James Benn - Blood alone

For that matter, the same went for me. I felt the handkerchief under my T-shirt and wondered at the power it had wielded over the fellow who had given up his cart so willingly, lire or no lire.

Yegg. A yegg is a safecracker. It came to me as easily as an apple from a grocery stand back on the beat in Boston. My memories were beginning to fall into place. A safecracker. The guy in Rocko's tent, he'd wanted to find their safecracker. Why? It didn't make any sense.

Sure it did. A bank heist in the middle of a war. Who 'd notice?

I'd had enough of walking. When I came to a cluster of tents, I strolled into the vehicle park and found a jeep screened from view by a supply truck. In the back were a couple of packs, which I left on the ground in case the owners had anything personal in them. I'd been a policeman, that I could recall now. My father and uncle were on the job in South Boston, too. Being a cop was in my blood, which meant I'd steal a jeep, but not somebody's letters from home or the souvenirs they'd scrounged or traded for. The army is impersonal, like an insurance company or the Boston Harbor Authority, so it didn't matter.

I gunned the jeep out of there and soon passed my Italian friends, slogging it out on their way to Capo Soprano. I almost waved but figured they'd be cursing me because of my jeep, so I passed them with all the indifference military drivers show for the common foot soldier on either side.

Minutes later, I saw the familiar white-banded helmets of the military police at an intersection about one hundred yards ahead. I braked and found myself trapped in a slow line of traffic. No roads led off to either side, only pine trees and cactus to my left and a row of bombed-out buildings on my right, their faded red brick scorched by fire. The MPs were looking anxiously up the other road, letting vehicles through the intersection one at a time. It didn't seem as if they were searching for stolen military property, but I knew they had a way of sniffing out suspicious characters. So I tried to play it as normal as I could when I approached the intersection.

"Hey, Sarge," I yelled to one of the MPs standing apart, obviously in charge of the detail. "What's the holdup? My captain'll have my ass if I don't get this jeep to him on time."

"Tell him to complain to General Eisenhower," the noncom growled back at me as the vehicle in front of me went through the intersection. The closest MP held up his hand.

Uncle Ike. What? Shock registered in my head and plunged down to my gut. Uncle Ike? It sounded right and true, and yet impossible. I felt the blood drain from my face as I tried to keep up with all the new information flooding into my brain.

"Hold up, you got a front-row seat to see Ike," the MP sergeant said. "That's gotta be worth a pissed-off captain any day, am I right?"

"Worth a dozen of them, Sarge," I managed to say.

My mom and Ike's wife were second cousins but I'd called him uncle since he was so much older. That had never meant much, until my folks had cooked up a scheme to get me a safe job.

Sitting in a line of jeeps and trucks, gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles whitened, it all started to come back, memories of my family rising up like heat from the road.

Dad, Uncle Dan, and me in Kirby's one night, soon after Pearl Harbor. They had laid it out for me, how the Boyles had already lost one man fighting for the British and they didn't want the same to happen in another generation. Frank, their older brother, had been killed in the trenches during their own world war. To the Boyles, the British were nothing more than oppressors, and they weren't worth a single Boyle life, much less two.

While my father and uncle came up with the solution, it was my mother who made it happen. Massachusetts politicians, all owing the Boyles for various favors granted over the years-especially on Election Day-were called. I rapidly found myself at Officer Candidate School, then assigned to Uncle Ike's staff, which I thought would mean an easy posting in the nation's capital. None of us could ever have guessed that this unknown general would be called upon to lead our armed forces in Europe. And that I'd end up going with him from London to North Africa and now to Sicily. Holy shit! I was an officer. A lieutenant. Not much as officers go, but I was one. Not my first surprise of the day, but a big one.

So, I'm Lieutenant Billy Boyle, special investigator for General Dwight David Eisenhower. I look into military crimes for the general to be sure justice is served, but quietly, so as not to harm the war effort. How that had led me here, I still couldn't tell. I wondered if I'd gone bad, if I'd gotten in over my head in something on the wrong side of the law.

Two U. S. Army motorcycles roared through the intersection. One halted, pulling over to the side of the road, as the other continued. A small crowd of GIs had gathered as word spread that Ike was coming through. He wasn't a general people got excited over, like Patton or Montgomery, but he was in charge of the whole shooting match, and he was one of ours, a regular American guy. He had a calm determination that was more impressive than Patton's bloody exhortations or Montgomery's posturing for glory.

Had I failed Uncle Ike? Had I gotten mixed up in something that would make him ashamed of me? I remembered once, when I was a kid, I'd been caught breaking the windows of an old shed in an alleyway near our house. It had been a dare, and once I'd broken one, I was too caught up by the feel of the rock in my hand and the sound of shattered glass to stop. It was Mr. McGready's shed, and even though it was ready to fall down, he hadn't taken kindly to my efforts. And he knew my dad. It wasn't the spanking I'd gotten that bothered me or being sent to my room with no supper. It was the look of disappointment on my father's face. I didn't want Uncle Ike to look at me like that.

A jeep with a mounted. 50 caliber machine gun slowly made its way through the intersection. A DUKW followed. The Duck, a new addition to our invasion arsenal, was a wheeled amphibious vehicle that traveled through water, climbed up onto the beach, and then drove on inland. I could see a bunch of brass, American and British, but no Uncle Ike. I found him in the next jeep, stopped short of the intersection so he could get out and talk to the troops. He wore a khaki uniform with a fore-and-aft cap, his general's stars lined up and gleaming. He returned salutes and shook hands, mixing with privates and noncoms like he was one of them. No one cheered or hollered like they might have done if it had been Patton barreling through in a tank. They just gathered around and chatted.

"Billy! Billy? Is that you?"

I heard a familiar voice call out from the DUKW and watched Captain Harry Butcher climb out, looking natty in his tropical navy uniform, even in this heat. Harry had been commissioned a U. S. Navy captain, but his nautical experience was strictly limited to cocktails on yachts. Harry was Uncle Ike's aide, which meant he had a variety of duties, mostly revolving around keeping visiting dignitaries, politicians, admirals, generals, prime ministers-anyone important enough to rate time with the general-happy. Harry was one of the busiest men on Uncle Ike's staff. I waved back, resigned to having been spotted.

"Billy, good to see you," Harry said, shaking my hand. As usual, military formalities were forgotten. I was Ike's nephew, I was among the anointed. "Haven't seen you around HQ, Billy. Where 'd you disappear to? General, over here, look who I found!"

He waved excitedly, not waiting for an answer, and I counted my blessings. I got out of the jeep and stood at relative attention, snapping off a nervous salute and wondering what Uncle Ike knew about whatever I'd been up to.