Rogue Warrior: Holy Terror Part 4

The Italians in charge of the operation immediately began debating what to do-move in now, or wait until he showed. The national police captain said wait; the GIS people said go.

Situation normal, stage two, otherwise known as TARFU: Things Are Really f.u.c.ked Up.

The argument continued for a good twenty minutes. During that time, Biondi had not only failed to show up, but the units posted near the complex reported that the lights that had been seen earlier had been extinguished.

Situation normal, third and final stage: FUBAR-f.u.c.ked Up Beyond All Repair.

Everyone now agreed it was time to drop in. It took maybe five minutes for the choppers to land, and another sixty seconds for the teams to secure the facility. Things went so quickly Mr. Murphy didn't even get a chance to pop his head in.

Maybe because he was too busy laughing it off nearby. There were exactly two people in the complex; both looked old enough to have helped kick the Germans off the island in World War II. Instead of the dozen or so Mercedes, Jaguars, and other premium autos we'd been briefed to expect, the building at the center of the complex contained a beat-up Fiat and a bicycle that had seen its best days before Mussolini had been born.

Clearly, the Mafia had been tipped off.

The anti-Mafia policemen were used to this sort of thing, and took it in stride. The GIS people wanted to vent their frustrations by using the auto repair sheds to brush up on their demolition skills, but the commanders overruled them. Blowing up buildings without a court order is frowned on in Italy. And here I thought they were an enlightened society.

Frankie rode with me back to the opera to pick up Karen. When we were a few blocks away, he thanked me for my help. I'd told him I could only stay for a few days and he figured that with this fiasco I'd be gone.

"What are you going to do next?" I asked.

"That's up to the Air Force. But I think our best bet is probably looking for Biondi."

"Biondi's not going to turn up," I told him. "More than likely he's dead."

Frankie thought about it for a moment, then nodded. "Do you need a flight back to Sicily?"

"I was thinking of hanging around Naples for a few days," I told him. "Karen's never been here. I thought I'd show her the sights. You can always call me if something comes up, but I don't think there's much for me to do back at Sigonella."

Frankie shrugged. Given that I was a volunteer-and a forced one at that-neither he nor anyone else was in a position to tell me what to do.

The Mafia operation had impressed the h.e.l.l out of me. It also scared me, in a way. If those guys were trying to steal a nuclear bomb, sooner or later they'd succeed. Not necessarily at Sigonella-c.r.a.pinpants had made enough changes and brought in enough people that even Red Cell would have a difficult time s.n.a.t.c.hing the family jewels. But there were dozens of other installations around Europe. The scary thing was that the American ones were the best protected.

I'd decided to stay in Naples to do some sightseeing, all right, but what I wanted to see wasn't in any of the tour books.

Eighteen hours later, after a day on the beach with Karen, a drive on the local highway in a rented Testarossa, and a brief nap, I took Karen to the airport and bid her a fond arrivederci. Then I made my way back to the city's narrowest streets, looking for a cafe frequented by career pickpockets and other low-level thieves. (I'd say that it was in a seedy part of town, but seedy describes ninety-five percent of the city.) I gave the room a preemptory scowl as I entered, a nonverbal warning not to f.u.c.k with the newcomer. Then I walked over to the corner where the two meanest-looking dirtbags were sharing a table and straight vermouths.

"What the f.u.c.king h.e.l.l is this bulls.h.i.+t all about anyway?" snapped the short one as I sat down.

"And it's a pleasure to see you as well, Trace," I told Trace Dahlgren, pulling out a chair. She may not have a drop of Italian blood in her, but she had the Neapolitan death stare down.

"Hey, d.i.c.k," said Sean Mako. He pointed to the vermouth, which I'd told them to order. "I don't have to drink this stuff, do I? It's kind of sweet."

"It was just to let the owner know you were okay," I told him. "He's the son of an old friend." I doubted anyone else had ever ordered vermouth since the place had opened.

