Rogue Warrior: Holy Terror Part 2

I returned the salute, then shoved the speaker forward. A barrage of 9mm bullets splintered it into pieces, the tangos burning their mags on the easy target. The speaker tipped, fell, and crashed under the torrent.

At least I think it did. Checking my handiwork wasn't on the agenda. Instead I raced to St. Sebastian's Altar, looking to s.h.i.+mmy my way up the marble columns. It took about two seconds to realize that wasn't going to work, but I did find a way to wedge my feet against the rectangular side panel and my back against the marble, and in that way pushed up to the first ledge above the altar. From there I stood and just managed to grab the fancy marble scroll things at the top of the column, using them to haul myself up to the ledge that ran around the side of the chapel.

At that point, Mr. Murphy intervened in the person of a corrupt seventeenth-century marble dealer, who had foisted cheap stone off on the pope. The first scroll had held my weight easily; I pulled myself up and scrambled to the side arch. The next move was to get around a large archway and into the upper alcove area, where I could climb up the side of a thick pier at least partly blocked from the gunmen. To get there, I had to hang my a.s.s out over the middle of the church, an easy target for a second or two. As I sized up my approach, I noticed the thick marble and figured I'd use it to swing around into the niche, where I'd be protected by a statue of a saint. It would have worked perfectly, too, except that the marble broke in two as soon as I trusted it with my weight.

I had just enough momentum to grab the bottom of the statue as I fell. I slapped my chin and face against the stone base beneath the niche but hung on, so I didn't complain. Much.

Dangling thirty or forty feet off the ground, I was an easy target for the tangos up in the dome, and they commenced trying to write their names in my backside. Shortstuff distracted them with covering fire long enough for me to scramble up behind the saint's cape. But getting across to the next niche was impossible; they weren't cut symmetrically and there was nothing to grab on to to swing across. So instead I climbed onto the saint's shoulders, grabbed the column top-more fancy scroll stuff-and pulled upward, praying as I did that the contractor's wares had been properly inspected before installation. This time the marble held, and maybe because of Shortstuff and his pistol, the gunmen didn't try getting a good angle to fire at me. Their blasts chipped the h.e.l.l out of the columns a few feet away, but missed me.

I climbed up over a foot-wide ledge and pulled myself onto one a few feet higher and three or four times as wide. Large spotlights sat in a track at the lip. Twelve feet above that ledge was a wide galley with even larger spotlights mounted on thick stands. I hung my b.u.t.t out and started to climb. As I got my hands on the top ledge, 9mm slugs began poking at the marble nearby. The bullets missed, but the chips peppered my side as I scrambled upward and over the low wall at the edge of the galley, pulling the Beretta submachine gun from the makes.h.i.+ft bandolier as I rolled onto the floor. I spun over and got to my knee. One of the tangos was running toward me from the direction of the dome. Our eyes met for a second, and I saw his flash with fear, as if he'd finally realized what a world of s.h.i.+t he'd gotten himself into. I yanked up the Beretta to fire, but before I could he threw himself behind one of the nearby light poles.

Chickens.h.i.+t move, but it saved his a.s.s.

Temporarily. He was between me and the windows I wanted to go through. Gun trained on his hiding place, I ran toward him, waiting until I could get a decent shot. As I closed in, he jumped back out into the walkway. A burst from the Beretta encouraged him to continue off the edge. He flew toward the cathedral floor, landing with a splat so loud I heard it as I broke the gla.s.s on one of the windows.

The windows open onto the main part of the roof. It looks more like a strange theme park of spiked fences and miniature buildings than a roof. The dome sits at the center, topped by a cupola that's sometimes called St. Peter's Crown. Imagine the Capitol dome in Was.h.i.+ngton with one less set of windows and you have a rough idea what the dome on St. Peter's looks like. There are a set of large windows and columns that circle the base. They rise from a stone wall about ten or twelve feet over the roof. There are stairways to the roof, but I simply jumped up onto the bricks covering one of the utility entrances and climbed from there to the base.

