“If you can get close to the north end of the square,” Sharky said, “I can get in a good swipe at those tanks and soldiers jammed in beside those alleys.”
“There are kids coming at them from the other end,” the pilot said. “By the time I swing around, they’ll be there.”
“Might just be enough for those tanks to know we’re here,” the rear gunner said. “Make them take a step back, knowing we’re closing in.”
“Let’s all just be patient,” the pilot said. “I’m going to keep moving around until one of you finds an opening. When you see enough clearance, then take your shots and make them count. Make the tanks a priority. The kids are too close to the soldiers for us to risk a swoop.”
“Do you want to keep the tanks contained in the square?” one of the gunners asked. “Or do you want them back out on the road?”
“Let it play itself out,” the pilot said, swinging the front end of the B-24 high to the left and away from the piazza. “In the square or out, be nice if we leave behind some burning tanks. There’s some pretty intense fighting going on down there. Which means that more sooner than later, one side’s going to have to move back. That’s when we go in.”
“Those kids look to be pretty much holding their own,” Sharky said. “Be nice if we can give them a hand.”
“They know we’re here,” the pilot said, gently easing the B-24 clear of the battle zone. “And they know we’ll be back. For now, that’s all we can give them.”
“Comfort first,” Sharky said, surveying the scene behind him, “bombs and bullets later.”
Vincenzo placed the wounded boy under the shade of a large pine tree, resting his head on top of a mound of torn clothing. He turned around and put both hands on Fabrizio’s slender arms. “I want you and the dog to stay here and keep an eye on the wounded,” he told him. “I need someone I can trust to keep them safe.”
Fabrizio nodded several times, his eyes wide and filled with confidence. “I won’t let anything happen to them,” he said.
“You should all be safe here,” Vincenzo said, the fires of the alley glowing at his back. “This street is not on a route the Nazis will want to take.”
“Where will you be?” Fabrizio asked, staring at Vincenzo and the dozen street boys standing behind him.
“Where I belong,” Vincenzo said.
He turned away from the boy and ran toward the fire in the alleys, the rest of the street boys trailing close behind, three of them holding thin blankets under their arms. “Jump right through the flames and you’ll be okay,” Vincenzo shouted, picking up his pace. “If the fire gets to your clothes, don’t worry. Someone will get to you before it can get to your skin.”
“Why are we going in this way?” one of the boys yelled out. “Some of the other alleys are wide open and clear.”
“There are soldiers and tanks waiting in the mouths of those alleys,” Vincenzo said. “They expect us to make a run at them from there. They’re not counting on us running through fire. Remember to have your guns ready to shoot as soon as you cross the flames. We’ll only be a surprise to them for a few seconds.”
“I hate surprises,” one of the boys said as he picked up his pace and passed Vincenzo and the others, several feet away from the arching flames.
“So do the Nazis,” Vincenzo said.
Nunzia, Angela and the boys stood in front of the fountain, firing the last bullets in their guns, the bodies of half a dozen soldiers strewn about their feet. A shot fired by Kunnalt, standing in the well of his tank, his uniform smeared in blood, clipped Claudio in the shoulder and sent him sprawling, one side of his head landing on top of a chipped piece of stone. Nunzia and Pepe pulled the boy behind the fountain, both still firing guns with their free hands. As she emptied the bullets in her chamber, Nunzia looked past the smoke and the heavy return fire and saw Connors running across the square toward her, two blazing guns in his hands. “Nunzia, get down!” Franco shouted, shoving her to her knees.
She broke away from him and turned to catch a rifle tossed to her by Angela. She gave a quick glance at those around her. Franco bled from his leg and arm, holding a machine gun in the crook of his good shoulder. Pepe was shooting from a sitting position, a large bloody gash open on his forehead. Claudio was throwing rocks and stones, trying to get to a fallen soldier’s gun, his arm washed in blood. Angela, the front of her shirt soaked the color of beets, stood her ground and fought with both a gun and a knife.
