had landed. They stowed the two parachutes together and then walked
south searching for the two radio ’chutes. They found the first one
almost at once. It was caught on an overhanging rock over a sheer drop
of about thirty feet to a stone ledge below.
“Glad I didn’t land there,” Tony commented, as he crawled up the rock
to the ’chute. There he tugged the shroud lines so that the container,
which was hanging free in the air, swung over close to Dick, who caught
it and cut it loose. Then Tony retrieved the colored ’chute and they
continued the search for the other one.
It took them ten minutes to find it, and by that time dawn had really
come. The birds in the trees were chirping and flitting about but no
other sound came to them. When they had gathered everything together,
they set out to find the others of their party.
“Must be about three-quarters of a mile,” Dick said. “No matter how
fast they went out of the ship they’d be spread over that much
territory. We can start whistling pretty soon.”
After a hundred steps through the trees, heading northward parallel
with the ridge of the hill above them, they began alternately to give
poor imitations of bird calls. But the birds themselves were singing so
vigorously, as if they did not realize a war was going on, that the two
Americans began to wonder if their calls would be heard. In a few
minutes, however, they heard a call like their own.
“That’s no bird,” Tony said. “Only Vince Salamone could make a sound
like that.”
They hurried down to the left, from which the whistle had come, lugging
their heavy containers with them. They saw Vince Salamone and
“Boom-Boom” Slade sitting on their equipment under a tree. Vince was
working so hard at whistling that he could not hear the replies which
Dick and Tony were giving him. And Slade was pursing up his lips
repeatedly without a single sound coming out. The demolition expert
could not whistle a note!
Dick called out when they were close, and the two men jumped to their
feet. Happy to learn that neither one had been hurt in his landing,
Dick checked over the equipment to be sure it was all there.
“Right—three containers and five ’chutes!” he said. “Let’s go.”
Dick led the way as they went forward to the north again. It was hard
walking, for the hill was steeper, and ahead Dick could make out an
outcropping of rock that rose straight up for about twenty-five feet.
He began to whistle once more, looking for either Max Burckhardt or
Jerry Scotti. After a few minutes he heard an answering whistle and
stopped.
“Where’s that coming from?” Dick asked, puzzled. The whistle seemed to
be ahead of them, but just where was not certain. So they walked
forward more steps, whistled again, and heard a reply. Then they heard
a voice.
“Dick! Dick! I’m up here!”
They all looked up. There, leaning over a rocky ledge far above them,
was Max Burckhardt.
“Max! How did you get up there?” Dick called back, not too loudly.
“How do you think?” Max demanded angrily. “I landed here, of course!”
“On that little ledge?” Tony asked. “How big is it?”
“About eight feet square,” Max replied. “And there’s not a way to get
off it. Sheer rock up above and straight drop below. Not a foothold
anywhere. I feel silly as the devil perched up here with no way to get
down.”
“You may feel silly,” Dick answered, “but you’re really lucky as the
devil. You might have been knocked senseless against this cliff by your
’chute.”
“Don’t I know it!” Max called back.
“Where’s your ’chute?” Dick asked.
“Here!” Max replied. “I sort of sensed I was on the edge of something
and I pulled it in fast. It was trying to pull me right off. Toss me up
a good rope. There’s a rock up here I can fasten it on.”
Dick quickly opened one of the supply containers and found a good
length of rope. It took half a dozen tries to get one end of it up to
Max, but soon he had it looped over the rock. He tossed one end down
again.
“With both ends down there,” he explained, “we can get it free from
this jutting rock and take it along with us. Hold it taut for me and it
won’t come loose.”
Max tossed his ’chute over to them, and then Dick and Vince Salamone
bore down on the ends of the rope. Soon Max slid over the edge and came
hand-over-hand down to the ground.
“Boy, am I glad to see you guys!” he exclaimed. “I was beginning to
feel that I’d be up there for the duration.”
Gathering everything together again, they went in search of the other
supply containers and within another ten minutes had found them intact.
“Now to find Jerry,” Dick said. “He can’t be far.”
“I know it,” Max said. “I’ve been wondering. I would have thought he
might come back a bit looking for me, and I certainly think he would
have looked around for the last supply ’chutes. He was jumping right
after them.”