I called over a waiter and got us a bottle of Pellegrino, which is Italian for overpriced water. Then I filled them in on the situation. Sean reacted the way Sean reacts to everything. He grunted once or twice, nodded a few times more, and basically recorded everything I said without saying a word. Trace, on the other hand, obviously hadn't had much sleep on the plane. Even b.i.t.c.hier than normal, she cursed up an unladylike storm about the incompetence of everyone from the U.S. Air Farce to the Italian GIS. This was a very good sign-several weeks of training tadpoles had made her more ornery than ever. Woe be to anyone tonight who got in our way.

We were going back to the auto mall. I wasn't interested in Biondi-as I'd told Frankie I thought he was probably dead. It was the headman I wanted. To save myself the trouble of hunting him down, I planned on leaving my calling card and then making it easy for him to find me. As an incentive, I'd borrow the shop foreman and make it worth his while to call for help.

The briefing for last night's operation stated that the mechanics typically arrived just after 9 p.m., about a half hour ahead of the first stolen car. They'd fire up the espresso maker, make sure their equipment was ready to go, then wait. The vehicles crossed the threshold every twenty to thirty minutes once things got going. That suggested one of two approaches to getting into the facility-arrive an hour or so ahead of time and surprise the workers when they arrived, or drive up in a stolen vehicle and take them during the operation.

Taking them beforehand not only seemed easier but had the extra benefit of conserving time, and so we took that option. Unfortunately, our intelligence proved to be inadequate. Biking over around seven-thirty to do the pre-strike recce, I discovered that guards in pickup trucks had already taken up positions blocking the two winding dirt-and-gravel roads that led into the complex. I could hear the sound of an air-drive ratchet in the distance; our friends were already at work. I went down the road a bit, then circled back to Sean and Trace, waiting in a van I'd rented earlier in the day. There's a little car thief in all of us, and so it wasn't surprising that Trace wanted to fall back to plan B: steal some vehicles and get in through the front door. But di Giovanni hadn't mentioned the guards, and I wondered what else he'd left out or simply didn't know. It was not inconceivable that the people guarding the roads had lists of the expected thieves or the vehicles that would appear that night. While we could blast our way past the pickups, any gunfire would alert the people inside the complex.

Smarter and safer, I thought, to simply sneak around the perimeter, grab what we wanted, and leave. A hypo of Demerol would keep him quiet on the way out. We were armed, of course-it's easy to get weapons in Naples, even the MP5Ns I prefer, and we'd also stocked up on flashbangs, radio gear, and other goodies-but my preference was to complete the operation without inflicting casualties if possible. The Mafiosi were going to be p.i.s.sed enough as it was.

The railroad tracks provided an easy route into the complex, and a fresh recce showed they were unguarded. That's often the case. No one expects a locomotive to sneak up on them.

We stashed the van and made our way up the siding, moving to within about thirty yards of the main building. The Mafiosi had moved two railroad cars into the complex earlier in the day, and we'd have no trouble getting right up to the cars without being seen. But there were two roustabout types taking turns breaking bottles near the rails, in between loading the cars. They weren't paying enough attention to be a direct threat. Even so, we couldn't count on walking right by them to the building without being seen. Skirting them meant backtracking fifty yards to a rock-strewn slope, descending about fifty feet, and then circling through a gra.s.sy field to come around on the other side of the building. I told Trace it was her turn to stay behind as tail gunner; by the time her kvetching ended, Sean and I had gone through the field. We crawled ten feet behind a low wall and had a clear view into the main building where the cars were worked on. The lights inside the warehouse threw a large rectangle of white out into the macadam in front, making it easy for us to see if anyone came out of the building. The light succ.u.mbed to shadows within ten yards or so; everything beyond that was pitch black. As long as we stayed outside that box of light, we would be invisible.

