by Ed Ruggero
“No, stick to the road. Keep them in sight. Just try to get around as many of these guys as you can.”
Colianno used every wide spot to swerve around whatever truck or jeep was ahead of them. Some drivers cursed, some ignored him, some laughed because he worked so hard and often wound up just one vehicle length ahead of where he’d been. A few tried to get out of his way, and Harkins waved his thanks.
Traffic thinned at the southern end of the lake, and for a moment Harkins lost sight of the ambulances.
“There,” Colianno said. “Peeling off to the right.”
Harkins raised his binoculars and found two of the ambulances. They’d picked up speed.
“Is that them?” Colianno asked. “I only see two.”
“I don’t…”
The rear ambulance hit a crater, springing open the back doors and giving Harkins a look inside. There were at least four people, and the man closest to the door was definitely Boone. The surgeon reached to pull the doors shut again, nearly lost his balance. Then he shifted something from right hand to left to get a better grip.
“Shit,” Harkins said. “Boone’s got a pistol.”
“Did you see Moira and Kathleen?”
“I think so. There were definitely four people in there.”
Harkins watched his driver. The paratrooper kept shifting from first to second and back again, jamming the clutch and the accelerator. When he took his hand off the gearshift he rubbed it obsessively on his leg.
“Look,” Harkins said. “Lindner is the biggest threat to Boone. There’s no reason for him to hurt the women.”
Colianno looked over at Harkins. “He’s got no play here,” he said, his eyes off the road. “What’s he going to do? Drive home to the States? Once we catch up he’s backed into a corner. He’s liable to do anything.”
The jeep crashed into the bumper of the truck in front of them. There were a half-dozen GIs in the back, perched on wooden ammo crates.
“What’s your hurry, Mac?” one of them yelled down at them. “Afraid there won’t be any Krauts left when you get there?”
“When we catch up I can talk to him,” Harkins said to Colianno. “Get him to release Kathleen and Moira, maybe Lindner. If he knows the game is up he might just surrender.”
“What fucking world are you living in, Lieutenant?” Colianno said, his voice strained. “He shot his goddamn first sergeant to death! He went there to kill one of his own nurses, and she’s in that ambulance with him!”
“I still think I can talk him down,” Harkins said. “You got a better idea?”
The truck ahead moved, and Colianno pushed the gearshift hard.
“Yeah, I shoot him in the head as soon as I can get a bead on him.”
* * *
The first round of incoming artillery exploded just off the track, and twenty yards ahead of the ambulance. Shrapnel peppered the side of the vehicle.
“Holy shit, that was close,” Boone said.
Donnelly, unable to hide her disgust, said, “The close ones poke holes in the side. You might get a Purple Heart yet, Colonel.”
“Nurse Donnelly,” Boone yelled over the noise. “It’s your precious Doctor Lindner who betrayed you, betrayed us all.”
The next rounds of incoming were farther from the road; the ambulance moved again.
Donnelly waited to see where Boone was going with this. Ronan, who believed that Boone came to the house in Palermo to shoot her, not Drake, had not said a word since Boone got into the vehicle.
“He’s a spy, you see,” Boone said. “Not a good spy, but a spy nonetheless. Did you know he was treating a senior American officer? Probably pumping him for information. And he turned on his accomplice. Killed Stephenson to cover up what they’d been doing together.”
Donnelly looked at Lindner, who appeared as defeated as any prisoner she’d ever seen. Boone was a liar, of course, but Harkins had fingered Lindner as a spy. Maybe that just made him a good German.
“And what was it that they were doing together, Colonel?” Donnelly asked. “Because it looked to me, looked to everybody at the hospital, that you were the one doing favors for Doctor Lindner. Letting him stay on while you shipped other POWs as quick as we got them patched up.”
Ronan kicked her, but Donnelly was too angry to stay silent.
“You’ll see,” Boone said. “It will all come out in the end.”
Lindner said something that was lost amid the engine noises.
“What?” Donnelly asked.
“I did not kill anyone.”
