“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.
“Hey, Fritz,” I said, leaning over him. I didn’t exactly feel sorry for him, since he probably was on his way to execute those women, but leaving him here to suffer didn’t sit right either. His eyes widened, perhaps in fear.
“ Er hat den Amerikaner getotet,” the Kraut said, grabbing me with his free hand. “ Er hat gemacht! ” A thin pink bubble of blood appeared around his lips, and then burst as he gave a last gasp and died.
“What did he say?” I asked Kaz, as I unclenched his fingers from my sleeve.
“He killed the American. He did it.”
“The Kraut? He was confessing?”
“No, those were his exact words. Someone else killed the American. Do you know him?”
I knew the American. He was immediately recognizable by his red hair and tall, lanky frame. Rusty Gates, platoon sergeant. He was laid out neatly, feet together, hands on his chest. A ground sheet covered his body, but the hair was unmistakable. I pulled the cover back and knew for certain. One dog tag was gone. One bullet hole to the heart, powder burns and all.
“Rusty,” Einsmann said in a gasp, scaring the hell out of me. I hadn’t heard him come up on us, and I swung my arm around,. 45 automatic at the ready. “Jesus, don’t shoot!” He threw his hands in front of his face.
“Yeah. Sergeant Rusty Gates, Third Platoon. You knew him?”
“Sure. Had a few drinks with him now and then. Met him back in Sicily. He was a solid guy. Think that Kraut officer got the drop on him?”
“Looks like it,” I said, drawing the ground sheet back over him. Rusty had seemed like a solid guy. A leader. I’d felt good about Danny being in his platoon, but now, with former supply officer Lieutenant Evans in charge, I wasn’t so sure.
“Maybe they shot each other,” Einsmann said.
“Not likely,” I said. “Probably the Kraut surprised Rusty as he came over the ditch. Dropped him with one shot, then somebody else shot the officer.” But as I said it, I saw that things didn’t add up. Rusty must have been shot at close range, three or four feet at the most, to leave gunpowder burns. He would have seen the German before he got that close. I looked at the dead officer again. His entry wounds were next to each other, straight on, at the same level you’d hold an M1 at the hip. Just above the belt buckle. Bang bang, you’re dead, but not right away. “The Kraut must have shot Rusty at close range, then someone else killed him for it.”
“Which makes sense,” Kaz said. “If the German offered to surrender and instead pulled out his pistol and shot the sergeant.”
“Yeah, if it happened that way. Strange, that’s all. The guy makes it out of his vehicle after it’s ambushed. He didn’t run, didn’t get more than a dozen yards away. Then he throws his life away to kill one American.” I looked at his face. He wasn’t young. Maybe thirty-five, forty. He wore a wedding ring. Regular army, not SS. A fanatic, never-surrender Nazi? Maybe. Maybe not.
“He was gut-shot,” I said. “Sure to kill him, but not right away. He suffered.”
“For his sins, most likely,” Kaz said.
I wasn’t so sure. We’d heard the story of the Italian women who were to be shot, but I doubted Gates and his men had. Why leave him alive, in pain like that? Who killed the American? Another Kraut? A GI?
“His pistol is gone,” Einsmann said. That was obvious. No GI could resist a souvenir, especially with so few Germans around. We went back to the vehicle and searched it, but that had already been done. Two Schmeisser submachine guns had been smashed, and the pockets of the dead searched. We got back in the jeep and started out again, more slowly this time, as I tried to work out in my mind what had happened back there, and what Danny might have seen or done. I didn’t like anything I came up with.
A mile or so later, a signpost let us know we were in, then out, of the village of Cossira. It was hard to tell the difference. We came to a fork in the road, and Kaz traced the route we’d taken with his finger, looking around for a landmark or a sign. Drainage ditches, flat fields, and distant hills were all we saw. “This way,” he said, pointing to the right fork.
“It’s got to be a left,” Einsmann said, leaning over Kaz’s shoulder, tapping his finger on the map. “We want to be more north.”
I looked at the map, and then up at the sun, as if that might give me a clue. “We’ll go left,” I said. “We can always turn around if it looks wrong.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“The sign says Carano to the left,” I said. “That’s right where it should be.”
“Sounds right to me,” Einsmann said, turning the map around several times, viewing it from every possible angle. The jeep was idling at an intersection. Left was Carano, straight was Velletri, which I knew was up in the Alban Hills. To the right was nothing but emptiness, plowed fields, and damp gullies.
“We should turn around,” Kaz said in an exasperated tone. “I said so back at the last turn.”
“This feels right,” I said, gunning the jeep and taking a hard left. I hoped it was. The road narrowed and became a hard-packed dirt surface. We came to a fork in the road, one weathered sign pointing left to Carano. We went right, on my theory that keeping Carano to our left was the wisest course. It was left of Le Ferriere on the map, so logic was on my side. Kaz didn’t say a word, satisfying himself with switching off the safety on the Thompson. We drove farther and found another fork in the road. This time, the sign to Carano pointed back the way we’d come. Gianottola was to the left. I couldn’t find it on the map, so I went right, for no particular reason, the road curving around a slight rise.