A Mortal Terror bbwim-6

by James R Benn

  General Lucas ascended the ladder to the bridge deck, his corncob pipe stuck into a corner of his mouth. I wasn’t exactly a fan of “Old Blood and Guts” George Patton, but it struck me that I’d rather have a general like him leading an invasion than this paunchy, grandfatherly figure.

  “Billy, what are you doing here?” Phil Einsmann said, working his way to my corner of the deck. “I thought you’d still be in Caserta, tracking down the Red Heart Killer.”

  “Is that what you press boys are calling him?” I was sorry he’d been given such an interesting nickname. He didn’t deserve it.

  “It’s catchy. I filed a story, but I doubt the censors will release it. Not good for morale back home. You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Habit. I like reporters, I just don’t like telling them anything.”

  “Hell, Billy, I already know about Major Arnold and how you found him stuffed in his own trunk. There hasn’t been another killing since then, has there?”

  “No. And I’m not taking this sea cruise for my health.”

  “So you think the killer is someone in the Third Division?”

  “I didn’t say that. Lots of other guys making this trip.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll tell you something, though. Lucas is not happy with his orders. He thinks he’s being hung out to dry. He’s got twoplus divisions and they’re landing him on a flat plain with mountains almost thirty miles away. The orders from General Clark are pretty vague. Did you pick up on that? To ‘advance upon the Alban Hills.’ What does that mean-take them, or approach them?”

  “Could be either.”

  “Exactly. If Lucas fails, Clark can blame him whichever way it goes, for not taking the hills or for advancing too rapidly. Lucas is between a rock and a hard place, without enough troops to do the job.”

  “Is that why you were asking him what his plans were?” “I was hoping to get him riled up, so he’d say something worth printing.”

  “I think it’s been some time since he’s been riled.”

  “That might be a damn good thing, Billy. A lack of rile could keep some of these boys alive.”

  “Where did you hear all this?”

  “Not everybody clams up in front of reporters. It’s easy to get stuff off the record. On the record and past the censors, that’s another thing. So level with me, Billy, off the record. About the murders.”

  “I wish there was more to tell. Yeah, I think it’s someone in the Third Division. Someone who knew the victims. Someone who had a reason to kill them. Did you ever meet a guy named Stefano Inzerillo? He ran a dive called Bar Raffaele in Acerra.” I didn’t mind trading information with Einsmann, especially since he’d probably not get word one past the censors.

  “You used the past tense, Billy. I take it he didn’t sell his business and move?”

  “He’s moved on to another location. Did you know him?”

  “I know the joint.”

  “Not a spot for high rollers; not like the officer’s club at the palace. What were you doing there?”

  “Billy, I took you for a man of the world. What do you think? It wasn’t for the fine wine. How did Inzerillo get it?”

  “Someone beat him up pretty bad, so he barricaded himself in his bar. Some guy, a GI most likely, set the place on fire.”

  “Jesus. Anzio could be a rest cure after all this.”

  “Did you ever see Lieutenant Landry there?”

  “The first victim? I don’t know, never met him. Couldn’t tell you. I did see Sergeant Cole there once though.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t know him.”

  “I knew who he was. I only said I hadn’t spoken with him since he got transferred to CID. Father Dare told me he helped get Doc Galante to wrangle a transfer for him. Wait a minute-it would have been Major Arnold who did the paperwork on that. Was Cole’s suicide part of this?”

  “Off the record, I’d call it murder.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  There had been fireworks in the night, and I’d finally understood what “the rockets’ red glare” meant. There were no bombs bursting in the air, but the shoreline took it on the chin. To the north, Anzio and Nettuno glowed a dull orange as smokewreathed fires spread. Kaz and I were on the beach, threading our way between craters, stacks of supplies, engineers spreading steel gratings over the sand for the heavy stuff to cross to the road, and noncoms yelling at GIs to move inland. We trudged up to the main road and watched as landing craft disgorged more and more men. After being crammed onboard ships for more than thirty hours with hundreds of men who had nothing better to do than play cards, sweat, puke, and pray, they looked excited, like kids on a trip to the shore. They laughed and gabbed, peppering their sergeants with insistent questions.

