Street Boys (16 page)

“
Grazia
,” he whispered, seconds before he drew his last breath.

2

16TH PANZER DIVISION HEADQUARTERS
IL PALAZZO REALE

Von Klaus watched Kunnalt rush to his side, stop and salute, always aware and appreciative of the young officer’s eagerness to please. The troubled look on the man’s face was enough to tell him that the news to be delivered wasn’t good. “Problems already?” he asked, waiting as his aide took a deep breath.

“We’ve encountered a minor disturbance on Via Toledo,” Kunnalt said. “And we took some casualties.”

“I never consider casualties to be minor disturbances,” Von Klaus said with a note of irritation.

“Sorry, sir. I meant it as a statement of fact. I didn’t mean to sound unconcerned.”

“What have we lost?” Von Klaus said, brushing aside the apology.

“Nine men are dead,” Kunnalt said. “Three are wounded, one critical. And three of the tanks are down.”

Von Klaus stared at Kunnalt, his face red, his voice coated with anger. “Who did this?” he asked, each word spoken softly and in a deliberate tone.

“Boys mostly,” Kunnalt told him. “They lined the rooftops, armed with rifles and makeshift bombs.”

“Boys plan pranks, not battles,” Von Klaus said. “Someone is leading them. Who?”

“We’re not quite sure yet, sir,” Kunnalt said. “But the men reported an exchange of gunfire with an American soldier. He came at them from a rear flank and seemed to be in control of the operation.”

“The Americans are firmly entrenched in Salerno,” Von Klaus said. “They won’t move until Montgomery moves and that’s at least a week away. They may have sent a small team down to gauge activity in the city, but no one is sent out alone. The men may have seen one soldier, but there may be others scattered throughout the city. We need to find them, and quickly. I don’t want any repeats of what happened this morning. This mission will be a success if I have to personally bring down every building myself.”

“If we capture one of the boys, he might lead us to the Americans,” Kunnalt said. “They may have been forced into this fight and might be looking to find a way out.”

“They weren’t forced to be good at it,” Von Klaus said. “Nine dead soldiers and three tanks in ruin. This is insane! I want this stopped before it builds. That means today, Kunnalt.”

“Our troops were not expecting resistance,” Kunnalt said.

“They’re soldiers,” Von Klaus snapped. “It’s time they began to act like it.”

“I’ve alerted all sniper teams to report any movements back to headquarters,” Kunnalt said. “In addition to that, do you want me to request aerial assistance from high command?”

Von Klaus shook his head as he looked down at a large map of Naples spread out on a table under a tree. “This is our battle. Unless you want me to inform high command that one of the most elite tank troops in the German army can’t face down a group of children led by one soldier.”

“Then no changes to the standing orders, sir?”

“The orders hold as given.” Von Klaus looked away from the map and toward Kunnalt. “No mercy in any quarters. Not to the buildings and not to anyone left on the streets. And that includes children.”

3

SAN LORENZO MAGGIORE

Steve Connors sat on a thick stone in the shadows of a dark basement, his hands on the dials of a broken transmitter, the candle by his feet his only direct light. He moved the dials from right to left and tugged at the white button at the base, all to no avail. He slapped at the base of the machine in frustration and then kicked it to the ground. He sat with his back against the wall and looked out into the darkness. “Does that help make it work?” Vincenzo asked.

He stood in a corner of the room, his voice a small echo in the stillness of the basement. He stepped closer to Connors, until the candle flame helped illuminate his face.

“I need to contact my headquarters,” Connors said, staring up at Vincenzo. “I have to get us some help.”

“How much better would your soldiers have done today?” Vincenzo asked.

“I saw you freeze up out there,” Connors said, his anger now at full throttle. “And I saw a kid with no business being in a fight get killed. That wouldn’t have happened with soldiers.”

“I didn’t expect to see Angelo come down the street,” Vincenzo said, his head down and his voice low. “And I didn’t know how to stop him.”

“We got lucky out there,” Connors said. “Only one of ours died. And that’s not because we were better than the Germans. It’s because they weren’t expecting us. That’s not going to happen anymore, and that means a lot more people are going to die.”

“It was my first fight,” Vincenzo said almost sheepishly. “And I was afraid. More than I thought I would be.”

“All those military books I hear you like to read are filled with stories about great battles and great soldiers,” Connors said, looking at Vincenzo. “They talk about strategy and planning, make war sound like a chess game. And they’re all wrong. Those books don’t tell you anything about war. They don’t tell you what it’s like to squeeze a trigger and then watch some guy your own age in another uniform fall down dead.”

“At first it was like everything was moving in slow motion,” Vincenzo said, searching for the words. “And then when I tried to run, it felt like my feet were buried in water. But then a second later, it was all going so fast, I couldn’t figure out how to keep up.”

