Rockets' Red Glare (23 page)

“This area is private. Is he expecting you?” he barked in Italian, sticking a pipe in his mouth, as if that was all he’d need to say. It had a short curved stem that let the bowl rest against his chin.

Melanie couldn’t understand a word he said, but she nodded just to be polite.

“Yes, well, you see, he doesn’t know me, but—”

“Prego,”
he said, taking the nod as an affirmative reply, adding,
“Ministro Borsa stabili in mezzo.”

Melanie hurried past the gatehouse and down a dirt road lined with horse vans to the stable. She entered beneath the Borsa crest, walked between the stalls, and up a staircase. The private box was a shuttered wood-paneled room, lushly furnished with priceless antiques, Persian rugs, paintings of horses, and countless show ribbons. She stepped through it lively and out the arched door to the balcony. In the show
ring below, Borsa, in natty equestrian attire, and a stableboy were adjusting the saddle on an Arabian.

“He’s beautiful,” Melanie called out to get Borsa’s attention, after watching for a few moments.

“Thank you,” Borsa replied, climbing a staircase to join her. “You’re rather early,” he went on, assuming she was there for the benefit, which wouldn’t start for hours. He towered over her as he stepped onto the balcony, and Melanie introduced herself. She was clearly taken by his presence, and offered an awkward apology for the intrusion. Then, quickly capturing his attention with the WWII photograph, Melanie told the story of her search for her father.

“My God,” Borsa said in an amazed whisper. “Look at us—Sarah—Aleksei—Your parents you say?”

“Yes,” Melanie replied, heartened by his reaction.

“I knew them both,” he said poignantly. “Aleksei was an art student from Russia who came to study in the heart of the Renaissance. We were classmates at the university. He was trapped here when the war came.”

Melanie was stunned. She didn’t hear a word after “from Russia.” She wasn’t sure she even heard that.

“And as you can see, we fought together,” Borsa continued, reflecting on the photo. “Against the Nazis,
and
the Fascists,” he added proudly and, seguing into an afterthought, asked, “Do you ride?”

“Pardon me?” Melanie asked, still in shock.

“Do you ride, are you a horsewoman?”

“Oh,” she replied coming out of it. “As a matter of fact, yes. Yes, I am.”

“Good, I was about to take him for a run in the Gardens,” Borsa said, referring to the Arabian. “And we have a mare who could use some exercise. We’ll ride, and I’ll tell you what I can remember.” He called down to the stableboy, who hurried off to fetch the animal.

At that moment, a horse van arrived at the entrance to the stable area. The guard came from the gatehouse.

“I have a horse for the auction,” Dominica said from behind the wheel. “Give me a hand will you?”

She wore a black balaclava—a fitted orlon hood with an oblong opening for the eyes, worn by climbers and race drivers—and large dark sunglasses. The effect was more that of a trendy fashion excess than a device to conceal her identity, which it did.

The guard grunted and waved the van into the courtyard beyond the
gatehouse, following after it. When the van stopped, he opened the rear door and poked his head into the darkness in search of an animal that wasn’t there. That’s when Dominica shoved him into Silvio’s arms from behind. The powerful construction worker pulled an oat sack down hard over the startled guard’s head, and dragged him into the van. By the time Dominica closed the door, the guard had succumbed to the chloroform that had been liberally splashed into the sack. While Silvio—wearing headgear similar to Dominica’s—bound the guard, she returned to the cab and drove the van toward Borsa’s stable.

Kovlek had been watching from his Fiat on the approach road. He smiled at their progress, left the car, and walked toward the gatehouse.

In the show ring, Melanie took the reins of a magnificent dappled Arabian from the stableboy, and swung into the saddle. She followed Borsa across the red clay and through a tunnel to the bridle paths that interlaced the surrounding pine forest.

“It was spring, 1945, when that picture was taken,” Borsa said, “but it was that February when it all began. And what I remember most vividly, is rain—torrents of endless, bone-chilling rain.”

* * * * * *

Chapter Thirty-five

The winter of 1944 unleashed violent rainstorms across all of Western Europe.

