Fire in the Hills (15 page)

“And I'm Turbine—‘Whirlwind,' ” said the German.

Typical
partigiano
war names.

Lupo shook hands with each, hesitantly. “I'm Lupo.”

Volpe Rossa shook hands with them, too. “Volpe Rossa.” Did she trust them? Her face was unreadable.

The Italian picked up the small bundle of pork and politely held it out to Volpe Rossa. The German offered Lupo a potato. Everything had turned all crazy.

Lupo burst out, “What's a German doing with the resistance?”

The German stayed a moment, with his hand extended toward Lupo. Then he took a bite of the potato himself. “What's anyone doing with the resistance? I was in the army. At Dachau. Do you know about Dachau? Do you know what they do to the Jews there?”

“Is it a death camp?”

“A death camp.” The German breathed tiredly. He took another bite of potato. “My people—my friends—my own brother, we worked in a death camp. Imagine it. I thought I was losing my mind.”

Volpe Rossa raised her head with a jerk. “That's what Gufo wrote.” She slowly worked herself up to sitting. “Those were exactly his words.” She looked at the German with her lips parted slightly. Her face was sad wonder.

“Was he German?”

“No. But he saw things. Here in Italy. We both did.”

“So . . . ,” said the German. He finished the potato. “Thousands of us Germans deserted. Thousands of us are working for the resistance in these hills, and in the countryside of France, and in Germany and Poland. We aren't enough, but we do what we can to end this war.”

And that's what Volpe Rossa herself had said to Lupo once. Maybe not the exact words. He couldn't remember spoken words exactly, like he could written words read over and over. But he knew she'd talked about doing whatever she could to end the war. This German sounded genuine, Lupo had to admit it, though he still felt off balance. There was something about this man that he didn't like.

“We're in need of new partners,” said the Italian.

“Then I guess we came along at the right time,” said Volpe Rossa.

The German laughed. “What a motley crew. One Italian man, one woman, one German, and a boy. Who's going to trust us?”

A boy? Lupo winced.

“They'll learn to trust us,” said Volpe Rossa.

“
Soffia il vento
,” sang the Italian.

“
Urla la bufera
,” joined in the other three.

They sang as they ate, as they packed up, as they walked off into the night.

25

T
HEY BUILT A FIRE in the pattern of a gigantic X. It glowed bright in the frigid January air, a signal to an Allied plane, showing it where to drop supplies for the
partigiani
. Their assignment tonight was supply pickup. They'd built signal fires like this many times before. Supplies were dropped off on this hillside twice a month—so they felt secure in their experience; they knew how to do this job. They waited beside the fire: Struzzo, Turbine, Volpe Rossa, and Lupo.

The four of them had become an inseparable team. They went on so many different missions. They delivered arms to hiding places in gardens, helped prisoners escape from local holding points, dynamited strategic roads, sabotaged telegraph lines, delivered medicines and doctors' advice to makeshift clinics, brought food to women left alone with small children, passed messages with information about enemy troops and plans—anything and everything.

Other teams did all that and sniped at German trucks, too. But the band of
partigiani
they reported to wouldn't give Volpe Rossa direct battle assignments because she was a girl. That meant that the entire team of four never went to battle. Lupo was grateful. He wanted Volpe Rossa as far from battles as possible. And he wanted to reach home alive. And he wanted to do it without killing anyone.

So this work suited him well. He stood as close to the fire as he dared, for the warmth it let off, while still staying in the shadows. That was a rule: stay in the shadows unless you were forced out. He watched the sky.

The familiar drone came first. Then the plane was finally in sight. Supply boxes floated down on parachutes.

He was about to hurry toward where a box had landed when . . . Bang! Bang bang bang! From the dark all around Germans came running out, shouting and shooting. An ambush!

Lupo ran. He fell and got up and ran. He ran blindly, smacking into branches, tripping over rocks. He ran as hard as he'd ever run. Into the hills. Away.