If you look up at the dome windows from the floor of St. Peter's, they seem crystal clear. Light flows through them, glittering off the gold-plated artwork below. Up close, though, they're covered with a thick layer of Roman soot. I rubbed enough of the grime away to see a large blur on the balcony across from me, and two less distinct ones to the right. One of the smaller blurs moved to my right; his companion followed.

They left something behind. I couldn't tell what it was, but I suspected it was a bomb.

I leaned closer to the window, pressing my face and hands against it. As I did, the framework holding the pane in place gave way and the entire window a.s.sembly crumbled, which sent me flying into the church, sailing toward the floor three hundred something feet below.

*I'm making some of the details of the security arrangements vague and slightly misleading, just in case some a.r.s.e decides to use my words as a blueprint for destruction. Doom on you, f.u.c.khead!

*The translation is rather free.

*On paper, this looks a lot more dangerous for the hostage than it was in real life. I was holding the gun, remember, in my hand, and had a clear shot. His weapon was alongside her head and he was looking at me; he'd've had to look away and move his hand to actually shoot her. By that time he was dead.

3.

I can't say my life flashed before my eyes, but the floor of the cathedral certainly did. Then my right foot snagged the lead frame of the window just enough to change my direction. I threw my hand out to grab the rail-instinct and reflexes, no conscious thought involved at all. I missed, slapping my forehead against the metal pipe instead. I took harder shots on dates when I was a teenager; nonetheless this one cleared the fog from my brain. I folded like a deck chair, fortunately on the balcony that surrounds the dome.

My ears were ringing, and the sound had a very familiar rasp to it. If I didn't know any better, I would have sworn it was the voice of Roy Boehm, the creator of the SEALs. Boehm served as my tutor and patron saint, and it's always his eloquent, refined voice I hear in the dark days of my soul.

What he says isn't very profound, but it is direct: Attack! Attack! ATTACK! You f.u.c.king piece of whales.h.i.+t! Off the deck and fight like a man.

Boehm never gave me an order that didn't require immediate compliance. I swung the submachine gun up and began firing at the two tangos immediately in front of me. Both died with something other than smiles on their faces, but I didn't have time to admire my handiwork-Murphy slipped his fingers into the Beretta and jammed the son of a b.i.t.c.h about halfway through the mag.

There's a CIA a.n.a.lyst in the bas.e.m.e.nt of Langley who's cheering as he reads this, not because he hates me but because it means that the boom business in terrorism has caused standards in training and equipment to decline. To him, my borrowed submachine gun is a welcome waypoint on a downward slope plotting the bad guys' inevitable decline and fall.

Personally, I would have felt a h.e.l.l of a lot better if the trend line ran through a different weapon, namely the one belonging to the tango opposite me on the cupola walkway. I did my best impression of a fish out of water, flipping forward and diving behind the fallen bodies of his comrade as the b.a.s.t.a.r.d did some touchup work on the nearby frescoes. One of his bullets creased my pants leg, and another singed my b.u.t.t.

Which not only hurt, but p.i.s.sed me off. Shoot me in the head, shoot me in the heart, but don't try to b.u.t.t-f.u.c.k me or there'll be h.e.l.l to pay.

I flattened my body parts against the floor behind the dead terrorists, their bodies jumping with the 9mm slugs their friend was spitting from across the way. Neither of the slimers had a weapon that I could see, and I wasn't in a position to frisk them.

Shortstuff chose this moment to appear with one of his men at the entrance to the balcony. Never have I felt so glad to see a hairy Italian in my life. The tango on the other side of the dome did not share my enthusiasm and spent the rest of his mag chasing Shortstuff back into the archway. I jumped to my feet, determined to rush him before he could reload. But instead of fis.h.i.+ng out a new box of bullets he climbed up on the protective screen around the railing and jumped.

