Sons of Thunder (27 page)

“Medic!” The shouts pushed him to his feet. Black smoke billowed from the fractured chateau, the door now rubble.

“Markos!”

Fire torched the building, flames like forked tongues licking from the doorways.

Screams, the horror of the injured as they spilled from the building, too many on fire, jolted Dino to himself. He grabbed a sandbag, used it to put out the flames on a man—left him groaning in the dirt even as he raced around the end of the building.

The servants’ entrance. Black smoke choked the hallways, blinding. He pushed in, but it punched him back. He fell to the earth, his lungs wracking.
Markos!

Debris continued to spit from the fire, even as he scrabbled to his feet, fled to the backyard of the chateau.

Soldiers had pushed a ladder up to the third-story window, some carrying patients down, others managing on their own.

There. Of course Markos helmed the evac from the window, hauling men from the burning recovery rooms, gripping their arms as they slid down the ladder. Men at the bottom caught them to safety even as an explosion crumpled another section of building.

Dino ran to the ladder, braced a patient sliding down, then yoked his arm over his shoulder as he looked up. “Get out of there, Markos!”

Soot blackened Markos’s face. “Right behind you!”

Dino stumbled away, toward a hedgerow where a cadre of soldiers was building a hasty barricade of vehicles and hay bales.

He eased the man to the grass, torn between checking his vitals or racing back for another victim when he heard it.

The high buzz of the second Stuka, on an attack run toward the chateau. He turned, spied Markos still in the window.
“Get out of there!”

Markos threw a leg over the frame, then the other, then, as the morning sun glinted off the silver hull of the incoming bird, he balanced a man over his shoulder and stumbled down the ladder.

The Stuka strafed the yard.

Dirt chipped up. Dino ducked into the hay bales.

He watched with sickness as the bullets pinged the ladder. It crumpled, and Markos dropped like a brick.

“No!” He hit the ditch as the second fighter dropped its payload onto the hospital.

CHAPTER 20

Dino expected an explosion that would decimate the rest of the hospital, crush his brother under the rubble.

But…nothing.

He raised his head, his hands still over his face.

No phosphorous explosion, no rock and debris as the chateau collapsed. The entire yard turned eerily silent.

“Misfire!”

He heard the word, and it scooped out his breath. But the bomb could still go off—jostled by falling debris, or even a stray bullet.

Markos lay crumpled beside the crushed ladder, his leg clearly broken even as he pushed himself up, grabbed his gun.

He fisted the uniform of the hurt soldier, as if to pull him away, but the soldier came to life, crawling to safety under his own power.

The Stuka that had dropped its payload banked in the sky.

Dino’s mouth opened as heat crawled up inside him. A heat like the night he saw Kostas, his eyes wild, tackle Theo to the stones. Back then, the hot rage propelled him into the fight. Now as he saw it replayed, he recognized the truth.

A part of him had…hated Markos. Hated him for being bigger, and better, and smarter. Hated him for owning the sea, and Sofia’s beautiful love.

Hated him for being the brother who kept them safe, and endured Uncle Jimmy’s rage…and fought to keep his promise.

A promise Dino couldn’t quite wield.

He’d spent too much of his life with the specter of Markos telling him who he wasn’t. Who he’d never be, caught inside his failures.

Thankfully, he’d left that hatred, that Dino behind.

But maybe…maybe he hadn’t quite been healed from the wounds of that hatred.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

What if he wasn’t supposed to leave his mark on the world? Perhaps he was simply supposed to be a real friend. A real brother.

The Stuka’s engine cut through him, galvanized him to his feet.

A hand reached out, grabbed him.

“Doc—no!”

Vivi crawled up beside him, her face bloodied, her uniform ripped. “It’s going to go off!”

“He’s my brother!”

“You can’t save everyone!”

He pulled her hand away. “But I can save him.”

God will deliver you.

The voice came now, soft, firm, and he recognized it.

Maybe I was meant to save him
. Maybe in fact, for the first time, he could keep his promise. To Markos.

To Sofia.

Take care of her.

He wrenched away from Vivi. The Stuka devoured the yard, even as he fought his way to Markos. Dirt bit his face, his heart already outside his body.

Markos was struggling to his feet, shooting at the sky. He stumbled a step before he pitched into the dirt. “Go back! Go back!”

Then Dino had his hands on him, clenched into his uniform. He threw his arm over his shoulders. “Move it, brother!”

Markos had at least two inches, probably thirty pounds on him. Still, Dino lifted him to his feet without effort—

The Stuka chipped at the building.

Dino had taken three steps into the open when he felt it. The rumble of the earth, a convulsion.

He threw his brother to the ground and fell on top of him as the chateau exploded.

“It’s okay, Dino, I’m here, I’m here.”

He was under the pier, the water chipping away bones, salting his mouth, choking him. He coughed, splattered out the sea. Still it seared his chest to breathe.

Cold, so cold.

“Markos.” The starless sky blackened his eyes. Markos’s arm bracketed his shoulders, holding him to his warmth.

“Don’t try to talk.” Markos’s voice, husky and calm in his ear. “Oh, God, please.”

“Don’t let him find us,” Dino said. “Yannis will kill us.” The man’s drunken rage still tremored through Dino’s body.

Something about Markos’s voice… “Oh, no, Dino. He won’t find us. I won’t let him find us.” His words broke at the end. Maybe Markos was afraid too.

The waves. They tossed him, again filled his lungs. He coughed, and pain speared him in half.
I’m
…

Voices churned over him, screaming, and a rumble of a faraway explosion.

Light crackled across his vision, and it cleared.

Not Zante. Not the night of Theo’s wedding under the docks.

Markos, blood dripping from the open wound on his face, leaning over him, his jaw set tight. Eyes that held Dino, so dark he could barely wrench away. Behind him, smoke churned through the sky, the sound of Tommy guns tearing it apart.

Cold, so cold.

“I’m hurt, aren’t I?” His voice emerged roughened, even garbled.

A muscle pulled in Markos’s jaw. His eyes told Dino the truth as he met his gaze. “You can’t die on me, little brother. Please, don’t die on me. I need you.”

He couldn’t feel his body, not really—amazing how the pain he’d remembered had simply vanished. Yet, with Markos’s words, something unhinged inside him. A lightness, as if a fist around his chest had released. He sucked in a quick breath, let it fill him.

Smiled.

“Dino?”

If he’d had use of his hands, he would have cupped one around Markos’s neck, maybe drawn him close, making sure Markos could see his eyes.

“We’ll go back, won’t we?”

Markos stared at him, nodded.

“We’ll go back, and Mama will make us bread. We’ll drink retsina from the cellar.” The cold began to dissipate, become nothing.

“Medic!” Markos clutched the front of his fatigues. “I need help over here!” A tear raked down his face as he turned to Dino. “Don’t you die on me!”

He wanted to crawl his fingers to Markos’s hand, to pull out a new promise.

“I love her too, you know. Sofia. I love her too.”

Markos shook his head, his face twisted. “Hang on, Dino. Please, hang on.”

A medic appeared in his vision. He gave Markos a grim look, shook his head.

Markos lunged for the medic even as he vanished. He didn’t quite mask the stricken look before he again met Dino’s eyes.

“It’s okay.”

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. That is how you will discover the man you want to be.

“I love you, brother,” Dino said softly, his eyes wet.

Markos bent over him. “
Dino!”

Beyond him, the smoke parted. Dino glimpsed the faint, Ionian blue sky, cool and deep, beckoning him even as he spread his arms and dove.

SECTION THREE

Sofia