Mac wingate 7, p.11
Mac Wingate 7, page 11
Wingate looked at the others in the back of the truck. They were looking right back at him. There was suspicion in Manganaro’s face and disbelief in the kid’s. Betty watched him with something close to revulsion. Christ, thought Wingate, they were taking him at face value. They saw the uniform, they heard the commands in German, they really believed he’d gone over to the enemy! He shrugged mentally—if that’s what they thought of him, tough luck. There was nothing he could do about it. So long as they kept quiet about it long enough for him to spring the trap ...
The driver had recovered some of his assurance. He turned the truck off the road, eased it through the stream of refugees, and bounced cautiously along the dirt road westward. Wingate stayed on the running board beside the driver and as they passed the Volkswagen he waved to it to follow behind. It was simply a question of time now. He’d done everything that Giuseppe Campo could have wished for. They were quits from here on in. What happened when they hit that cut was up to Campo. Let’s hope, thought Wingate, that the guy was up to it.
The cut came up ahead of them, deep in morning shadow. There wasn’t a sign of Giuseppe’s men. Knowing exactly where to look and what to look for, Wingate expected to see the telltale line of a-shoulder around the edge of a rock or the slow movement of a gun muzzle tracking their progress. There was nothing. Even the lookout high above the cut had disappeared. It looked as if something had happened to change Campo’s plan. If he’d pulled out altogether, what kind of a situation did that leave Wingate in? He had the armed kraut behind his back and the driver and two more krauts in front. How long could he keep up the charade of being an SS colonel. And when the time came, could he chop all four of the bastards before they chopped him? Maybe the sooner he acted the better. He’d leave it until they made the final turn into the valley and were hidden from the road, then he’d go for the guard behind him first.
They climbed into the cut, the rocks rising sheer and stark on either side. Wingate peered among the sparse cover of thorn bushes, their leaves already half fallen in the autumn air. There was nothing. Suddenly they were in the shade and the chill sense of approaching winter sent a little shiver through Wingate. He could feel the apprehension of the guys beside him in the cab as the truck pushed deeper into the shadows, and behind him he could imagine the guard checking every new feature that came in sight, his finger on the trigger of the submachine gun.
The valley opened up on their right and the driver turned into it. At last they were out of sight of the road.
“Herr Standartenführer?” said the driver, bringing the truck to a stop and looking up at Wingate for instructions.
“Let me take a look,” said Wingate, brusquely in German.
He dropped to the ground, walked ten or twelve yards ahead of the vehicle, then stopped. There was a low rock outcrop to his right, the north side covered with moss. Behind it, Giuseppe and one of his men crouched with a couple of Berettas. Wingate caught them out of the corner of his eye, but he didn’t look at them. The sight of Giuseppe changed the whole scene. The partisans hadn’t pulled out and left him. They must be all around, waiting for a signal from Giuseppe.
“Turn around,” Giuseppe was whispering. “Your woman—get her out of there!”
Wingate turned. The guard in the truck was watching him, the submachine gun cradled in his arms. Behind the guy, lining the sides of the cutting, six or seven of Giuseppe’s men had suddenly appeared. They were covering the truck with a range of weapons and one of them had already gotten a finger hooked through the ring of a grenade.
That same second, something spooked the truck guard. He let fire a quick burst at Giuseppe’s rock cover. Ricochets whined into the air and rock chips struck Wingate in the face. He fired a two-second burst from the Schmeisser over the top of the cab and chopped the guard across the chest with a line of 9-millimeter slugs. The guy spun around under the impact and disappeared behind the cab.
There was silence for a moment. The sudden and unexpected rattle of machine gun fire in the enclosed space of the defile had stunned the three men in the cab.
Wingate yelled, “Brad! Get the hell out of there! Bring the others! Make it snappy!”
Manganaro’s head appeared over the cab. He took in the scene at a glance. A moment later he was helping Kenny Fields and Betty over the truck side, and finally followed with de Lille over his shoulder. He made for Wingate, the other two close behind him. At the same moment, Giuseppe got to his feet and waved the Germans out of the cab.