If he had jumped to his death I would have personally paid for his funeral...after I stomped on his squished remains. But instead of going downward, he leapt toward the ledge under the nearby window, swung one of his legs up and managed to scramble upright and then through the window. (Give the devil his due-that ledge has to be twelve or more feet over the floor of the balcony, and just to grab the slippery marble and hoist yourself takes enormous finger strength. And frankly it's easier to fall over that security screen than it is to leap over the top. But fear is a powerful motivator.) "Look for bombs," I shouted to Shortstuff, jumping onto the screen to copy the tango's monkey routine.

"There's a door-that way," yelled the Italian, pointing a short distance.

Well, duh.

I ran through it out into the hallway, ducked right and left. Shortstuff yelled again, but I didn't hear what he said. Most likely it was something along the lines of: You don't have a weapon with you, a.s.shole.

Which wasn't the same as being unarmed. The terrorist who'd gone through the window had fallen or jumped from the stone base down to the roof. When I got out, he was just getting himself up, limping as if he'd busted his ankle or trashed his knees. Driven by adrenaline, he began running toward the front of the church.

By now, the Italian military and police response teams called in to back up the Vatican people had finished their coffee breaks and were en route. A pair of guns.h.i.+ps, Augusta A129 Mangustas (basically Apaches with garlic breath) whipped down from the north, the spearhead of a larger flock of aircraft, including two Chinook choppers loaded with a.s.sault teams.

The roof of the basilica looks like a little city. The roof of the nave or the center aisle of the church looks like a long building in the center. It's flanked by fences and odd-shaped structures. The tango took a turn around one and veered toward the nave, heading in the direction of a workman's ladder. I caught up in time to get a kick in the face. He hauled himself up onto the roof, when I clambered up behind him he was retrieving a pistol from beneath his coveralls.

I had one of two choices-jump back down, or throw myself forward in a wild attempt to knock the gun out of his hands before he got a chance to fire. I chose the latter, which raises the inevitable question: Which is faster? A speeding bullet, or Demo d.i.c.k?

That day, at least, it worked out to a draw, as my fist arrived in the tango's midsection just as he began firing. Bullets flew past me, the gun flew to the side, and tango and I tumbled toward the side of the roof.

And kept tumbling. After three or four spins, we went our separate ways. He flew to the left of a small hip roof and sailed off into a fence, striking the top railing hard enough to split his head like a crushed grape.

And moi, or Io as the Eye-talians would say?

I didn't go anywhere. The bandolier I'd fas.h.i.+oned from my belt snagged me upside down in the gutter as I headed face-first toward the terraced roof. One second I was poised to fly through the air like Superman. The next second I was still there, waiting for my close-up.

By the time I got myself unhooked, the SWAT team was fast-roping from the Chinook forty or fifty yards away. Shortstuff and his team surrounded the now-dead tango, and then turned their attention to me.

"We're getting a ladder," he yelled. "Don't let go!"

I wasn't planning on it.

When everything was sorted out, it looked like this: Four four-man groups of terrorists had come into the cathedral, posing as workmen and clergy and using the fake speaker boxes to carry their weapons. The idea had apparently been to capture as many tourists as possible, then probably kill them and themselves. They had not brought explosives with them; the shadow I'd seen on the dome balcony turned out to be a backpack with extra mags for their guns. Considering what could have happened, things had gone extremely well. Even so, four of Shortstuff's men and eight unarmed security people had been killed, with two others wounded. Six tourists had been killed and fifteen or seventeen* wounded in the attack. Tour guides and unarmed security people had managed to lead most of the civilians to safety, and while the press seemed to forget them in the brouhaha that followed, I won't. In many cases, the guides had not been properly trained on evacuation procedures and used their common sense to quickly find the nearest exits or secure hiding places. Just as important, they remained calm. I'm sure the families of the people they led to safety realize how much they owe them.