Nunzia clicked the trigger on the rifle and turned to aim it at Kunnalt, now out of his tank and coming at her, less than ten feet away. Connors was in the middle of the firefight, ramming the backs of Nazis with the butt end of his guns, shooting them as they went down, inching his way toward her. She turned her head and quickly looked his way, catching his eye and holding the gaze for the briefest of seconds.
Kunnalt’s first shot hit her flush in the stomach, knocking her backwards, the gun flying from her hands.
The second one landed just below her neckline, its force turning her around and away from him, her right hand curled just above the edge of the fountain. Angela and the boys held their fire, eyes frozen on Nunzia’s fallen body. Connors ripped through the Nazi line, in a frenzy, killing all that stood between him and the woman he loved. He rushed to her side, watching as Kunnalt drifted away, enveloped in a veil of smoke. He dropped to his knees and turned her face toward his, desperately aware that the wounds were deep and fatal. “No,” he mumbled, in between broken breaths and muffled sobs. “Don’t do this. I’m begging you, please, don’t die. I’ll get you out. We all will. Just please. Hang on for me. Please.”
She placed a hand across his quivering mouth, her warm eyes calm and peaceful. Connors heard and saw nothing else but her, alone in the center of a brutal storm. “A good man always finds love,” she said to him. “You found it with me, even here, even now.”
“Yes,” Connors said, “I did find it.”
“And you will again, my American.”
Connors held her closer, kissing the top of her head, her blood oozing onto his shirt. “Ti amo, Nunzia,” he told her. “Ti amo.”
She looked at him and smiled. “Who taught you to say that?” The coldness reached her waist, her body giving in to the power of the bullets.
“Your father,” Connors said. “He told me if I said it twice, the love will last forever.”
“I think he made that part up,” she said.
“I believed it,” Connors said, rocking her gently back and forth. “I still believe it.”
Her hand slipped away from his face and her eyes slowly closed. Connors held her for several minutes, running his fingers through the strands of her hair, the tears falling from his eyes and mixing with the blood on his shirt. He then rested her head back on the ground and turned to the silent, stunned street boys around him. In the far corner of the square, he saw Kunnalt running back to his tank. He stood, reached for Nunzia’s rifle and handed it to Angela. He then looked at each of the children. “I want you to stay with her,” he told them. “Don’t leave her alone for any reason. If anyone goes near her, make them very dead.”
He picked up a machine gun and ran out into the smoke and haze of the square, in search of Kunnalt.
Vincenzo and the street boys jumped through the thick flames of the exploding trams, side-stepping the destroyed tank, and came out the other end of the fire shooting at the Nazis grouped at the far side of the alley. The soldiers turned, quickly got to their knees and began to return fire. Several feet behind the soldiers, Von Klaus swung his tank into position, looking to ensure that the boys’ charge would be a futile one. Vincenzo and the boys moved forward. Bullets bounced off the sides of the walls and the hard pavement, but many also found their mark and boys tumbled to the ground. In the center of the alley, Vincenzo lifted his right arm. At the signal, the boys dropped their guns and pulled two grenades each from the back waistbands of their pants. They pulled the pins.
“Let them taste it,” Vincen
zo shouted out and watched the arched path of the grenades reach the fleeing Nazi soldiers.
The explosions rocked the alley and sent them all to the ground. Vincenzo landed with a thud against a sharp piece of rock, which sliced a deep cut across his cheek and just below his eye. He crawled to his feet, glared out past the rushing smoke, the alley now empty except for Von Klaus and the mouth of his tank. Vincenzo stood on shaky knees, a small pistol clutched in his right hand, watching as the tank eased its way into his end of the alley. White fumes embraced Von Klaus as he looked down at the boy from inside the open well. The tank inched forward and came to a stop, twenty feet away from Vincenzo and the street boys. “I will not allow you a victory,” Von Klaus shouted down at him. “Not today and not ever.”
“It is still our flag that flies here,” Vincenzo said, holding his ground, gripping the trigger of the pistol, his mind fogged by the blow to the head and the blood that flowed down the side of his face. “Not yours.”
“That flag will be the last thing you will live to see,” Von Klaus said, poised to give the order to fire. “Your adventure ends with honor, but in death.”