  “Do you think I’ll do all right?”

  “Can I stick with you?”

  “What will you do when we get to Rome?”

  “No,” a sergeant first class barked at them. “I think you’ll piss your pants and run. And don’t come near me if you can’t keep your head and ass down, you’ll just draw fire. You’ll never make it as far as Rome, so don’t worry about it. Now move your ASTP asses and prove me wrong!”

  I watched the GIs following him, the smiles gone from their faces. I hoped the army had actually taught these kids something about warfare when they went to college.

  “Hey Billy!” Phil Einsmann ran up the beach, his only armament a small portable typewriter in a wooden case and his war correspondent’s patch on his shoulder. “Where are you fellas headed?”

  “We’re waiting for a jeep. Looking for a lift?”

  “I have no idea where to go, but I’d rather not walk there.”

  “Here’s Major Kearns,” Kaz said, as a jeep fought its way against the flow of traffic. I’d gone over my suspicions with Kearns about all the connections with the Third Platoon, Cole, the rag doll, the WP grenade, Inzerillo, and the last murder. I left out the part about my kid brother, and my worry that he might cross paths with Red Heart. He might think I was being overprotective. Maybe so. Maybe it was only coincidence, but it all felt wrong. Someone in the Third Platoon had answers. Father Dare was on my list as well. Einsmann, too, for that matter. He seemed to know more than he’d let on, and cropped up at the damnedest times.

  “Boyle, Kaz,” Kearns said as he got out of the jeep. Not for the first time, I noticed how people liked Kaz immediately, taking to his nickname, responding to his suave continental charm, not to mention the unstated allure of the mysterious scar down his cheek. A surefire combination. “The outfit you’re looking for is headed to Le Ferriere. Father Dare went along with them, since they didn’t have a medic.”

  “Isn’t that unusual?” Kaz said. “For a chaplain to go on a combat patrol?”

  “From what I’ve heard, he stays close to the front lines and does a lot of work with the wounded. He’s picked up some basic medical knowledge, so he’s useful, especially on patrol.”

  “He’s not your average holy Joe,” I said. “How do we find them?”

  “Go back down this road and turn right just before Nettuno. The road signs are still up. Take the Via Cisterna.” Kearns opened a map that showed the village about halfway between the coastline and the Alban Hills.

  “What is their mission?” Kaz asked.

  “To reconnoiter the village, see if any Germans are there. Le Ferriere is a crossroads, just south of the canal. It’ll be a key position if the Germans move in and put up a fight.”

  “You see any Germans yet, Major?” Einsmann asked.

  “A few prisoners, a few corpses,” Kearns said, eyeing Einsmann’s correspondent’s patch. “There was a small detachment in town, but no organized resistance. Might not be the same up the road. You might want to hang back.”

  “No organized resistance doesn’t get the headlines, Major. I’ll stick with these guys and stay out of the way.”

  “You do that. Boyle, get back to me tonight with a report. Corps HQ is a villa in the Piazza del
Mercato in Nettuno. Can’t miss it, just a couple of blocks in from the harbor.”

  “Yes sir,” I said. “You need a lift back?”

  “No, General Lucas is coming ashore, I’ll go back with him. The general and a whole posse of colonels, so find this killer. Whatever you need, let me know. This is going to be hard enough without looking over our shoulder every ten seconds.”

  A snarling growl of engines rose from seaward, and we all turned to watch another formation of fighters head inland to hunt for German reinforcements. Four aircraft, flying low, turning in a graceful arc that would take them parallel to the beach, not across it.

  “Take cover!” I wasn’t the first to say it, but I yelled anyway. I grabbed Kaz and pulled him into a ditch with me, looking up at the planes, knowing I shouldn’t. I couldn’t help myself. It was one of those moments when everything happens fast but you see things with crystal-clear vision, small details blossoming out of a blur, deadly but hypnotic. Bright white lights twinkled from the nose. They looked oddly festive in that split second before the sound caught up and the chatter of cannon and machine-gun fire drove all thoughts but of survival from my mind. Geysers of water sprouted in the surf as the Messerschmitts went for the landing craft and the troops and vehicles piling out of them. They pulled up, split into two pairs, and sped away, ineffectual antiaircraft fire trailing them.