He ran till he had no breath left. He stood, leaning forward, his hands supported on his thighs just above the knees. He couldn't hear anything behind him. No more rifle sounds in the distance. Nothing.

He went over what he'd seen in the split second after the first bang. Somebody falling. But he wasn't sure who. Not Volpe Rossa, though. Someone taller. It could have even been a German, going down under friendly fire. Or maybe Turbine or Struzzo had taken someone down. They both carried rifles. Plus Struzzo still had the gun he'd taken off Lupo the first time they'd met.

He couldn't know now. He couldn't know anything till morning.

He sat with his back against a tree and finally fell asleep. At dawn Lupo headed for the farmhouse. The team always had a prearranged rendezvous point in case of disaster, regardless of the kind of mission they were on. Anything could turn dangerous in a flash.

Like last night's supply drop.

But they were a good team, a lucky team. The others would be at the farmhouse waiting. Lupo knew they would.

A very good team. They were always hungry—who wasn't? They gnawed on bread that had turned black with mold. They slept on floors or muddy ground. They never had enough warm clothing. But Volpe Rossa's gunshot wound had healed well. And they had gone through the winter this far without the coughs and congestion that plagued the other
partigiani
. No matter how long they'd had to stay outside, even in sleet, they were always healthy.

The others would be at the farmhouse. They would.

And two were already there when Lupo arrived.

But Struzzo didn't show up.

They went back to look for him, walking separately, but always within hearing distance of one another. Turbine was the one to find Struzzo's body, hanging naked from a tree, tied up by one foot. Turbine and Lupo took turns digging the grave while Volpe Rossa patrolled the area in case the Germans came back. The frozen dirt made the job take hours. The shovel that the farm woman had insisted they bring with them clanked on rocks now and then.

At one point Turbine mumbled, “I wonder how many times she's sent a
partigiano
off with a shovel.”

But Lupo didn't talk. He couldn't. He had grown close to Struzzo. Not really because of anything they had in common. Mainly it was just that he loved hearing him talk, hearing an accent that felt like home.

They lay the body straight in the grave, and the three of them stood on the edges in respect and sorrow. Struzzo's skin had turned gray with exposure to the bitter cold. Lupo had seen that before—in Ukraine, when both boys and soldiers died in the frozen winter. He'd seen it happen to his best friend, Samuele.

“I'm sorry,” Lupo said quietly. “I'm sorry I don't have extra clothes to put on you.”

“He wouldn't have accepted them,” said Turbine. “If we had extra clothes, he'd want us to give them to other
partigiani
. To the ones who are still wearing summer shorts in the sleet.”

A stab of hatred went through Lupo's gut. It made no sense to feel this way, and he knew it. Turbine was right. Turbine had turned out always to be right. Lupo should be grateful for that fact. It helped to have someone smart around.

Almost immediately they found another
partigiano
to band together with: Saetta—“Thunderbolt,” so that they were a team of four again. But they changed their habits. From then on, only one of them built the signal fires and stayed at the drop-off point. The other three waited at a distance, then came up slowly to gather the supplies. That way if it was an ambush, they could try to ambush the ambushers. And Turbine and Saetta traded in their single-shot rifles for automatics.

Lupo had rebelled instantly to Saetta's name—for it felt as though the names themselves set Saetta and Turbine, the two that had to do with storms, against Lupo and Volpe Rossa, the two that were animal names. But Saetta quickly won him over.

Saetta was sixteen, only a year older than Lupo. They joked together. About nothing. They made each other laugh out loud. And they confessed moments of ignorance and fear. Saetta seemed to like Lupo instinctively. And he distrusted Turbine deeply. He never chose to sit beside the German at meals or lie beside him at night. He never entered into casual conversation with him.

Turbine noticed it. He offered Saetta food first. He did him little kindnesses.

But Saetta stayed firm against him. That alone would have been enough to make Lupo warm to the boy. But the friendship between Lupo and Saetta went beyond that. For the first time since he'd left Rina's farmhouse, Lupo had someone he could work beside without feeling any tension whatsoever. What a comfort that was—to care about someone with such ease.

