“Yes, I wish he weren’t unconscious,” Dick said. “It seems terrible, somehow, to see him here but not talk to him, hear him. And right now we need him badly. He’s the one with the brains in this outfit.”

“It’s too bad, all right,” Tony said, “but you’ve got a pretty good head on your shoulders, too, Dick. We can carry on. And, anyway, maybe Scotti will come around in a little while and he can direct operations from here. He doesn’t have to move around. We can do everything that needs to be done.”

The others agreed, but Dick felt a little lost without Scotti’s help at this point. He set about getting the cave organized, the containers unpacked, the supplies in order. Tony Avella checked over all the radio material and found everything in order.

Slade stacked his dynamite at the rear of the cave, and Vince said, as he saw the great pile, “Are you just going to blow up one dam with that, Boom-Boom? It looks as if you had enough for two.”

“It takes a lot of dynamite to blow up a good dam,” Slade said. “From the pictures and plans I saw, this isn’t such a wonderful one. Structurally, it would never be acceptable in the United States. But, when possible, I always believe in bringing along just twice as much material as I think I’m going to need.”

“And who knows?” Tony laughed. “Maybe we can find something else we can blow up with whatever’s left over.”

“Not a bad idea,” Dick said. “Not a bad idea at all.”

They all sat down at the mouth of the cave and opened their cans of rations. Dick said he thought it was all right to light a small fire for a short while so they might have coffee. In five minutes there were five cups being held over a little blaze, and soon the coffee was made. The men all drank it with relish and sighs of relief, and then the fire was put out.

“Nobody’ll spot that little bit of smoke and get suspicious,” Max said.

“We just shouldn’t do it too often,” Dick said. “If they should notice it regularly, they’d come to investigate.”

Every half hour, at least, Dick went to Scotti’s side, felt his pulse, and looked eagerly for some signs of consciousness. But the lieutenant remained in the same state, breathing shallowly, but with a good pulse beat.

By four o’clock in the afternoon, Dick felt sure that whatever decisions were made that day would have to come from him. Vince and Max had taken short naps, but now they were awake and asking him what the plan of action was. He called them all around him to talk the matter over.

“We can’t do much of anything except at night, of course,” Dick said. “And we haven’t got much time to waste. First, we’ve got to get the radio set up, somehow, somewhere. Any ideas, Tony?”

“Not up here,” Tony said. “That’s about all I can say now, Dick. They’d spot us in no time with their detectors, and we’d have a company of Germans all over the side of this hill.”

“Where, then?” Dick asked.

“In the town itself,” Tony replied.

“That seems next to impossible, Tony,” Max said. “Why, they’ll find it in a minute in town—even if you should find some way to get all that paraphernalia in without being caught.”

“I know it sounds out of the question,” Tony agreed. “But there must be some place we can set it up without being located. Now, if my uncle’s still around—”

“How are you going to find that out?” Vince asked.

“Go to town and ask,” Tony replied. “Isn’t that right, Dick?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Dick replied. “I don’t know about getting the radio into town, but we’ve got to go down there, some of us, and find out what’s what. That uncle of yours, Tony—we might as well assume he’s not there. So many people have been evacuated. What did he do there, anyway?”

“That’s one reason I think he might still be there,” Tony said. “For quite a few years, he’s been caretaker at the Villa Rolta. Right on the edge of town, the villa is—a big place about a thousand years old, backing up against the steep hill at the northern end of town. Belonged to the Rolta family ever since the twelfth century, though none of them have been around for quite a while. It’s been sort of a Museum for a long time now, and Uncle Tomaso has been caretaker. He’s an old duck and I don’t think he’d move. He’d stick there at the villa no matter what happened.”

“Well, maybe so,” Dick said. “It would be lucky if he were still around. We’ve got to find that out. And we’ve got to make contact with somebody else there if he isn’t around. That’s a ticklish job. The first man we talk to might be a friend of the Germans.”

“We’ll just listen first,” Tony said. “You can tell, after a little while, by the way people talk.”

“But what kind of listening can a bunch of American soldiers in uniform do?” Vince asked.

“That brings up another point,” Dick said. “You all remember what the General said about that. If we got out of uniform and were caught we’d be treated as spies. And you know that means getting shot—right away and without any questions asked.”