“You damn near had me fooled, Mac,” said Manganaro, breathing heavily. “In that goddamn outfit, what the hell was I to think?”
Giuseppe’s men came out from behind their cover in the cut and crossed the open ground toward the truck. Two of them got in the cab and restarted the engine. One of them checked the gun hitch while the others climbed over the tailgate and into the back of the truck. One of them yelled to Giuseppe, who was prodding the three Germans ahead of him toward the olive trees. The Germans had dropped their weapons and walked with their hands behind the backs of their heads. Giuseppe yelled back and the man broke into a roar of laughter. Some of the others joined him.
Manganaro cried, “You goddamn bastard, you can’t do that!” then screamed at Giuseppe in Italian.
Giuseppe ignored him.
“Mac!” screamed Manganaro. “For Christ’s sake, stop the bastard! He’s gonna chop those krauts! They’re prisoners! Christ, they’re not even armed!”
Wingate turned toward the olive grove. It was already too late. Giuseppe opened fire at point-blank range, and didn’t take his finger off the trigger until the magazine was empty. The krauts folded and slipped to the ground, blood already seeping into their pants and tunics.
When Giuseppe turned around, he was grinning. He took a new magazine from his pocket and snapped it into the Beretta. “Maybe we should have bayoneted them,” he called, walking back to the truck. “Bullets are for men, not scum like those.”
The men in the back of the truck had picked up the body of the guard whom Wingate had shot and now they pitched it over the side of the vehicle. It fell in front of Manganaro with a dull thump that drove all the air out of it in a rasping croak.
Manganaro let out a torrent of curses in Italian.
Giuseppe came up to him and stuck the muzzle of the Beretta in his gut. “Hey,” he said, “very nice. You speak a very nice Italian. Where you from—Roma or Brooklyn?” There was genuine menace behind the mocking tone. He wasn’t about to have his authority undermined in front of his own men.
“Go piss on your foot,” Manganaro muttered.
Giuseppe lifted the head of de Lille, whose unconscious body was still draped over Manganaro’s shoulder. He looked for a moment into de Lille’s half-open, glazed eyes and grinned. Finally he let the head drop back onto Manganaro’s chest and said, “He’s no good to us like that. Get rid of him.”
He was pushing Manganaro too hard, Wingate could see that. Manganaro hadn’t survived this long to take treatment like this from some peasant stinking of garlic and cow shit.
“Go fuck your mother,” growled Manganaro.
The grin disappeared from Giuseppe’s face. Without taking his eyes off Manganaro’s, he snapped back the cocking lever of the Beretta and released it. His finger was already on the trigger. There was no movement from any of his men. They stood frozen where they were, watching with interest, waiting for their leader to chop Manganaro in two. The tension became unbearable. Still Manganaro wouldn’t back off and Giuseppe had gone too far to climb down.
Wingate took a couple of quick steps forward and pushed between them, easing the gun aside with the open palm of his hand. “Hey, Giuseppe,” he said, facing the Italian, back to Manganaro. “You know what you’re doing? You’re about to get rid of the two best gunners in Italy. OK, if your guys can operate that 37 millimeter you’ve got hitched to the truck—fine. Maybe one of your women can handle the stoppages. Maybe you can fuse the nose caps and select the ammo type. But if not—for Christ’s sake don’t get rid of the two guys who can.”
Giuseppe finally took his eyes off Manganaro and turned to Wingate. Wingate stared right back at him, brazening out the confrontation, daring him to call Wingate a liar. Giuseppe’s band still watched, still waiting for some climactic end to the scene that would break the tension. For a second, it seemed to Wingate that he’d won. Giuseppe would break into that grin again, laugh, and slap him on the back. But the grin didn’t come. There was no softening of the expression on the dark-skinned, bearded face. Instead of laughing, Giuseppe took a step backward and brought the gun muzzle back onto Wingate and Manganaro. He’d made his decision. The thing had gone too far for him to back off. If it cost him a couple of specialists, he’d just have to improvise. But he couldn’t take the sort of challenge to his position that Manganaro had made. Not without answering it and coming out on top.