“There’s no honor in fighting a Nazi,” Vincenzo said. “Or dying at his hand.”
“Then you’ll die like an Italian,” Von Klaus said. “Free of both honor or victory.”
The shot came from an open window just to the right of Von Klaus.
It caught the colonel flush in the square of his side, forcing him to clutch and double up. Vincenzo looked up and saw a stunned Fabrizio standing in the window. The boy stared at the rifle in his hands. “I’m sorry I didn’t do what you told me to do,” he said. “But I didn’t want any more of my friends to die.”
Behind Vincenzo, two of the street boys had slid open a sewer cover and had begun to scamper into the open hole. Von Klaus lifted his head and looked at Vincenzo, a pistol in his right hand. He squeezed off two shaky rounds, one missing the boy, the other grazing his right leg, sending him down to one knee. Above them, a B-24 hovered in the skies.
Vincenzo fired back as he retreated, his shots ricocheting off the sides of the tank. Two street boys rushed up and grabbed him, dragging him, legs first, into the sewer hole. Vincenzo and Von Klaus held the hard look between them until the very second the leader of the street boys disappeared under the cover of a tunnel, the hot shell from the tank turret exploding just above his head.
As Vincenzo and the boys raced along the edges of the tunnel runway, they could hear the heavy fire from the B-24 shell Von Klaus and his tank. Vincenzo, his arm wrapped around the shoulders of an older street boy whose name he didn’t even know, looked up at the shaking, dusty curved lid of the tunnel. “Enjoy the rest of your time in Naples, Colonel,” he said.
Connors and Kunnalt exchanged gunfire as they both ran. Connors emptied the last bullets in his machine gun, the final blasts missing the fleeing Nazi. He tossed the empty gun to the ground and closed in on his target. Kunnalt turned, a pistol aimed toward Connors, but was caught at chest level by the soldier’s leap before he could get off another shot. They crashed through the large front window of a long-abandoned storefront, the weight of the American knocking the wind from the Nazi, the force of the fall reopening Connors’s shoulder wound. They rolled on the marble floor, over rocks and debris, kicking aside thin slants of old wood and discarded cardboard boxes. Kunnalt pushed back Connors’s head and jabbed several punches into the now bleeding wound, blood rushing out in thick spasms. Connors lifted his right knee and shoved Kunnalt off him. He hit him twice in the face and once in the chest, sending the Nazi sprawling along the dusty floor, flat on his back.
Kunnalt stretched out his left hand and wrapped it around a thick hunk of stone. Connors was on his knees and coming up toward the officer when he caught the blow against the side of his face. A second punch hit him at the back of his neck and sent him skidding toward the side of an old fireplace, ashes still piled high in the redbrick center. Kunnalt hovered over him, yanked Connors by the hair at the back of his head and rubbed his face and eyes in the pile of ashes. Connors struggled to lift his head, feeling along the marble floor for leverage, looking to push back at the Nazi. The tips of his fingers rubbed against the end of a sharp, rusty old iron poker. Connors pushed his head back several inches, his mouth filled with the taste of ash and slid his body down until he could grasp the poker in his right hand.
Kunnalt straddled the American, grabbing the back of his wet shirt and lifting him to his knees. “A soldier should not have to die this way,” Kunnalt said, a knife held tight in his right hand. “Not for a bunch of children.”
Connors whirled around, broke the hold and got to his feet. He reached back and jammed the poker deep into Kunnalt’s stomach, watching the Nazi’s eyes widen and hearing the knife fall to the floor. He held it there for several seconds, Kunnalt growing weaker, his left hand gripped around the end of the poker, the blood flowing out of his midsection, the life ebbing from his face. Connors stood above Kunnalt and felt the breath of death flow from his open mouth. He slammed his boot against the end of the poker, ramming it deeper into the Nazi’s body. Connors stepped back and let the Nazi fall facedown against the cold marble floor, the tip of the poker rising out of the center of his back.
Connors looked down at Kunnalt and then walked slowly out of the store.
The square was a thick mask of smoke.