Boone hit Lindner in the face with the pistol. There was a crunching sound and the German curled up on the floor of the ambulance, cursing. Donnelly helped him sit up again.
“Doctor Lindner came back to help take care of our wounded,” Donnelly said.
And I talked him into coming back.
* * *
The German barrage was perfectly planned, the incoming rounds landing in a tight pattern almost exactly aligned with the road about six hundred yards ahead of them.
“Christ, that looks bad,” Colianno said as the blasts silhouetted several vehicles.
“Looked like every round hit the road.”
“The Krauts target highways and intersections, even if they’re not sure anyone’s there,” Colianno said. “We do that, too.”
“Does that mean they’re attacking?”
Colianno shrugged, which Harkins did not find reassuring.
He couldn’t tell if the ambulances—they were chasing only two now—were on the other side of where the artillery hit or had been hit themselves. Up ahead, a handful of the American vehicles pulled off, hesitant to go forward.
“Let’s push,” Harkins said. Colianno drove a zigzag course.
According to his map, they’d pass through a narrow valley up ahead before reaching the coast. Another choke point and a chance to catch the ambulance.
They drove around the craters left by the artillery. Two American trucks were on fire, and a handful of men were carrying wounded and dead away from the wreckage. To his right, on the other side of a roadside ditch, Harkins saw a medic holding a plasma bottle above a GI laid out on the ground, while a chaplain wearing a purple stole made the sign of the cross over the wounded man. He thought of Patrick, was sure his brother also ignored incoming fire when a soldier needed him.
Two jeeps that had rolled or driven off the road were trying to climb out of the ditch. They needed a tow.
“Hey!” a sergeant called to Harkins. “Give us a hand here!”
Harkins turned to Colianno, who said, “No way we’re stopping.”
He was still speeding, still careening around the wrecks, when the first tank rolled in from the left, fast, nearly clipping the front of their jeep. It was a Sherman, thirty tons of steel, hell-bent for somewhere else.
“Shit!” Colianno said as he turned sharply and their two passenger-side wheels slipped into the ditch. They skittered along for ten or fifteen yards, Harkins sure that they were going to roll, before Colianno got control and dragged them back onto the track.
That’s when the second tank came up behind them.
Harkins heard the whine as the big machine downshifted, turned halfway in his seat to see the tank driver, the top of his head just visible above the coiled tow cable and white star on the front glacis plate. Nine feet above the road, his upper body sticking out of the turret, the tank commander waved at them furiously to get out of the way.
Although there was no hope of anyone, even Colianno, hearing him, Harkins yelled, “Where the hell do you want me to go?”
Colianno pulled as close to the tank ahead as he could, he and Harkins breathing in fumes from the engine grate directly in front of them. The commander of the lead tank, also standing in his turret, saw them, lifted his goggles to get a better view. He shook his head, snapped the goggles back in place, and turned to the front, his right hand resting on the big .50 caliber machine gun mounted atop the tank.
Harkins l
ooked left and right, where the hills on either side rose to pinch the road. This was the bottleneck he’d seen on his map. The tanks were in a terrible hurry to get through. Get hit with artillery here, with no room to maneuver, they were just big targets, thick-skinned but hard to miss. Colianno and Harkins had jumped on a fast-moving train, with no place to stop, no way to get off.
They were obviously within range of enemy artillery. If a German counterattack reached them—if panzers suddenly appeared on top of the ridges, for instance—they were in a shooting gallery.
It was nearly full dark now, and Harkins could see only a few yards on either side, could just make out the tank they were following. The road curved to the left, and for a moment he thought they might be able to get off to the right, maybe pull ahead of the tanks. Then the ground to the right dropped away sharply—they were on the side of a hill now—and just as suddenly the Sherman ahead of them stopped.
Colianno stood on the brakes, their hood coming within a foot of the tank’s hot grate. He backed up a few feet to get out of the exhaust, and heard the commander of the lead tank yelling at someone in the road, but nothing moved.
“I’m going up,” Harkins said. “Bring the jeep up when you can.”