They stopped and whistled. There was no answer. Then they moved forward
a short distance and whistled again. Still no reply came to them. Dick
climbed up the hill a little farther and called out to the others. He
had found the entrance to a cave. It was well sheltered and not very
obvious, and inside it was like a large square room. But they found no
Lieutenant Scotti inside, nor any sign that a human had been in the
place for a long time.
“This will make a swell base,” Dick said, “as soon as we find Jerry.
Let’s stow all our stuff here and fan out to look for him.”
Quickly they put their supplies and equipment well back in the dry cave
and then started out in different directions from the cave entrance. It
was Dick who first heard the groan, coming from behind a huge, jagged
boulder. He raced around it quickly, whistling the signal frantically
as he went.
There at the bottom of the boulder lay Lieutenant Scotti. His face was
covered with blood, and his right leg was twisted under him in a way
that told Dick immediately that it was broken.
CHAPTER EIGHT
TWO VISITORS TO TOWN
The others came running to the boulder in a moment. Dick had felt the
Lieutenant’s pulse and found it still strong. The blood on his face was
from two deep gashes in his skull, obviously from the jagged rock
against which he had fallen.
Vince Salamone picked up the lieutenant in his arms and carried him
gently up the hill to the cave. Tony and Max ran ahead to get out some
of the blanket beds from the supply containers, and finally Scotti was
resting inside the cave.
“Tony and Max,” Dick said, “see if you can find water. There ought to
be some little stream or springs near by in hills like this.”
The two men snatched up canteens and went out quickly. Meanwhile, Dick
looked over Scotti’s broken leg. Salamone looked on as if he wished he
could do something. Slade, who had said almost nothing, came to Dick’s
side.
“I happen to know a little bit about such things,” he said, almost
timidly. “Let me have a look.”
Deftly he ripped away the lieutenant’s trouser leg and examined the
break in the bone, just a little above the knee.
“Seems to be pretty clean,” he said. “We’ll have to get it set right
away. Need some long straight pieces of wood.”
“I’ll get ’em,” Vince said, happy that there was something he could do
to help. He pulled a hatchet from the supply container, made sure his
knife was in his pocket, and went out of the cave.
In a moment Max and Tony both returned with water and Slade bathed
Scotti’s face and his wounds. Opening a first-aid kit, he put a little
sulfa powder in the deep wounds and then dressed them.
“He’s completely unconscious as a result of these,” he said to Dick.
“Can’t tell if there’s any concussion of the brain or not, of course.
If there is, it’s bad, and he may not come to. But if not he’ll come
around. We mustn’t try to force him back to consciousness, though. Just
make him comfortable and let him rest.”
Dick nodded in agreement and the little demolition expert, who now
turned out to be also a first-aid expert, went quickly over the rest of
Scotti’s body to see if there were any more wounds. He found nothing
but some torn flesh on one hand, where he had probably tried to clutch
at the rock when he landed on it. Slade quickly cleaned and dressed
this wound, too, felt the lieutenant’s pulse, and stepped back.
“Can’t do anything else except set the leg,” he said.
Max and Tony had gone to help Vince find the straight pieces of wood
needed for this task. In a few minutes they returned with straight
sapling trunks about an inch and a half in diameter, but Slade said the
wood was too pliable.
“That could never hold a broken leg in position,” he said. “It would
bend with the leg. You’ve got to find old wood, hard and stiff.”
The three men went off into the woods again, and soon Dick could hear
the sound of a hatchet chopping wood. He hoped that the sound did not
carry to the town below, or to any German garrison which might be near
by. The town was about two miles away, and the main German gun
emplacements on the hills were a good way to the south of them, but
still Dick did not rest easy until the sound was ended.
In ten minutes the three men returned with wood that Slade declared
perfect. It was straight and true, with all tiny branches cleaned off
smoothly, and there was no give in it at all. Slade set the others to
tearing one of the parachutes into strips, and these strips he tied
around the two long pieces of wood which were placed on either side of
Scotti’s broken leg.
In twenty minutes the job was done.
“Best I can do, anyway,” Slade said. “Maybe it will set all right and
maybe not. Nothing else to do, though. The main thing I’m worried about
is the head injury.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: _Slade Set Scotti’s Broken Leg_]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Yes, I wish he weren’t unconscious,” Dick said. “It seems terrible,
somehow, to see him here but not talk to him, hear him. And right now
we need him badly. He’s the one with the brains in this outfit.”
