Mac wingate 7, p.19
Mac Wingate 7, page 19
Very slowly, Wingate stood up and lowered the Schmeisser. “For Christ’s sake, Brad,” he breathed, turning to Manganaro who was leaning against the wall to Wingate’s left, the Beretta in his hands still smoking. “D’you want to fill me in? I thought sure as shit ...”
Manganaro shook his head. He looked suddenly exhausted. “Don’t ask me, Mac,” he said. “Ask this dumb wop here.” He indicated Giuseppe, now drawing smoke deeply into his lungs, a look of supreme satisfaction on his face. “We had the drop on the whole bunch of them. Walked right in on them. We could have gotten it over five minutes ago, but this dumb asshole has to give a speech!”
Giuseppe turned and walked slowly over to them. His satisfaction had almost become smugness. He looked very pleased with himself and his men watched him with deep admiration. “Listen,” he said, stabbing Manganaro with a finger. “Asshole—maybe. Dumb—no!” He tapped his head and turned to Wingate. “Weengate,” he growled, without taking the cigarette out of his mouth. “When I kill a man, I like him to know for what he is dying. You understand? The world is a reasonable place—I like him to have a reason. Even a stinking bag of garbage like this—” he indicated one of the Nazis with his boot, “should have a reason. I tell them it is naughty—very naughty—to frighten little children. Then I shoot them—huh?”
Wingate nodded. What was the point of arguing with a fruitcake like this? Giuseppe had been living with the goats up in the mountains for too long. “Commendable,” was all Wingate said.
“And now,” Giuseppe announced, sweeping around so that his voice embraced the entire room. “I go to my little girl!” He turned to the door and disappeared toward the staircase, his men following him dutifully in single file.
“I guess we’re going to make it, Mac,” said Manganaro, putting a hand on Wingate’s shoulder. “There were times when I had my doubts. Just a question of dodging the flak now until we contact one of our patrols. Pity it’s over—I was kinda getting to enjoy it.”
“Fun,” Wingate conceded. “Good clean fun. But when we cross the line, I’ve a couple of things to take care of. There’s a kid. I promised to get him to his Dad. If it wasn’t for him, I’d stay here.”
Manganaro looked at him. “I don’t get it,” he said. “You mean here—here in this place?” He threw a quick glance around the walls of the room. “What the Christ for?”
“I’ve got a date,” said Wingate. “I’m—expecting a visitor. Don’t ask me who, I’ve never met him. All I know is his name—Cesescu.”
“So that’s the guy who’s been listening in to us!” cried Manganaro. “The bastard’s out there tracking Kenny’s transmitter!”
“That’s what I figure.” said Wingate. “Unless he’s psychic.” He shrugged and turned to the door. Giuseppe was coming down the stairs with a dark-haired little kid in his arms. “But the boy changes that,” Wingate continued. “He’s been through enough. I want to deliver him safely first.”
“But if you and the kid separate, how will this Ces-whatever know where to find you? The kid’s got the transmitter?” Manganaro asked.
Giuseppe, ahead of him, was holding up his daughter and beaming with fatherly pride. “Beautiful, beautiful,” Manganaro acknowledged, absently.
“Brad,” said Wingate, stopping in the narrow passageway to let Giuseppe get to the front door first. “He won’t have to find me. I’ll find him. I know where he’ll be. Where would any bastard go to pick up information useful to the krauts? I want the biggest, best-known servicemen’s bar in Naples—because sooner or later, that’s where he’ll turn up.”
Chapter Ten
Giuseppe refused to go further south. “Listen, Weengate,” he said, with that characteristic open gesture of his arms. “What good you think I do behind the lines—huh? The war is here, no longer further south. Between here and the Alps, that is where I belong. Wherever there is a Tedeschi still alive in Italy—I am there. I go back into the hills. You and Montgomery and Clark, you keep driving them north, we hit them as they retreat. Good—huh?”
“Brilliant,” said Wingate, moving to windward of Giuseppe. He was going to miss the guy’s vitality and flamboyance, but sure as hell he wasn’t going to miss the stink. “What about the kids?”
