In 1944, when Danny was 20, he met Hooper in a bombed-out basement in Cassino, Italy. The German-occupied town blocked the Allied advance to Rome, and for five months Danny had fought to take Cassino, suffering through a nightmarish winter of combat, a winter when he dreamed nightly of his own death. Then in May, when the battered town at last fell, he got cut off from his unit and found himself alone on a narrow cobblestone street, bracketed by the crumbling walls of what were once people's homes. He moved slowly. He crept along the street with his back pressed hard against a stone wall, the breech of his BAR snug against his heart and his left hand sweating tight around the handguard. He took a short step and the wall behind him crumbled; and he fell backward onto a flight of stairs, tumbling several feet to a dark basement. When he sat up he saw Hooper sitting on a pile of rubble dressing a wound in his thigh.

"You all right?" Hooper asked.

Danny looked himself over. "Seem to be," he said. He nodded toward Hooper's thigh. "What about you?"