“It’s too bad, all right,” Tony said, “but you’ve got a pretty good
head on your shoulders, too, Dick. We can carry on. And, anyway, maybe
Scotti will come around in a little while and he can direct operations
from here. He doesn’t have to move around. We can do everything that
needs to be done.”
The others agreed, but Dick felt a little lost without Scotti’s help at
this point. He set about getting the cave organized, the containers
unpacked, the supplies in order. Tony Avella checked over all the radio
material and found everything in order.
Slade stacked his dynamite at the rear of the cave, and Vince said, as
he saw the great pile, “Are you just going to blow up _one_ dam with
that, Boom-Boom? It looks as if you had enough for two.”
“It takes a lot of dynamite to blow up a good dam,” Slade said. “From
the pictures and plans I saw, this isn’t such a wonderful one.
Structurally, it would never be acceptable in the United States. But,
when possible, I always believe in bringing along just twice as much
material as I think I’m going to need.”
“And who knows?” Tony laughed. “Maybe we can find something else we can
blow up with whatever’s left over.”
“Not a bad idea,” Dick said. “Not a bad idea at all.”
They all sat down at the mouth of the cave and opened their cans of
rations. Dick said he thought it was all right to light a small fire
for a short while so they might have coffee. In five minutes there were
five cups being held over a little blaze, and soon the coffee was made.
The men all drank it with relish and sighs of relief, and then the fire
was put out.
“Nobody’ll spot that little bit of smoke and get suspicious,” Max said.
“We just shouldn’t do it too often,” Dick said. “If they should notice
it regularly, they’d come to investigate.”
Every half hour, at least, Dick went to Scotti’s side, felt his pulse,
and looked eagerly for some signs of consciousness. But the lieutenant
remained in the same state, breathing shallowly, but with a good pulse
beat.
By four o’clock in the afternoon, Dick felt sure that whatever
decisions were made that day would have to come from him. Vince and Max
had taken short naps, but now they were awake and asking him what the
plan of action was. He called them all around him to talk the matter
over.
“We can’t do much of anything except at night, of course,” Dick said.
“And we haven’t got much time to waste. First, we’ve got to get the
radio set up, somehow, somewhere. Any ideas, Tony?”
“Not up here,” Tony said. “That’s about all I can say now, Dick. They’d
spot us in no time with their detectors, and we’d have a company of
Germans all over the side of this hill.”
“Where, then?” Dick asked.
“In the town itself,” Tony replied.
“That seems next to impossible, Tony,” Max said. “Why, they’ll find it
in a minute in town—even if you should find some way to get all that
paraphernalia in without being caught.”
“I know it sounds out of the question,” Tony agreed. “But there must be
some place we can set it up without being located. Now, if my uncle’s
still around—”
“How are you going to find that out?” Vince asked.
“Go to town and ask,” Tony replied. “Isn’t that right, Dick?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Dick replied. “I don’t know about getting the
radio into town, but we’ve got to go down there, some of us, and find
out what’s what. That uncle of yours, Tony—we might as well assume he’s
_not_ there. So many people have been evacuated. What did he do there,
anyway?”
“That’s one reason I think he might still be there,” Tony said. “For
quite a few years, he’s been caretaker at the Villa Rolta. Right on the
edge of town, the villa is—a big place about a thousand years old,
backing up against the steep hill at the northern end of town. Belonged
to the Rolta family ever since the twelfth century, though none of them
have been around for quite a while. It’s been sort of a Museum for a
long time now, and Uncle Tomaso has been caretaker. He’s an old duck
and I don’t think he’d move. He’d stick there at the villa no matter
what happened.”
“Well, maybe so,” Dick said. “It would be lucky if he were still
around. We’ve got to find that out. And we’ve got to make contact with
somebody else there if he isn’t around. That’s a ticklish job. The
first man we talk to might be a friend of the Germans.”
“We’ll just listen first,” Tony said. “You can tell, after a little
while, by the way people talk.”
“But what kind of listening can a bunch of American soldiers in uniform
do?” Vince asked.
“That brings up another point,” Dick said. “You all remember what the
General said about that. If we got out of uniform and were caught we’d
be treated as spies. And you know that means getting shot—right away
and without any questions asked.”
“Sure, but we can’t go in uniform,” Tony protested.
