Ettore had never accepted that it was an accident: his father had been flying the Piper Cub himself, and he’d been an excellent pilot. He remembered with a shiver how he and Emilia had sat up for hours in the apartment that night, waiting for their parents to come home: how it had dawned on him slowly that he would never see them again, how one part of him, even now, refused to believe it.
His father, Count Giuseppe, had been a physicist who had worked with Nobel prizewinner Enrico Fermi in Italy, and in the USA: Fermi and his wife, Laura, had stayed frequently at their New York apartment. Ettore was convinced that his father had been too smart to make the pilot error they’d attributed to him. The fact was that the count had known something was going to happen: he’d dropped hints about the dangers of the research he was engaged in. Then there’d been the business of the Codex – the elaborate process his father had gone through to make sure that its hiding place was secure and that no one would be able to find it without Ettore and his sister. The hypnosis idea had come from one of the count’s scientist-friends: Ettore had never understood why the Codex was so important, but he’d accepted the hypnotism process: it had seemed like a game at the time. He’d only remembered later that his father had insisted it was necessary in case anything happens to me.
Ettore’s only grudge against his sister was the fact that she’d made him return to Italy, a primitive country whose sole advantage was that they played real football – not the nonsense that passed for football in the States. Running off to join the partisans had been his most defiant act of rebellion: Emilia hadn’t liked it, but she hadn’t been able to stop him either. Exactly why he’d done it, he didn’t know, only that he’d felt at home with the Giappisti, and that the operations he’d taken part in had been a thrill – especially the time he and his friend had rescued the giant British parachutist and machine-gunned a pair of Krauts.
Now he was paying the price of his stupidity in wearing the Falconi signet ring on his foray to Orsini: it had been a giveaway, although judging by what he suspected had happened to his friends, his fate would have been sealed whatever. What really puzzled him was how the Krauts had known they were going to be there: it smacked of betrayal, he thought.
The road curved gracefully through avenues of trees like blazing fire-beacons, exploding in candy-apple red and chartreuse, dripping burnished leaves that lay across the gravel in burnt-orange drifts. The driver increased speed as the land flattened out through fields of sun-browned grass: the vast panorama of the valley unfolded, descending gracefully, rising up through galleries of woods like angry wounds in ox-blood and plasma yellow, up to a wavy line of peaks draped in purple shadow. The sky was poised and fuming: great rifts of grey cloud were in the process of throttling a golden effervescence which burst forth momentarily in spokes of brilliant light.
There was a checkpoint at the junction where the Orsini road met the main road from Ancona to Fabriano. Over Kaltenbraun’s shoulder, Ettore saw that there were oildrums across the road, barring their way. The checkpoint stood in a circle of sparse trees that cast poles of shadow across the road: beyond it, along the main thoroughfare, stood tangled evergreen hedges taller than a man. A couple of motorcycle combinations were drawn up under the trees: a German soldier with a sub-machine gun observed them placidly from the shadows nearby.
Kaltenbraun swore: the driver pulled up in front of the oildrums. The Hauptsturmführer stood up, gripped the dashboard, gesticulated at the guard, who sidled reluctantly towards the car. ‘Warum haben Sie den Kontrollpunkt nicht geöffnet?’ the officer bawled. ‘Why haven’t you opened the barrier? I sent an alert before we left Orsini.’
The soldier halted a few yards away: at first, Ettore noticed only that he was unusually lean for a Kraut: his tunic hung loose from his shoulders like a tent. His helmet, too, was two sizes too large: it drooped forward across his eyes, shadowing a face that was as thin as a handle, as white and hairless as a child’s.
The soldier shifted slightly on his feet, gripped his weapon: Ettore noticed that it was a Beretta sub-machine gun. Kaltenbraun cursed again, flung open the car door. ‘Salutieren Sie nicht vor einem Offizier? Come on, you oaf – we haven’t got all day.’
