Street Boys (31 page)

Nunzia was in the next tower; Gennaro and Franco cowered by her side. “We must get to the subbasement,” she said. “It’s our only chance to escape.”

“What about the others?” Gennaro asked. “Can we get to them before the castle collapses?”

“No one will be left behind,” Nunzia said in a loud, firm voice as she led the two boys away from the shaking corridor. “Angela is getting the children out of the towers on the water side. We’ll work our way down and meet up with them underground.”

The three turned a corner, flames licking the sides of the walls, smoke flowing through every opening. They skidded to a stop and stared down at a large crater at the edge of their feet where there had once been a stone floor. The rocks had been blown away by three salvos from a tank stationed across the path. Nunzia looked into the dark void, the eyes of the two boys focused on the fire raging at their back. “We need to jump,” she said, reaching for their hands. “It’s just one floor down. We can make it.”

“What if the next floor collapses from our weight?” Gennaro asked, his voice cracking.

“It’s a chance we have to take,” Nunzia said. “If we stay here, we’ll be dead inside of five minutes.”

“I don’t want to go first,” Gennaro said.

“I’ll go,” Franco said, stepping in front of Nunzia and Gennaro, his feet poised on the edge of the splintered floor. “And then the two of you follow me down one after the other.”

“Aim for the center,” Nunzia told him, “and keep your legs bent, it’ll help brace your fall.”

Franco turned to Gennaro and nodded. “I’ll be down there waiting for you,” he told him seconds before his jump.

Nunzia closed her eyes and waited through what seemed like endless moments until she heard the hard landing and Franco’s soft voice. “The floor here is solid,” he yelled up through the haze of smoke. His voice was a faint echo that mixed with the booming sounds of the Nazi tanks. “But the walls sound like they’re going to break apart any minute.”

“Hurry, Gennaro,” Nunzia urged, placing a hand on the frightened boy’s sweaty back. “You have to jump now. There isn’t any more time.”

Gennaro turned and looked behind him at the fast approaching flames. He could sense the melting of the stone walls around him and his lungs filled with the acrid mix of fire and dust. He gazed up at Nunzia, her beauty untouched even in the center of a cauldron, and placed a warm hand on her face. “
Un baccio, per buona fortuna
,” he said to her.

Nunzia nodded and bent down and kissed the boy gently, her lips soft against the blushed tones of his cheeks. “
Grazie mille
,” Gennaro said.

He then stepped back and pushed her over the edge and down to the floor below. He heard her shout out his name as she fell into the empty cavity, landing with a soft thud alongside Franco. She screamed up to him and, along with Franco, yelled for him to make the leap to safety. But Gennaro could no longer move. His small, quivering body and his gentle soul had surrendered to the long war.

“
Grazie mille
,” Gennaro said again, in a soft, foggy whisper, disappearing behind a collapsing wall and an angry rush of flames.

Connors slid the manhole cover halfway across the opening and lifted his head just above the lip. He stared out at a raging field of heavy heat and thick smoke, dead soldiers, exploding tanks and bullets zipping past at every conceivable angle. Two of the tanks were off to his left, toppled over and smoldering, their iron shells melting into the parched earth. The remaining soldiers were grouped in tiny clusters, some spread out chest to the ground, others bent on one knee, all firing the last of their ammo toward the open windows above them. Connors stared up at the castle, its thick walls withering and crumbling, huge pockets of fire rising into the sky, black smoke covering the wide interior like a cape. Stranded across the vast breach of such horrible decay were the strewn bodies of soldiers and boys, enemies now linked only in death.

Connors closed his eyes then took a deep breath, his lungs filling with the vile taste of battle. He clicked open his cigarette lighter, brushed the flame against the three strips of cheesecloth jammed inside the tip of kerosene-filled wine bottles, and tossed them out of the sewer. He watched the bottles crash and land in the center of a quartet of merging soldiers. The instantaneous blast sent them all tumbling, their bodies ripped apart. He reached down, turning his head away from the action above, and picked up two more bottles, the cigarette lighter still clutched in his right hand.

Connors never saw the soldier.