“I don’t think we can, either,” Dick said. “And I know Scotti didn’t
think so. That’s why he got hold of six sets of clothing, clothing of
ordinary Italian small-town people such as they’d be wearing in Maletta
these days.”
“Do they fit?” demanded Vince Salamone, whose difficulty in finding
clothes large enough was always bothering him.
Dick laughed. “Yes, Jerry did a good job on that,” he said. “Of course,
it was pretty easy to pick up the right things fast in the towns we’ve
recently taken over in southern Italy. He even found a couple of
Italians as big as you, Vince.”
“Then we go in Italian clothes?” Tony asked.
“Only if you want to,” Dick replied. “I’m not going to ask anybody to
do it who doesn’t agree perfectly with the idea. But I know that I’m
going to leave my uniform here in the cave when I visit Maletta.”
“Same here,” Tony said. “I’ll be right at home. Nobody’ll ever notice
me. And if they ask, I’m just little Antonio Avella, from the town of
Carlini up north, come down looking for my poor old uncle.”
“What kind of Italian peasant do you think I’ll make?” Max asked. “I
can’t speak the language.”
“You’re my deaf and dumb cousin!” Tony laughed, and the others joined
in. “I always knew part of that was true, but now you’ll have to fill
the description completely.”
“Okay,” Max laughed. “I’ll be deaf and dumb if it means I can help and
at the same time keep from getting myself shot as a spy.”
“Maybe we can pick up a German uniform for you,” Dick said, “and then
your German will come in mighty handy. Come to think of it, I’m going
to keep on the lookout for a spare uniform.”
“Make me a high officer, if you get me a German uniform,” Max said.
“I’d like to be more than a private for a while, especially if I’ve got
to wear a Nazi uniform. It would be fun to get in a Colonel’s uniform
and march up to a company of soldiers and order them to jump in the
lake and drown themselves. They’d do it, too! They’re just that crazy
about obeying orders if the orders are barked by a guy with enough gold
braid on him.”
“But I don’t speak German or Italian, either one,” Slade said. “What
about me?”
“Boom-Boom, you stay right here,” Dick said. “In the first place, you
came along to blow up a dam. You can also be mighty useful by nursing
our lieutenant back to life and health. Somebody’s got to keep on tap
here, anyway, all the time. You’re elected.”
“All right,” Slade said. “But I must have a chance to look over that
dam once or twice before I go to blow it up.”
“We’ll visit the dam, all right,” Dick said. “But that will come later.
Now here’s the schedule, and for most of you guys it’s easy.”
They all looked at the young sergeant expectantly.
“If too many strange Italians from the north, including a deaf and dumb
one, land in this town all of a sudden, some folks will be suspicious.
So this first night Tony and I go down to the town to look for his
uncle Tomaso or find out whatever we can. Depending on what we
learn—we’ll lay our plans then.”
“And the rest of us just sit here?” Vince demanded.
“Yes, you just sit here,” Dick said. “Tony and I will leave as soon as
it grows dark. If we don’t come back by two a.m. Vince and Max are to
come looking for us. Clear?”
They all nodded in agreement. Then Dick went in for another look at
Lieutenant Scotti, followed by Slade.
“Isn’t there really anything we can do, Boom-Boom?” he asked uneasily.
“Not a thing, sergeant,” Slade replied. “I’ll confess I’m worried about
the lieutenant, but there’s nothing we can do. Anything we might try
would prove more dangerous than doing nothing at all now.”
Dick shook his head and went back to get the Italian peasant clothes.
He tossed the sets of clothing to each man according to his size, and
then stripped off his uniform and put on the trousers and shirt which
Scotti had bought from an Italian many miles to the south.
“If the guy that owned these knew how they were being used,” Tony said,
as he got into his things, “I’ll bet he’d be mighty happy. When this is
over I want to look him up and tell him that his clothes helped in the
big defeat of the Germans at Maletta.”
They ate a meal from their ration cans then, and watched the sun sink
over the ridge of hills to the west. By seven o’clock it was completely
dark, and Dick Donnelly—once more using the name of Ricardo
Donnelli—and Tony Avella started down the hill to visit the town of
Maletta.
CHAPTER NINE
UNCLE TOMASO
The two men did not talk for some time as they walked slowly through
the dark woods. As the trees began to thin out near the bottom of the
hill, Dick thought more carefully about the details of their plan. As
they approached the town more closely, it seemed almost impossible to
carry such an undertaking through successfully. Here they were walking
right into the heart of the enemy’s territory, into one of his most
important bases.