“It seems to go that way in every fight,” Connors said, his anger dissipating, his manner softer now, more compassionate toward a boy coming to terms with his first taste of fire. “There are days when you can see every bullet fired coming right at you. Other times, all you see is a flash from a gun and the buzz run past your ear. It’s different every time out.”

“Are you always afraid?” Vincenzo asked, sitting down across from Connors.

“Never more than the first time,” Connors said. “There’s no training that can prepare you for that first fight. You don’t know how you’re supposed to feel or how you should act. It gets easier after you’ve been through a few, but you always get the fear. You just know how to deal with it better.”

“I think I’ll always be afraid,” Vincenzo said. “I don’t know if that will help make me a good fighter.”

“You’re already a good fighter,” Connors said. “Just because you’re afraid doesn’t mean you’re not brave. You’ve seen a lot of blood for a kid your age and that gives you more of an edge, but it doesn’t make you battle-ready.”

“I might never be,” Vincenzo said. “But this morning was not just about me and Angelo. It was about those children on the rooftops who finally had a chance to fight back against tanks and soldiers.”

Connors stood and walked toward the steps leading out of the church, stopping in front of a dust-shrouded statue of Saint Jude.

“He’s the patron saint of lost causes,” Vincenzo said. “Italians pray to him when they have no one else to turn to for help.”

“It do them any good?” Connors asked.

“You’ve been here long enough to know the answer,” Vincenzo said. “But Italians never blame the saints. Only themselves. So they pray every day, and once in a while good things happen and they have a saint to thank for it.”

“That hold for you, too?” Connors asked. “The prayer part, I mean.”

“Not really,” Vincenzo said, looking up at Saint Jude, his marbled hands entwined in long rows of cobwebs. “Even if the saints could hear my words, why would they stop just to listen to me?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever prayed,” Connors said. “I would go to services back home, but that’s just more because I had to than wanted to. And while I was there, I went through all the motions of prayer. But I’ve never said one where I really meant it.”

Vincenzo patted his fingers gently across the statue’s bare feet and looked at Connors. “Maybe that will change,” he said in a whisper. “For both of us.”

They turned and walked up the narrow steps leading out of the church, leaving behind the peaceful silence.

4

PIAZZA DANTE

Three German tanks rumbled around the center of the square, their engines running hot, officers standing in the open pits, gazing out at the abandoned structures. The large, ornate gate in the middle of the massive building was shuttered. It had been built in 1625 and was positioned directly across from Dante’s statue. A dozen German soldiers were scattered around the tanks, their eyes searching the rooftops for signs of trouble. The tanks spread out, the officers directing the drivers to designated spots, each facing a front of the hemicycle that had stood since 1588. They were poised and eager to begin their destructive mission.

The center tank fired first.

Its opening salvo sent the gates flying, splitting the lock and bending the iron grate. The officer ignored the smoke that mushroomed around him, tapped on the sides and looked into the square as the tank moved forward. Three of the soldiers walked in behind the tank, crouched and apprehensive. The actions that had been taken earlier in Via Toledo had been radioed to all the units and they were placed on a full alert. The tank moved under the large monument, crushing some of the bars of the fallen gate as it rumbled past, and came to a halt on the other side, the officer’s head still shrouded in the shadows of the arch. He turned and saw the other two tanks holding the same position.

“Looks clear to me,” he said, speaking into a hand mike. “We’ll send the men in first to draw any of them out. Once that’s done, we bring it all down.”

The soldiers slid into place alongside the tanks. Outside the towers, Dante’s sculpture looked up toward the tolling clock.

It was ten
A.M.

The three wooden carts were wheeled in and hidden behind Dante’s statue. Each cart was loaded with mines and soaked with kerosene. Vincenzo eased past one of the carts, rifle in hand, and crouched down along the stone basin. Franco and Angela stepped in alongside. “The tanks are right where we need them to be,” Franco said.

“The American needs a few more minutes to get in position,” Vincenzo said. “Then we can make our move.”

“What if more Nazis come from behind us?” Angela asked. “What do we do?”

“We turn the carts on them,” Vincenzo said. “Which leaves our people in the square out on their own.”

“This is a dangerous plan,” Franco said.

“I’m open to any plans that aren’t dangerous,” Vincenzo said. He waited but Franco stayed silent. Vincenzo turned away, his eyes searching out the tanks in front of him, watching the Nazi soldiers move inside grounds that had been designed for leisurely walks, not great battles.

The center tank shifted gears and ground to a halt, the soldiers positioned around it holding their places and their weapons. The tanks on either side also came to a quick stop, the square filled with rising dust and crouched soldiers aiming weapons at the man and boy standing at ease in the center of the piazza. Maldini stood facing three tanks and a dozen Nazis, his arms held out, a smile on his face. Next to him, little Fabrizio bounced a soccer ball against the side of his foot.

