Mac Wingate 11, page 9
The boy seemed to have the speed. Wingate heard him racing along like some sort of cartoon character with wheels for legs. But the person in the squeaky shoes, although not as fast, seemed the better planner. Although the squeaks had merged together from the person’s running, Wingate could hear the volume grow louder and diminish in a different pattern from the boy’s—meaning the person in the creaking shoes was taking different paths trying to find a shortcut.
From the subtlety of sound, it seemed to Wingate as if that person was succeeding. The boy kept up his frantic pace, but the squeaky shoes were getting closer. Frustrated at his own failure, Wingate hurried his speed so he could lean and pivot right or left as each alleyway twisted before him.
But soon, both he and the boy could hear that the third person had them beat. The person’s progress just kept getting better, pushing Wingate on and panicking the child.
“Curri quanta vuoi cacca t’aspiettu!” Mac heard the boy shout with initial defiance. But at the end of the line, he heard the boy’s false bravado crack. The pursuing person said nothing.
“Ingiustizia!” the boy shouted, this time in angry panic. “Infame! Infame!”
But by the time he said the last word, the squeaky shoes were upon him. Wingate heard some more steps as if the two were performing a hasty dance in place, and then he heard only the squeaky shoes continuing—as if the boy had merely been a minor obstruction.
It took Mac several more minutes to find the boy. The small figure was standing against a wall as Wingate came around the corner. The alley was positioned in the San Marcolo maze in such a way that the sun was blocked from it. The light in the narrow path was a cool brown-gray gloom.
The boy was standing, one arm at his side, the other slightly bent behind his back. It was as if he was using it to nonchalantly hold up the wall. His head was cocked to the left, something approaching a smile on his lips. But his open eyes were not crinkled with mirth and his pupils did not gleam or flash with wit.
Wingate didn’t have to examine the boy to know what he had previously suspected. He had seen enough people with that still, vacuous look on their faces to know that the boy was dead—his face frozen in its last expression.
Even though he knew, Wingate sadly approached the young Sicilian, careful to look for any clues to his murderer. He had already considered and discarded the notion of giving chase. If the person could catch up with the quick and slippery kid, Mac had little hope of finding him.
Instead he stood before the staring, standing boy. He argued with himself for a second about disturbing the corpse, but his own survival instinct outranked his respect for the young and dead.
Mac put one hand on the kid’s sleeve. The body slid over to the left and landed heavily on its side. The eyes rolled back into the skull, and the boy rolled over on his stomach. Wingate saw the knife wound then. It looked like the boy had tried to avoid the blow by running away. Instead the blade had slid between his shoulders, high on his back. If it wasn’t strong enough to cut the spinal cord, then it might have been long enough to reach the heart. Either way made him just as dead.
Mac kneeled over the crumbled corpse, his practiced hands patting along any possible pocket or hiding place. The only sound in the alleyway was the padding of his hands on the cloth and the wind hissing through the maze’s turns.
Suddenly Wingate’s neck hair stood at attention. The wind, like a cold hand, seemed to grip his throat for a moment. The padding noise had taken on texture, depth and dimension. The small noise seemed to magnify in scope, though not in volume. But Mac realized it was not his gentle pats that were making all the noise.
He could actually feel the displacement behind his kneeling form. Like rocks in a glass of water, solid forms were pushing out less substantial materials. Wingate rose quickly and turned. Standing ten yards in front of him was a small army of children.
They seemed to be manufactured by the corners of the alleyways. As he watched, more and more young boys, all seemingly cut from the same cloth, slid into view. They crowded into the narrow space, their faces frighteningly blank.
Just as quickly as they started appearing, the nearly soundless march came to an end. Some barefoot, some with sandals, they had drifted quietly in. Now they all stood, eyes on Mac or the dead boy, seemingly waiting for an explanation.
Wingate had a crazy mental picture of Bob Hope trying to explain away a body found by the police in his car.
