Street Boys (27 page)

The bullet tore through the Nazi’s neck and lodged in his throat.

He dropped the knife and fell on top of Nunzia, his eyes quick to lose all signs of life, his head tilted, foam, blood and spittle seeping out of the corners of his mouth. Nunzia inched herself away from his slumped body, casting the soldier aside and jumping to her feet. She took the knife from the Nazi’s hand, looked across the square and saw Connors rush toward her, the smoking gun still in his hand. They were less than ten feet apart when she saw the Nazi soldier come out from behind the base of the fountain, aiming his rifle at Connors. “Get down!” she shouted. “Now!”

Connors dropped to the ground, his eyes following Nunzia’s, turned on his back and fired three rounds at the German standing to his right. He held the position as he watched the soldier topple over the side of the waterless fountain. Connors then rose to his knees, looked around the square and raced toward Nunzia, catching her in his arms. As they held one another in silence, the six Panzer tanks had positioned themselves on the north and south sides of the smoldering square, their steady barrage bringing finality to the few remaining structures. Connors lifted Nunzia’s face, gently holding it with three fingers of his right hand. He stroked each cheek, leaned his head forward and kissed her. For the briefest of moments, they were both able to ignore the fire and destruction around them.

Connors opened his eyes, Nunzia still in his embrace, and looked over her head. The Nazi had his back to them, his rifle raised and aimed at a street boy fleeing from one of the fast approaching tanks. Connors ran his hand down the side of Nunzia’s arm and grabbed for the knife she still held in her right hand. He pried it loose from her fingers, moved her aside, took two forceful steps forward and flung it, blade first, toward the soldier. The knife pierced his uniform and severed several main arteries, sending both the rifle and the soldier tumbling to the ground. Connors waved the street boy forward, signaling him to move to higher ground and safety. Nunzia stepped up quietly from behind and handed Connors an ammo pack and a German machine gun. “You’re pretty good with a knife,” she said.

“It’s something I picked up from an old lady I met the other day,” Connors said, taking the gun and pack and her hand.

Maldini held the gun to Zoltan’s back, standing with the Nazi in the shadows of the stairwell. They both could hear the footsteps coming closer, less than one floor above them. Maldini quickly glanced behind him and saw Giovanni and Frederico hovering in a corner, rifles hanging across the top of the crate of grenades. “Remember this,” he whispered into Zoltan’s ear. “No matter what happens, I’ll make sure you die before I do.
Capito?
”

The Nazi arched his back. He stiffened when he heard Zimmler’s voice echo down at them. “Glaus!” he yelled, his voice booming like a stereo in and out of the empty fish tanks. “Zoltan! Time to wake up and join the war. The tanks are in the square. So are some of those boys that have been pestering us. We need you to bring the grenades up.”

Zimmler stopped in midstep and Maldini heard the click of his rifle trigger. “Answer him,” he whispered to Zoltan. “Tell him you’re on your way. And say it loud so he can hear you.”

“We’re bringing them up,” Zoltan shouted in German. “We’re just getting our gear ready.”

“Can you manage on your own?” Zimmler asked. “Or do you two women need a man’s help?”

“Have him come down to you,” Maldini said, moving the gun away from Zoltan’s back and placing it up against his neck. “Tell him you found some wine, lots of it, and ask what you should do with it.”

“Do you want us to bring the wine up as well?” Zoltan asked, wiping at the sweat coming off his brow. “Glaus found a case hidden in one of the tanks earlier today.”

Maldini heard the hurried footsteps and turned to the boys behind him, holding up his right hand and signaling them to prepare to fire. Giovanni and Frederico pressed their rifles against the top of the crate, spread out their bodies and took aim at the dark steps above them. Maldini put an arm around Zoltan’s waist and the two stepped farther back against the stone walls of the aquarium. Zimmler turned the corner, standing several feet across from the two men, his rifle slung casually over his shoulder, a smoldering cigarette jammed in the center of his mouth. Maldini looked at the two boys and nodded.

Both bullets found their mark, hitting Zimmler at chest level and sending him skidding down the remaining steps. Giovanni and Frederico stood and walked over to where the soldier was stretched out, their rifles aimed down at him, waiting for any movement. “His time with us has passed,” Maldini said to them, still holding the gun on Zoltan. “Take his rifle and belt and start heading up. And do it quietly. We still have one more Nazi to deal with.”