They fell together in a natural rhythm, Lupo and Saetta walking or eating or working side by side, while the other two talked over strategy for their next mission. The more Volpe Rossa and Turbine paired off, the more Saetta and Lupo paired off.

One night when Volpe Rossa was up in the farmhouse helping their most recent farm family host and the guys were alone in the barn, Turbine said, “So, Saetta, tell me what they did to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Something made you hate me. And it's nothing I did—we've had no quarrel. I'm used to working to earn the trust of
partigiani
. But I can't seem to earn yours, no matter what I do. What did my fellow countrymen do to you?”

Lupo blinked back his curiosity. It was more important to protect an honored tradition among
partigiani
, the tradition of privacy. “You don't have to answer, Saetta.”

“That's right,” said Turbine. “Our pasts are our own business. But your past could get in the way between you and me. We all depend on one another. And you and I are the only ones with rifles.”

“Lupo's old enough to carry a rifle,” said Saetta.

Lupo's stomach twisted. So far he hadn't had to defend his lack of a weapon.

“We're talking about you and me,” said Turbine, to Lupo's relief. “About the problem between us. Maybe it will help to put it in the open.” He folded his hands and locked eyes with Saetta. “If we don't have friendship, how can we keep up our spirits? And our spirits are our strongest weapons.”

Turbine's voice was so clear, even Lupo felt compelled. He moved closer to Saetta to lend support.

“I stole a watermelon two summers ago.” Saetta sat with his back against the barn wall. Now he rested his head against the wall, too, and looked up. “From a truck. The truckload was for the Nazi headquarters. An SS officer caught me. He drove me home, with the watermelon on my lap.” Saetta spoke to the rafters. Though Lupo could see only the outline of his face in the dark, he sensed that Saetta was crying. “When we got home, the officer made me sit at the table until all my family got there. My father, my mother, my sister, my brother. Then he told them to sit, too, around the table. The SS officer made my mother cut the watermelon. The sweet smell filled the room. It was glossy red inside. Perfect. He held a submachine gun. He told me to eat the watermelon. I ate. My little sister cried for a piece. We'd been hungry for so long. But the officer said it was my melon; I had stolen it, after all. I ate and ate while my sister cried. I puked. Then I ate some more. When I finished, he shot them. He killed my family. But not me. And he said, ‘Let that be a lesson, dirty thief.' ” Saetta stretched out on the straw.

Turbine and Lupo lay down, too. Lupo knew they were all crying.

Saetta's behavior toward Turbine didn't change after that. But Turbine no longer seem moved to try to change it. He let Saetta keep his distance.

And somehow Lupo knew that Turbine was right to let it go. Saetta couldn't make himself befriend Turbine, but he'd told Turbine his story. And that meant he accepted Turbine.

They were a team. They could count on each other. All of them.

26

M
ARCH BEGAN JUST AS COLD as the winter months before. Lupo shivered and hugged himself in the dark. He finished setting the fires for an Allied plane supply drop-off, then rushed back into the shadows beside scrub bushes and waited. This was a new drop-off point; Lupo felt skittish.

Turbine and Saetta and Volpe Rossa watched from a nearby hill. Whenever Lupo was the one to set the fires, he always had to squelch the urge to look in their general direction. He had to be careful not to give them away, in case anyone was watching him and saw where he looked.

He kept his eyes on the sky.

The familiar drone came. Then he saw the plane. But as it passed overhead, he made out only one parachute.

Clunk! So many clunks!

Lupo nestled back deeper into the bushes. What was going on? Was someone throwing things? Were there Germans in the trees over there?

He noted carefully where the single parachute had landed. That was important, otherwise it would be really hard to find it. He waited a good half an hour before he got up the nerve to go for it. Then he sneaked from bush to bush toward his goal.

He stumbled over something hard. He felt around in the faint moonlight. The pieces of a wooden crate lay scattered, with belts of ammunition between them.