“Wait a minute, fellas, it’s not what it looks like. I didn’t kill the guy. I didn’t even know he was sick.”
Wingate quickly counted something on the level of two dozen children, looking to be an average age of twelve or thirteen, all wearing dirty pants and open-neck long-sleeve shirts that were too large for them. Most had ropes for belts and the effect of the small forms in the large clothing was as if all the men in town had shrunk. This impression was heightened because their faces showed no immaturity. They showed no light of youth or joy in childhood. They were tired, angry, numb old faces painted on the bodies of boys.
Wingate unholstered both his sidearms and held them at his sides, like a gunfighter about to meet his foe on main street. “Anyone know English?” he asked, his voice sounding alien in the alleyway, even to him. “Inglese,” he offered, remembering the translation.
No one answered, and it hardly made any difference to Mac. What if someone did? What would he say then? That a man with squeaky shoes had been chasing the boy and he had only stopped by? That held as much water as, “Mommy, mommy, a giant came in the window and ate all the cookies.”
The only clue that the boys heard was that the front line took one step toward him. Mac’s right leg moved back, but only to give him a firmer stance. He held his ground, motioning to the corpse with the .45, but not taking his eyes off the group.
“I didn’t do this,” he said flatly. “I want to find out who did. And why.”
The words, not surprisingly, had little effect on the children. What effect they did have was disquieting. As a unit, they all took another step forward. The bunch of kids seemed to be slowly rolling toward him as if they were a giant, wide caterpillar.
Wingate did move back on the second step, preparing himself to glance over his shoulder to find a rear exit. But just as his head started moving to the side, the boys in the lead reached behind their backs, each pulling out a knife.
They were all Italian fighting knives, of various shapes and sizes. Wingate recognized a few right off. They were all more than a foot long with straight blades. Almost all the handles were wood and straight as well, although Mac did spy one curved butt, which held a pointed, two-sided blade—probably created from an outmoded bayonet from World War I.
The others were probably hand-me-downs from their older brothers. They were no less deadly for that. And the boys held them like practiced street fighters. There were no upraised fists. All the blades were held low, pointing up at Wingate’s torso. Their dull eyes held nothing but bloodthirsty seriousness.
Wingate didn’t dare look behind him now. He was certain that the moment he took his eyes off the group, they would charge him en masse—no matter what the consequences. He would just have to keep his sixth sense running high. For the moment, he was pretty sure that the kids weren’t behind him as well. But the second his instincts told him he was surrounded, he had better learn how to fly real fast.
They took one more step toward him before Wingate raised his Browning. “Back off,” Wingate said in complete seriousness. There was no hint of wonder or hysteria. He wanted his demeanor to say, “I’ll use it if I have to.” But the moment he actually said it was the moment he—and probably the kids—knew he wouldn’t.
The children must have picked up his meaning. They stopped momentarily when the 9 mm barrel pointed in their general direction, but then they proceeded to move forward ... one step at a time. Wingate saw no fear or doubt in their expressions, but crowded in their eyes was a look of angry fatalism. In a group, none cared if they died. There was an all-encompassing sense that even death had to be better than life during the war.
Mac had no alternative but to test them. The Browning stayed pointed at the first row, but the .45 came up quickly and blasted at the ground just in front of the middle boy’s toes in the front row. The automatic’s report was magnified in the narrow alley and its booming concussion echoed through the back-street maze.
There was a small explosion of dirt and dust right in front of the first row. The front line couldn’t help but rear back at the sight, while those in back, having only heard the gun, moved forward. The group rippled like a lake with a rock thrown in at either side, then settled into stillness.
The boy whose foot was most closely affected looked up from the bullet hole directly into Mac’s eyes. Then, with malice aforethought, he moved his foot forward and ground his toes over the hole as if putting out a cigarette. He was showing Wingate just what he thought of Mac’s bravado. Then he took an additional step forward.
