Sharky's Machine

PROLOGUE

Chapter One

NORTHERN ITALY, 1944

It had been dark less than an hour when Younger and the two sergeants finished loading their equipment on the three mules and prepared to head north towards Torbole and the rendezvous with La Volte. The young captain was excited, his eyes flashing as they smeared boot black on their faces. He was like a football player just before the first whistle blows, charged up, fiery with nervous energy. Harry Younger was perfect for this kind of cloak and dagger stuff; it was like a game to him. You could almost bear the adrenalin pumping through his veins. When they had the mules ready, Younger took out his map one more time and spread it on the side of an ammo box strapped to the flank of one of the miles and held his flashlight close to it. He went over the details once more and everybody nodded. The paisanos stood back from the group and smoked American cigarettes and said nothing.

When he was finished, Younger smacked his hands together and then ran one band through his crew cut several times and pulled his cap down over his head. Then he took Corrigon by the arm and led him away from the group, off by himself.

‘How ya doin’, buddy-boy?’ he asked Corrigon.

‘Four-o,’ Corrigon said, but there was an edge in his voice.

‘Sure you’re okay?’

‘Yeah, yeah, fine, sir.’

‘You’re not gonna choke up on me, are you, chum?’

Corrigon smiled. ‘I wouldn’t dare,’ he said.

‘That’s m’boy. Look, it’s a piece of cake, Corrigon. I’ve done this, shit, half a dozen times. You been in here for two days, right? Not a sign of a fuckin’ Kraut anywhere around. Don’t think about what might go wrong, think about how simple it’s gonna be.’

‘Yeah, sure,’ Corrigon said. Will you knock off the pep talk, for Christ’s sake!

‘I’ll make you a bet. I’ll bet we all come outa this with Silver Stars. I know this La Volte, see. He’s got every fuckin’ paisano guerrilla in north Italy up his sleeve. It’ll be a little Second Front, up here. They’ll kick the Krauts in the ass and we’ll be across the Po before Christmas.’

‘Yeah, right, right.’ Corrigon tried to sound enthusiastic.

‘You know why I picked you for this end, Corrigon? Hunh? Because Pulaski and Devlin there, they been slug- gin’ it out all the way since Anzio. If anything goes wrong, we’re between you and the Heinies, if there are any. And we been in here now two days and not a sign, not even any recons overhead. Hell, buddy, God lost his galoshes in here. Nobody’s gonna bother us.’

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.

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.’

He reached into a first-aid kit on his belt and took out a small cylinder and a bandage roll. ‘You have, how you call it, uh, a nose cloth, capisce?’

‘Handkerchief?’ Corrigon asked.

‘Si, Si.’

‘Back pocket, left side.’

Francesco took it out, tore it into two strips, and made patches of them. He sprinkled grey powder on the entry and exit wounds. ‘Penicillin,’ he explained. Then he and Dominic bound up the wound.

‘Our town is Malcesine. About three kilometres. Can you walk?’

‘How far’s that?’

‘Two miles maybe.’

‘I’ll do an Irish jig for two miles to get outa here,’ Corrigon said.

The two Italians helped him to his feet. The pain swelled back through him, but he clenched his teeth and tried to ignore it.

‘Tough guy, eh, amico? Francesco said.

‘Yeah, sure, tough guy, that’s me,’ he groaned. I’ll tell you what I am, he thought, I’m a simple, dumb, dogface, eighty-two-dollars-a-month-plus-combat-pay-corporal from Clarefield, Pennsylvania, and I used to drive a delivery truck for my brother-in-law’s brewery and it makes about as much sense me being here as it would to put army shoes on a fucking French poodle but I ain’t so dumb that I buy that skit about you two being farmers when you have knives in your boots and penicillin on your belts but I’m not gonna argue with anybody right now so let’s stuff all the Dick Tracy bullshit and get the lovin’ hell outa here fast and maybe, later on, when we can put our feet on the table over a little pasta and vino somebody will tell me what happened back there and why everything Went to hell so fast.

But Corrigon hurt too badly and was too tired to think much more about it. All he knew for sure was that Captain Harry Younger and Sergeant Joe Pulaski and the other noncom, Devlin. were dead and Major Halford’s operation had bought the farm. And right now four million dollars in gold was lying on the bottom of Lake Garda.