Chapter 9
A/N: Thanks for all of the reviews. There are some OC's in this chapter. Sorry about that. i know a lot of people aren't fans of OC's.
Germany always comes to save me when I cry… That's why… I can't cry anymore.
There's an old tale that has been passed on from mother to child, father to son, for many generations. It's said angels cry when raindrops fall, their tears water the crops and fill the seas. Therefore, if no one died, there would be no life, because the angels would have no reason to cry if everyone lived. There can be no life without pain, without loss.
However, that day, it was said it felt as though the country itself were crying. General Giovanni dismissed such silly superstitious nonsense with a shake of his head.
General Giovanni was a first generation Italian-America. His mother, a beautiful blue-eyed, dark haired beauty from Sicily, fell in love with his father, a poor fishermen. The two never should have fallen in love, but they did. When they were together, she could forget that she was supposed to marry another man, and he could forget that his brother was involved in the Mafia. Just as the pressure for her to marry and for him to bow to the Mafia reached its absolute height, they eloped. Fleeing to America with nothing but the clothes on their back.
Twenty years later, they had firmly established themselves and raised their oldest son to adulthood. Giovanni could never imagine what they went through to raise him, but he was forever grateful to them. Even as a general, he did his best to write letters to his mother and send his father money. Whether or not his proud father accepted it was not his problem.
Pride had kept his father out of the Mafia. It had helped him find a place in a foreign land with a young wife. The stubborn old man could keep his pride, but he shouldn't complain if his son took after him in that regard.
Now in his late 40's, Giovanni found that he had fallen in love with Italy. Mountains rose up behind the air base he was stationed at like great guardians. Of course, his office pretty much restricted him to a windowless, concrete box, so he didn't get to see those mountains often.
He sat at his desk in his small office, with a mountain of paperwork on either side of him, a computer in front him, and a picture of his wife and son, when his son was still cute, an arm's reach away from him. His hands should have been flitting away on the keyboard, and they would be in a few minutes, it's just that there was a storm outside the likes of which he'd never seen before in Italy, and it was so frickin' distracting.
When was lunchtime? He was hungry and all that his mini fridge had was beer he wasn't supposed to drink while he was on duty. He'd have to thank his men for that little treasure eventually. And what time was it anyway?
He'd sent the 2nd Lieutenant for coffee ten minutes ago. Lieutenant O'Brien, had huffed indignantly at the mere thought of lowering himself to the imaginary station of military busboy, but he always did that before he came back with coffee. He should have been back five minutes ago. Where was he?
Speak of the devil, O'Brien rushed into the office, sopping wet, or at least he rushed in the sense that he was fast walking, which was like panicking when it came to the normally stoic O'Brien.
Giovanni felt his heart rate speed up. Something was wrong.
"Sir!" O'Brien started, sounding agitated. "We have a general at the gates waiting for approval to enter, Sir."
Giovanni closed his laptop with a soft click. The Lieutenant, a sandy haired, slender man in his late 20's, would not have come to him with this information unless something out of the ordinary had occurred. For instance, the man at the gates claimed to be a general, but had no means to prove his claim.
"Alright, O'Brien, I'll bite. What's wrong with that?"
"I've never seen or heard of him in my life, his uniform indicates he serves the Italian Army, and he barely looks old enough to drive, Sir."
"…Are you joshing me, Lieutenant?"
"Of course, sir. Sometimes I wake up at two in the morning and think, 'Wouldn't it be awesome if I could go outside in the middle of a thunderstorm, potentially get hit by lightning, risk my military career, and get soaked to my underwear, just so I can play a prank on my superior officer' Oh, how I've dreamed of this day." He said all of that without ever failing to keep his tone formal and composed.
The general threw his hands up in a placating gesture. Obviously, O' Brien had woken up on the cranky side of the bed. "Yeah, okay, fine. Take me to the kid and remind me to ask for a new Lieutenant when we get back to my office."
As Giovanni stood to join his subordinate, O'Brien leaned on the doorway, muttering under his breath, "Please don't make promises you don't intend to keep, Sir."
A quick grin was flashed in his direction. "You love me, Lieutenant, as you should. No one else in this entire base would take your sass in stride like I do."
As they walked out the door, Giovanni felt the storm hit him like a bulldozer. It was strange that such a strong storm could have come on so fast, when it'd been clear skies only half-and-hour earlier, and they'd had to cancel a few flights as a consequence. As always, the safety of their pilots was a priority, and sending them off to fly in a whirling, thunderous, roiling mass of sickly purple clouds was not something he was willing to do. They risked their lives everyday for their country. The least he could do was make sure they knew they had someone at home who was on their side.
An umbrella would have been a good idea. He should have brought one or he should have made O'Brien get one for the two of them.
It was dark as he approached the gates. Two lamplights on either side showed him the small silhouette of a petite, slender figure guarded by two of his soldiers. As he drew closer, the silhouette began to grow features. Once he found himself merely a foot or two away from the mysterious figure, he could see that the so called "general" was only a mere boy. With hair the color of dark chocolate, eyes that glinted gold in the light of the lamps, and a limp, stray, bent curl poking out of the side of his head, he could have been a naïve college student or a boy pretending to be a soldier for some sort of initiation rite.
