Nola shook his head.
“They are all aboard. There’s no one out there.”
“Give me ten minutes,” Canidy said, and reached to set his watch.
Nola touched his watch to adjust it.
Canidy said, “Mark.”
Canidy then went out of the cabin, jumped on the pier, and ran toward the cargo ship.
Nola looked at his watch. Nine minutes had passed since Canidy left.
He stuck his head out the door of the cabin.
“Cast off the lines,” he called to his men.
The men untied the bow and stern lines from the cleats on the pier, then leaped back aboard, coiling the lines as they went.
Nola checked his watch.
The second hand swept the face.
Ten minutes.
He looked back to the pier, saw no one, and frowned.
His right hand reached up and bumped forward the lever that controlled the transmission.
As the Stefania slowly moved ahead, Nola turned the wooden spoke wheel to port and her bow began to angle out toward the open sea.
Just as the transom cleared the end of the pier, Nola heard a heavy thump, thump aft of him.
He did not turn around to look.
It was the unmistakable sound of feet hitting the deck.
The Stefania was dead in the water—her engine off and all lights out—just north of Mondello, which was just below the Villa del Archimedes at Partanna.
It had been an hour since she had left the dock at Palermo, and Dick Canidy, sitting on the transom and peering toward shore through a pair of battered binoculars, was beginning to question his skills.
He let the binocs hang from the strap around his neck, looked again at his watch, then back toward land—and then there came a small explosion followed by a second one, and then by a much louder one.
It lit the night.
“That third one,” he said to no one in particular, “must have been the fuel cell cooking off. Or…maybe there was something more onboard that ship.”
“Whatever it was,” the professor replied, “judging by the fire plume, it totally consumed everything aboard.”
There was a loud rush of water about one hundred yards north of their position. Everyone turned to see the great black bulk of a submarine. It was lit by the glow in the sky.
Canidy turned to the professor.
“There’s our ride,” he said. “Too bad we can’t stick around to see the villa go up. That’s going to be one of my masterpieces.”
W.E.B. Griffin is the author of six bestselling series: The Corps, Brotherhood of War, Badge of Honor, Men at War, Honor Bound, and Presidential Agent. He has been invested into the orders of St. George of the U.S. Armor Association, and St. Andrew of the U.S. Army Aviation Association, and is a life member of the U.S. Special Operations Association; Gaston-Lee Post 5660, Veterans of Foreign Wars; China Post #1 in Exile of the American Legion; and the Police Chiefs Association of Southeast Pennsylvania, South New Jersey, and Delaware. He is an honorary member of the U.S. Army Otter & Caribou Association, the U.S. Army Special Forces Association, the U.S. Marine Corps Raider Association, and the USMC Combat Correspondents Association. Visit his website at www.webgriffin.com.
William E. Butterworth IV has been a writer and editor for major newspapers and magazines for twenty-five years, and has worked closley with his father for several years on the editing of the Griffin books. He lives in Texas.
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