Not one of the tangos had survived. My fault to a large degree, I know. If I had thought about it, I might have tried to save two or three of them for deep-fried interrogation, heating their b.a.l.l.s over a vat of boiling olive oil to get some useful information. But you don't get do-overs in this business. And the investigation of the "terroriste diabolice" as the media called them wasn't my concern. My own take was that the group had been fairly incompetent; if I went to all that trouble, I would have made d.a.m.n sure to bring a few explosives inside to make a more permanent comment on the architecture.

Karen and I had a reunion in the Governor's Palace next to the cathedral, where I'd gone with Shortstuff to debrief. Backa.s.s arrived a short while later, thanking me profusely for helping avert a catastrophe. He was so excited that his English was a little hard to understand, but I think at one point he may have offered me a cardinal's pointy hat. I turned him down, though I did accept one of his business cards and promised I'd stay in touch. Even G.o.d can make use of the devil sometimes. I finished telling the police and military intelligence people what I knew, then left with Karen to find a pair of pants without air-conditioning back at the hotel.

The excitement of the afternoon meant I missed my appointment with Shakespeare, the MI6 officer I'd met the night before. Unfortunately, he couldn't reschedule: En route to the cafe where we'd arranged to meet, he was. .h.i.t by a truck. At the time, the fact that the vehicle ran up onto a curb to strike him and then sped away didn't seem particularly noteworthy to the Rome police; they handled two or three similar cases every week. Shakespeare's official cover made him appear to be just a businessman, and by all appearances he was just an unlucky SOB. The police report called it an accident.

To be honest, it may have been. MI6 later conducted its own investigation and came up with nothing. The typical Roman at the wheel makes the worst Boston cabbie look like a grandmother on her way to a Sunday afternoon tea, and truck drivers are even worse. But considering everything that happened afterward, I'd put even money on his death not being the result of typical Roman indifference to pedestrians.

The information he was going to share about Saladin died with him. If anyone else in MI6 knew anything about it, they didn't come forward to volunteer it, and as it turned out I wasn't in a position to ask around.

It did cross my mind that afternoon that the thwarted takeover of the basilica might have been the big event Saladin's communique promised. But I doubted it. Like most of the people who knew about him, I thought Saladin was more than likely a blowhard wannabe whose only a.s.set was a computer and some hacking skills.

Backa.s.s decided to honor my basilica climbing with an Italian-style reception the next evening, replete with plenty of cheek kissing and Asti. I was starting to OD on Roman hospitality but Karen wore down my resistance during a pleasant lunch at a hilltop trattoria a few miles from the hotel; Backa.s.s had hinted that the pope might attend and even I couldn't turn down a chance to meet the pontiff. When we got back to the hotel, we discovered that Backa.s.s had sent a Vatican Mercedes to take us into town; the armored sedan was nice, but what won me over was the fully stocked bar in the back. After instructing the driver on how high to fill my gla.s.s with Bombay, Karen and I started upstairs to change. We were about halfway to the elevator when someone shouted my name. I turned around, and found myself confronted by six large men with bad buzz cuts, all clearly American. They were well dressed; their dark suits matched and none of their Kevlar was showing.

"What's this? An escort?" I asked.

A squeaky voice answered. "Richard Marcinko, aka Demo d.i.c.k, aka Rogue Warrior?"

"AKA, who are you?" I asked. I couldn't spot who was talking behind the wall of flesh, though I did notice a flurry of movement behind me. Several men stepped out from the statues on either side of the elevator.

"Richard Marcinko, you are under arrest," continued the squeaky voice. The wall parted and a man in an Air Force uniform stepped through. He stood about six-three and weighed, oh, maybe a hundred and ten pounds counting the uniform and the briefcase he had in his right hand.

"Who the h.e.l.l are you?"

He introduced himself as Major Squeakynuts,* and declared that I would come with him.

"Why the f.u.c.k would I do that?" I asked.

"Because there's twelve of us and one of you," said Squeakynuts. "And you wouldn't want resisting arrest to be added to the charges against you."

