won’t believe us, will go north. So we go south.”

  In a strange way, it made sense. Kay climbed inside the plane and found her barracks bag. “Georgie, find yours, toss out anything you don’t need. We can use the bags to carry rations and things.”

  “What about the other girls? We should bring them their bags, do the same.”

  “Good idea.” Kay pulled out a stack of magazines, her skirts, her swimsuit, her . . . her ball gown. The same grassy green dress she’d worn to Mellie’s wedding, dancing in Roger’s arms, his face so close to hers.

  “Have any room in . . .” Roger stood behind her, gaze fixed on the fabric in her hand.

  Kay’s cheeks flamed, and she shoved away the dress. “Plenty of room.”

  “Let me take that.” Georgie relieved him of his armload of tins. “Oh good. Rations from the life rafts.”

  “Yeah.” His voice rough, he turned away.

  Kay’s eyes burned, but she loaded her bag with tinned water that Mike handed her.

>   At the wedding she’d reverted to her old flirtatious ways and tried to manipulate Roger’s heart and control him. This was her punishment.

  Roger trudged through the woods, two of the nurses’ barracks bags over his shoulders and his kit bag in hand. Since he’d transferred back to Italy on November 11, most of his belongings were at Ciampino Airfield, including the dhol. He only had his shaving kit, his Bible, a pair of drumsticks, and a change of shirt, socks, and undershorts.

  The older Italian man led the way, Pettas and Whitaker assisted Vera, and Roger brought up the rear with the teenage boy, Enrico.

  He never should have flown today. And he thought he’d become a top-notch pilot. Baloney. If they made it out of this alive, Veerman wouldn’t give a recommendation to a man who lost yet another plane.

  Nope, he’d blown his one good chance and thrown away a gift once again. And nine other people had to pay the price.

  About fifty feet ahead of him, Kay struggled with a barracks bag far too heavy for her. She wouldn’t be going to the chief nurse school. Not only had he broken her heart, but he’d dashed her dreams. Why did she have to suffer because he was a no-account?

  The older man stopped and held up one hand. Roger stood still, held his breath, and strained his hearing.

  Then the man flipped his hand forward. “Presto.”

  “Fast,” Enrico said. “Go fast.”

  The woods opened up. A village lay cupped in a valley, open and exposed.

  “Is that a good place to hide?”

  “Si.” Enrico jogged alongside him, out into the open. “Only today. Too close to the airplane. My friends will find better place. We move tonight in the dark.”

  Roger puffed from the exertion.

  At the edge of the village, a middle-aged woman met them, ushered them through the back door of a house, and motioned them up a narrow staircase, speaking quietly in Italian.

  They filed into a good-sized room, fitted with nothing but a table and chairs, and darkened by closed shutters.

  “Quiet,” Enrico said. “Do not open the window. Sleep. We go tonight.”

  Roger sloughed off the bags. “Let’s lighten these, folks. Only essentials.”

  Enrico beckoned Roger to follow him downstairs. The other partisan waited down in the big kitchen, where the woman stirred something on the stove.

  Enrico shifted his rifle strap on his shoulder. “You are the leader, no?”

  Roger felt like saying no, but like it or not, he was in charge. “I am.”

  “We must tell the Americans.”

  “We brought our emergency radio from the plane.” He pointed with his thumb up the stairs. “I could send a signal, but it wouldn’t be coded.”

  “No, no, no.” Alarm flashed in Enrico’s large dark eyes. “The enemy will hear. We send messenger, a woman partisan they will not suspect. She will go to the OSS man in Genoa.”

  Genoa. At the top of the boot, on Italy’s west coast. “Is it far?”

  Enrico smiled and shook a finger. “No. We not tell you where you are. It is better you do not know.”

  That made sense. If the Americans were caught, they could endanger the partisans, who were risking their lives to help them.

  Roger studied Enrico’s face, the angles of manhood just starting to poke through the roundness of boyhood. “How old are you?”

  “Fifteen.” He pulled himself tall. “I fight for a year now. I will not work for Tedeschi.”

  Roger’s throat tightened. These were the people the Twelfth Air Force helped with supply drops. Now he saw firsthand why they fought. Because the Germans took away every able-bodied man for forced labor and left women and children and the elderly to fend for themselves.

  “Excuse me.” Kay stood at the base of the stairs, one hand braced on the wall. She addressed Enrico, not Roger. “Could we please have some water? We’re thirsty and we need to wash the wounds.”

  “Si.” Enrico explained to their hostess in Italian, and the woman bustled around to meet the request.

  Roger sank his hands into his trouser pockets, tapped out a rhythm on his thighs, and tried not to look at Kay, although she filled his peripheral vision. She’d been amazing today—calm, compassionate, authoritative, quick-thinking.

  “You should have that looked at.”

  He faced her. “What?”

  She pointed to her temple. “You’re bleeding. Mellie or Georgie can take care of it.”

  He fingered the dried blood on his cheek. “Oh. Yeah.” Mellie or Georgie, huh? She certainly knew how to put him in his well-deserved place.