He sent his Lieutenant a sour look, but the man wasn't paying him any attention, both of his eyes were riveted on the stern looking boy.
With added gruffness for effect, Giovanni started,"Alright, kid, you don't know me, but I go by General Giovanni 'round these parts, and I've been part of the 31st Fighter Wing for twenty years, so I've been around the block a few hundred times. Do you think you're the first punk I've caught impersonating a soldier? This here's a serious felony, kid. I could have you locked up and the key tossed into a ditch, were I so inclined."
Something like anger flashed across the boy's face. He furrowed his brow, glaring, and said, "My name is General Vargas. I'm here to request the use of one of your fighter planes under Prime Minister Letta's orders." The skepticism in the air was palpable. Then the kid reached into his jacket, he'd done it once before so only General Giovanni showed some concern at the gesture, then handed over a crumpled sheet of paper. The general snatched it from the boy's hands, and then tried to make out the swirled script in the dim light and rain.
"Forget your glasses, General?" His Lieutenant asked with a small dose of sarcasm as he tried to surreptitiously peer over his shoulder, for no conceivable reason other than to be annoying.
"Shut up, O'Brien." In a few more minutes, the general, a man in his late 40's who had some difficulty reading even when he wasn't in a torrential downpour, made out the Prime Minister's signature.
Enrico Letta
The letter went as follows:
I, Enrico Letta, as Prime Minister of the Republic of Italy, declare that the man holding this letter, Veneziano Vargas, is a certified general in the Italian military despite his young age, and that he is to be given access to all the military personnel and equipment he requests at any military base stationed on Italian soil.
Your Prime Minister,
Enrico Letta
"Let the kid in. He's either one heck of a forger or one heck of an underrated savant. Either way, I want him inside and out of the rain." The two privates shrugged, then they opened the gate with a measure of wariness. "Check him for weapons."
The boy held his arms out as they patted down his pants and jacket, his face expressionless except for the minute, panicked flickering of his eyes. One of the private's let out a small whistle as he pulled a small .45 out from under the boy's shirt. He handed it off to Lieutenant O'Brien, who proceeded to check to see if it was loaded. The gun still had five casings in it. Not only that, but the serial number on the gun suggested it had been filed to a U.S. soldier, not an Italian army general.
They didn't believe for a second that the kid was a general. They could only hope that he hadn't committed a more serious crime in his little game.
Seeing their suspicious glances, the boy stated," That's my friend's gun. I didn't steal it." Then he turned to Giovanni, who could the desperation and exhaustion etched into his young features. "General, please, I need to leave immediately. Look-" The general cut him off with a sharp wave of his hand.
"Give us some time. We still need to check your letter for forgery, maybe even call up Mr. Prime Minister, and then if everything checks out and the sky clears up, we'll let you borrow one of our F-16's."
The boy took a step away from them, his face contorted into an angry scowl, and slammed his fist against the fence. At the same time, lightning flashed across the sky. "That's not good enough, General! My friend is dying! For every minute I stand around arguing or chatting or drinking hot cocoa with you, more people will be put in harm's way. There is a threat, General, that I need to eliminate, and at this point, I am willing to take drastic measures. But I don't want to. So, please… just let me go."
O'Brien shook his head while the two privates merely waited for orders. A young kid, claiming to be a general, holding a concealed, possibly stolen weapon- none of that added up to something good. They needed to keep their eye on him. And even if he did check out, flying off in a thunderstorm was practically suicide.
Still hopeful, the boy stood tall. Chocolate eyes, the same shape and color as his son's, stared back at him with implicit trust.
Giovanni allowed himself a soft sigh. "I'm sorry, son. I just can't do that."
Then it happened. The boy's face crumpled, his hope in Giovanni extinguished, but it didn't stop there. It hardened, like molten lava into rock, his eyes took on a frenetic gleam, and then he began to run.
"Stop him!" Giovanni shouted over the howling winds. One shot rang out as the boy drew close to one of the sleek, copper-colored fighter planes. The first shot cut through his calf like a hot knife through butter, leaving a spray of blood across the concrete. Despite being injured, the boy ignored the pain, only a low, tremulous whimper letting the soldiers know that he felt it at all. Another step was taken towards the plane, and then another. Giovanni moved to restrain as another shot rang out in the night.
This one hit the boy in the back of his head, spraying his face and brain matter across the nose of the F-16 Falcon. The rain quickly went to work; washing most of the gore away in the few seconds it took the body to hit the ground.
The general spun around, furious, to see his Lieutenant still stand with his gun held out in the air. "What was that, Lieutenant? He was a child!"
"With as much respect as you are currently due, Sir," The soldier retorted as he lowered his weapon. "He was an enemy!"
"We didn't know that for sure."
"We couldn't take the chance."
For a moment, both were quiet. The two privates returned to their posts, clearly shaken by what they had witness, as their superiors leveled heated glares at each other.
Finally, Giovanni broke the silence. "O'Brien, when I get back to my office… remind me to request a transfer."
"Will do, Sir."