Squeakynuts turned out to be a U.S. Air Farcer from the Office of Special Investigations and Thumb Sucking. After a fruitful exchange of obscenities, I discovered that I was suspected-suspected, not charged-with violating security at the Air Fart's rest stop for nukes at Sigonella in Sicily.

Don't bother breaking out a map. I'd been nowhere near Sicily in the past few days. In fact, I hadn't been there in roughly a decade. The "suspicions" were either very old or ridiculous, most likely both.

A little bit of background for those of you unfamiliar with my history. After starting and commanding SEAL Team Six, I moved on to other challenges, eventually forming a counterterrorist training/covert action unit known as Red Cell. Our primary task, at least on the books, was to run exercises designed to discover and demonstrate flaws in security procedures at U.S. installations. Most of my victims wore the crisp whites beloved by the U.S. Navy, but occasionally I got a chance to spread my ill will to our brethren services. Among my early a.s.signments was a directive to "visit and test" the Air Force's nuclear babysitting arrangements at Sigonella.

Sigonella is located on the eastern side of Sicily, about where a soccer player would kick the island if it were really the football it looks like on a map. The bulk of the base is actually a U.S. Navy installation "shared" with the Italian air force. Our Air Farts use it as a transs.h.i.+pment point, moving "items" down the road to supposedly secure magazine areas, separate from the Navy base. (These "items" were weapons that caused mushroom clouds to appear when used. Some of the details-heck, all of the details-about their storage and existence here remains cla.s.sified.) Red Cell pulled the pants down on the Air Force operation, demonstrating that it would be child's play to grab a couple of gadgets from under their noses. The general overseeing the radiation counters went fairly apes.h.i.+t-that's a medical term-when he got my report. He swore that he would have my head delivered on a silver platter at his earliest opportunity.

That had been somewhere in the vicinity of two decades ago; he'd've retired by now, which meant the statute of limitations on my head ought to have expired. Joking aside, Sigonella was barely a footnote in my Red Cell career, a few days of frolic and fun in the sun before getting down to more serious business, and I hadn't given our escapades there much thought until my arrest. (Red Cell details some of our exploits in greater detail. Just remember it's all fiction, whatever the government claims.) Time out for a quick info dump on Sigonella for those of you who haven't read the earlier books or have never had the pleasure of traveling to Sicily. Besides being the birthplace of the Italian Mafia, a lot of Sicily is owned by Libyans. This includes the olive groves surrounding the airfield at Sigonella. (Qaddafi is our friend now, right? Ha!) Most of the airfield's perimeter security is provided by Italian conscripts. (No offense, but there is a reason the shortest book in the world is t.i.tled Italian War Heroes.) The deterrent is a low barbed-wire fence that I can go under just as easy as I can get over.

As you'd expect in any joint venture, command and control is an issue. Think of the old Abbott and Costello routine, "Who's on First." Now put half of the conversation in Italian and the other half in English, and you'll see how confusion can run up and down the chain of command. The Italians have a commanding officer and we have a commanding officer (CO). Our guy can make decisions pretty freely or get guidance from CINCUSNAVEUR (the in term for Commander in Chief U.S. Navy Europe). But the Italian CO must-and I do mean must-coordinate most major decisions with Rome. And anything other than whether to use marinara or a meat sauce on the spaghetti is considered a major decision. (That may be one, too, now.) Our people live in housing outside the base. Most take a bus or car to get to work. Ambus.h.i.+ng them and holding them hostage is a piece of cake. When I was running Red Cell, quite a number of our guys were hitchhiking back and forth, which is even worse.

One thing I will say: The locals are friendly. h.e.l.l, they ought to be-they make money off us. There is a "communist" party within the government, but it's more like the Italian version of the Kiwanis Club than the party we saw during the Cold War era. On the other hand, in today's Italy, even the right-wingers are concerned about being considered a "p.a.w.n" of the U.S. What this means is that there's little pressure on the Italians at Sigonella to work with our guys. And since Sicily in not within a war zone-and let's face it, it can be a d.a.m.n nice place to hang out when it's not raining-there's a lack of concern for what is going on in the real world.