  We stood up and dusted ourselves off as a gas tank exploded somewhere down the beach, leaving black smoke belching into the sea air. Yells, shrieks, and curses rose from the men on the beach, and I watched Major Kearns trot toward the landing craft, looking over his shoulder. He was going to have one helluva sore neck before this was over.

  “Let’s go,” I said. Einsmann piled in back and Kaz navigated, holding the folded map in his lap as it flapped in the breeze. We drove through a cluster of pastel-colored buildings facing the water, the morning sun lighting them beautifully, giving even the blackened, smoldering hole in the roof of one of them a lazy, seaside quality.

  “Where are all the people?” Einsmann asked as we slowed around a curve. “No one’s here. You’d think by now the locals would be out to see all the excitement.”

  “Perhaps they are still hiding in the cellars,” Kaz said.

  “Maybe they’re all die-hard Fascists,” I said.

  “Mussolini certainly was popular here,” Kaz said. “He ordered the Pontine Marshes drained, and created farmland between the shore and the Alban Hills. His government built new towns and farmhouses, populating them with his supporters. I doubt many of the locals will be lining the streets cheering us on.”

  “That’s good stuff,” Einsmann said. “How do you know all this?”

  “Kaz knows everything,” I said, having found that to be true of most everything I needed to know. Ahead, I saw a cluster of GIs around a farmhouse, and pulled over as one waved me down. They were Rangers, and in the dusty courtyard between the house and the barn, the bodies of two German soldiers were laid out. One Ranger was going through their pockets, handing papers to an officer. The rest of them were gathered around six women, a couple of them young and very pretty, the others maybe their mothers and aunts. They were rubbing their wrists, strands of rope scattered on the ground at their feet.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. Two Rangers approached, surveying us with suspicious eyes. One American officer, one British officer, and one correspondent in his own ragtag version of a uniform. I didn’t blame them for pointing their tommy guns in our general direction.

  “We came up the road from Anzio, and found these two Krauts. First ones we saw,” a corporal said, spitting out a stream of tobacco juice in their general direction. “Then we heard these ladies hollering inside the barn. From what we can make out, a German officer was bringing a detail this morning to execute them.”

  “What for?”

  “Leaving a restricted area. Seems like anyone left in the coastal zone has to have papers to leave. They took a truck to Rome to buy food on the black market, and almost made it back. The Germans nabbed ’em and were going to shoot them in the morning, once they had an officer on hand.”

  “Good thing he was delayed. Kaz, ask them about Rome, and how many Germans are between here and there.”

  Kaz and Einsmann went over to the group, and were soon pulled into a swirl of kisses, embraces, and hands raised to heaven and back to ample breasts in thanks. It looked positively dangerous.

  “We’re looking for the road to Le Ferriere,” I said to the corporal.

  “Keep going, right around the bend,” he said, pointing to a curve ahead. “Sign is still up. Looks like we caught the Krauts flat-footed. Be careful going up that road, though. By now they gotta have heavy stuff moving in.”

  “Or maybe that officer and a firing squad.”

  “Yeah, be nice to turn the tables on the bastards.” He spit again, sending another splat of brown juice on the ground, as he looked at the women. “Looks like your Limey pal made out okay for himself.”

  Kaz returned to the jeep, a young girl on his arm, trailed by the other women, all talking at the same time, mostly to Einsmann.

  “I told them he was a famous reporter, and would put their names in the newspaper for their relatives in America to see,” Kaz said. “But Gina has something to tell us. Di’al tenente quello che mi hai detto,” he said, patting her on the arm.

  “ Ci sono pochissimi soldati tedeschi a Roma,” Gina said proudly, smiling at Kaz and taking his hand.

  “Very few German soldiers in Rome,” he translated. “Mostly military police.”