The guard flipped back the rim of his helmet with long-tapered fingers: Ettore clocked eyes like sparklers, a pointed nose, keen ferret features, an overcurved mouth twisted in a sardonic grin. For a split second their eyes met: recognition hit him like a thunderbolt. Furetto. In Kraut uniform. The crazy idea that his partisan friend had somehow joined the enemy was just forming in his mind when two things happened in quick succession: Kaltenbraun jumped down from the car, and Furetto shot him with a brisk double tack-tack. The shots snapped like whipcracks: Ettore smelt burnt air and cordite, heard lead jackets thump flesh, saw the Hauptsturmführer hurled backwards with the aggravated look still on his face, felt his body slump against the car’s chassis, saw twin buboes blister his chest, saw gore erupt like the clutchings of tiny red fingers. The Jerry driver snatched at the SMG in the dashboard-brace, was jerked back by an arm like a ship’s-hawser attached to a shock-haired mountain of a man who seemed to have appeared out of the bushes on the right. It was the same giant British parachutist Ettore had helped snatch from the Krauts, in the same ragged clothes, now covered in blood. Ettore saw a blade glitter, clocked a scorpion-sting movement, saw the steel pierce the base of the Jerry’s neck, saw arterial blood jag, saw the giant stab the blade down again and again, plunging it in so deeply that it looked as if he were smashing the Kraut with a fist the size of a baked ham.
The guard to Ettore’s right cocked his Schmeisser, brought it to bear on the big man. Ettore threw himself on the Jerry, swung his manacled hands, knocked him off balance. The Kraut’s SMG stuttered: rounds spivvied up gravel, ricocheted off the road with indignant shrieks. The giant leaned forward, snatched the weapon out of the Jerry’s hands, pointed it at him. The mouth under the bristling black beard crinkled, displayed a graveyard of broken teeth. ‘How do yer say put ’em up in Jerry?’ he chortled. He jabbed the guard in the belly with the SMG-muzzle. ‘Put ’em up, Kamerad!’ he roared.
Ettore had half turned towards the second guard when something that felt like a cannon-ball smacked into the side of his head. His world receded down a dim corridor full of tweetering descants and the brilliant fulminations of dying stars.
When he came round he was sitting against a tree: his head felt like it had been trapped in a door: warm blood was trickling down his cheek. Emilia was crouching over him, dabbing at his head with a bloody handkerchief. His handcuffs were gone: Furetto, no longer wearing his Kraut uniform, stood a little behind his sister, grinning through his teeth.
‘Ettore.’ Emilia swept her flowing locks out of her eyes: tears ran down her cheeks, but she looked relieved. Over her shoulder he saw two men in peasant dress hustling a Kraut into the bushes. One of them was the tubby, trout-faced British parachutist they’d found wandering in the woods: the other he didn’t know – a man with blunt, freckled features and a weight-lifter’s torso. They made the German lie down among the trees, tied his legs with cord. Ettore glimpsed other field-grey bodies lying prone in the trees. Kaltenbraun was gone: only a smear of blood on the road remained where he’d fallen: the dead driver and the other guard had also been moved. The giant was at the barrier, rolling aside the concrete-lined oildrums.
Emilia tried to throw her arms round him: he fended her off. ‘How long was I out?’ he gasped.
‘Only a few minutes. One of the guards hit you on the head by accident.’
Ettore staggered to his feet, cast an edgy glance back up the Orsini road, grabbed his sister’s arm. ‘More Krauts are coming. It’s a trap. It’s a trap.’
At the same moment there came a brutal swatting sound like a boxing-glove hitting a punch-bag, an accelerating drone, an ear-bending crescendo of tortured air.
‘Take cover!’ someone screamed.
Chapter Forty-One
The bomb kerauned into the road tw
enty-five paces short of them with a blinding flash and a seething reflux of firegold and black. Caine, sprawled in the road with his arms around his head, felt the air keedle, felt the earth shimmy, felt his guts convulse. A woft of dust and grit blew over him. Not in range yet. Next one will be. He jumped up, clutched his weapon, shuftied along the Orsini road, clocked smoke-spume lufting from the mortar-shell, saw another Kubelwagen rolling behind it, saw a platoon of Kraut infantry dodging in and out of cover, advancing in fits and starts along the verge.
Caine had planned to take Kaltenbraun’s car: Wallace was already clambering into the driving-seat. He felt a raging certainty, though, that the Krauts would drop the next mortar-round right on her.
‘Leave it Fred!’ he bawled. ‘Go for the Alfa.’
‘Gotcher, mate.’
Trubman was helping Emilia to her feet: she looked pallid and dazed, but unhurt: Ettore and Furetto were picking themselves up. Caine grabbed the guard’s discarded SMG, thrust it at Ettore, put his arm round Emilia’s shoulders. ‘Run!’ he yelled.