I could see two cars inside the warehouse, a Ford on a lift, and a Mercedes sitting near the door with its hood up. Two other Mercedes were parked in front, waiting their turn. As I watched, a mechanic closed the hood on the Mercedes inside. He started it up, snapped on the lights, and drove it out of the garage down to the railroad car, where the roustabouts guided him across the metal planks as he loaded up. Meanwhile, another worker came out and took one of the other Mercedes inside. Within four or five minutes, another car came up the road to take its place. The driver behind the wheel of the car, an Audi A8, bore more than a pa.s.sing resemblance to a former U.S. president. To this day I'm convinced it was him, seeking a more honorable profession than politics in his retirement. He closed the door on the vehicle and walked back down the hill. The workers inside the garage went about their business without acknowledging the arrival of the car or even seeming to notice.

So far, I hadn't seen a foreman or anyone who looked like he was in charge. We could just grab one of the mechanics, of course, but I wanted someone more valuable to the operation; I had to leave for Germany the day after tomorrow, and wanted this taken care of before then. I told Sean I was going to go over to the side of the building where there were windows and see what the layout was, but before I could hop over the wall a dark blue Fiat sedan pulled up the road.

It was obvious right away that this wasn't a stolen car. The vehicle was several years old, and had slight but noticeable damage to the grille. It also pulled right up near the door.

Can you guess who got out of the car? No, not Biondi. Police Lieutenant di Giovanni. I guess he was very qualified to be a Mafia expert. The workers couldn't genuflect fast enough or low enough as he walked into the warehouse: He was the capo of the operation.

All right, then, I thought. This was going to be dirt easy. The paesani in the warehouse were unarmed. Sean and I would trot over and wait by the door for di Giovanni to come out. I'd grab him, Sean would toss a few flashbangs on the ground, and we'd drive away happily ever after.

And that's exactly what happened.

Almost.

*In typical Italian fas.h.i.+on, the authorities never could decide on the number injured. I have no idea why there was a discrepancy, except for the obvious: Italians can't count, especially when casualties outnumber their fingers.

*I didn't get the exact spelling.

*Officially, Delta's "funny squadron" doesn't exist, and hasn't since it was created in 1993. Then again, neither does Delta.

*Again, forgive me for not being too specific.

4.

Sean and I had just trotted to the shadows at the side of the building when two pairs of headlights started up the road. We took a few steps back and hunkered close to the building. I sensed something was wrong as one set of headlights arced to the left, the vehicle pulling up behind di Giovanni's. But it wasn't until I saw that the vehicle was a van that I knew what was happening.

"s.h.i.+t!" I yelled.

The van's side door flew open and two men jumped out, machine guns blazing.

"d.i.c.k?" said Trace over the radio as the warehouse lit up.

"It's some sort of ambush-get di Giovanni into the car," I yelled to Sean. "Trace-we'll meet you in front of the warehouse. Take the second van."

Sean kicked a flashbang under the van while I leveled my MP5 at the jokers with the machine guns. They'd been decked out in style-Belgium Minimis and bulletproof vests complete with ceramic inserts; their employer didn't skimp. The plates are excellent protection even at close range against anything smaller than a howitzer. Problem is, they don't do jack for bullets in the head.

Rather than pulling up behind the other vehicle, the second van accelerated and swooped to the left, flanking the first. Realizing that this would take it too far from Trace to easily deal with, I yelled for her to help Sean and then put two shots into the winds.h.i.+eld, taking out the driver. The vehicle lurched against the wall, stopping with a crash; the door flew open and five or six men emerged, all firing Minimis in my general direction. I ate dirt, pus.h.i.+ng the earthworms away as I crawled to the wall and hopped over. Sean was already inside the warehouse-I could hear him in my earbud-but I couldn't tell where Trace was.

Somewhere around about here, a voice in my head pointed out that my presence in the Naples area was voluntary and unpaid, the point being that if I was going to do something utterly stupid like get my anatomy remodeled, I ought to at least be on someone else's workman's comp policy.