Mac reacted by pulling the trigger of his Browning. This bullet landed right between the boy’s legs. In the meantime, Wingate’s expression did not change. The boy looked at the perfectly aimed second bullet hole, then back up to Wingate again. The rest of the group seemed to hesitate, looking around for some sort of order.
The lead boy gave it to them. Sizing up Mac once again, he stepped forward again. “Avanti,” he said softly. “L’avi sarbata.”
Wingate needed only to recognize one word from the boy’s quiet statement and that was “avanti.” It meant “forward.” Even with six rounds left in the .45 and twelve in the Browning, he couldn’t hope to mow down all the knife-wielding children he had to in order to survive. And in this cramped site, he’d be lucky to kill eighteen kids without becoming a pincushion for Italian fighting knives.
Wingate’s plan of action was clear. Without shame, he brought both guns up and pulled both triggers at once. Even as the bullets were streaking just over the heads of the gathered children, Wingate, was already racing backward. He twisted his body and charged toward the left corner of the alley—the corner closest to him—praying that an exit would be there.
Just as he glanced in the direction he was running, he saw that the alley exit was over to his right. What he was charging for was a dead end. Cursing his luck, he pulled over, seeing a boy coming at his right side out of the corner of his eye. It was the kid he had shot at, reacting much faster than the others, who were still stunned by the double-barreled delay he had left them with.
The boy held his knife by his own waist, his arm muscles tensing to drive the blade under Mac’s arm and between his ribs as they passed each other. Mac saw the boy leap over the other kid’s corpse, his face set in determination. But just because the kid had survived this long on youthful cunning, it didn’t make him a match for Mac’s experience, strength and longer arm reach. As the boy was tensing for the kill, Mac swung his Browning in a vicious, sweeping arc, the barrel catching the boy across the forehead.
Utilizing no finesse or sympathy, the metal met the young flesh with a sick, smacking thud, stopping the kid in his tracks and then hurling him forward, but behind Wingate, who was now moving toward the exit of the alley. As the boy dove face-first into the ground, the rest of his underage army surged forward.
Any guilt Mac might have had from bashing the boy was forgotten in his headlong rush to keep himself from being stuck on the end of their blades. He moved down the new alley, happy that it was thinner than the one be had just left. Because of that, the other kids were tripping over themselves to get into it, delaying their chase. If Mac was only able to get to the street without getting lost in the maze of turns so the kids could cut him off, he might be able to get back to the “safe house” without a scratch. And without shooting anybody.
He had hit the boy in the first place to keep from wasting a bullet he might need later. And as he turned left, then took another right, he saw that this third alley ended in the main San Marcolo street. His mind started doing celebratory jumping jacks as he saw light at the end of the long, thin, roofless tunnel.
But just as quickly as his joy had surfaced, it was drowned in shock. For, turning the corner of the street and beginning to march down the alley at him, was a full-grown German soldier.
Mac’s mind did a gut-wrenching double take. A German soldier? In the back alleys of San Marcolo? Wingate was suddenly caught between the Reich and a hard place. He stopped in his tracks, pulling his body sideways.
Around the corner to his left were the forward scouts of the maddened corps of children. To his right was a Nazi private, wearing his helmet, green uniform, black boots and everything. Everything included the standard Karabiner 98K rifle, which the soldier was holding loosely in front of him.
Wingate had to act fast. The Nazi had not yet seen him. But within seconds, his eyes would focus on the American soldier halfway down the alley and then the fun would really get underway.
If it had been one German soldier, then there’d hardly be a problem. Mac would shoot him and then be on his way. But just as there’s smoke, there’s fire, where one Nazi was, more were sure to follow. Sure enough, as he was watching, Mac saw the front end of another Nazi soldier coming around the main street corner.
Even so, Wingate hazarded a glance in the other direction. Coming around the opposite corner were three of the many little Sicilian devils, their knives clutched tightly in their fists. Mac turned, hearing the German’s grunt of recognition. Seemingly without thought, he charged right at the Nazi. He came too close too fast for the enemy soldier to aim his rifle properly. Using his elbow like a fist in the cramped quarters, Mac swung the bony joint into the Nazi’s stubble-covered jaw.