The Nazi was on his knees, a thin piece of rope wrapped around the palms of his hands, waiting for the American to lift his head out of the sewer opening. He made a diving lunge toward Connors, flexing the rope twice around his throat with deadly speed and precision. Connors’s head snapped back far enough for him to look up into the Nazi’s eyes, his hands dropped the bottles and instinctively reached toward his neck in an attempt to ease the pressure. The Nazi pushed down harder on the rope, his eyes bulging from the effort, his jaw muscles clenched, his lower lip bit and bleeding. Connors reached a hand up and tried to swing the Nazi down into the open hole. He pressed his weight against the hard end of the sewer and forced his head to turn, the chord cutting through his skin, a long gash opening just above his neck line and instantly filling with blood and dirt and frayed rope. Connors brought his right hand up, fingers curled into a hard fist and landed a stinging blow flush to the center of the soldier’s nose. It stunned him and his grip momentarily loosened. Air once again ran freely through Connors’s windpipe. He threw two more punches, one glancing off the Nazi’s helmet, the other finding its mark on the right side of the soldier’s cheek. Connors then lowered his aim, fought off the urge to give in to the pain, ignored the weightlessness of his legs, and directed his hardest punch at the Nazi’s Adam’s apple. The sting of the punch sent the Nazi reeling to his left, inches away from Connors’s face, the rope now hanging loose around his neck. Connors took a quick glance around and then pulled the Nazi’s head toward him, resting it against the base of the sewer. He coiled his arm around the young soldier’s neck, pushed it back farther and then snapped it down and held it until he heard the final crack of bone against muscle.

He pushed the Nazi away from the sewer and stepped down slowly back into its darkness. He touched the gash across his neck, saw the front of his shirt sopped through with blood and gave a final sad and tired look at the collapsing walls of the castle. He lowered his head and slid the sewer lid closed, its rusty edges skimming the sleeves of the Nazi soldier’s uniform. He climbed down the thin steps and stepped into the center of the unlit corridor, running toward the sewage tunnels at the farthest end, a dust storm raining down on his head from the heated battle above.

Maldini stood with his arms inside the round end of the sewage tunnel, his legs immersed in the cold waters of the bay. The tunnel jutted out a dozen feet past the rear of the castle, its thin corroded cover overrun with grass, dirt and moss. The water was at low tide and the current was pulling gently to the west as Maldini reached up and helped ease the first boy out of the tunnel. “Keep your head low,” he said as he placed him in the water. “Walk while you can and then swim when you must. And rest if you get tired. So long as you hug the shore, it’ll be difficult for the Nazis to see you.”

The boy nodded and began his slow move downstream as Maldini turned back to the tunnel. Inside, the shaft was crammed with two long rows of soot-stained boys, some wounded, others shaken and frightened, all of them overwhelmed by the intense level of fighting they had just endured. Vincenzo and Nunzia crawled along the length of the tunnel, keeping the boys in line, tending to wounds and calming fears. Franco was down at the rear end, directing the ones who were still fleeing the burning castle. Maldini did a rough head count. There were less than fifty boys waiting to pounce into the bay. It meant that at least twenty-five lives had been lost in the fight.

He helped each boy out of the tunnel, his hands red with the blood from their wounds. Maldini prodded them on their way, offering meaningless words of courage and support, watching as they floated in the waters of the bay. He eased the last of the boys into the water then jumped back up into the tunnel, running up to join Vincenzo and Nunzia. In the distance, he could make out the shadowy forms of Franco and Angela. “Call them down,” he said. “It’s time for them to go. Then you two follow. I’ll stay back and string together the line of grenades and swim out to meet you as soon as that’s done.”

“What about Connors?” Nunzia asked. “We don’t leave without him.”

“Yes, you will,” Maldini said firmly. “Both of you will. It’s going to take me a few minutes to string the line and get the grenades in place. He’ll be here by then.”

“What if he isn’t, Papa?” Nunzia asked.

Maldini could hear the desperation in her voice. He gently gripped his daughter’s arms in his hands. “It won’t take the Nazis long to figure out our escape route,” he said. “Once they do, if those boys aren’t out of the water they will die. They are in this fight because of us. Many have been killed thanks to the plans we put in place. I’m not going to let anyone, even a man I’ve grown to care about and respect, allow that to happen. In my place he would do the same.”