  “They must have come through the German lines,” I said.

  “ Hai visto i tedeschi fra qui e Roma? ” Kaz asked her.

  She shook her head no and unleashed a torrent of Italian, gesturing toward the two dead Germans.

  “None,” he said. “They drove to Rome and back and were only caught when three Germans left their post on the beach and came to the farm to look for food. They caught them unloading the truck, and tied them up in the barn. They told them when their officer came in the morning they would be shot. Then one of them drove off in the truck and these unfortunates stayed to guard their prisoners. Gina says the Germans moved most people out of the area, and let only those who were needed to work or farm stay. The penalty for travel without a permit is death.”

  “Seems like the locals are friendlier than you expected,” I said, noticing how Gina had linked her arm with Kaz’s.

  “Yes, it appears that hunger trumps politics,” Kaz said. He tipped his service cap to the women, and kissed Gina on the cheek, which raised a howl among the older ladies, who pulled Gina into their midst. I pulled out chocolate bars from a pack in the jeep, handed them around, and all was forgiven.

  “That was a story,” Einsmann said, writing in his notebook as the jeep rumbled along. “U.S. Army Rangers rescue Italian beauties from Nazi execution. My editor will love it, the readers will lap it up, and most importantly the army censors will like it. Maybe I can get it out tonight from headquarters.”

  “If what Gina said was true, that’s the big story,” I said. “No Germans between here and Rome. I wonder if General Lucas knows.”

  “You can’t go by a story a pretty girl spins for you,” Einsmann said. “Not without corroboration. You really think the Germans are dumb enough to leave this whole area undefended?”

  “There’s times I don’t think too highly of our own brass,” I said, turning right at an intersection where a faded white road sign pointed to Le Ferriere. “Don’t see any reason why they should be any smarter on the other side.”

  The road was straight and narrow, with low-lying fields on both sides. Kaz pointed out the occasional farmhouse, a two-story stone structure, in the middle of a plowed field. At each one, I expected a machine to open up on us, but there was nothing but silence. We passed a farmer turning his field, and he looked at us with indifference. We were uniforms, and uniforms are bad for farmers. They mean crops churned up by tank treads, houses
occupied, food stolen, and that was without the fighting. If General Lucas didn’t move quickly, every one of these stone buildings would become a battleground.

  I sped up, feeling giddy at how alone we seemed, how strange it was to be driving into enemy territory as if on holiday. On the side of the road ahead, I spotted a vehicle on its side in the ditch. It was a German Kubelwagen, a cross between a jeep and a command car, recognizable by the spare tire mounted on the sloped front hood. Kaz had the Thompson submachine gun out before I could even slow down. I pulled over about ten yards short and cut the motor, listening for any sign of movement. Nothing. Kaz and I exchanged glances, nodded, and got out. I motioned for Einsmann to stay put and he was eager to, scrunching down in the backseat, hugging his typewriter to his chest as if it were armor.

  Kaz and I each approached a side of the vehicle. The canvas top was down. Bullet holes dotted the windshield and the hood. The driver was half out of his seat, his neck hanging at an odd angle. Another German, probably thrown from the passenger’s seat, was on the ground next to him. He’d taken a slug or two in the throat, and the ground drank in his blood. We both made a circuit of the Kubelwagen, looking for evidence of another German. The two dead were enlisted men. Was this the detail heading to execute the women? If so, where was their officer?

  Kaz stepped up on the mounded earth beside the drainage ditch that ran along the road. “Billy, come here,” he said.

  I followed, and saw two more bodies. One was a German officer. I could tell by his shiny boots and the gray-green visor cap lying in the mud. He was on his back, his neck arched up and his mouth wide open. His chest rose and fell with a wheezing sound, his eyes gazing at the sky overhead, as if searching for the way to heaven. One hand gripped a tuft of grass, desperately hanging onto this world. His boot heels had dug into the earth, leaving gouges where he’d flailed, as if running away from death. He had two bullet holes in his gut, powder burns prominent around each one. He’d been left to die slowly, and not that long ago.