Corrigon was beginning to feel a little better. You oughta be a coach, he thought.. You’d have the whole team playin’ with broken legs.
‘Feel better?’
Corrigon nodded. ‘I’m okay, Captain. Believe me.’
Younger laughed, his all-American smile flashing through the blackface. ‘What the hell am I pumping you up for? Look, two days, we’ll be back in Naples. I’ll swing a seven-day pass for all of us out on Capri and the drinks’ll be on old Bud Younger.’
‘You’re on,’ Corrigon said.
Younger slapped him on the arm. ‘Don’t break radio silence until you’re set up. You won’t hear from us unless there’s trouble. When you’re ready, give us a call and we’ll be back at you. We won’t be a anile away from you when they make the drop.’
‘Right.’
Younger walked back to Pulaski and Devlin and said, ‘Okay, let’s saddle up.’ They started off to the north into the black night.
‘See you in a couple hours,’ Younger said jauntily and then the darkness swallowed him up. Corrigon didn’t move for a couple of minutes. He felt suddenly lonely. Fear tickled his chest. Then finally he turned to the two paisanos and swung his arm and they started off towards the lake. Fredo led the way with Sepi bringing up the rear, a tight little group walking almost on each other’s heels. In less than an hour they reached the bluff overlooking di Garda. They lay on their stomachs on top of the ridge and Corrigon
could hear the wind sighing across the lake and feel its cool breeze on his cheeks. Somewhere down below, a hundred yards away perhaps, water slapped against a shore.
‘Garda,’ Fredo whispered, pointing down the opposite side of the slope. ‘Yeah, Si,’ Corrigon whispered. It would have been nice, he thought, if just one of these Eyeties could say something in English besides ‘cigarette’ and ‘chocolate.’ But then, why should he complain? The only Italian be knew was ‘fig-fig’ and a couple of cusswords.
Typical army. Three guys behind the German lines and they can’t even talk to each other.
Corrigon took out his binoculars and scanned the darkness. Here and there small diamonds of reflected light shimmered on the rough surface of the big lake. A wave of fear washed over Corrigon and then it went away. He reached into the breast pocket of his field jacket, took out the rice-paper map, and spread it on the ground beside him, holding a tiny penlight over it. Fredo looked at it for a moment or two and nodded vigorously, smiling with a row of broken teeth, and pointing to a spot on the northeast shore of Lago di Garda. It was almost exactly on the perimeter Younger had laid out for him.
‘Phew,’ Corrigon murmured with relief.
‘Buono?’ Fredo asked. Corrigon nodded. ‘Si, very buono. Uh, the flares, uh, la flam, flame, uh...’
‘Ahh, si,’ the guerrilla answered and nodded again as he reached into the khaki duffel bag and took out one of the railroad flares. He was a nodder, this Fredo. The flare was eight inches long with a short spike attached to one side and a pull fuse on the bottom. There were twelve in the bag. Fredo and his companion, Sepi, knew exactly what to do. They had been rehearsing all afternoon, ever since Captain Younger had dropped in and made contact with La Volte. Fredo tapped Corrigon’s shoulder and pointed down at his wrist.
‘Ten to eight,’ Corrigon said.
Fredo puzzled with it a minute and then smiled again. ‘Den, den,’ he said, wriggling ten fingers in the corporal’s face.
‘Yeah, right, si, ten more minutes.’ He pointed to the duffel bag and then down the hill towards the lake and Fredo and Sepi moved out without a sound. Corrigon
listened for a full two minutes and heard nothing. They were good, no doubt about that, like cats tiptoeing on sand.
He snapped open the khaki cover on the radio and cranked it up, then spoke softly into the headset.
‘Spook One, this is Spook Two. Do you read me. Over.’ The radio crackled to life, much too loud, and Corrigon quickly turned the volume down. Sweat broke out in a thin kne across his forehead, smearing the black shoe polish on his face. His hands were wet. And they were shaking.
‘Spook One to Spook Two. Reading you loud and clear.’
‘Spook One, we’re set up. No trouble so far,’ Corrigon said.
‘Roger, Spook Two, and we’re affirmative also. Any signs yet?’
‘Negative. We got’ — he looked at his watch again — ‘seven minutes.’
‘That’s roger and we’re in synch. Out.’
‘Out,’ Corrigon said and cradled the headset. He was lying on his stomach, chewing unconsciously -on his thumb, wondering what the hell he was doing there, when he heard a sound beside him. An electric shock of fear shot through his chest and he reached for his .45 and turned on the penlight. Fredo grinned back at him.
Corrigon sighed with relief. ‘All set? Uh, okay?’
‘Si, oh-kay.’
He snapped off the light and lay with his eyes closed, listening. He thought, What the hell am I worried about? It’s a fairly simple operation and these guys do it all the time. The sector was isolated, no major roads anywhere near. Why would there even be any Germans around? He began to relax.
At first it was hardly a sound. It was a low rumble, like distant thunder, then it built, growing into the deep, solemn throb of four engines, coming in from the south.
‘Now,’ he whispered sharply and Fredo and’ Sepi were gone. The roar grew and then burst overhead, so low he could almost feel the slipstream of the B-24 as it passed overhead.
Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, one after another the flares sizzled to life as Fredo and Sepi ran along the two lines they had set, pulling the fuses, marking a twenty-yard strip between Corrigon and the lake. Corrigon threw the shoulder strap of the radio over his shoulder and ran down the hill after them. The plane wheeled hard and started back down the run towards him, its engines whining at full speed. It was then Corrigon realized the wind wasn’t coming off the lake at all. It was coming from behind him, blowing streams of smoke from the flares out over the lake.
‘Holy shit!’ he cried aloud. The plane was almost on top of them, roaring down the lakeside. He was vaguely aware of the engines backfiring as he slid the radio off his shoulder and knelt beside it, frantically cranking up the generator.
‘Spook Two, this is Spook Two to Angel. Go around, go around, the wind’s...’
Too late. The bomber rumbled overhead. A second later he heard the faint fump as the first chute opened, then another and another...
It was then that Corrigon became painfully, terrifyingly aware that he had not heard the engines backfiring. It was gunfire. Gunfire from Spook One’s position half a mile uplake.
There were flashes jarring the black sky, the rapid belch of a German burp gun, a faint agonized scream, the hollow crack of a grenade. Fredo and Sepi, etched in the ghoulish red glare of the flares, turned sharply and ran back down the line, kicking over the flares and throwing sand on them.
The first parachute, a grey ghost with its heavy load swinging below it, plopped into the lake. It sank immediatçly.
‘Spook One, Spook One, what the hell’s going on?’ Corrigon yelled into the radio.
‘Bandits, we got band...’
An explosion cut off the transmission. Fire swirled up into the black sky and vanished. Then a machine-gun chattered, no more than twenty yards away, and Fredo, running, leaped suddenly into the air. His back arched. Tufts flew from his ragged jacket. He fell on his face, arms outstretched in front of him, rolled over on his back, and lay still, his feet crossed at the ankles. Sepi turned and started back towards Fredo.
‘No!’ Corrigon cried. It was too late. The machine-gun chattered again. Bullets stitched the ground around Sepi’s feet, snapping his legs out from under him. He screamed and fell, skittered along the ground, started to get up to his knees, and was blown back into the air, dangling for an instant like a puppet, then dropping in a heap as the earth around him burst into geysers of death.