The officer in the center tank motioned toward Maldini, signaling him to move closer. “What are you doing here?” he asked in Italian. “You’re not allowed within city limits.”

Maldini walked forward, his steps slow and calculated, sliding casually across the rough terrain. “I know, sir,” he said apologetically. “I was set to leave when the Germans first arrived. But then my son ran away. He was afraid of the guns. Ever since, I have spent all my time looking for him. This morning, with the grace of God, I finally found him. He was hiding in one of the large rooms above us.”

Fabrizio looked up at the German officer, moving the soccer ball from one foot to the other. He then lifted his eyes and saw his target, on a stone wall, fifteen meters to the right of the tank. A mine rested in the center of a brick column, directly above four soldiers with cocked machine guns.

“I could have you shot just for being here,” the officer snarled.

“I know, sir,” Maldini said. “I beg you, please show us your mercy. We’re ready now, my son and I, to go anywhere you want us to go.”

“Were there any others hiding in those buildings?” the officer asked. “Besides your son.”

“None that I saw, sir,” Maldini said. “The buildings I searched looked empty, a poor place to hide for adult or child.”

“Your son managed to survive,” the officer said. “Despite the many bombing raids.”

“The Good Lord must have been watching over him, sir,” Maldini said. “It’s the only answer.”

The officer snorted a laugh and looked down at one of his soldiers. “These Italians love to believe that God takes a hand in everything that happens to them. It helps rescue them from any responsibility.”

Maldini kept his eyes on the young officer in the tank and ignored the snide laughter that came from the soldiers grouped around its sides. Next to him, Fabrizio lifted the soccer ball from his foot to his knee, bouncing it in a quiet rhythm, as he stood balanced on one leg. Maldini turned to the little boy and gently rubbed his head. “It’s time to play ball,” he said to him.

“I’m not afraid,” Fabrizio said.

“That’s good,” Maldini said. “Because I am.”

Fabrizio nodded and moved the soccer ball from his knee back to the flat end of his right foot. He began a slow trot, kicking the ball from one foot to the other, his eyes on the soldiers and the tank officer. The Germans lowered their guns as they watched the boy maneuver around the front of the square, flipping the soccer ball over his shoulder and catching it with the front of his chest. Some of them laughed as he kicked the ball with his right heel and dropped to his knees as it landed on his forehead, always keeping the bounce steady. Maldini stood off to the side, his eyes on the mine positioned just to the right of the center tank, his right hand at his back, its fingers wrapped around the hard end of a revolver.

Fabrizio was on his feet, the ball a blur from foot to chest to head to arm, his hands spread out in front of him, enjoying the nods of approval he was receiving from the relaxed soldiers. “Your boy is an excellent player,” the officer said to Maldini, his attention focused on Fabrizio. “One of the best I’ve ever seen.”

“Would you care to see him shoot the ball?” Maldini said. “I swear on my mother’s very soul that you’ll never live to see a shot like his again.”

The officer leaned back against the edge of the circular opening and glanced around at the happy faces of his men. He looked back to Maldini and nodded his approval.

Fabrizio turned to Maldini, the ball floating in midair, his cherubic face gleaming with thin lines of sweat. “Score your goal, Fabrizio,” Maldini told him.

The boy moved with stutter steps, his small feet a blur as he inched the ball closer toward the soldiers and the tanks. He flipped the ball up to his knees and began to run as he bounced it, looking up to gaze at his target, taking seconds to weigh the distance and the angle needed to make the shot. He was within twenty feet of the tank, a short reach away from a soldier’s grip, when he stopped, turned his back, trotted a dozen steps forward and placed the meat of the ball on the center of his right foot. He let it rest there for a fraction of a second, spread out his arms and slid to the hard ground. He extended his leg out, his body resting flat on the wet stones, and kicked the ball skyward toward the brick wall next to the main tank.

The ball whizzed off Fabrizio’s foot, a white blur moving up and away from the reach of any soldier. The officer watched it go, the smile on his face doing a fast fade when he caught sight of the mine positioned to his side. The ball landed square in the center of the mine, sending large pieces of brick, stone and shredded glass cascading down on the tank and the soldiers, its loud blast rocking the piazza. A massive hot blanket of thick brown smoke engulfed Maldini as he ran toward Fabrizio, clutched the boy in his arms and sprinted toward the rear of the square and the open door that awaited them both. Bullets zinged past them as they ran, the boy clutched to Maldini like skin. “Was it a good shot?” the little boy asked as they headed toward Connors, frantically waving them on.

