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The vibration and engine noise make it necessary to concentrate in order tosaid, but Rainy has taken note of the flight times and the mention of coffee She pulls her orders froe is only a paragraph

She reads it quickly Reaches the end Frowns

She goes back and reads itMissed s, actually

By the ti and her breath is short This can’t possibly be all there is She checks the envelope again in case she’s overlooked a sheet Nothing

She is ordered to appear at the airfield, to take the flight to the Azores, there to rendezvous with a Royal Navy submarine, which is to take her to Italy She is to deliver Cisco to his uncle and receive in return a map of enemy emplacements around Salerno She is to deliver the packet to a certain person working at the Swedish Embassy in Rome

And then?

Her orders are silent about then

She ss past a rising luh one o, what she is to do, how she is to escape

She wants to throw up Her face feels like it’s burning Surely this can’t be it Surely even an aetting what Corelli wants, just no plan for keeping her alive and out of the hands of the Gestapo or Italian counterintelligence

The Swede Hehow she is not siotten in the middle of enemy territory

The Swede Sure That’s it He’ll help her

But try as she ht, she cannot make herself believe it, not all the way

There’s a difference between taking risks and co suicide

The six hours and twenty minutes pass in relative silence Cisco leans back and dozes, eyes half-shut Rainy’s mind races in circles This isn’t a plan, this is a sketch This is espionage through rose-colored lenses It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that if she were an officer more attention would have been paid to her survival

I’eant, a GI Expendable, like any other GI