“Because I want him to kill me,” Pino said, started the Fiat, and put it in gear.
They took off, sliding in greasy mud that soon caked the sides of the car. They drove cross-country to the north before finally meeting up with a two-track road that led downhill through switchbacks and long traverses that put them parallel to the Brenner Pass road above the town of Bressanone/Brixen. The German army column choked the town and the route ahead for more than a mile. Nothing was moving.
Gunshots sounded below. Out the window, bouncing along on the two-track, Pino looked toward the front of the column and saw why it had all but halted. There were six or seven pieces of heavy artillery at the head of the line. Many of the mules that had pulled the cannons through Italy had finally given up; they stood their ground and refused to work any longer.
The Nazis were whipping the mules, trying to get the artillery pieces out of the way so the rest of the column could get by. The mules that wouldn’t pull were being shot and dragged to the shoulders of the road. The last cannon was almost out of the way. The Nazi caravan was about to retreat on.
“Go faster,” Leyers ordered. “Get in front of that column before it blocks us.”
Pino downshifted and said to Carletto, “Hold on.”
The track was drier here, and Pino was able to double and then triple his speed, still parallel to the convoy, almost to the head of the snake. A kilometer farther on, the lane met another crude route that dropped downhill seven hundred meters to the Brenner Pass road where it passed through the village of Varna/Vahrn and no more than one hundred meters from the cannons and the dying mules.
Pino downshifted and slid them neatly into a track that headed steeply downhill. He floored the accelerator. The Fiat bounced and flew down the last flank of the mountain even as the last cannon cleared and the Panzer tanks at the head of the German column fired up and began to roll once more toward Austria.
“Get ahead of them!” Leyers shouted.
It took everything Alberto Ascari had taught Pino to keep the car from flipping or rolling. He chuckled madly as he barreled them down the last stretch to the road even as the first Panzer built speed.
But then, out of nowhere and a mile to the south, a US Mustang P-51 fighter plane dive-bombed and opened fire on the Nazi column, strafing its way up the line.
The general must have understood the physics of all that was involved now because he began to shout, “Faster! Faster, Vorarbeiter!”
They were neck and neck with the tank, which was some eighty meters from blocking the intersection. The Fiat was one hundred and ten meters from the Brenner Pass road but closing faster as the Mustang flew closer, letting loose machine gun fire every few seconds.
Forty meters shy of the road, Pino finally hit the brakes and downshifted, which hurled the Fiat into a series of wild muddy zigzags and then up on two wheels, with the Panzer right there, before they shot off an embankment and landed in front of the tank. They skidded, went up on two wheels again, and almost flipped before Pino got the Fiat righted and accelerating.
“Soldier coming up out of the tank!” Leyers yelled. “He’s at the machine gun!”
Pino had widened the gap, but the distance was still child’s play for a heavy-caliber machine gun. The shooter could cut the Fiat apart like cheese. Hunched over the wheel, Pino held the accelerator flat against the floorboard, expecting to take a bullet to the back of the head.
But before the Nazi could open fire, the US fighter came round the bend, strafing up the neck and head of the German column. Bullets rattled off the Panzer armor and ricocheted off the road right behind the Fiat. Suddenly, the shooting stopped, and the plane banked off.
They rounded another bend and were out of the Germans’ sight. For a moment there was stunned silence in the car. Then Leyers began to laugh, pounding his fists on his thighs and on the suitcase.
“You did it!” he cried. “You crazy Italian son of a bitch, you did it again!”
Pino hated that he’d done it. He’d fully expected to die in the trying, and now that he was putting distance between them and the retreating Nazis and gaining ground on the Austrian border, he didn’t know what to do. He seemed destined to get General Leyers out of Italy, and he finally surrendered to the task.
The twenty-four kilometers of road between Bressanone/Brixen and Vipiteno/Sterzing climbed to the level of the snowpack, which looked granular, wet, and névé, but still deep. When they met fog again, it was hard to tell where the snow ended and the air began. Cut off by the German column behind them, the Brenner Pass road was deserted and wound up into patches of thicker cloud and mist. Their pace slowed to a crawl.
“Not far now,” Leyers said after they passed through Vipiteno. He pulled the suitcase back up onto his lap. “No time at all.”
“What are you going to do, Pino?” Carletto asked, drinking again. “What’s this all been for if he just gets away with the gold?”
“Major Knebel says he’s a hero,” Pino said, feeling numb. “I guess he goes free.”
Before Carletto could respond, Pino downshifted and braked hard, entering a hairpin turn on the last climb toward the border. A low wall of snow blocked the way, and he had to slam on the brakes and come to a full stop.
Six rough-looking men wearing red scarves stood up from behind the snowbank, aiming rifles at them from point-blank range. Out of the forest on Carletto’s side, another man appeared holding a pistol. An eighth man stepped out of the trees to Pino’s left. He was smoking a cigarette and carrying a sawed-off shotgun. At first glance, even after a year, Pino knew him.
Father Re had said Tito and his men were robbing people on the Brenner Pass road, and now here he was, strolling Pino’s way.
“What have we here?” Tito said, coming up alongside the open window, the sawed-off shotgun leading. “Where do you think you all are going on this fine May morning?”
Pino had his hat pulled down over his brows. He held out the envelope and said, “We’re on a mission for the Americans.”
Tito took it, opened it, and looked at the paper in a way that made Pino think he couldn’t read. He stuffed the letter back in the envelope and tossed it aside. “What’s the mission?”
“We’re taking this man to the Austrian border.”
“That right? What’s in the suitcase he’s got handcuffed to his hand?”
“Gold,” Carletto said. “I think.”
Pino groaned inside.
“Yeah?” Tito said. He used the muzzle of the shotgun to push Pino’s cap up higher so he could see his face.
After a second or two, Tito laughed scornfully and said, “Isn’t this perfetto?”
Then he jabbed Pino’s cheek with the shotgun muzzle, opening up a gash below his eye.
Pino grunted with pain and reached up, feeling blood already flowing.