He’d no sooner had that thought than behind them, to the west, he thought he caught the buzz of some larger engine. He looked in the rearview and side-view mirrors, but saw no slit lights that would indicate an oncoming vehicle. The sound grew louder.
Pino glanced again, seeing General Leyers twisting around, and then something beyond him, something big back there above the trees. The moonlight caught the wings then and the snout of the fighter, its engine a building roar and coming right at them.
Pino slammed on the Daimler’s six brakes. They skidded. The fighter swooped over them like the shadow of a night bird before the pilot could trigger his machine guns and chew up the road out in front of the skidding staff car.
The shooting stopped. The fighter gained altitude and banked to Pino’s left, and then was gone behind the treetops.
“Hold on, mon général!” Pino cried, and threw the vehicle in reverse. He backed up, swung the wheel right, shifted to low range and then first gear, punched off the headlights, and gunned it.
The Daimler went down through the ditch, up the other side, and between a gap in the trees into what looked like a recently plowed field. Pino pulled forward close to the base of a cluster of trees and stopped, clicked the ignition off.
“How did you—?” Leyers began, sounding terrified. “What are you—?”
“Listen,” Pino whispered. “He’s coming back.”
The fighter bore down over the road the same way it had the first time, coming from the west, as if it meant to catch up with the staff car and destroy it from behind. Through the tree branches, Pino couldn’t make it out for several seconds, but then the big silver bird blew by them and up the highway, silhouetted against the rarest of moons.
Pino saw white circles with black centers on the fuselage and said, “He’s British.”
“It’s a Spitfire, then,” Leyers said. “With .303 Browning machine guns.”
Pino started the Daimler, waited, listening, peering. The fighter was making a tighter turn now, coming back above the near tree line six hundred meters ahead of them.
“He knows we’re here somewhere,” Pino said, and then realized the moon was probably glinting off the hood and windshield of the staff car.
He threw the Daimler in gear, tried to bury the left front quarter panel in the thorn thicket growing up around the hedgerow, and stopped when the plane was two hundred meters out. Pino ducked his head, felt the fighter go over them, and took off.
The Daimler chewed up ground, gathering speed, mowing down clods and ruts the entire length of the plowed field. Pino kept looking back, wondering if the plane would make a third pass. Near the far corner of the field, he pulled into another gap in the trees, with the nose of the staff car facing down the bank into the road ditch.
He turned off the engine a second time and listened. The plane was a distant, fading buzz. General Leyers started laughing, and then clapped Pino on the shoulder.
“You’re a natural at the cat-and-mouse game!” he said. “I would not have thought to do any of that, even without being shot at.”
“Merci, mon général!” Pino said, grinning as he started the Daimler and headed east again.
Soon, however, he was conflicted. Part of him was appalled that he had basked once more in the general’s praise. Then again, he had been smart and crafty, hadn’t he? He’d certainly outwitted the British pilot, and he rather enjoyed that.
Twenty minutes later, they crested the hill with the full moon rising before them. Diving out of the night sky, the Spitfire crossed the face of the moon and flew right at them. Pino locked up the brakes. For a second time, the Daimler went into a six-wheel-drive screeching skid.
“Run, mon général!”
Before the staff car had stopped, Pino leaped out the door, took one long off-balance stride, and dove for the ditch even as the Spitfire’s machine guns opened up and sent bullets skipping down the macadam.
Pino landed in the ditch, felt the wind blow out of him as bullets struck steel and broke glass. Chunks of debris peppered his back, and he curled up, protecting his head and struggling for air.
The shooting stopped then, and the Spitfire flew on to the west.
Chapter Twenty
When the plane was a distant hum, and he could breath, Pino whispered in the darkness, “Mon général?”
There was no reply. “Mon général?”
No answer. Was he dead? Pino thought he’d be happy to think that, but instead he saw the downside. No more Leyers, no more spying. No more information for the—
He heard movement and then a groan.
“Mon général?”
“Yes,” Leyers said weakly. “Here.” He was behind Pino, struggling to sit up. “I must have blacked out. Last thing I remember was diving into the ditch and . . . what happened?”
Pino told the general as he helped him up the bank. The Daimler was backfiring, hesitating, and shuddering, but somehow still running. Pino shut it off, and the engine mercifully died. He got the flashlight and tool kit from the trunk. He flicked the light on and passed its beam over the vehicle with General Leyers gaping along with him. Bullets had ripped the Daimler from front to back, penetrating the hood, which was throwing steam. The machine gun had also blown out the windshield, perforated the front and back seats, and punched more holes through the trunk. The front-right tire was flat. So was the opposite side’s outer-rear tire.
“Can you hold this, mon général?” Pino asked, holding out the torch.
Leyers looked at it blankly a moment, and then took it.
Raising the hood, Pino saw that the engine block had been hit five times, but the light .303 rounds had not had enough energy left after piercing the hood to do any real damage. A spark plug cable was severed. Another looked ready to go. And there was a hole high in the radiator. But otherwise the power plant, as Alberto Ascari liked to describe it, looked serviceable.
Pino used a knife to strip and twist together the two pieces of the severed spark plug cable and used first-aid tape to bind it and the weaker cable. He got out the tire kit, found patches and rubber glue that he used to seal both sides of the radiator hole. Then he removed the flat front-left tire, and moved the outer right tire forward to replace it. He took off the flat outer back-left tire and dumped it. When he started the Daimler, it still ran rough, but it was no longer bucking and coughing like an old smoker.
“I think it will get us back to Milan, mon général, but beyond that, who knows?”
“Beyond Milan doesn’t matter,” Leyers said, sounding clearer-headed as he climbed into the backseat. “The Daimler is too visible a target. We will change cars.”
“Oui, mon général,” Pino said, and tried to put the staff car in gear.