Lucilla leaned over and kissed Mark.
"Good morning, Mark."
Mark rolled toward the middle of the bed.
"Lucy, this wasn't supposed to happen between us."
"My powerful American friend doesn't think I'm exciting?"
"Lucy, you're most pleasurable at night, like you warned me."
"Is there something wrong?"
Mark sat up and pulled the sheets around him. He motioned for Lucilla to cover her ample breasts. He walked across the room.
"I can see, Lucy, how you could get any man you wanted back when Rome ruled the world and you ruled your husband." For the moment Mark was all business. "I can't say that a guy like me would never have feelings for you."
"So why can't we just make love as we travel as husband and wife?"
Mark leaned forward. "This is war, Lucy. Our mission in Italy comes first. There are times you could like me or even love me too much."
"What's wrong with that?"
"We could in the coming months get ourselves into a situation in which one of us is wounded during our mission."
"If it happened to you, I would come back and get you. Treat your wounds."
"That's just it. If you or I let our feelings for each other get in the way of our mission, we could fail."
Mark let his sheet fall. "It's not that I would never want you. But were I wounded and the success of our mission was hanging in the balance, I would order you to leave me."
"I could never do that."
"Then, as I suspected, we're not ready yet. There's more training ahead of us. You have got to be better trained. Hardened. Ready to kill and walk away from it all."
"What do we do, Mark?"
"I was asked if you were ready yet, or if I should take you through more training. Last night showed me we both need more. So we begin today."
Mark arranged for Lucilla to practice hand-to-hand combat. For this Lucilla faced soldiers much larger than she was. They practiced so hard that Lucilla learned to disarm attackers coming from the front and from behind.
Once she mastered dealing with one opponent at a time, they trained her to face two attackers at a time. She would disarm one with lightning speed and slam her fist onto a vulnerable spot on their bodies and learn to kill when necessary.
At last Lucilla faced Mark himself. She felt it ironic that she would have to practice trying to kill a man that she was beginning to have feelings for.
Nevertheless, Lucilla fought hard to get the better of Mark as he came at her with a rifle and bayonet sheathed for safety. Keeping her wits, she sidestepped him with ease and managed to twist the rifle out of his hands and knock him to the ground.
Then she turned his own bayonet on him. She had bested him at least once.
Mark stood up with a smile. Laying his hand on her shoulder, he said, "You're ready, and I've just volunteered you and me for a dangerous mission."
Lucilla and Mark were dressed in desert camouflage as they loaded their radio, weapons, backpacks, and mission-essential equipment aboard their rubber dingy. Their submarine surfaced. The captain went over their evacuation procedures with both Mark and Lucilla.
Their mission was to report on troop deployments, vehicles, equipment, and weapons available to defend the beaches near Ancient Carthage.
The submarine would surface in twenty-four hours the next night and once more on the next night. After that they would presume that Mark and Lucilla were dead or captured. There would be no more justification to risk a submarine and crew on their mission.
Lucilla and Mark paddled about thirty minutes until reaching the shore. Once ashore they picked up their load and hid their dingy under driftwood and proceeded inland.
When they reached stone ruins as the sun was rising, Lucilla was delighted.
"Oh, Mark, these are the ruins of Ancient Carthage! My father brought me here on a trireme as a young girl. I know these very stones."
"How would you know one from another. The desert winds have carved them for centuries since you were a girl."
"Because of this carved dagger on this stone."
"What of it?"
"Mark, I buried a copper elephant here. Do
You have a minute?"
Mark looked at his watch. "You have five minutes."
In eagerness Lucillia unfolded her small shovel. In two minutes she was clutching a small copper elephant. With tears in her eyes, she handed it to Mark as she filled in the hole and made the sand blend together where she dug.
Mark smiled. "This artifact is an archaeologist's dream. Feel old that you found your toy after only 1700 years?"
"It doesn't matter," Lucilla said as she placed it in her bag.
They proceeded another mile inland, taking advantage of whatever concealment available. When they reached a small hill, they found what they had been seeking. Before them was a whole mechanized German regiment and two Italian regiments. A combined force of five thousand soldiers. In addition there was one battalion of towed Italian artillery.
Mark and Lucilla found drift wood branches and built themselves some concealment and continued to observe the German and Italians through their binoculars. They made notes on their memo books on anything they noticed of significance. To their surprise, a German caravan of staff cars made their way toward their assembly area.
Mark lit up as a general emerged from one of the cars.
"Wow!" He looked at Lucilla. "It's General Rommel. The Desert Fox himself."
"So if we get him, the war's over, Mark?"
"Not by a long shot, Lucy. But we can certainty disrupt them if we got him."
"What are we going to do, Mark?" Lucilla placed her hand on his shoulder looking for reassurance.
"Lucy, this is what I was saying about putting the mission before our lives.". He took hold of her with a serious look on his face. Our mission calls for us to radio our intelligence findings if we cannot meet the submarine tonight."
"You mean that we should communicate what we are seeing now even if we expose ourselves to danger?"
"If we communicate now, our fighter planes can swoop down on them fast and decimate them and maybe get Rommel as well."
"Okay, Mark, I trust you and we can take our chances."
Within minutes Mark had turned down the volume of his small transmitter and began sending the coordinates and strength of the enemy units.
"Lucy, we gotta scram, get out of here fast. My transmission was too long. They may have a fix on our position. We can't wait for nightfall. As they began to make their winding way toward the beach. Just as Mark reached an adjoining wall, he almost laughed aloud at what was written.
. KILROY WAS HERE.
"Maybe I haven't see everything, but on days like these I come close."
But there was no time for laughs as Mark and Lucilla heard the engines of track vehicles in the distance.
"We can't make for our dingy, Lucy. There's no cover, and we can't fight off a whole platoon of Germans."
They managed to elude their pursuers for a few minutes. But then they spotted their probable hiding place. With deliberateness the tracked vehicle with soldiers made their way toward Mark and Lucilla.
As soldiers in the track vehicles began to fire on their position, Mark and Lucilla heard the roar of American fighter planes overhead. The two vehicles in front of them exploded in two mushroom balls of flame.
To their right they could hear the roar of Allied fighter planes dropping bombs and churning up soldiers, track vehicles, and gun emplacements. Fifty caliber rounds tore through desert camouflage nets and set off stores of gasoline. Ammunition then exploded with a deafening roar. For several minutes small arms ammunition rounds shot every which way for several minutes.
The roar was so prolonged that it seemed like Chinese New Year.
"Isn't it dangerous to move now, Mark?"
Mark threw out a yellow smoke grenade.
"Our planes' pilots have been briefed to watch for us th throw out yellow smoke. If they see it, they will look for us to move West and will report our suspected location to headquarters. But they'll also order the submarine not to risk surfacing. So by now They know we are alive at this moment and will be on our way home."
"We're on our own, aren't we, Mark?"
"It's going to take everything we have to get back to Algiers."
"We'll, Mark, if we have to die, I'm happy that we're together."