“They go with you, of course,” said Giuseppe, genuine surprise in his voice. “You think war is any place for bambini? You find a place for them. You put them in a school. Education—” he tapped his head dramatically with a finger, “very important. But a good Catholic school, Weengate, not one of your lousy American places. These are good Italian children—not atheists.”
He found the statement very amusing and he let out a bellow of laughter. After a moment of uncertainty, his followers joined him. They were back with the gun and the mules now, moving around the deserted streets in the direction of the road to Aversa. One of the animals threw up its heels nervously at the sudden burst of sound.
“I’m going to miss you, Giuseppe,” said Wingate. “In your own quaint way you’re an amusing son of a bitch. What about your own kid—does she stay with you?”
The little girl was walking beside her father, clinging to the bottom of his sheepskin jacket with one hand, a finger of her other hand stuck in her mouth.
“Aw, Weengate,” Giuseppe cried. “What good would a little girl be against these—animals? She cannot hold a rifle, she cannot throw a grenade. Later, maybe, but right now she goes with you. Take her with the others. See she is OK. When the shooting is over, when we have driven this scum back where it came from—I find her.” He bent and picked her up and kissed her. He muttered a few gentle words to her, then set her down beside Wingate. She grabbed the bottom of Wingate’s jacket without a protest, simply transferring hands and fingers.
The main road was deserted. There were signs of earlier fighting between the retreating Germans and other citizen groups, but it had all passed some time earlier. Rubble lay across the road and here and there fires still burned, but the artillery barrage was now north of the city. In the town itself, fighting was reduced to grenades and mortars interspersed with small arms fire. The first Allied patrols were mopping up the last pockets of resistance.
Giuseppe put out a big, coarse-skinned hand and dragged Wingate into a bruising embrace. “My friend!” he cried, slapping Wingate on the back and kissing him noisily on both cheeks. “You, I shall never forget. My next bambino will be a boy and I shall call it Weengate!”
Wingate held his breath as his face was buried first in one side of Giuseppe’s whiskers, then in the other. Finally he pushed Giuseppe clear and breathed, “Fine. Nice. That’ll be great for the kid.”
Giuseppe turned north for the hills, leading his mule team pulling the gun limber, followed by the rest of the animals and his group of supporters. They marched out of step, no two single bits of clothing alike, looking more like roaming derelicts than fighting troops. Wingate watched them, full of admiration. They were the tough, hard soul of Italy, that wasn’t going to take any more totalitarian shit from anybody. They were as important to the war effort as the B-17s and Spitfires. Maybe more so. There was a point beyond which a B-17 couldn’t go, but these guys recognized no limits. Wingate and the others turned south, Manganaro in the lead with Kenny. The kids, apart from Giuseppe’s daughter still clinging to Wingate’s jacket, clustered around the nun.
“You OK?” asked Wingate, turning to Betty who was walking on his right.
“I’m—mad as hell,” she snapped.
“What did I do?” he protested.
“Oh, Mac, not you,” she said. “Not just you. Everybody—the whole damn world. It’s gone mad. What are we doing marching a bunch of young kids through scenery like this? What d’you think it’s going to do to their minds later? Look at this place. You know what they used to say? See Naples and die—because once you’d seen that bay over there, Vesuvius, Capri, Sorrento, you’d seen the most beautiful thing on earth. There was nothing else worth living for. Now—look at it. We’re all crazy!”
“You thought of the alternative? You prefer to see this fascist cancer cover the face of the earth? The kids’ll get over it. We’ll rebuild Naples. There’s a price you’ve got to pay for radical surgery, but we’ll recover. We don’t have a choice.”
“I guess not,” she admitted, some of her fury draining away. “Maybe I’m being selfish. The more damage you characters do, the more there is to clean up after you. I was thinking of that base hospital I’m to help set up, and all the medical supplies we tossed out of that aircraft. You know what I’m carrying in this?” She held up her bag. “A clean set of undies and a bottle of aspirin. Not much to start putting all that chopped meat together again with.”
He nodded. There wasn’t really anything to discuss. He agreed with everything she said. His own position simply gave him a different angle on the thing.
“Where are you headed?” he asked.
