There were still flares burning behind Corrigon, but there was no time to bother with them now. Farther up the shore more explosions rent the night, more flames licked the sky. A burst of gunfire tore the radio to pieces. Corrigon veered, started running, hunched over, towards the safety of darkness. He slung the tommygun under his arm, firing several bursts behind him as he ran. He was almost to the top of the hill, almost outside the shimmering red orbit of the flares, when he felt something tug at his shirt, felt fire enter his side, boring deep and burning his insides.
He staggered but did not fall, dove to the ridge, and rolled over the top as a string of bullets chewed up the crest of the hill behind him. Pain flooded his body, seared his lungs, filled his chest.
‘AHHHH, G-O-D D-A-A-A-M-N!’ he screamed and crawled back to the ridge, laying the tommygun on the ground, pulling it against his cheek. Below him, shadowy figures moved towards the remaining flares. He squeezed the trigger. The gun boomed in his ear, shook him, jarred the pain deep inside him, but he kept firing and screaming. One of the figures whirled and fell, then another. A third turned and ran back towards the darkness, and Corrigon swung the gun, saw the bullets strike, saw the figure dance to his death. He kept firing, raking the three bodies until the barrel was so hot he couldn’t hold it anymore. He struggled to his feet, pulled the rice-paper niap from his pocket, and stuffed it in his mouth, feeling it dissolve in saliva as he started to run.
He did not know how long he ran, only that each step was worse than the last and the pain in his side seared deeper with each one. Vomit flooded his mouth; he spat it out and kept going. His mind wandered back in time and seized on an old chant from his Boy Scout days, ‘Out goes the bad air, in comes the good,’ and it became a cadence that kept him going.
Darkness gobbled him up. He tripped, staggered, fell, felt cruel stones bite into his knees, and ignored them. ‘Out goes the bad air, in comes the good,’ lurching back to his feet and running on. ‘Out goes the bad air, in comes the good,’ running through a black void with his eyes closed and then he smacked headlong into a wall and his forehead burst open like a tomato and he bounced backward and landed in a sitting position and madness seized him. He pulled his .45 automatic from the holster and in a rage fired over and over again at the wall, and then for no reason at all he started to giggle. Sitting there with his side shot apart and his head split open and a pistol jumping in his hand, lost in the middle of an alien land and alone, totally alone, with death snapping at his ankles, Corrigon laughed and the laughter turned to sobs. Once more he got to his feet, felt the wall, staggered along it to a corner and, turning, felt the gritty rust of a latch. He lifted it and went through the door, and leaned on it, closing it behind him.
Silence. And it was blessed. He felt for his penlight, but it was gone. Then his fingers touched the cold metal of his Zippo lighter. He took it out, snapped the flint, and held it high over his head. He was in a shed of some kind, abandoned except for spiders busily weaving webs in the corners. He walked to the opposite side of the small room and sat against the wall, facing the door.
The pain in his side hit him in waves, subsiding, then washing back through him and subsiding again. He heard himself groaning and he snapped the carriage on his .45 and ejected a bullet into his lap and put it between his teeth.
You’re crazy, Corrigon, crazy as shit, sitting here in the dark actually biting on a bullet.
But it helped and finally, as he leaned against the wall trying to make peace with the fire inside him, he passed out.
When he regained consciousness, he was bathed in sweat, the bullet still between his teeth. He looked at his watch. Ten-o-five. Two hours.
Then he heard the voices. Low, cautious. At least two of them, talking rapidly. He strained to make out words. The beam of a flashlight filtered through the cracks of the shed. They were nearer now, at the door. He heard the latch lift from its rusty hook.
Corrigon sat straight up. He held the 45 in both hands and aimed it at the door and waited, biting down hard on the bullet, blinking the sweat out of his eyes. The flashlight beam fell on his face. He squeezed the trigger and the pistol plinked. Empty.
Corrigon’s shoulders sagged. He lowered the gun to the floor and spat out the bullet and raised his head towards the ceiling, closing his eyes and waiting for it to come.
The flashlight beam lowered and picked out the gun.
‘Americano,’ a voice said.
‘Si,’ came the answer.
‘Laferita è motto sanguinosa. E gravemente leso.’
‘Ummm,’ said the other one.
‘E mono?’
‘No.’
‘Buono.’
Buono? That was good. What were they saying? Something about blood, death. A jumble of words he could not understand.
One of them was very close now, leaning over him. Then he said, very slowly, ‘You are lucky, amico. That the gun was empty. I would not want to kill you.’
Corrigon opened his eyes.
The Italian lowered the flashlight and in its reflection, Corrigon could see the two men. The man who had spoken to him was tall and lean with grey hair and a jawline like granite. The other one was younger and shorter and had shoulders like a football player.
‘My name is Francesco. Capisce? Francesco.’
Corrigon managed a feeble smile.
‘Hi, Francesco,’ he said in a voice hoarse with pain and exhaustion.
‘That is Dominic. He does not capisce English.’
‘No capisce,’ Dominic said and smiled from embarrassment.
‘That’s okay, I no capisce Italiano.’
‘E ufficiale?’ Dominic said.
‘He says, Are you an officer?’ Francisco said.
‘Shit, I’m a goddamn corporal.’
Francesco turned to Dominic. ‘No. Sonuficiale.’
Dominic shrugged. Then he held up a tommygun. ‘Abbiamo udito colpi e trovato una mitragliatrice.’
‘We heard the shooting and we found this gun on the hill.’
‘I think it’s mine,’ Corrigon said, then: ‘Who are you?
‘Farmers.’
‘Not partisans?’
‘Non siamo guerriglieri, ma siamo simpatizzanti.’ Dominic said.
‘He says, we are not guerrillas, but we are sympathetic to the Americans.’
‘Grazie.’
Everybody nodded.
‘Do you know La Volte?’
Francesco looked puzzled. ‘La volte 2 The fox. What is that?’
‘Shit,’ Corrigon said, ‘I’m too tired to go into it.’
Dominic said, ‘I tri attn sono morti.’
‘Si,’ Francesco said and, turning to Corrigon, told him, ‘The other three Americani are dead. I am sorry.’
‘Ah, Jesus.’
‘Pray for yourself. It is too late for them. What are you called?’
‘Corrigon. Johnny.’
‘Buono, Jah-nee,’ Francesco said and he took a dagger from a sheath in his boot. Corrigon’s smile vanished and he stiffened. ‘Easy,’ Francesco said, ‘I must cut the shirt. There is much blood.’
Corrigon lay back and listened to the blade slicing through the cotton shirt. He felt a finger probe his side and it exploded with pain. He decided to think of something, of Major Halford calling him in, giving him the pep talk, telling him Harry Younger thought he was ready for a mission. ‘It’s really fairly simple,’ Halford had said, ‘just drop in, make the connection, supervise the drop and get out.’ Sure, nothing to it, Major. Like falling into a bear trap. And Younger, all full of piss and vinegar, dreaming about all the broads lining up to rub his Silver Star. Only now it would be a Purple Heart. Posthumously.
And where was the big shot La Volte when all the shooting started?
‘Hey, Jah-nee,’ Francesco said. ‘You are lucky. It just went in one side and out the other.’ He whistled softly through his teeth. ‘Just like that, eh, paisan? Lots of blood, but it could be worse.’