The voice didn't belong to my conscience; it was far too practical and sober for that. It was Karen, who was sitting in the observer/copilot's seat of a Bell JetRanger, coming in hot and heavy from the south. She was watching the escapade with the help of a long-range starlight video camera secured to the nose.

(Arrivederci means see you soon, and this was more than soon enough. She didn't have to go home until tomorrow night. Her role in the operation had been to secure the helicopter, which in typical Italian fas.h.i.+on was a good half hour behind schedule. But I wasn't in a position to complain.) "Buzz these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds while I flank them," I told her. "I'll get south of them when you pa.s.s. Don't come back a second time-I don't want you getting hurt."

"You'll never hear the end of it if we do," she said. "This d.a.m.n helicopter costs a fortune."

By the time the people with the machine guns. .h.i.t the dirt, I had managed to get almost all the way behind them. As dust sprayed everywhere, I hopped back over the wall and ran forward so I could see what I was shooting at. Unfortunately, I ran into an obstacle along the way-a guard from the other road who'd double-timed up to find out what all the commotion was. We rebounded off each other maybe six feet, both stunned by the collision.

Stunned is a condition I'm familiar with. I hopped up and gave him a kick to the head to keep him on the ground. I would certainly have shot him, except that I'd dropped my MP5 in the collision.

By the time I found it, the people from the van were emptying their Minimis at the chopper, which had the pedal to the metal and was disappearing beyond the hill. Their gunfire made it easy to see where they were, and I emptied the MP5 at them.

Inside the warehouse, Sean found di Giovanni cowering behind one of the vehicles, a 9mm Beretta shaking in his hands. Sean batted it out of his hands, gave di Giovanni a swat, and then poked him with the Demerol. He threw him over his shoulder and hustled outside just after the helicopter pa.s.sed, streaking to my right as I fired at the Minimi amici.

The men in the van had killed the guards on the road they took up to the site. But they'd left the other set intact, figuring to get away before they could respond or call in reinforcements. Those reinforcements were now en route, or so it looked to Karen, who saw four pickups tearing up the highway from a farm two miles away. Worried that the helicopter would be an easy target if it landed nearby, I told her we'd meet her at the parking lot we'd used the night before.

"The last Mercedes," I yelled to Sean, stuffing a fresh magazine in my MP5 and backing toward it. I stopped at the car in front of it, pried open the gas cover, then took a handkerchief out of my pocket. Two or three of the bozos back by the van began firing in my direction as I lit and pushed the burning rag into the gas opening. The vapor system on the vehicle was in good repair, preventing the car from exploding...

...for about five seconds. Then a thick arm of fire shot out from the vehicle, and the luxury sedan lit up the night.

I barely got our car backed away in time, whipping around only a dozen yards from the flames. As I started down the road I saw the pickup truck that had been guarding the turnoff barreling straight for us from below. Probably unsure whether we were on his side or not, he veered to the left, trying to block the roadway. I veered to the left as well, which got me around him more or less intact, minus a little sc.r.a.ped paint and lost chrome as I glanced off a nearby tree. I continued a little farther, hoping to make it to the Y where the two roads met before the cavalry arrived. I didn't quite make it, as the quartet of high beams announced.

Quartet, as in four across. The trucks were driving side by side, trying to block the road.

When a certain strategy succeeds, my motto is to keep using it until you beat it to death. So I waited until the last possible moment again, then veered hard left. Not having my headlights on, I didn't know how close I was to the wall at the side of the road.

The answer was: very.

We rebounded back, smacking the front fender of the first pickup and twisting into a mangled pretzel of a car wreck. The front end of the Mercedes crumpled down like an accordion and the airbags deployed; I found myself sucking formaldehyde-treated plastic, or whatever the h.e.l.l it is that they make those d.a.m.n things with.

Airbags fetch a good price on the black market, and the markup was too tempting for the local Mafiosi to resist. As bad as swallowing airbag dust may be, it's better than going through the winds.h.i.+eld, which is what happened to at least two of the people in the pickups. Another four or five of the men who'd been traveling in the rear beds went airborne, splas.h.i.+ng on the road behind us.