“Taranto, I suppose,” she said, a touch of resignation in her voice. “There’s a New Zealand medical unit there that came in with the initial invasion. It’s the best place to start, under the circumstances. I was supposed to pick up firm instructions in Malta, but ...” She shrugged.
“Be nice to see you again,” said Wingate. They’d shared some rough experiences together in the past few hours. It would be nice to share some pleasant ones for a change.
“Well—maybe some time,” she said. “You’re right, it would be nice. The way this war’s going, I guess we’ll bump into one another again.”
“Not professionally, I hope.”
She laughed. “No, Mac. I hope not professionally.”
They hit the first patrol in the Via San Carlo, just breaking from the cover of the Opera House. There were twenty of them, commandos with General Mark Clark who had broken out from the Salerno beachhead a matter of hours earlier. They were Americans and the lieutenant in charge of them looked little more than a kid. He was nervous, and suspicious. He wanted identification from Wingate and he wanted to know if the kids were hostages.
“Buddy, listen,” Manganaro interrupted. “We’re bushed. Give us a break. We’ve had shit thrown at us ever since we left England—don’t give us any more. Do us a favor. Just take the kids off our hands.”
“It’s true,” said Wingate. “OK, you’ve had your own share of flak this last couple of weeks, but it’s still true. We’ve been shot down in a B-24 and we’ve just walked through the lines. If you’ve got any doubts, why don’t you send a guy south with us. It can’t be long before we hit a command post.”
The lieutenant gave it some thought. There was sporadic machine gun fire from halfway up the street ahead. Finally he nodded and called, “Mason! Get these guys back to forward headquarters.”
“Thanks,” said Wingate. He glanced at Kenny Fields, standing with his tote bag over his shoulder. “What do you know about the British?” he asked, quietly. “This kid’s Dad is with a commando unit. A sergeant with the 8th Army—name of Fields.”
“Captain, you’ve got to be joking,” the lieutenant exclaimed, not looking at Wingate but checking the bare street in front of him. “You know the size of the 8th Army. What kind of question’s that?”
“Sure,” said Wingate. He knew it was a dumb question, but it was the only one he could ask. “But a sergeant, a commando—that cuts the odds a bit.”
The lieutenant shrugged. “There’s a commando outfit with the British 10th Corps. They came up off the beach with us. You could try them, I guess.”
“Thanks,” said Wingate. He turned to Mason and said sharply, “OK, soldier, let’s move it.”
The forward HQ had been set up in the southeast corner of the Piazza Mercato. It wasn’t much help. It had its hands full, monitoring the progress of the patrols probing westward, and it couldn’t handle a bunch of tired and frightened kids. The colonel in command listened sympathetically, nodding as Wingate spoke, checking a street map in front of him at the same time. In the end he shook his head.
“You’ve got to get to Portici, Captain,” he said. “I can let you have a couple of men, but I can’t do any more. Back there they’ve gotten things under control. There’s a base headquarters—transport out of the area—supplies.”
Wingate nodded. “How far, sir?” he asked. He knew he couldn’t protest. These guys were all the forward patrols had to fall back on. The guys up front needed all their attention. “Mile—mile and a half.”
“Any transport?”
“Nothing I can spare,” said the colonel, turning to a sergeant with headphones and a field radio. “What’s happening with Captain Schwartz around Mazzini Square?” he snapped.
“Let’s go,” said Wingate, turning to Manganaro. “We’ll get nowhere here.”
They moved southeast, then south, the dark sea to their right still illuminated by the fires. The main fighting was over. Civilians were emerging from cellars, carrying the injured on improvised stretchers. Beyond, infantry and armor was beginning to move up in force. Manganaro had picked up a couple of the smaller kids and had them riding on his shoulders. Kenny Fields had taken the hand of another and was leading him forward as if he was a younger brother. Inside the tote bag over his shoulder, Wingate knew that the transmitter still bleeped out its signal. Somewhere in the city, maybe hiding in a cellar or disguised as a refugee, was a guy without a face. A guy sitting at a radio receiver monitoring every single bleep.
It was the end of the road; Wingate could feel it. Either way, the farce was almost over. The final confrontation couldn’t be more than a few hours away. He was tired. He needed sleep.