Giovanni watched the man he'd spent a decade working with walk back to their office building before he turned back to the kid they'd just obliterated. Kneeling down, he moved to see what damage had been done the boy's face. Upon seeing, he knew it wasn't going to be an open casket funeral. There was nothing left of his face, besides a few smattering's of flesh and a small, open-jawed mouth.
Dammit.
With a soft touch, he stroked the boy's hair away from the mess his face had become and wondered about his son. Suddenly, he felt a force knock his feet out from under him, and the unpleasant sensation of something whipping his gun out of its holster.
It shouldn't have been possible. No one could survive having their face blown off, and yet, the thing pressing his face to the wet concrete and holding his gun against his head seemed to be the boy's corpse.
"Move, General." It rasped out, pressing the gun a with a little more force against his temple, then it muttered, "…Sorry about this."
"I've never been apologized to by a corpse before." He calmly replied, as his brain worked to make sense of what was happening. "Usually, I'm the one doing the apologizing. Not sure if I like the reversal." A small chuckle, reminiscent of rusted metal, sounded over his shoulder.
The boy – corpse maneuvered into being his own little human shield. If the two privates tried to shoot him again, they'd have to go through their general's flesh and bone to do it. One of the privates ran to sound the alarm at Giovanni's muted signal. More words came from the shatter mouth behind his ear, "I'm going to let you go in five seconds. When I do, I expect you to do whatever you can… to protect the people of Italy. Do your job, General. Try to stop me. And then, when you go home tonight, tell your wife and son about the mere boy who stole a fighter plane, snatched it right out of your incompetent fingers. Try to stop me. Try and fail and then try again until I'm nothing more than a memory you recall as you lie dying in your bed, many years from now."
A memory? More like a nightmare. The general turned his head to face the bloodied mess of meat and asked, "What are you?"
The answer was simple. "I'm a monster. Now-" He pushed the general to the ground. "Run." Bullets entered the boy's back as he climbed into the cockpit. Red clouds of heated blood filled the air.
Flying a plane would have been difficult for a human who'd just been shot in the back of his head, but Veneziano was no human. Even as he began to turn on the engine, his eyes and nose started to regenerate. This did not mean his face and body were in good shape. He'd bled out almost a quarter of his total capacity, and his everything felt like it was on fire. He stored that information into a small compartment, saving it for later. As the plane began to move forward, red lights flash and alarms blared, waking up all of the soldiers who were resting in their barracks and driving the on duty soldiers out of their buildings.
Small pings and dings was all the damage Italy could register as he drove the plane down the sidewalk, building up speed and frightening armed soldiers as he went. Okay, so he'd rather the general had just let him borrow the plane, but stealing it was proving to be a good option. He just hoped he wasn't hitting anyone.
His stomach leapt the first time the wheels lost contact with the ground. The plane was heading towards the mountains. If all went well, he'd fly clear across them and then hide in the storm. And if all went great, he wouldn't be hit by lightning.
By car, it takes five hours to reach Switzerland. So, if he went 1,000 mph, it should only take around twenty minutes. Barely any time at all, and yet, it was twenty minutes too long.
He swallowed thickly as one of the American men barely dived out of the way. This act would have him declared a traitor, a rogue. That was fine. he just didn't want to be a murderer.
With a final, desperate pull on the throttle, the plane drew up and flew over the fence, leaving all the guns and the soldiers in its wake.
The blinking radar on the control panel dinged to let him know that two heat seeking missiles were on his tail, just as someone fired a rocket launcher.
Some people are just sore losers.
Face fully formed once more, Italy let out a whoop of pure adrenaline fueled joy. He guided the plane in a steep incline up the mountain. When they passed over it with him, he barely even gave them a second thought. Before him stretched forests, and, in a few minutes, he'd finally be free, and all his friends would finally be safe.
The plane flew straight into a cloud, then it dropped into a deep descent, Italy screaming the whole way down. Just as he was about to crash into the ground, he pulled out of the dive. Tree tops scratched against the bottom of his plain as he successfully stabilized it, but the missiles were't so lucky. They struck the ground, creating a hug plume of dirt, dust, and fire where they detonated. For a moment, Italy was afraid he'd lose control of his plane, but it was only a moment.
One more yelp and he was the ruler of his skies. The lightning struck around him, setting his blood afire.
There was no reason in the skies for him to fear or cry. And so, for the next twenty minutes, he allowed himself to forget the pain, forget the future, forget the past, and feel... like he was happy to be alive again.
Notes:
Giovanni is a fictional character, but his backstory is based on my dad's. His parent's were from two very different social classes, and my grandpa's cousin worked as a truck driver for the mafia. That means driving get away vehicles and transporting stolen or illegal goods.
The 31st Fighter Wing is stationed at Aviano Air Base, 50 miles north of Venice. They have hundreds of F-16 Fighting Falcons, which are often used to provide support in the Middle East. Although Aviano Air Base is currently hosting the U.S. Air Force under NATO, Italy administrates it. Whatever that means.
The Prime Minister, Enrico Letta, is not a fictional character. That's really the Prime Minister of Italy.
Once again, thanks for all the reviews^^