In Italy’s Elsa Valley, Aleksei Deschin blinked at the flash of lightning and clap of thunder that rolled through San Gimignano, an ancient mountain town. Rain came off his pancho in sheets as he leaned into the torrent and continued up Via San Matteo, a narrow street in the north end. Three men trudged uphill behind him—a Russian, an Italian, and two Americans—searching for a German supply depot in the downpour.

The storm front ran from Rome through Florence to the north—the same line taken by the allied offensive to liberate central and northern Italy. The chilling deluge had eroded the morale of troops on both sides. But it was the Germans—running out of ammunition, food, and fuel—who were in retreat on every front.

Contrary to this trend, divisions under Field Marshall Albert Kesselring were holding their own in the Elsa Valley against the U.S. Fifth Army. These units, commanded by General Mark Clark, were to push east through Volterra and San Gimignano to Florence. They would join Eighth Army forces advancing west, and attack the Gothic Line, the Wermacht’s final defensive position, fifteen miles north. But the well-fueled and fortified German divisions, with an endless supply of ammunition, had stopped Clark’s Fifth Army cold.

Adolph Hitler’s spirits soared at the news. “This is the turning point!” the Führer exulted. “As
I
told you it would be!”

And he had. Just a year ago, the Führer overruled his general staff, who thought San Gimignano too far west, and insisted the supply depot be located there. The ninth-century city, with its thick walls and lookout towers was not only impenetrable but also strategically located above the roads from the coast to Florence.

Allied Command wanted the depot destroyed. But they had to find it first, and had been working closely with Italian partisans who had infiltrated the valley.

Deschin, the sharp-minded Russian the Americans had code-named Gillette Blue, was in charge of partisan liaison and intelligence. Numerous reconnaissance missions into heavily fortified enemy areas had failed to locate the depot, and he had shifted his focus to San Gimignano. Few German troops were billeted there. Perhaps, Deschin reasoned, it was a ploy to divert attention from the depot. Now, he led the group up San Matteo in search of it.

A stone wall sealed off the top of the street. Much of the soil behind it had been excavated, creating a bunker that concealed two German soldiers and a machine gun. A few flat stones had been removed from the wall to provide a slit for the muzzle. Rain pinged on the corrugated steel roof as the Germans watched Deschin’s group enter a bombed-out granary. The German private trained his weapon on the entrance, waiting for the four men to come out.

“Nein,”
the sergeant warned, seeing his eagerness.

“But, they will be like bottles on a wall,” the private protested.

“Nein,”
the sergeant said more sternly. “You know our orders. Only if they cross toward the church.”

Unlike other buildings in the city, neither the church, the magnificently steepled Cappella Di Santa Fina, nor the German storage depot in the catacombs beneath had been touched by allied bombs. Crates of weapons and ammunition, and drums of fuel, were safely concealed in the network of rock tunnels. But months of rain had saturated the porous stone to the limit, and water began seeping through cracks and fissures. The gradual trickles had become unending cascades; and German troops were working frantically in ankle-deep water, covering the precious supplies with tarpaulins.

Deschin’s group had finished searching the granary and, having come up empty, was back out in the rain, advancing up San Matteo.

“What do you think?” he asked, eyeing the church.

Giancarlo Borsa looked up at the thousand-year-old structure, rain
pelting his sharply cut features. He had organized the resistance in the area and brought Deschin into the group.

“I doubt it, Aleksei,” he replied. “Kesselring has respected our artistic treasures. And we can’t afford another Monte Cassino,” he went on, referring to the sixth-century Benedictine monastery near Naples that the Allies had reduced to rubble only to discover the Germans had never used it for military purposes.

“Maybe that’s why Kesselring thinks he could get away with it here,” Deschin replied incisively.

“Good point,” Borsa said. “But I hate to think of what will happen if you’re right.”

Theodor Churcher threw back the hood of his pancho angrily. “Horseshit!” he bellowed in a thick drawl. “Not a building on earth worth saving if it’s endangering men’s lives, let alone American lives!”

The lanky Texan had just turned twenty, a brash, ambitious, unpolished hayseed who thought the sun rose and set on Texas and the United States—in that order. He challenged the others with a look, and set out purposefully toward the church.

“On my signal,” the German sergeant ordered in a tense whisper. The private nodded, hugged the stock of his weapon, and wrapped his finger around the trigger.