“What about him?” Frederico asked, pointing his rifle at Zoltan. “You sure it’s safe to leave him here alone? He might get loose and shout out. Warn the sniper we’re coming his way.”

“Don’t worry,” Maldini said, walking past the boys and the bodies of the two dead Nazis. “He’ll be bound and gagged. And he won’t be alone. We have an army of rats down here who will keep a very close eye on our friend.”

Tippler had one eye squinted shut and focused his other down the trigger line of his high-powered rifle. He had a street boy in his scope, moving from a burning building to the edge of the fountain. The sniper stiffened his upper body, held his breath and squeezed down on the trigger, the recoil bouncing off the top of his shoulder. The boy fell in a heap, his head down as if asleep, crouched in a corner of the square, hidden by the shadows of a long-abandoned basin. “Like sending pigs to the market,” the sniper said in a low voice, a half-smile on his lips. He gently brushed the rifle along the edges of the embankment seeking its next target.

Tippler stopped when he saw the American soldier running through the square, a young woman by his side. He pulled a fresh bullet from the pouch on his belt and slid it into the cartridge holder, jamming the casing in place. He wiped the rifle down with a damp cloth he kept next to his cigarettes and double-checked the scope. “There you are,” the sniper said. “The ghost of Naples. I wonder how many of his cigarettes Zimmler would wager on your life?”

Tippler stretched out his body, his legs flat against the cold stone floor, his shoulders and arms tight and tense. He gazed through the scope and slid his hands along the dark wood barrel of the rifle, the index finger of his right hand resting on the curve of the trigger. He lifted the butt end of the rifle half an inch higher for better leverage and bore down on his target.

Giovanni and Frederico rested the grenade crate on a lower step and stood with their backs against a wall, inches from the German soldier. The older boy grabbed Frederico’s right hand and held it tight, looked across at him and nodded. They came out of the darkness together, throwing their bodies at the flattened Nazi. They landed on his back just as he squeezed the trigger, sending the shot astray and the rifle cascading over the edge of the embankment. Frederico picked up a rock and landed blow after blow at the head and neck of the surprised Tippler, who struggled frantically to regain his focus and turn his body. Giovanni, his hands gripped around the soldier’s ammo belt, leaned down and pushed him forward. Tippler’s arms hung over the side of the tower, several hundred feet above the battle zone.

Tippler managed to turn his head and caught a numbing blow to the eye from the sharp end of a rock. A thick line of blood spurted out of the large gash, clouding his vision. Frederico tossed aside the rock and moved next to Giovanni, each boy pushing and pulling with all their strength to get the soldier out of the tower. Tippler kicked furiously at them, landing hard, painful blows to their backs and arms. Giovanni ducked one feverish swing of a boot, jumped to his feet and pressed his hands against a stone pillar. He lifted his legs and jammed the thin soles of his shoes against the center of Tippler’s crotch. He closed his eyes and pressed down with full force, the muscles and veins on both his arms and neck bulging, his feet shoving the Nazi’s body closer to the edge of the tower. Frederico leaned his shoulder against the soldier’s back and tugged at his ammo belt with both hands. One final push from both and Tippler slid out of the tower and fell screaming over the side. The two boys stared down after him, watching him land with a loud thump on top of a moving tank.

Giovanni and Frederico, both drenched in sweat, the sides of their arms red with welts, turned away from the embankment and found Maldini standing behind them, the crate of grenades in his hands. “He loved to laugh and make bets with the others,” Frederico said. “How many shots it would take to kill one of us. He never lost.”

“He did today,” Maldini told them.

He rested the crate next to one of the stone pillars and pulled free a grenade. He peered over the side, the tanks venting their wrath against old buildings shrouded in flames and abandoned homes lost under blankets of smoke. In the midst of all that madness, soldiers with machine guns searched for street boys cowering inside the wall of fire or shielding themselves under rocks and stones. In the center of the massive square, wedged in next to a crumbling fountain, he found Connors and Nunzia, fighting back to back, their guns spraying bullets in every possible direction. Maldini checked the time on his wristwatch and then looked up at the two boys. He pulled the pin from the base of the grenade and sent it spiraling down toward a trio of Nazi soldiers. “It’s time to join our friends,” he said.