“It was your best,” Maldini managed to say through gasps of breath as he and Fabrizio rushed past Connors into the immediate safety of the office building foyer. Connors stared past them, offering cover fire and assessing the damage made by the exploded mine. The tank in the central archway was shrouded in rubble, the officer bent over the open lid, seriously wounded. Three ground soldiers lay dead and scattered. The other two tanks had moved out of the gate entrances and were in the center of the square, raining waste on the empty buildings surrounding them. The soldiers had spread out and were firing down at his location, bullets nicking walls and shattering glass.

Connors looked down at Fabrizio and winked at the little boy, the mastiff now alongside him, sniffing and licking at the sides of his face. “I guess you really are a great football player,” Connors said.

Fabrizio patted the top of the mastiff’s head and smiled back at Connors. “But I won’t be able to practice anymore,” he said. “That was the only ball I had.”

Nunzia came up behind Connors, resting a hand on the soldier’s back. “They’re ready,” she said in a low voice.

A loud explosion rocked the second floor of the building, dropping plywood and cinder chips down on them. “So are they,” Connors said, staring out at the approaching tanks.

The two wooden carts were rolled into the shade of the archways, four mines in each, a heavy smell of kerosene coming off the old planks. Vincenzo bent down against the side of a wall and peeked out into the square, heavy gunfire and powerful explosions rocking the foundation of buildings built to last forever. He wiped his forehead with the torn sleeve of his shirt, took several deep breaths and closed his eyes. Next to him, crouched down and waiting with weapons cocked, six boys stood ready to move on his call. On the other end of the square, Franco waited with a similar group, all huddled in the same position. “When will we know to go out there?” one of the boys asked him, speaking in a whisper.

“You’ll know,” Vincenzo assured him. “And remember, don’t use the carts as shelter. They’ll be the first to explode.”

“I’ve never fired a rifle before,” the boy said, his voice unable to hide the frail nerves. “I hope I shoot something besides myself.”

“Aim it at the ones wearing the uniforms,” Vincenzo said to him, patting his leg. “And keep pulling on the trigger. After that it’s as much luck as skill.”

“I’ve never killed anyone, either,” the boy said.

“You weren’t supposed to,” Vincenzo said, looking into his eyes. “Neither was I and neither were those Germans out there. But if they don’t fight, they’ll die. And so will we. My grandfather used to tell me that we don’t choose our life, we just live it.”

The explosion sent them sprawling to the damp ground. It came from the other end of the square, the power of its blast centered in the building where Connors and the others had been positioned, its facade now crumbled, smoke billowing toward the clear sky, flames shooting out the second- and third-floor windows. The force of the hidden bomb had stretched out into the square, leaving four soldiers dead and a tank disabled, the tracks around its rear wheels shattered into pieces.

Vincenzo stood and turned to the others. “It’s time,” he said. “Let’s show the Nazis that Naples is still alive.”

They grouped around the back of the cart and pushed it into the open square, aiming it toward the last functioning tank. From the other end, Franco and his team did the same, their target the soldiers collecting themselves from the mine blast. Vincenzo caught Franco’s eye and nodded. “Scatter and fire,” he shouted to the boys behind him. “Leave the cart to me.”

The boys ran from the cover of the cart, firing rifle rounds in the direction of the soldiers. A few threw themselves to the ground, a handful gathered around thin pine trees for shelter, pointing their rifles and blindly emptying their chambers. Vincenzo rolled the cart with all his might, the mines jiggling, the palms of his hands cut and bleeding from the pressure he was putting on the splintered old wood. Bullets zinged at him from all directions, a grenade blast exploding twenty feet to his left. He ducked down and gave the cart one final push, using the full force of his tired body, and then he rolled off toward a patch of grass to his left. Franco released his cart seconds later, diving behind a thick green bush.

The two carts exploded at the same time, sending wood, brick, steel and chunks of concrete through the air. Vincenzo stood in the midst of all the smoke, waving his arms in a frantic motion, signaling the boys out of the square and back into the arches and the safety of the streets. He ran behind them, then turned to check on Franco. The boy was on his knees, a large shard of wood jabbed into the back of his right shoulder. The smoke around them was dense and the few German soldiers who were left were firing in the blind, bullets landing against walls and bouncing off cobblestones. Vincenzo ran toward Franco, lifted him to his feet and put an arm around his waist. “Can you run?” he asked him.

“Faster than you,” Franco said.

Vincenzo gripped him tighter and both boys ran at full sprint out of the mangled Piazza Dante, leaving behind three ruined tanks and a dozen dead soldiers and a square erupting in flames. They ran under the archway and out into the clear sunlight, the marble statue of Dante greeting them both, his stiff arms spread out. Vincenzo and Franco stopped to catch their breath and glanced briefly up at the statue. “What better place to leave behind an inferno?” Vincenzo asked Franco.

“That’s another book I didn’t read,” Franco said, between gasps for breath.

Vincenzo laughed as the two then continued their run, quickly disappearing into the empty streets of their city.