* * * * * *

That morning, during a break in the weather, an Air Force C-47,
Dakota
, headed down a makeshift runway north of Rome with a Waco glider in tow, and began climbing. Three hundred feet back in the Waco, pilot Ted Churcher and spotter Mike Rosenthal were fighting to keep the glider from catching the tug’s turbulence, and pinwheeling at the end of the nylon towline.

About eight months ago, Churcher had completed his junior year at Rice and had come home to Lubbock for the summer. He was flying crop dusters, as he did every vacation, when he heard the Army Air Force opened its combat glider school on the outskirts of town. Churcher graduated number one in his class, and flew over a hundred reconnaissance missions behind enemy lines in North Africa and Sicily.

When Captain Jake Boulton, OSS liaison with Fifth Army Intelligence, called for glider-recon to locate the German storage depot, Churcher volunteered.

Now, 4,500 feet above the Tuscan countryside, he checked his landmarks and nodded to Rosenthal.

“Time to part company,” he drawled. He clicked on an intercom
that ran on a wire wrapped around the towline. “Thanks for the ride, Jake.”

“Anytime,” Boulton—who was at the controls of the
Dakota
—replied. “Matter of fact, you find that Kraut depot, and we’ll tow you all the way back home to Lummox if you like.”

“That’s
Lubbock
, Jake,” Churcher retorted. “And you can bet the farm we’ll find it. We’ll just keep riding the elevator till we do,” he added, referring to the air currents that take a glider back up to altitude.

He pulled the towline release. The metal fitting unlatched with a loud clank. The Waco cut free from the C-47 and soared, gaining altitude, the
whoosh
of air rushing over its surfaces the only sound now. Churcher put it on a glide path to the target ten miles away.

Made of canvas over a tubular steel frame, the gray-green Waco had an 85-foot wingspan that gave it a rate of descent of less than 2 feet per second—slower than a soap bubble in still air. Riding thermals, the bird could stay up for hours, needing barely 150 feet to land when it came down.

Churcher came in over San Gimignano against the camouflage of clouds, and made a silent pass over the multi-towered city. Rosenthal panned his binoculars in search of vehicle tracks or troop activity that would reveal the location of the enemy storage depot. During the next few hours, Churcher made a half dozen passes, lowering the altitude each time. Finally, Rosenthal turned from his binoculars in disgust.

“We’re wasting our time, Ted.”

“Yeah, the Krauts must move the stuff out at night. The rain washed away the tracks before we got here. Maybe, if I came in lower, you could—”

“Lower? Any lower we’ll leave the family jewels hanging on one of those pines.”

“Impossible. We’re coming in below them. Matter of fact, Rosenthal, I’m treating you to a bona fide South Texas ass scraper.”

Churcher put the Waco into a steep dive and swooped down over the north end of San Gimignano.

Flocks of ravens roosted in many of the city’s towers. The German lookout in the northernmost one saw what at first appeared to be a hovering bird. When he saw it had a shiny Plexiglas nose, he opened fire.

Rounds splintered the plywood floor behind the Waco’s cockpit, pinging off the steel tubing and ricocheting out the top of the canvas fuselage.

“Son of a bitch!” Churcher exclaimed as he put the glider into a
diving turn, keeping a wing tip to the tower to present as small a target as possible.

The German fired another sustained burst.

The rounds perforated the Waco’s right wing. The air began tearing the canvas off the tubular structure, unbalancing the lift and threatening to flip the Waco over on its back. The shredded fabric was chattering like a jackhammer as Churcher fought to maintain control.

“Get behind me!” he shouted.

Rosenthal scrambled from the copilot’s seat. The weight shift helped settle the Waco down. Churcher put it into a wobbly dive toward a field a few miles away, just beyond a walnut grove. Gnarled branches began racing past the bottom of the Plexiglas bubble. The landing gear snagged the tops of the last row of trees and tore out of the bottom of the fuselage.

The instant the glider cleared the grove, Churcher got the braking flaps full up, and dropped it onto the tall grass. The Waco tilted forward onto the nose skid, and began sliding over the wet chaff. It had skidded about a hundred meters, and was losing momentum when what was left of the landing gear snagged a wire fence. The glider came to a sudden stop, and pitched over into the mud, burying the nose—which was the way out.