“I want to come, too, Lieutenant,” Colianno said.
“I know you do.” He actually felt sorry for the kid. “I’m only stepping around this tank.”
Harkins had just reached the front of the Sherman when its commander climbed out of the turret, stepped onto the deck, then jumped to the ground. Just ahead, a wrecker had attached a tow cable to a fuel truck; the fuel tanker’s right wheels had slipped off the edge of the slope, and the whole rig was listing toward the drop-off.
“How long you been at this?” the tank commander asked the four GIs trying to pull the fuel truck free. Harkins could hear the strain in the man’s voice.
“Half an hour,” someone said.
“I can’t wait around.”
The tank commander was dark-skinned, with a wide face and the raccoon look of a man who wore goggles in the sun.
One of the GIs jumped in the wrecker and gunned the engine, but the fuel truck was well and truly stuck.
“Sorry, fellas,” the tank commander said. “Stand back.”
He climbed back on the Sherman and put on his helmet with the headset. He said something and, below him, Harkins saw the driver acknowledge the command. Then the tank rolled forward, its left track clawing at the rock face. The GIs on the wrecker jumped clear, and when the tank got close, it simply shoved the wrecker and fuel truck over the side of the hill. The mass of steel rolled over—the two vehicles still connected by the tow cable—until it reached the bottom of the ravine, a long sixty or seventy feet below.
The lead Sherman passed, and Colianno was right behind.
“Did he just shove that whole thing over the side?” Colianno asked as Harkins jumped in.
“Yeah. Let’s not get in his way.”
* * *
The latest rounds of German artillery exploded behind them, and as the ambulance rolled forward Boone tried to stand and look out the small windows in the rear doors, but he couldn’t keep his footing.
While his back was turned, Donnelly pulled two scalpels from the medical kit, tucking one into her trouser pocket and gesturing for Ronan to do the same. Lindner was on the floor between them, his cheek swollen and eyebrow cut from where Boone had hit him with the pistol. It wasn’t clear if he saw what they were doing.
Boone had just looked at his watch, asked, “How long have we been driving?” when another barrage knocked the vehicle sideways. Something tore a hole in the ceiling of the van.
The ambulance picked up speed, swerved. Donnelly felt its rear wheels slipping, and then they were airborne, the four of them thrown around as the ambulance rolled over once, twice. Someone’s boot kicked Donnelly hard in the face, and she heard what might have been a bone cracking as one of the men—she thought it was Boone—grunted out a lungful of air.
Donnelly was still conscious when the vehicle stopped rolling, the ambulance on its side, rear doors flung open. Outside, the artillery continued to fall, though farther away, the flashes lighting up the dusk. Men screamed.
“Moira!” she called.
“Get out,” Ronan said. Dragging her medical bag, she pushed Donnelly on the butt as the two women clambered for the opening.
Donnelly, out first, turned to pull her friend clear. Inside the ambulance they could see a tangle of arms and legs.
“Get away from the vehicle,” Donnelly said.
“Lindner,” Ronan said.
“Get clear first.”
Another round of artillery made her point, and the women dove for the lip of the road, their feet sliding downslope. They pressed their faces into the rocks and dirt as two more rounds banged brightly nearby. There was a loud whompf that sucked the air from around them, then a giant, blinding fireball as the fuel tank on a nearby truck exploded.
Donnelly shielded her eyes and made out four, no five jeeps and trucks scattered like broken toys along the road. As her eyes adjusted, she saw men staggering. A figure lurched away from a flaming vehicle, a man on fire, his clothes, hair, shoes consumed, not even screaming anymore. He staggered two steps, fell to his knees, burning like he was made of straw, like he’d been marinated in gasoline. As she watched, another GI stepped close and shot the man with a pistol.
Donnelly looked away, asked Ronan, “You OK? In one piece?”
“I got a bump on my head, I think,” Ronan said. “You think Lindner and Boone are dead?”
“That would make things easier, wouldn’t it?”
Then Donnelly heard the call that got her moving.
“Medic!”