“Your papa is right, Nunzia,” Vincenzo said quietly. “We wait until the grenade lines are strung. It’s the best we can do.”

Nunzia’s black eyes were red temper hot and her cheeks were flushed with anger. Her hands balled into tight fists. “He would never leave any of us,” she said, spitting out each word. “He would fight until he was dead. If either one of you leaves this place without him, without knowing if he’s alive or dead, you’ll have betrayed a friend.”

Maldini looked back at his only daughter and nodded. “Get Franco and Angela,” he said. “The four of you go out there and make sure the children get to safety. We’ve left enough of our dead behind for one morning.”

“And the American?” Nunzia asked.

“I’ll get him out of the castle,” Maldini said. “I promise you. It’s the least I can do for the man my daughter loves so much.”

Nunzia embraced her father and held him tight in her arms. “
Ti amo, Papa mio
,” she whispered.

“
Anche io ti amo
,” Maldini said back to her. “
Con tutto il mio cuore
.”

Vincenzo held Nunzia’s hand, waiting as Franco and Angela ran up next to them, both crouched down to keep their heads from hitting the ragged top of the tunnel. “Let’s go,” he told her. “The children are waiting.”

Maldini waved them off as he watched each one dive into the cold water and disappear around the bend of the sewage tunnel, swimming their way downstream. He found a soggy cigarette in his torn shirt pocket and tried to light it with a damp match. It caught on the third try and he smiled when he heard the crackling of the brown tobacco. He took a deep drag and blew the smoke up toward the tin ceiling. He then turned away from the water’s edge and walked back into the mouth of the storm.

Maldini found Connors in a rear corridor, hunched down on his knees, hiding from the shadows of two passing Nazis, the handle of a long knife palmed in his right hand. Maldini inched in toward him, walking gingerly on the slippery subbasement floor strewn with water, dust and debris. He gave Connors a quick nod and pulled a pistol from his waist- band, waiting with his back pressed to a redbrick wall for the Nazi soldiers to cross his path.

When the two soldiers were five feet away, standing on opposite ends of the subbasement, Connors moved first. He leaped to his feet, grabbed one Nazi from behind, and shoved the knife deep into the center of his back. The second Nazi turned when he heard the scuffle but Maldini stepped out of his nook and fired three shots, sending the soldier sprawling to the muddy floor. Maldini ran toward Connors, stopping only to retrieve the Nazi’s machine gun. He was quick to notice the rope cut across the American’s throat and the blood flowing freely down the front of his chest. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to find your way alone,” he said to Connors. “I should have left you a compass.”

“It wouldn’t have helped,” Connors said. “I have no sense of direction.”

An explosion just above their heads caused the ground to tremble and the walls to crack and splinter. “Then follow me close,” Maldini said, starting to run down the back end of the subbasement. “I won’t come back for you a second time.”

“I’m right on you,” Connors said.

He followed Maldini out of the subbasement, into the sewage tunnel. Above them, they both could hear the heavy footsteps of Nazi soldiers, searching through rubble and flames for any hidden boys or escape routes.

Maldini led the way around tight corners and through dusty crawl spaces, navigating each turn with an agility and skill that belied his years. He scampered like a child in search of a favorite, secret place. As he ran, rushing to keep up with the older man, Connors realized that while Vincenzo and the others knew their way around the streets of Naples, Maldini could take them into places no Nazi could ever find. He was their one guide to the underground, moving through tunnels and sewers with relaxed precision and a confident step.

They were both out of breath when they reached the last loop of the sewage tunnel. Maldini wiped at his brow with the corners of an old handkerchief. “The water’s up ahead,” he said between gulps of breath. “Jump in and turn to your right. The current will then take you where you need to go.”

“I’ll go in when you go in,” Connors said. “You don’t have the time to put up that grenade line by yourself. The Germans will figure out a way to get down here, it’s only a matter of minutes.”

“You don’t need to know how to swim,” Maldini said with a knowing smile. “The bay is kind to all, even Americans. And I’ll be right behind you. It won’t take me long to get the line ready.”

“I think you told me once you weren’t cut out to be a hero,” Connors said.