Connors aimed his machine gun at an approaching tank and held fire, looking up at the Nazi soldier flying down out of the aquarium tower. He backed up several steps, reaching a hand out for Nunzia and pulling her along with him, as the soldier landed on the other end of the square. “I was expecting a louder signal,” Connors said, ducking under a Nazi fusillade of bullets.

Nunzia fired off a half dozen rounds and then glanced up at the tower. She saw her father lean over the edge and toss out a German grenade. “That was just an appetizer,” she shouted. “Here comes the meal now.”

The blast of the first grenade sent three soldiers hurtling to the ground, facedown and dead. The next dozen grenades caused a break in the Nazi offensive. Within minutes, the square was filled with street boys rising up from the sewers, running out of fiery buildings and jumping down from smoke-filled houses, each firing weapons at the now-surrounded German soldiers. Connors ran toward an open manhole, grabbed a sack of grenades from a street boy and jumped on the back of a Nazi tank. He turned to his right and saw a rainbow of kerosene cocktails rain down on two other tanks swinging away from the buildings to bear down on the boys. Connors ducked under the massive fireball that was quick to follow and then unpinned two of the grenades and tossed them into the open slot above. He jumped off the tank, the explosion hitting while he was in midair.

The three remaining tanks were moving in a tight circle, heavily armed soldiers closing in behind them, looking to shoot their way out of a square that just minutes earlier they could claim as their own. A Panzer tank, its turret loaded and in position, blocked their path. Vincenzo stood in the open hole, a pair of goggles hanging off his neck.

“You think they’ll be all right?” Nunzia asked, looking through the haze and smoke at the Panzer tank parked beside the aquarium.

Connors turned to her and nodded. “The Americans have Patton,” he said. “The Brits have Montgomery and the Neapolitans have Vincenzo. Not a loser in the bunch.”

Vincenzo lowered his head and looked down into the hull of the tank. Dante was pushing buttons and shifting gears, while Claudio and Pepe stood by his side, loading bombs into the hold. Fabrizio was huddled in a corner, the bullmastiff at his feet, trying to find comfort inside the tight space. “What’s taking so long?” Vincenzo asked. “Can you drive this tank or not?”

“We got this far, didn’t we?” Dante shouted back. “Just give me a few seconds. There’s all these buttons and gauges I need to get used to.”

“How soon do you want us to fire?” Claudio asked.

“They’re closing in,” Vincenzo said, staring out at the oncoming Nazi tanks and soldiers. “They’ll be on us in less than five minutes unless we attack.”

“Do you think they figured out we’re not one of theirs?” Pepe asked.

“They’re Nazis,” Vincenzo said in an irritated tone. “Not morons.”

Dante pushed three buttons and moved an iron lever toward him. He took a step back to read the gauges and accidentally stepped on the mastiff’s tail. The dog turned his head and snarled. “Why is he in here?” Dante asked Fabrizio, who was calming the dog with a pat on his massive head.

“To protect us,” Fabrizio said with a knowing nod.

“Get ready to fire,” Vincenzo shouted down. “And move it forward. If you can, shift that turret above ten meters to the left. You’ll hit a whole section of soldiers. Once you start, Dante, no matter what happens, don’t stop.”

Dante was mesmerized by the power of the vehicle he commanded, his eyes staring with amazement at the array of switches, gears and gauges amassed before him. He stood atop a wine crate and looked through the slot hole at the square, smoke and fire billowing in all directions. The Nazis were running toward them, forced out of the square by the bullets and bombs fired and thrown by Connors, Nunzia and the street boys. He turned to Claudio and Pepe and nodded. “Load it,” Dante said. “And be careful. We want the bombs to go out, not come in. Wait for the signal from above.”

“What do you want me to do?” Fabrizio asked.

“Keep an eye on Vincenzo,” Dante told him. “It’s going to get really loud soon and I may not be able to hear his commands. You listen for me and make sure that I do.”

Vincenzo stared out at the advancing tanks and troops, at a section of a Panzer division fleeing from the weathered guns of the boys and the damage inflicted by their own grenades. “Fire,” he shouted into the hole. He wrapped his fingers around the sides of the tank as the first shell came spiraling out of the turret, disappearing in a blur as it exploded against the far side of a building wall, its brutal force sending four Nazi soldiers down to the ground.