Four Nazi tanks fired at what was left of the buildings and fleeing children. Connors walked toward the fountain, Angela and the boys still hovering over Nunzia’s body. Vincenzo, Fabrizio and the mastiff were now with them. Connors stepped between the boys, bent down and gathered Nunzia’s body in his arms. He held her close to his chest, his eyes staring at her peaceful face. He turned and placed her gently inside the fountain, lining a series of thick rocks around the edges of her body. Vincenzo moved in alongside him and rested a hand on top of hers. “You had her love,” Vincenzo said to him.
Connors looked away from Nunzia and stared at the boy, his face and leg bleeding, a machine gun in his left hand. “Sometimes that’s just not enough,” he said in a low voice.
The shell exploded just above their heads, chunks of pink stucco flying down at them, the Nazi tank bearing in on the small group, firing bullets in their direction. “Up the church steps,” Vincenzo yelled, pointing to his right, waving the group away. “Grab some weapons and hurry. We’ll let the tank come to us.”
The group ran toward the dozen steps of the large church, the last building in the square untouched by Nazi bombs, stopping only to pick up guns and grenades from the side of the fallen. Vincenzo followed, firing his gun at the approaching tank as he moved. Connors, his back to the oncoming vehicle, bullets spitting at the dirt around him, held his place above Nunzia’s body. “You, too, American,” Vincenzo said. “You’re not going to do her any favors by dying. Get to the church and help the others. They need you there.”
Connors whirled and glared at Vincenzo. “If you don’t mind, General,” he said. “I’m not in the mood for taking orders.”
Vincenzo turned from the tank to the soldier, his voice softer. “It’s not an order,” he said. “It’s a favor. Help us finish what we started.”
Connors and Vincenzo held their look for several seconds, ignoring the guns and the shells exploding around them. The soldier looked down at Nunzia one more time, then picked up two machine guns and a row of hand grenades and followed Vincenzo toward the steps of the church.
They stood with their backs against the bronze doors of a medieval structure built for prayer, the tank inching its way up the stone steps, firing an angry volley of bullets as it lumbered toward them. The ragged army held its place and fired back. Connors and Vincenzo rained machine-gun fire against the steel of the tank. Angela, Franco, Claudio, Dante and Pepe tossed grenades at the handful of soldiers hidden by the shadows of the vehicle. Fabrizio threw as many rocks and stones as he could find, the bullmastiff barking angrily by his side. Three other Nazi tanks circ
led the square and headed in their direction.
The tank bounced from one step to the next, close enough now for the boys to reach out and touch. Angela tossed out her last grenade and ran down the steps, trying to reach an abandoned machine gun. A Nazi soldier leaped out from behind the tank and fired, hitting her in the knee. She fell, grabbed for the machine gun and threw it to Franco. The boy caught it on the run, then he, Connors and Vincenzo jumped on top of the tank and crawled their way toward the lid.
The boys snapped open the lid of the tank and jumped off, Franco fired at the soldiers huddled behind the vehicle, giving the wounded Vincenzo the cover he needed. As they all scooted up the stairs, Vincenzo pulling Angela along with them, they watched Connors jam his guns inside the lid of the tank and fire until his bullets were spent. The tank creaked to a halt, a mere inches from the front doors of the shuttered church.
Connors cast aside his guns and unpinned his last grenade, tossing it at the soldiers firing from behind the tank. He jumped off the front end just as the explosion hit, sending three more Nazis tumbling to their deaths. He ran up the steps and grabbed Fabrizio, shielding the boy with his body.
“We only have a few guns left to fight with,” Vincenzo told him. “They still have three tanks, all heading here.”
“And we’re short of bullets and grenades,” Franco said.
Connors looked up and down the line, each one of them either too spent or too wounded to move. The steps leading up to the church were speckled with blood and bodies. The entire square was a bright blaze of flame and horror, bodies crumpled alongside buildings, tanks overturned and shedding oil and smoke, fires raging in all corners.
The three tanks rumbled along the sides of the square, closing in on the church, looking to take aim and end the final stand of Connors and the street boys. “You can run,” Connors said. “They’ll get some of you, but not all. It makes no sense for everybody to die.”