Giuseppe’s finger slid from the trigger guard to the trigger. As it did so, Kenny Fields yelled, “General—hey, General!” and ran from where he had been standing at Betty Andrews’s side right up to Giuseppe Campo.
For a second, Giuseppe was confused. The kid had broken his concentration. Some of the tension in the scene had dissipated. One of the guys in the truck rested his ass on the tailgate.
“My Dad’s in the 8th Army, General,” Kenny went on. “If you’re going to shoot Captain Wingate, can I stay with you?”
Giuseppe looked down at the boy. Kenny was tugging at his sleeve, pulling the gun off target.
“Please, General,” the kid pleaded.
Giuseppe’s grim expression cracked into a sudden grin. “General!” he laughed, looking around at the others. “You hear that—General!”
The tension broke as quickly as it had built. There was general laughter from Giuseppe’s supporters. Wingate realized that he had been holding his breath, and now he released it in a slow hiss.
“This is good boy!” Giuseppe announced with a sweeping wave of the hand. “Very smart. He recognizes a general—even through sheepskin!” He turned back to the boy and asked, “Who said anything about shooting Weengate? Weengate is my friend. Everybody is my friend!” He waved the gun muzzle toward the three dead Germans lying under the trees, and added with a grin, “Almost everybody.” He moved toward the truck, opened the door of the cab, then yelled, “Well, come on! What you waiting for?”
They rolled steadily down the narrow valley, Giuseppe in the cab with three of his men, Wingate’s party and the rest of Giuseppe’s supporters in the back. They were heading due south now, hidden from the columns moving north along the coast road by the little ridge of high ground that was becoming all too familiar to Wingate.
Kenny Fields was sitting next to Wingate and Wingate said quietly to him, “Thanks, Kenny. I owe you for that. We all do.”
“I was getting scared, Captain,” the boy said, sitting with his knees drawn up and his tote bag on his lap. “I thought he really was going to shoot. I had to do something. I couldn’t just stand there—not after what you did for me. Anyway, I want you to meet my dad.”
“I guess we’re quits then,” said Wingate. He really was quite a kid, sitting there on the floor of the truck, his dark curly hair covered in dust.
The valley broadened. The olive groves to the east of them gave way to open fields full of grazing cattle. Directly ahead, the horizon was dark with the smoke of battle.
Manganaro was sitting facing Wingate, looking at something beyond Wingate’s shoulder. Finally, he said, “There’s some guy up there with a telescope. Take a look, Mac.” Wingate craned around. Eight or nine hundred yards away, the land rose sharply up from the valley floor in a clifflike escarpment of broken rocks and scrub. Halfway up it Wingate saw the occasional flash of light where the sun glinted on some reflective surface. Manganaro’s guess could be right. It could be a telescope. His heart sank. It had been the recurring theme of the whole goddamn trip. Right from the start in that English bar, somebody had been following them. For Christ’s sake, why? More important—how were the bastards keeping such a close track on them?
He hadn’t much doubt about that last question. There was something damn phony about that frog. His speech, his manner, the way he’d directed Kenny to the aircraft—everything he’d said and done had been suspicious. He was slumped next to Manganaro with his back against the truck side. His eyes were open again, but he still looked no more than half conscious. Wingate looked down at the gun he was still carrying. It might be better to dump the guy now before he had a chance to set up more problems. The way the truck bounced over the rough ground, it could be passed off as an accident. They were all keyed up. An unfortunate squeeze of the trigger with the muzzle pointing in de Lille’s direction was all it would take. He began very slowly to swing the gun to his right ...
He never knew whether he’d finally have squeezed that trigger. He never got the chance to put it to the test. Manganaro interrupted him with a cry of, “Mac! Behind you!”
Wingate spun around, eyes only a couple of inches above the truck side. Below the telescope spotter, where the base of the escarpment met the level ground of the valley, an armored half-track vehicle was nosing up out of a defile in which it had been hiding.
“Tell ’em to move it, Brad!” yelled Wingate, pushing Kenny to the floor of the truck.
Manganaro let out a stream of commands in Italian to the driver and hammered with his fists on the metal cab. Giuseppe Campo bellowed back from inside.