“We haven’t got any identification papers,” he said casually to Tony.
“Neither have a great many Italian peasants,” Tony replied, “especially
if they come from the farms. Either they haven’t been given such papers
at all, haven’t been checked up on, or they forget to carry them.
They’re like that, you know—not like the Germans at all, who must
always have everything so well systematized. The Italian farmer knows
that he is Guiseppi Amato, and all his friends know it. Why, he asks,
should he bother to carry around a paper saying that’s who he is?”
Dick laughed lightly. “And he’s right, too,” he agreed. “Mussolini
really couldn’t get very far with his system and rigid discipline and
such, cataloguing everybody and everything.”
“Of course, the Germans are very contemptuous of the Italians,” Tony
said, “which is a compliment to the Italians. They don’t realize that
half of the Italians’ apparent carelessness is really a subtle form of
opposition. They just forget their identification papers, that’s all.
And they tell that to the German sentry or officer with the most
innocent face, with a sort of helpless shrug of the shoulders. It
exasperates the German, of course, but what can he do about it? If only
an occasional Italian acted that way, the Germans could shoot him or
throw him in a concentration camp as punishment and as an example to
the others. But when half the people do it—well!”
“Then if we’re asked for papers, we’ve just forgotten them, or lost
them some time ago,” Dick concluded.
“Or we don’t even seem to know what they’re talking about,” Tony said.
“We’re dumb. We’re as stupid as the Germans think we are. In that,
we’re safe.”
“But it’s a good idea to avoid any more contact with the Germans than
we are forced into,” Dick said.
“I think so, too, Dick,” Tony said. “So I think we ought not to go into
Maletta on the main road. They’re likely to have sentries posted on the
main roads into town, just to check on people coming and going. We can
cross the main road, go through the fields, and cut around to one of
the little side streets.”
“Good,” Dick agreed. “The land is leveling out below us a bit. Looks
like a farm.”
“Yes, see the lights over there,” Tony pointed out. “Farmhouse on our
right. If we keep straight ahead across the field now we ought to
strike the main road. We can cross it, then circle around to the left
toward town, under the shadow of the hill.”
“Will that bring us anywhere near the villa where your uncle was
caretaker?” Dick asked.
“Yes, right there,” Tony replied. “You see that steep hill ahead? You
can make out the dark outlines of it against the sky. It’s at the foot
of that—the villa, backed right up against the hill, almost built into
it.”
They were walking across the farmer’s field now, stepping between the
rows of plants. Dick could not make out what they were, but he was
careful to avoid stepping on them. Finally they came to a low stone
wall marking the end of the field. Beyond it was a ditch and the road.
They crouched low beside the fence and listened. Far off a dog barked
and from somewhere else another answered him. To the left they could
see the lights of Maletta, though there were not many, and no glow was
cast in the sky as it would have been in normal times.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: _The Two Men Walked Toward the Villa_]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Okay, let’s go across,” Dick said, vaulting over the wall.
Tony followed him, and they clambered up the side of the ditch onto the
road. It was wide and paved, obviously the main road to the northeast.
“There’s another road like this going northwest,” Tony said. “Two
valleys meet here at Maletta and join into one up which our forces are
coming. They form the letter Y, with Maletta at the point where the
three arms meet. I imagine most of the German troops and supplies come
down to Maletta along the left upper arm of the Y, from the northwest,
though some come along this road, which is the right branch of the Y.”
“The dam is up to the east a bit, isn’t it?” Dick said. “On the right
arm of the Y.”
“That’s right,” Tony said. “This road skirts around the edge of the dam
and lake, then dips down into the valley. It will be wiped out
completely by the flood waters when the dam is blown up.”
They were across the road by this time, leaping over another wall into
another field.
“Then the waters will pour down through Maletta and into the valley
leading to the south, where our main attack seems to be,” Dick figured
out.
“Yep, and a good flood it will be,” Tony said.
“But that leaves the main supply road into Maletta free,” Dick said.
“The left arm of the Y, leading to the northwest.”
“Yes, it does,” Tony replied. “But we’ll catch plenty of German troops
and supplies in Maletta itself, and below it, where they are going to
meet our attack.”
“But they can escape up the northwest road,” Dick said. “We ought to be
able to do something about that.”