There was an angry crack as flesh and bone collided with each other. The German’s head snapped back as Wingate slipped his Browning into his belt. With his hand now free, he held the dazed soldier upright and swung the .45 automatic back at the kids. He shot the first one in the leg. He had absolutely no qualms about shooting a child, although his subconscious had to admit that he wouldn’t feel wonderful about killing one.
The boy’s leg kicked as if it had a life of its own. His body swung back, as if he were trying to lay upon a mattress of air. Then he did a belly flop on the dirt, his blade skittering away. It came to rest against the alley wall.
Mac’s action mobilized those on both sides of him. The kids coming from behind the first boy broke from their close-knit unit and scattered. The soldier coming up behind the first Nazi unslung his rifle, preparing for serious business. The only sounds in the alley were Mac’s grunts of effort and the wounded kid’s crying. It was heartening to know that even with their knives and ancient faces, they still cried when hurt.
Wingate was in no mood to appreciate that fact, however. He was too busy trying to stay alive. He kept his gun pointed at the kids, who were still coming on, but flat against the wall, while holding the dazed German between him and the other Nazi soldier.
Not wanting to shoot their associate, the other soldier, as well as a third man coming up behind him, kept their fingers loose on their triggers but took a few cautious steps into the alleyway. Knowing that it was vitally important for him to keep the stunned Nazi between himself and the rest of the soldiers, Wingate twisted around and kept the remaining kids at bay by blasting at them as fast and as close as he could.
It had only been seconds since he had smacked the German in the jaw. But Wingate could see that there was no real way to escape. Sure, he could mow down the three Germans, but he didn’t know who was behind them. If he raced into the main street, he might have run right into a Nazi unit. There was no way to be sure and he didn’t feel like risking it.
On the other hand, he couldn’t retreat very well, with the back alleys jammed with young knife fighters. That would be like fighting upstream in a river loaded with piranha. Given the circumstances, the only way to go was up. Mac had spied a boarded window some eight feet up on the right-hand wall close to the mouth of the alley. The biggest problem was that there were two enemy soldiers between him and it.
Wingate worked out a desperate plan to reach its relative safety. The dazed German was beginning to struggle against Mac’s grip as the closest boy ducked under his gunfire and tried to stick him by coming in low. Wingate saw the boy’s fluid, snaking movement and risked pivoting so the boy had a surprise target. Mac moved to the left, exposing his profile to the Nazi duo as the boy was unable to stop the forward momentum of his knife.
The dazed Nazi’s eyes cleared for a split second just before the seven-and-a-half-inch Italian blade sunk into his back. His look of anger and determination changed to one of shocked confusion. His arms flailed for another moment, weakly trying to reach the knife wound, then the curtain rang down over his eyes with a sad finality.
Almost as fast as Wingate had pivoted forward, he pivoted back. It looked as if he were only giving the other two Nazis a peek of him. He twisted himself and the now dead soldier back to their previous position so fast that the knife was pulled out of the kid’s hand. Mac then kicked the boy in the head, sending him back against the wall like a thrown baseball.
The whole key was not to shoot at the other Germans. If he shot, they would scramble for cover. Mac wanted them to stay in the alley. Having dispatched the attacking kid, Mac turned his attention to the boy behind him. The fighting had forced the other kids to stay behind the cover of the corner, but the third knife wielder tried to sneak in while Mac was turning. Wingate swung the .45 across his face.
The blow nearly tore the kid’s head off his neck. He spun to the right like a top. Then his legs, which his mind had commanded to run just before the .45 hit, sent the unconscious body face-first into the opposite wall. The kid bounced off and fell flat on his back.
But not before the kid’s arm instinctively sliced through the air. The boy’s action had started just a millisecond after Mac’s swing, so while Wingate’s blow hit first and deflected the trajectory, the kid had had enough sinewy strength to cut through Mac’s shirt and skin.