  The hostess handed Kay a bowl of water and some towels, and she chattered in Italian.

  “For washing.” Enrico handed Roger a ceramic pitcher of water. “For drinking. Do you have—how you say it?—for drinking?”

  “Canteens. Yes, we have some.” He had no choice but to follow Kay upstairs to deliver the water. At the top of the stairs, she paused, hands full.

  Roger eased around her to open the door. He gripped the knob. They shouldn’t be here. Women in enemy territory, hiding in plain daylight, wounded and scared. Brokenhearted.

  In the dim cramped space, he faced Kay. “I’m sorry.” The words came out throaty and grainy and insufficient.

  She peered at him through dark eyes, the longest she’d looked at him all day. Her mouth softened a bit. “It’s not your fault.”

  What wasn’t his fault? The crash landing? The shattered friendship?

  Kay nodded at the door.

  Roger opened it. She was wrong. They were both his fault.

  31

  November 20, 1944

  Not the most pleasant evening for a stroll.

  Kay squinted ahead into the moonless night, careful to keep Georgie’s black silhouette in sight before her. Roger and Enrico led the column, and Mike and Whitaker and Pettas brought up the rear, the routine they’d followed six nights in a row. Enrico served as their translator and guide as the partisans shuffled the Americans from shed to cellar to barn to bombed-out house. Traveling at night, Kay had no idea which direction they went, except that it always seemed to be up.

  To her right, Mellie sucked in a loud breath.

  “You okay?” Kay whispered and grabbed for her friend’s arm.

  “Yes, just lost my footing.”

  “Careful.” Traipsing through a puddle had drenched Kay’s feet, but her overcoat and hood kept the rest of her surprisingly dry and warm.

  Mellie sighed. “Maybe they’ll have food for us.”

  Kay’s stomach rumbled. “Maybe.” Since the Italians had so little food, the crew used their tinned Army rations, and sparingly.

  “I hope I don’t sound ungrateful. The partisans are wonderful to us, and I know Enrico and Roger do their best.”

  “I know.” Kay adjusted her barracks bag over her shoulder. The group had sorted through the bags and discarded everything useless—high heels and cosmetics and hair curlers and skirts and swimsuits and even Mellie’s wedding dress, at Mellie’s insistence. Kay had kept only two sentimental items, her Bible and her doll Sissy, who now rode in her musette bag rather than in the less private domain of the barracks bag.

  “Enrico’s really taken to Roger, hasn’t he?” From the tone of Mellie’s voice, she had to be smiling. “I like how he calls him Ruggero.”

  “Yes.” Kay’s voice came out clipped.

  “I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to talk about him. This must be uncomfortable for you.”

  Kay made a face, invisible in the blackness. Any other woman Kay would have suspected of fishing for gossip, but not Mellie.

  “Why?” Kay faked a sparkly spirit, although she kept her voice down. “What could be more fun than a vacation with a man who thinks you’re a floozy?”

  Mellie gasped. “He didn’t say that, did he?”

  Kay’s foot skidded to the side, and she barely caught herself. “Not in so many words, but the message was clear.”

  “I can’t believe that. You’ve
been such good friends, and he’s always respectful to you.”

  “Until I flirted with him.”

  “Oh.” The word drifted away into the rain. “At the wedding. But I thought . . . well, it looked like you two were quite . . . close that evening. I thought something was happening.”

  So did Kay. Her throat swelled, but she shook her head to loosen her words. “He told me point-blank to stop flirting with him, that he wasn’t the right man for me.” Fresh pain lashed her heart.

  “Oh dear.”

  A chilly raindrop hit her forehead, and Kay tugged her hood forward. The only sounds were the slap of shoe leather on wet pavement and the sniffles and grunts and shuffles of people on the move. Where were Mellie’s sweet words of wisdom and insight?

  The group halted. Enrico spoke softly in Italian to someone, a woman from the sound of it, and then Enrico led the group to the left, up a new road. Always up.

  The group strung out again, close enough to see each other but far enough apart to avoid collisions in the dark. Enrico had partisan friends everywhere. They seemed to be spaced out every few miles to guide and to scout for enemy patrols.

  “I wonder,” Mellie said softly.

  “Wonder what?”

  “Roger. Well, I’ve known him for two years, and he never used to talk to women. Oh, he’d deal with us nurses, but only to get the job done. That was all. Until you and he became friends this spring. There must be a reason why he avoided women, something in his past.”

  Kay let out a noncommittal mumble. Even if he’d hurt her, she had no right to tell his secrets.

  “Perhaps he didn’t reject you because of you but because of him.”

  Because of him? A gust of wind blew drizzle into her face, and she angled her head away. Yes, Roger had been hurt by a woman, by a romance gone wrong. Was that why he’d rejected Kay? Did he have problems trusting women? Or did he have problems trusting himself with women?

  “I’m not the right man for you.” What exactly did he mean by that? She’d interpreted it as a brush-off, a way to avoid saying what he really meant—that she wasn’t good enough for him. But what if he meant it another way—that he wasn’t good enough for her?