Churcher was stunned by the impact. Rosenthal, who had been out of his harness, was trapped in the tangle of tubing that had been the cockpit. But neither was seriously injured. Churcher was trying to get out of his harness and go to Rosenthal’s assistance, when he heard rustling in the grass outside. He pulled his .45 side arm and whirled, just as a bayonet stabbed through the canvas and slashed the fuselage. Churcher held his weapon with both hands and leveled it at the spot where the bayonet continued slashing the canvas to ribbons, making a large opening. Aleksei Deschin’s distinctive face peered into the glider.

“Anybody in here need a shave?” he asked in his heavy Russian accent.

“Yes, but we’re all out of blades,” Churcher replied tensely, training the .45 on him. “You have some we can borrow?”

“The best. Gillette Blue,” Deschin replied, completing the exchange of passwords.

Then Churcher relaxed, and lowered the gun.

“Geezus!” he howled as Deschin and Borsa entered the glider. “You guys should’ve said something before you started slashing. I thought you were Krauts.”

“After that landing,” Borsa teased, “we didn’t think you were in any shape to hear us.”

Deschin and Borsa had been waiting in the walnut grove in a mud-splattered truck. Boulton had alerted Gillette Blue to the glider recon-mission, and arranged for partisans to rendezvous with the Waco and get the crew back to Allied lines. And Churcher had skillfully piloted the crippled glider to the landing zone.

The group quickly freed Rosenthal and took cover in the walnut grove, where Ettore, an old partisan who drove the truck, supplied the Americans with civilian clothes. Introductions were made as they pulled the coarse garments over their uniforms, then the talk turned to the German storage depot.

“You know,” said Churcher thoughtfully, “we were up there for a long time, and nothing. But soon as we made a pass over the north end, whammo!”

This confirmed Deschin’s theory. He and Borsa decided they would drive the Americans back to their lines, then check out that area of the city. But Churcher and Rosenthal insisted on coming along.

“Not until I clear it with command,” Deschin replied.

“No need,” Churcher said. “Jake Boulton and I are buddies. He’ll think it’s a great idea.”

Deschin eyed him skeptically, and began cranking the handle of his walkie-talkie.

“This is Gillette Blue to Safety Razor. Gillette Blue to Safety Razor. Come in Safety Razor.”

“We read you, go ahead,” Boulton replied.

“Nest has fallen,” Deschin reported. “Both birds are safe and want to help locate the elusive worm.”

“Negative, Gillette Blue,” Boulton said. “Repeat, negative. Return birds to friendly nest, immediately.”

Churcher took the walkie from Deschin. He cranked the handle creating static, then replied, “Negative. Transmission garbled. Repeat, transmission garbled. Say again.” He cranked the handle, obscuring Boulton’s reply with static, then clicked off the walkie. “I told you Jake’d think it was a good idea,” he drawled, grinning. “Let’s find us that Kraut depot, Gillette.”

The group drove off in the old truck. They were approaching the outskirts of San Gimignano when the cold rain began again. They left Ettore with the truck, continuing on foot to avoid enemy patrols.

* * * * * *

Now, Churcher strode boldly toward Cappella di Santa Fina in the
downpour. The others strung out behind him. Deschin was in the rear. His eyes caught a flicker of movement in the stone wall at the top of the street. But there was nothing growing between the stones that might have caused it. Then he saw the gun site tracking them slowly across the slit where the stones had been removed.

“Down! Get down!” Deschin shouted.

The German private squeezed the trigger, spraying the street with machine-gun fire.

Churcher dove to the ground, bullets whizzing past him. He landed in the gutter, muddy water gushing into his face. A round had gone cleanly through his left arm. The flesh burned as if pierced by a hot poker. The pattern of fire moved toward the middle of the street. Countless rounds ripped into Rosenthal in the space of seconds, each snapping him in a different direction. He grabbed at his stomach as it exploded into his arms, and fell face down onto the cobblestones. The deadly burst caught Borsa next, popping into his legs, knocking him to the ground, and continued across toward Deschin, who dove into the bombed out granary. The rounds pockmarked the broken facade, missing him; but flying chips of stone cut his face. He hid behind the rubble until the firing stopped, then craned up, surveying the street.