The Alfa Romeo was camouflaged behind one of the tall hedges near the main road, no further away than the length of a football field. They ran in a staggered bunch, Furetto and Ettore leading, Wallace jogging along at the rear. They had hardly cleared the barrier when Caine heard the mortar go thwommpppp, heard air scrape, heard the round plop out of the sky with a caustic drone. He dragged Emilia down, hit the deck almost on top of her, saw Wallace and Trubman bite dust a few yards behind. He felt the road rock like an unsteady boat, clocked glitter and flash, heard a squeal of metal, saw the Jerry wagon come apart in a gush of steel spines and white-cored fire, saw her rear end tip as if kicked by a giant foot, saw her crash down, saw black smoke gutter, saw orange flame-tongues lick, felt scorched air blast.
Before the explosion had played out, a Spandau started going bomp-bomp-bompa-bomp: a pattern of tracer fell through the rising smoke-trails, branched into splits of curved lightning that clawed air, chewed up the road surface in ragged bites. Wallace was on his feet, hoisting Trubman with an arm like a gantry, lofting off a spurt of nine milly through the veil of dust and smoke. The enemy gun jabbered in answer, bompa-bompa-bomp. Caine saw Wallace stagger, saw the ribbon of crimson that whipped from his thigh, saw him clutch at it frantically with a box-sized hand, saw him go down on one knee. ‘Oh shit! Christ!’ the big man bellowed. Trubman swivelled, fired his rifle from the waist, tried to haul Wallace up: Caine saw the Welshman knocked off his feet in a cross-hatched updraught of Spandau fire.
Caine’s ears rang: his jaw worked, no words came. He drew Emilia to her feet, saw Ettore and Furetto crouching, staring about in confusion. ‘Go. Go,’ he croaked.
He dashed back to help Wallace and Trubman, splittered a burst left-handed, dug a grenade out of his pocket, pinned it with his teeth, squeezed the handle tight in his palm. He hunkered down by Trubman, saw that the signaller had copped a wound in the shoulder, saw him getting up. Indeterminate shapes bobbed behind the blazing hulk of the Kubelwagen thirty paces away: Jerry small-arms crashed and clattered, rounds flitted past Caine like angry fireflies, stobbed up grit and dust. He lobbed the grenade overarm, heard the fuse click as the handle fell, heard the bomb hit dirt with a metallic clink, heard it detonate with a deep-gut rumble, saw blue-black smoke vortex, saw firedark and burnt-ochre particles spliff. He helped Trubman to his feet, grasped big Wallace’s arm.
They had run only a few yards when another mortar-shell craunched over their heads with an accelerating groan, struck earth in the field to their right, exploded in a brilliant nebula of light, shocked up a beach-comber of earth-sods, blazing bushes, powdered dust. The next one sailed in an instant later, creased a hot furrow over them, fishtailed into the hedge behind which the Alfa Romeo was cammed up: Caine heard the shell ramp, heard the howl of ripping iron, clocked the reverse-cone blast of flame and smoke that flexed like a gnarled fist from the hidden vehicle, saw steel shards and glass-specks blow.
An icy tentacle squirmed down his back: his heart sank. He saw Ettore and Furetto pull Emilia to her feet, saw her thick swale of hair flap like a dark flag, glimpsed a scarlet sliver of blood on her face. She’s hit, he thought. The three of them hesitated in the road for an instant, gaped about them, took in the whorling halos of oily firecloud that pulsated from the wrecked Alfa Romeo like smoke-signals. The Spandau bomped: Jerry sub-machine guns spat and crackled, rounds pitter-pattered along the gravel. The car’s gone. No way of escape. Caine remembered the ditch on the side of the road opposite the junction: they’d reccied it on the way in. It was their only refuge now.
‘The ditch!’ he bawled at them. ‘Get in the ditch!’
Wallace and Trubman were weaving left and right, dodging and ducking: Caine saw Emilia and the others vanish into cover. Jerry rounds beamed past his ears, gouged tiny craters in the gravel. He zig-zagged, dropped, rolled, came up shooting, bliffed double-taps: Ba-bamm. Ba-bamm. They were running across the main road now: Caine saw Furetto’s head pop up over the side of the ditch, then Ettore’s, saw bright trapezoids of fire bloom from their weapons, heard the burp and chitter of rounds, hoped they could shoot straight.