We weren't making a commercial for the Traffic Safety Department, so we didn't bother to count the victims. I helped Sean pull di Giovanni from the car as Trace did a Crouching Tiger/Slas.h.i.+ng Mafia routine, demonstrating her martial arts skills on two thugs who had the misfortune to come through the car accident intact. We left them reeling as we retreated down the hill, through the woods and to the van. Ten minutes later, we were in the JetRanger, heading back to the airport. Di Giovanni snored loudly in the backseat. I borrowed the chopper pilot's phone to call Frankie after we touched down to refuel.

"We'll have a deposit for you in about two hours," I told him. "The capo of the car operation."

"Who?"

"Di Giovanni. The Mafia expert. I don't know how much he knows about Biondi and what he was up to. I can't ask him until he wakes up." I glanced at my watch. If past experience was any guide, he'd be out for three more hours. "After that, we can figure out what to do next."

"Di Giovanni?"

"Yeah, the Mafia expert. Hopefully he's important enough to get the big boss involved, whoever that is. I doubt we'll get any straight answers from di Giovanni, at least not that we can trust."

"There's more to this than we thought," said Frankie. "A lot more."

Oh, if I'd only known how right he was.

Part Two.

Old Friends.

Our reliance is in the love of liberty which G.o.d has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere.

-ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

5.

The gunfire at the warehouse site did not attract the local police-surprise, surprise-but within an hour, calls were being made to locate di Giovanni. By the time we arrived in Sicily, Kohut had taken calls from several Italian officials, including what in America would be the attorney general's office. Our presence as observers on the raid the night before was just a little too coincidental. Apparently di Giovanni's a.s.sociates decided they would do better with him in the government's custody than in ours. This surely meant that they had decided to terminate the a.s.sociation, something I pointed out to di Giovanni when he came to in the hangar we appropriated at Sigonella after landing. We could help him, I said, but only if he helped us.

Still groggy from the drugs, di Giovanni blinked at me but said nothing. I asked a few questions about Biondi, which he answered with more blinks and then a shrug and shake of his head. When I asked about terroriste on the island, he responded with a genuinely puzzled stare.

Trace offered to give him a personal Jeet Kune Do demonstration, but I vetoed it. Frankie was already on his way over with some marines to take charge of the prisoner. Denting his fenders wasn't going to get us anywhere. There are definitely situations where the application of acute force can yield timely results. In this case, though, it seemed unlikely. The Mafia code of silence, or omerta, may be overrated, but it still takes more than a few d.i.n.ks and dunks to get someone at di Giovanni's level to speak freely. The pressure has to build over time, psychologically as well as physically. Besides, he was still fairly doped up; I doubt he would have felt half of the pain Trace inflicted.

Frankie arrived a few minutes later. Kohut was spitting bullets over at his office, convinced that I had created an international incident for the sole purpose of s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up his retirement. Di Giovanni was to be turned over to the Italian authorities immediately, if not sooner.

"If you do that, you'll never get anything from him about Biondi or anyone else," I told him. "I doubt he'll live twenty-four hours."

"Agreed," said Frankie. "But c.r.a.pinpants won't say boo, and I'm low man on the totem pole here. It's Kohut's ballgame."

"Did you point out that the terroriste are still around?" I asked.

"The Italian government apparently worries him more. I checked with the amba.s.sador," Frankie added. "I thought I ought to give him a heads-up. He said it's a military matter, and he'll back whatever the Pentagon wants."

There was an opening, I thought. Kohut wasn't the Pentagon; he was just the local Air Farce commander, who could be overruled if the circ.u.mstances warranted. The trick was finding the person with b.a.l.l.s enough to overrule him.

Pus Face?

It was worth a try.

The aide who answered the general's phone must have thought I was a bill collector. The general had left orders that he not be disturbed, and it took the words nuclear catastrophe to get the general to the phone. His first words were, "What blew up?"