“Let’s go,” Donnelly said, grabbing the heavy medical bag by one of its handles. She scrambled to her feet, Ronan on the other handle as, stride for stride, they ran toward the wrecked vehicles and wounded men.
* * *
The artillery was close now.
“There should be an intersection up ahead,” Harkins said. It was too dark to read the map, so he stuffed it into the pocket behind his seat.
“There’ll be a road coming in from the left, a Y intersection. Maybe we can get past the tanks there.”
“Fire up ahead,” Colianno said.
An orange light reflected off the hillside above them.
The lead tank pivoted sharply to the left, and suddenly Harkins could see a column of flame, a few vehicles scattered, some GIs running, backlit by a burning truck.
“An ambulance!” Harkins said. “On the other side of that fire.”
The lead tank had turned to hug the base of the slope on the left, but the commander, probably because he could not see past the bright flames, stopped the big Sherman. Colianno swerved to the right to avoid plowing into the exhaust grate again, but he took it too sharp. There was a small berm on the side of the road; the jeep hit it, front wheels off the ground, leaned over in midair for a long second, and landed on its passenger side. Harkins pulled his legs in at the last second, narrowly avoiding getting one or both crushed.
“You OK?” Harkins asked Colianno, who landed on top of him. The jeep’s wheels were still spinning, but the engine sputtered to a stop.
Colianno got to his feet, rummaged among the things flung from the jeep until he found his rifle and ammunition. He turned toward the ambulance, which was on its side some hundred yards away, its red cross insignia lit by the fire.
“You’re staying here,” Harkins said. “We don’t know if that’s the right ambulance, and I want to be ready to roll. So get the jeep right side up, then come forward.”
Colianno used both hands to throw his rifle to the ground. “I hate being your fucking driver!”
Harkins went four or five steps, heard the sound of incoming artillery. Colianno reacted first, yelled, “Incoming!”
Harkins threw himself forward, jamming his chin on the ground, biting his tongue and eating dirt.
Four explosions, close together, lit the ravine below them. A spray of steel shrapnel spent its energy going up, then came down on Harkins, harmless as rain.
Harkins pulled himself upright, knee and chin throbbing, and hurried toward the ambulance. On the other side of the circle of light thrown by the fire, he could see the lead Sherman nosing forward, pushing an overturned truck. GIs on the ground were yelling at the tank commander, who screamed back.
“Get out of my way!”
Although the road was a bit wider because of the intersection, his tanks were still trapped, incoming artillery threatening to turn them into giant torches.
Harkins ran to the front of the lead Sherman, heard a man on foot yell, “Stop! We got wounded on the road!”
Harkins turned, squinted to see through the firelight, saw Donnelly and Ronan beside a wounded GI. Donnelly was on her knees, pressing straight down with both hands on the man’s shoulder, maybe his chest. Ronan worked in a big satchel, a medical kit, pulling things free and talking fast.
“Kathleen,” Harkins said, running to them.
Donnelly looked up at him, then back down at her patient, whose shoulder and upper torso were ripped open.
“Press on this,” she told Harkins. “Right where my hands are.”
Harkins thought he had a good grip, but when Donnelly pulled away a geyser of blood shot through his fingers, spraying his chin and mouth.
“Press hard, goddamn it!”
Harkins did as he was told; the bleeding subsided.
“Clamp,” Ronan said.
Donnelly took something from Ronan, then slipped her hands below Harkins’ fingers. “Move.”
The geyser came back. Donnelly jammed the pointed end of the clamp into the pool of meat and upwelling blood. The stream stopped.
“Where else is he hit?” Donnelly asked Ronan. The two women started their head-to-toe examination of the GI. The man’s right eye had been slashed; his left was open, rolled back, showing white. Harkins hoped he was unconscious.
He sat on his heels, heard a GI shout behind him, turned to see the lead Sherman moving toward them, slowly, a crawling beast. He jumped up, ran straight at the tank, and leaped for the front deck. He caught the edge of the driver’s hatch and crawled up to the turret, face-to-face with the commander.