“Sure, but we can’t go in uniform,” Tony protested.

“I don’t think we can, either,” Dick said. “And I know Scotti didn’t think so. That’s why he got hold of six sets of clothing, clothing of ordinary Italian small-town people such as they’d be wearing in Maletta these days.”

“Do they fit?” demanded Vince Salamone, whose difficulty in finding clothes large enough was always bothering him.

Dick laughed. “Yes, Jerry did a good job on that,” he said. “Of course, it was pretty easy to pick up the right things fast in the towns we’ve recently taken over in southern Italy. He even found a couple of Italians as big as you, Vince.”

“Then we go in Italian clothes?” Tony asked.

“Only if you want to,” Dick replied. “I’m not going to ask anybody to do it who doesn’t agree perfectly with the idea. But I know that I’m going to leave my uniform here in the cave when I visit Maletta.”

“Same here,” Tony said. “I’ll be right at home. Nobody’ll ever notice me. And if they ask, I’m just little Antonio Avella, from the town of Carlini up north, come down looking for my poor old uncle.”

“What kind of Italian peasant do you think I’ll make?” Max asked. “I can’t speak the language.”

“You’re my deaf and dumb cousin!” Tony laughed, and the others joined in. “I always knew part of that was true, but now you’ll have to fill the description completely.”

“Okay,” Max laughed. “I’ll be deaf and dumb if it means I can help and at the same time keep from getting myself shot as a spy.”

“Maybe we can pick up a German uniform for you,” Dick said, “and then your German will come in mighty handy. Come to think of it, I’m going to keep on the lookout for a spare uniform.”

“Make me a high officer, if you get me a German uniform,” Max said. “I’d like to be more than a private for a while, especially if I’ve got to wear a Nazi uniform. It would be fun to get in a Colonel’s uniform and march up to a company of soldiers and order them to jump in the lake and drown themselves. They’d do it, too! They’re just that crazy about obeying orders if the orders are barked by a guy with enough gold braid on him.”

“But I don’t speak German or Italian, either one,” Slade said. “What about me?”

“Boom-Boom, you stay right here,” Dick said. “In the first place, you came along to blow up a dam. You can also be mighty useful by nursing our lieutenant back to life and health. Somebody’s got to keep on tap here, anyway, all the time. You’re elected.”

“All right,” Slade said. “But I must have a chance to look over that dam once or twice before I go to blow it up.”

“We’ll visit the dam, all right,” Dick said. “But that will come later. Now here’s the schedule, and for most of you guys it’s easy.”

They all looked at the young sergeant expectantly.

“If too many strange Italians from the north, including a deaf and dumb one, land in this town all of a sudden, some folks will be suspicious. So this first night Tony and I go down to the town to look for his uncle Tomaso or find out whatever we can. Depending on what we learn—we’ll lay our plans then.”

“And the rest of us just sit here?” Vince demanded.

“Yes, you just sit here,” Dick said. “Tony and I will leave as soon as it grows dark. If we don’t come back by two a.m. Vince and Max are to come looking for us. Clear?”

They all nodded in agreement. Then Dick went in for another look at Lieutenant Scotti, followed by Slade.

“Isn’t there really anything we can do, Boom-Boom?” he asked uneasily.

“Not a thing, sergeant,” Slade replied. “I’ll confess I’m worried about the lieutenant, but there’s nothing we can do. Anything we might try would prove more dangerous than doing nothing at all now.”

Dick shook his head and went back to get the Italian peasant clothes. He tossed the sets of clothing to each man according to his size, and then stripped off his uniform and put on the trousers and shirt which Scotti had bought from an Italian many miles to the south.

“If the guy that owned these knew how they were being used,” Tony said, as he got into his things, “I’ll bet he’d be mighty happy. When this is over I want to look him up and tell him that his clothes helped in the big defeat of the Germans at Maletta.”

They ate a meal from their ration cans then, and watched the sun sink over the ridge of hills to the west. By seven o’clock it was completely dark, and Dick Donnelly—once more using the name of Ricardo Donnelli—and Tony Avella started down the hill to visit the town of Maletta.