Wallace and Trubman plunged into the ditch: Caine tumbled in after them. It was wide and grassy, deep enough to conceal a kneeling person: Emilia was helping Wallace strap the field-dressing from his ear on to the wound in his thigh. The bandage was already soggy with gore, but the wound wasn’t spurting: the bullet had missed the artery, Caine thought. Emilia was as white as paper, her big brown eyes stood out like wet carnelians on porcelain features: a thin ribble of blood ran down her cheek from a graze on her temple. Trubman was gasping for breath, trying to stem the bleeding from his shoulder with a piece of four-by-two: sweat dribbled off his forehead in diamond drops. Ettore and Furetto were still leaning over the parapet, packing off short bursts at the enemy. Caine beckoned to them: they ducked down.
‘Listen to me,’ he growled. ‘Emilia, you, Ettore and Furetto – you’re civilians. I’m going to give you a chance to escape. I’ll count to three – you get out of here. Try and find your way back to the partisan camp –’
‘How far do you think we’d get?’ Ettore broke in. ‘The Krauts will stop us, torture the secret of the Codex out of us, then kill us. I’m staying here.’
‘I not go anywhere,’ Furetto piped up: his eyeballs were wide: his outsized ears waggled. ‘I stay and fight.’
Emilia looked up from Wallace’s wound: her face was strained, her sleepy eye almost closed: she swept back her hair, dabbed at her head-wound with her soiled handkerchief. ‘Give me a gun,’ she said tensely. ‘If this is it, I may as well fight, too.’
Caine handed her the spare Schmeisser: his throat felt like pasteboard, but there was no water. There was no spare ammunition either: it had all gone up with the car. He was so parched he’d have killed for a swig of liquid. ‘They’re going to rush us,’ he croaked. ‘They know we’re only six, with no heavy weapons and no transport. They outnumber us five to one, and they’ve got mortars and machine-guns. We could surrender, but we’re under a death-sentence anyway.’ He swallowed hard, realized there wasn’t much more to say. I’m back where I started: in a ditch facing the Hun. The Krauts will already have reinforcements on the way.
He glanced at Emilia: with her trim figure, her head cocked to one side, her dark, blood-speckled hair falling over one shoulder in a single swathe, her heavy-lidded eyes glittering like jewels, she looked like some beautiful, slender, hunted deer, he thought. He experienced a pang of regret that the life of this young woman should be cut short, should end here in a hole on the side of the road in her native country, a stone’s throw from where she was born. What about her brother, Ettore? He was still a kid. It’s not right, he thought.
He forced the thought aside. ‘Come on,’ he said, half to himself. ‘We’re not dead yet.’
‘Fuck ’em,’ Wallace boomed.
‘All right,’ Caine said. ‘Check your ammo. If you’ve got gren
ades left, pin ’em. When I give the word, everybody at the parapet. On my order, chuck your grenades and start shooting.’
They still had the advantage, he thought: no matter how many Krauts there were, they had no choice but to advance to contact, and they’d take casualties. Their mortars wouldn’t be any good when their own men were in range: if enough of them went down they might withdraw.
‘I’ve only got ten rounds,’ Trubman chuntered.
‘Fifteen,’ Wallace gurned, clacking his mag back in place.
Caine had twelve: none of them had a full magazine. ‘Make every round count,’ he told them. He cocked his weapon, slid the handle forward: the Schmeisser was a good weapon, but he missed the feel of his Tommy-gun. He wondered if Copeland still had it, what would happen to it if he didn’t come back. Where was Copeland now? Probably on his way to Algeria with the SRS. He was glad to have Wallace and Trubman with him, blamed himself for getting them mixed up in an op that wasn’t their problem. They’d done their time behind the wire: they should have been on their way back to Allied lines by now.
Hun rounds went gooompah along the side of the ditch, cut loose grass tufts and soil, scissored air, buzzed like hornets. A round slapped turf by Caine’s head, spun off with a piercing shriek. He ducked, cocked his Schmeisser, eyed the others grimly. ‘Go!’ he bawled
They came up to the parapet, kept their heads low, dipped behind stones and clumps of grass. Furetto and Ettore were on the left: Caine positioned himself between Emilia and Trubman, with Wallace on the far right. He clocked the twisted frame of the Alfa Romeo half-lodged in a burning hedge, saw smouldering tyres and engine-parts strewn across the road. The enemy was only fifty paces away: the Kubelwagen had halted just short of the junction: the gunner was training his M42, about to give covering fire: Jerry troops were running along the sides of the road, shooting as they came.
Code of Combat Page 25