Base HQ was in the middle of Portici, a crescent-shaped hotel building just south of the main Salerno road. There was no question about it, the breakout from Salerno had finally been successful. The whole of southern Italy was in Allied hands. There was an air of assurance—almost euphoria—about the place. Men moved around from room to room with confidence, carrying papers, organizing the wounded in the large conference hall. The first women had already arrived, flown in from Malta and North Africa—Americans in the Women’s Army Corps, British in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, young women in nursing uniforms.
It took Wingate twenty minutes to find the unit Intelligence officer. He was British, a major in his mid-thirties with a handlebar mustache and eager blue eyes. He gave the impression that the last push on Berlin was under way and Christmas would see the end of the war.
“Grand to see you,” he cried, when he saw Wingate. “American? Good show! Up from the beachhead, eh?”
“Down from the old country,” said Wingate. The energetic eagerness that was confronting him only stressed his own need for rest. He knew he wasn’t going to get any until the final piece of the jigsaw had dropped into place.
“The old country? Grand!” the I.O. exclaimed, showing no interest in the fact. “What can I do for you, old boy?”
“We’ve brought in a party of kids,” said Wingate. “The Gestapo had them as hostages. They need somewhere to sleep—somewhere to go tomorrow.”
“Course they do, course they do,” cried the major. Wingate got the impression he hadn’t taken in a single word, but after a moment he added, “As a matter of fact they can join our POWs for the moment. We took over a prison camp yesterday morning. Freed them, you know. Bloody marvelous! Got them housed in an old barracks overlooking the bay. Stacks of room there. Any other problems?”
“We’ve a woman with us,” Wingate explained. “A New Zealander with the Nursing Corps. She needs to get to Taranto.” As he said it, he realized he was going to miss her. He’d miss the acerbic banter, the wry humor, the forthrightness.
Maybe she was right. The war was crazy. Perhaps there was some odd destiny that would throw them together again.
“Say no more, Captain. Say no more,” said the I.O. “We’ve a DC-3 going south from Capodichino in a couple of hours. We can squeeze her on that if you think she’ll be ready by then.”
Wingate nodded. “She’ll be ready,” he said.
“Then that’s settled. Have a word with my sergeant in the office. Marvelous man. He’ll lay everything on for you.” He looked at Wingate for a moment, expecting some last response. When Wingate didn’t speak, the major asked, “Anything else, Captain?”
“We have a boy with us,” said Wingate. “He was a stowaway on the plane we were on. He’s English. He’s looking for his father.” He shrugged. “I know it sounds crazy, but his father’s a commando sergeant with the 8th Army. Someone mentioned a British commando unit with the 10th Corps at Salerno ...”
“That’s the 5th Army,” the Intelligence Officer interrupted.
“He’s only a kid, sir,” said Wingate. “You know how fluid these outfits are. He might have been posted—he might be on secondment for a single operation ... It’s only a chance, but it’s the best I have.”
The I.O. shrugged. “Well,” he said, giving his mustache a little brush upward with the back of his hand. “British commandos came in at Vietri on the right flank of your rangers. Take care of the woman. I’ll check it out.”
Wingate saluted, spoke to the sergeant in the next room, then joined the others. The two kids with Manganaro were asleep in his arms. He turned to Betty, took her hand, and put it to his lips before she could raise any objection. “It’s good-bye,” he said, simply. “That’s war, they tell me. There’s a truck leaving from outside in twenty minutes and a plane going to Taranto in a couple of hours—that OK with you?”
She smiled at him and nodded. “That’s OK,” she said. “And Mac—take care of yourself. You were lucky this time. I want it to stay that way.”
“I’ll walk you to your limo,” he said, bending to pick up her bag.
She reached for the bag before he had gotten to it. “No,” she said, shaking her head firmly. “Don’t let’s make a big thing out of this, Mac. It’s no time to get into real relationships. If we meet again under different circumstances—well, maybe then.”
“Just trying to play the gentleman,” said Wingate, smiling. He knew she was right. He felt the same, but he wanted her to know that as far as he was concerned something had built between them during the time since they had left England. Something that wasn’t all that common in his experience.