Squeakynuts insisted that my apprehension had nothing to do with the past. He also insisted that there was no way I was being released from custody. To emphasize his point, his men flashed M4s, complete with grenade launchers. Discretion dictated that I send Karen to the ceremony to sip champagne and collect my medal while I went with Squeakynuts to find out which old friend in the Pentagon I was going to have to call to get my a.s.s unhooked from the donkey cart. I thought he would take me to the emba.s.sy to get it straightened out, which would mean the amba.s.sador would be in a position to help me out. Stupid me-going to the nearby emba.s.sy would have been the logical thing to do, which of course meant it was the last thing I should have expected. Within a half hour, I found myself in the rear of a C-130 Hercules on my way to Sicily.

This was a real C-130-an ancient "slick" with nothing but tie-downs in the back. I don't mind sitting on aluminum for a few hours, but the Herky Birds are loud. Take ten of your average motorbikes, multiply the sound by a factor of ten, and put them and your head in a garbage pail for three hours and you get the idea.

Things went from ridiculous to sublime when we reached Sigonella. Major Squeakynuts introduced me to his boss, Colonel c.r.a.pinpants, who took me in to see his boss, General Kohut. Kohut told me that there had been two or three probes of security over the past few days by "actors unknown." Apparently Red Cell's exploits had been engraved in the local lore to such an extent that when c.r.a.pinpants learned I was in Italy, I became Suspect Numero Uno. I was flattered, naturally, but I did wonder what my motive would be. Few people tempt a stretch in a federal hotel just to relive some of their glory days.

"You wanted us to look bad," suggested c.r.a.pinpants.

"Why would I go to that much trouble? You guys make yourselves look bad every time you shave."

That got a yuk from one of the enlisted Air Force security people, whom I've found to be generally decent sorts when their officers aren't around to lead them astray. Kohut gave him a sour look, and I have no doubt that the man will be old and gray before his next authorized leave.

It didn't take much more discussion or sarcastic remarks for me to figure out what was really going on here. The flyboys wanted my help figuring out who was probing the base, and had gotten the bright idea of using invented charges as a way of persuading me. The charges were laughable, but there were a lot of them, ranging from unauthorized presence on a military installation to contemplated destruction of U.S. property. They couldn't make even one of them stick, but they could tangle me in enough red tape and spaghetti sauce to keep me in Italy for the next six months if I didn't help out. So I decided to play along, at least for a while.

The probes were varied; a fence cutting here, a few firecrackers there. Locals had been seen, always at a distance, watching when patrols responded to alerts. c.r.a.pinpants thought someone was trying to test and evaluate his defenses, and he was absolutely right. The question was who, and why.

The why seemed obvious-someone wanted the gadgets the Air Force had there. The who, though, was more difficult to answer. The smallest of the nuclear chestnuts the Air Force stored here were many times more powerful than the weapons dropped on Hiros.h.i.+ma and Nagasaki. Terrorists were obvious suspects, but any of two or three dozen nations would pay millions, perhaps billions, for one. And not just countries in the Middle East like Syria, which would view a stolen weapon as an equalizer in a war with Israel. Taiwan could easily view a nuclear device as an equalizer in its perennial conflict with China. South Korea might think one prudent to protect it from North Korea. Even if such nations weren't directly involved in the s.n.a.t.c.h, they would certainly be in the market to buy it if an independent party pulled it off.

Two things worried me about what Kohut and his people said. One, the probes had been well organized, s.p.a.ced out over several days, and very low key-generally signs of a professional. And two, I doubted the Air Force people had picked up on all of the probes. It was the ones they missed that would present the biggest problem.

I took a tour of the facility and pointed out a few problems. I won't get into specifics for obvious reasons, but in general the facility was vulnerable to hostage-taking, unauthorized entry by (fake or stolen) supply and emergency vehicles, fence-line penetrations, and all manner of diversionary incidents.

