A Thread of Grace

February 1945

ABOVE NORTHWESTERN ITALY

Tracers stream by. Black puffs of AA blossom. The Dakota bucks and rocks. Simon Henley cringes, and the dispatching sergeant from Chicago laughs. “Relax! Jus’ some token shit from Sant’Andrea,” the Chicagoan yells over the deafening drone. “Nuttin’a worry ’bout.”

The plane’s crew is American, its passengers British. Three Special Ops teams of two men each: an officer who speaks Italian and a signalman to establish communications between partisan bands and Allied Command. Two teams have already parachuted into Emilia-Romagna, and now it’s on to Piemonte, after cutting across the Gulf of Genoa.

As promised, the flak ends in less than the time it takes to overfly the thin crescent of Liguria, but Corporal Henley has several excellent reasons for remaining terrified. One: he is in an airplane. Two: the airplane is over enemy territory. Three: very soon, he will be required to jump out of the plane into the enemy territory.

Across the fuselage, Major Salvi grins beneath the sort of pencil mustache favored by dashing cinema stars. “Simon! How is your sphincter?” Simon registers shock, and once more provides a laugh. “Don’t be ashamed!” Salvi yells. “Even Lawrence of Arabia got the shits before a battle!”

An Ancona expat who taught Dante at Cambridge, Giordano Salvi signed on with the Special Operations Executive back in ’42. His English is a strange mix of academic and army, but his Italian is native. Salvi already holds the Military Cross for the work he did north of Naples before Anzio, two years ago. This will be his third drop behind German lines.

It’s Simon Henley’s first.

Nineteen, a baby-faced blond, Mrs. Henley’s little boy spent his first winter of service freezing on coast guard duty, twelve miles from home. There he fired a Lewis gun from time to time at German aircraft passing overhead, but failed to impress either the Luftwaffe or the local girls. The latter failure, and the observable influence of a paratrooper’s distinctive red beret on women, accounts for Simon’s present predicament. In a fit of unrequited lust, he volunteered for paratroop training last year.

With illogic that seemed typical of the army, Simon was posted to the Signal Corps in British Guiana instead. There four Negro NCOs, each a breathtakingly fast telegrapher who’d worked for the Georgetown post office, browbeat him relentlessly until he could reliably transmit thirty words per minute without error— a skill, he learned glumly, that had no measurable effect on his sex appeal. When his group started lessons in silent killing and unarmed combat, he began to wonder if he’d been assigned to Special Ops, but then it was back to England, when he was apparently reassigned to the paratroops after all. He spent two weeks stepping out of a wingless plane propped on scaffolding twelve feet above the ground while a sergeant screamed, “Tuck and roll, you bloody little cunt! Tuck and roll!”

At last, the moment of truth: three training drops from a plane with wings and an engine. Only then did the freshly promoted Corporal Henley discover that the only thing more sickening than flying was the fear of plummeting to the ground like a rock. And the only thing more terrifying than that was the thought of displaying how frightened he was by hanging on to the dispatcher’s knees and sobbing, “Please, sir, may I be excused?”

Tonight, like Major Salvi, Corporal Simon Henley carries a compass concealed inside a button of his tunic and a comb with a hidden saw in its shank. Less subtly, he wears a commando knife with an eight-inch blade sheathed on his left hip, a Colt.45 automatic holstered on his right, and a Marlin submachine gun slung across his back beneath the Irvine Stachute that will, he’s been assured, open automatically. He’s been told only that they’re to get themselves to Milan and link up with a band of autonomous partisans there. Major Salvi has the rest of their orders. Everything in the SOE is need-to-know.

The pilot spots a signal fire made of hay bales, their outline blurred by wind. “Commies, pro’ly!” the sergeant blares through the noise. “You limey bastids won’t sen’ ’em any weapons, so dey use decoy signals to fool us i

“As opposed to a square color?” Salvi asks, ribbing him.

“Smart-ass!” the Chicagoan replies, shouting a laugh when Salvi says, “Major Smart-ass to you, Sergeant!”

They continue to chat at the top of their lungs while the pilot banks for a closer look. A second signal fire comes into view, and then a third, on a different mountainside. “Shit!” the Chicagoan yells when AA opens up on them from the direction of a flaming T. “Jerries! Get ready, youse guys.”

The red light comes on. The sergeant drags the door open. An icy blast of starlit air hits Simon Henley’s face. At thirty-second intervals, the sergeant flings out canisters of supplies, the wireless transmitter, and the hand generator, each on separate chutes. The plane jolts and sways alarmingly. The sergeant hits Salvi’s shoulder. The major disappears. Stepping up to the opening, Simon looks down, hoping to see Salvi’s parachute bloom above the folded, forested wilderness. The mountains are a study in black and white. Bloody hell, Simon thinks. It’s still winter here!

He’s never jumped into snow.

VALDOTTAVO

“The charges are too close together,” Renzo says. “Move that one about half a meter.”

“Why?” the kid wants to know.

“If the second detonation isn’t offset correctly, the wheels on the other side of the track will keep the train from derailing.”

“All right,” the boy says sullenly. He’s fourteen, maybe. Full of bravado and crap. “Why don’t you help?”

“Because,” Renzo explains patiently, “I’m a drunken old gimp. Either I fall over, or I can’t get up.” They can hear the locomotive’s engine now. “Move the charge.”

Renzo slogs back through the snowy mud toward Schramm and the others who wait on the slope above the tracks. “You shouldn’t talk like that about yourself,” Schramm says. “It’s bad for discipline.”

Lighting a cigarette, Renzo looks up, attention drawn by anti-aircraft fire in the distance. Low on the jagged horizon, an airplane smokes into sight. “Busy night.”

Schramm follows Renzo’s gaze. “British?”

“American. Starboard engine throwing oil. Feather that prop, friend.”

As if heeding Renzo’s advice, the pilot tries to bring the propeller vertical. The windmilling goes on, creating so much drag the plane nearly stalls. “Lighten the load,” Renzo murmurs. The damaged engine bursts into flame. “Cut the fuel…”

The train’s whistle blasts as the locomotive starts through its last tu

“It’s Franco!” the boy shouts back.

“Are you going to stay there and argue with that train?”

Canisters, boxes, and a couple of paratroopers sail out of the crippled Dakota and disappear behind a nearby mountain. The crew remains on board, hurling flak jackets, a chart table and oxygen tanks into the night.

“Will they make it?” Schramm asks.

“If they bail out now.”

The plane begins to climb, but not fast enough.

“Scheisse,” Schramm sighs when it explodes against a cliff. “Survivors?”

“The crew? Not a chance.” Renzo pulls out his flask and raises it to the dead. “The jumpers? Possibly.”