A second later, a stream of 20 millimeter chattered from the half-track and the first rounds slammed into the truck.
Chapter Six
Steam hissed from under the hood of the truck, forming a dense cloud ahead of the driver and condensing on the windshield. Some part of the water-cooling system had been hit. It was a matter of minutes—maybe even seconds—before the engine seized.
The driver had his foot down to the floor on the gas pedal as he struggled to turn the truck away from the half-track. The uneven ground helped. It turned the truck into an unpredictable target that the half-track gunner would have difficulty holding his sights on. The gunner fired again. From where Wingate and the others sat in the back of the bouncing vehicle, the situation looked hopeless. Tracer curved toward them. The heavy slugs from the 20-millimeter screamed over their heads or chipped up the ground ahead of them. It was simply a matter of time before they went down under the barrage. Wingate fired two bursts from the Schmeisser. The range was too extreme to be effective and the insecure position in which he found himself gave him no chance of accurate sighting. He kidded himself that some opposition from the truck might persuade the half-track gunner to keep his head down. But that wasn’t the truth. The truth was he couldn’t stand inaction in a tight spot. He had to do something.
Manganaro was standing up, bracing himself over the top of the cab and holding on to the upper rim of the passenger window below him and to his right. He shouted, “Bring it around! There—ahead of you now! That drop in the ground!”
Three or four of the partisans had joined Wingate now. They were firing directly over the tailgate of the truck, as they moved away from the half-track. Wingate could only guess where they were headed. Up against the truck side to his left, Betty Andrews had her arms around the boy, protecting him as much as she could. There was a toughness in her expression that filled Wingate with admiration. Jesus—some women were worth a goddamn regiment!
Suddenly, the tailgate came up into the air and Wingate lost his balance and fell back. He fell on his ass, then his shoulders, finally doing a back roll and ending up against Manganaro’s legs. Halfway through the movement he realized what had happened. It wasn’t the rear of the vehicle that had come up in the air, it was the nose that had plunged down. It was still plunging. He clawed at the wooden side with his right hand, steadied himself, then finally pulled himself into a sitting position.
The drop had been steep and sudden. They were running downhill at better than 45 degrees, bouncing off the broken rock surface, losing all traction. The weight of the 37 millimeter still trailing behind them began to slew the truck’s ass toward Wingate’s right. Another second and he felt the left-hand wheels lift off the ground and the truck begin to roll.
“Hang on!” he screamed. He flung himself at Manganaro’s legs and pulled him down from the cab roof. Up there, he’d be crushed to death when they went over. From inside the cab, Giuseppe’s voice was bellowing instructions to the driver.
Betty Andrews and the kid lost their grip on the tilting truck floor and rolled over, pinning Wingate and Manganaro in the corner. Behind them came a couple of partisans, one of them—a young woman clutching an M1 rifle—screaming in terror. Wingate was helpless, either to help anyone else or to help himself. In any other situation he might have laughed at the irony of it all. They’d hijacked a kraut vehicle and shot the crew, and now it was about to fall on them and smash them into the rock floor.
The truck hung poised for a moment on one set of wheels, then slowly the center of gravity tilted. The corner in which Wingate was pinned dropped sharply. There was a scream of metal, then the tearing of wood as the side hit the ground and slid. Then almost at once a sudden enormous blow hit Wingate in the back. Somebody on top of him howled in pain and the partisan girl screamed again.
Wingate was barely conscious. His head and neck felt dislocated. The weight of bodies and ammo cases and boxes of explosives pressed down on top of him so that he couldn’t breathe. He waited for the inevitable, the continued roll of the truck that would bring three or four tons of vehicle and gun carriage crushing down on top of them. Maybe even the detonation of the explosives and some of the ammunition.
The continued roll didn’t come. Wingate waited, resigned, but the truck had stopped moving. The wooden side he was forced up against had come to a rest. A girl’s voice was crying. From somewhere behind him he heard the door of the truck open and Giuseppe’s voice let out a strangled oath. Beyond that, steam hissed out of the damaged cooling system in a loud roaring snort.