Say, d.i.c.k, aren't those the same things it was vulnerable to back in your Red Cell days?

Um, yes.

Oh. Carry on.

Besides general complacency and rigid thinking, one of the biggest problems for security organizations these days is the overreliance on gee-whiz doodads to do the work of mark-one eyeb.a.l.l.s. Don't get me wrong: motion sensors, miniature bugs, infrared video, night gla.s.ses, UAVs-these are all useful tools. But they're just tools, only as useful as the people putting them to use. And if you don't have enough people, and if you're rotating people in and out so fast that they hardly have time to find the bathroom before leaving, you're asking for trouble.

But give credit where credit is due: The high-tech gear had come away with what police call a "partial plate"-several digits from a license plate belonging to a truck parked along the road to the facility. The truck turned out to have been stolen-a true shocker, no?

Kohut had been concerned enough about the case to call for help, and besides the Air Force security people and the DIA slugs, and a misplaced FBI agent, the State Department had a.s.signed an expert on international terrorism named Francis Delano to help with the case. Delano's real a.s.set was the fact that he spoke Sicilian as well as Italian. (Don't let the textbooks fool you. They're two different languages, each with its own set of curse words.) Delano had been tasked to liaise with the local yokels largely because of his language skills, and when I found out about the license plate and truck, it was Delano I went to see. By now it was fairly late-or early, depending on your point of view-but I called over to his hotel anyway and even managed to get him to pick up the phone after twenty or thirty rings. I explained that I was looking into the situation at Sigonella, had only a few hours or so to spare, and wanted to pick his brain as soon as I could.

Now, if possible.

Delano groaned. I took that as a yes, hung up quickly, and had one of the Air Farce security people drive me over.

Delano greeted me at his hotel room with a bottle of wine in his hand-and a loaded Colt.

"I'll take the drink," I told him. "You can keep the gun."

"You're Marcinko?"

"d.i.c.k."

"You know it's 4 a.m.?"

"Yeah, but it's never too early to have a drink in Italy."

Delano loosened up inside. Contrary to all expectation, he turned out to be an almost competent investigator, possibly because he had come to the State Department after a career in the Army's Criminal Investigation Division. My experience with State Department employees is that they usually don't know whom they're working for, us or the countries they're a.s.signed to. Generally they side with the latter. Frankie not only knew who paid for the b.u.t.ter on his bread but was sparing with it, the first government worker I've met in my life who declined to put personal items like his morning coffee on the expense account. If all government workers were as honest as he was, we'd have paid off the federal debt ten years ago.

Frankie poured us some wine and gave me an info dump on the situation from his perspective. He began indirectly, talking not about the probes or the truck, but Sicily itself. He knew a bit about the island, he said, because his grandparents on his father's side had come from here, although they had left from Palermo, the major port on the west.

Sicily had a long tradition of being at odds with the central government. The craggy coasts made it an easy place to sneak in and out of and the rugged terrain made it easy to hide. On the other hand, Sicilians tended to be clannish and distrustful of outsiders. It wasn't impossible for foreign terrorists to operate here, Delano said, but they would have a number of handicaps. Physically, Arabs and northern Africans could easily pa.s.s as residents, but once they started to speak, their accents and lack of fluency in the difficult Sicilian tongue would give them away. In short, he didn't think an outside group was responsible for the probes; the police would have heard about them long ago-not necessarily from complaints, but from gossip at the local bars and cafes.

"What about a homegrown group, like the old Red Brigades?" I asked. The Red Brigades were communist cells that operated throughout the country in the 1960s and '70s.

"They're old men now, the few who have survived. Besides, they weren't very active in Sicily," said Delano.

"Who then?"

Delano shrugged. "I don't think we're at the point where we can rule anything out. Or in."

He had set up a meeting with the local authorities to discuss the matter first thing in the morning, and invited me along. I told him I'd be glad to, then took his yawns as a hint that it was time to let him catch some beauty rest.