Wireless industrial networks differ in many respects from other types of wireless networks. In particular, since many applications impose tight real-time and reliability requirements at the same time, and packet sizes tend to be small. In this paper we design a simple and practically implementable protocol in which relaying and packet combining work together to improve the probability that packets are delivered within a prescribed deadline over fading channels. The results indicate that such a combination can be fruitfully employed in wireless industrial networks.