“What’s the word?”
“Well, the sat phone’s in use—or it was, briefly, five or six minutes ago.”
“Sicily?”
“That’s affirmative. It’s on the A18 Motorway, northbound between Catania and Messina.”
“Like you figured.”
“Right. How’s Striker doing?”
“Hanging in there,” Brognola said. “Should be getting close to touchdown at Giarre.”
“Cutting off some highway mileage,” Kurtzman noted.
“That’s the plan. I guess he thought a straight shot to Messina would be pushing it. Too many watchful eyes.”
“Police and otherwise.”
“Hey, don’t remind me.”
“One good thing,” Kurtzman observed.
“What’s that?”
“At least they don’t know who he is.”
Meaning from Bolan’s other one-man war, when it was personal between him and the Mafia, repaying debts of blood in kind.
“Small favors.”
“I’ll be in touch if we can track them on the mainland,” Kurtzman said. “Till then...”
“Till then,” Brognola echoed, cutting off the link.
Okay, so he was bothered by the thought of mafiosi meddling in a job that was already dangerous enough. So what? After the hell they’d wreaked in Bolan’s life, and all he’d gone through to repay them for it, anytime Bolan came up against the Mob it had to push some buttons. Even with the iron control he’d demonstrated from the first time the big Fed had met him, Striker was still a man. He wasn’t made of steel, and likely couldn’t close his eyes without at least a fleeting glimpse of ghosts.
Make it the friendly ones, at least, Brognola thought. Not quite a prayer.
What could he do to help in Sicily? Say nothing, in a nutshell. Justice had connections to Italy’s various national police forces, particularly the Guardia di Finanza, but what was Brognola supposed to do? Call Rome, maybe Palermo, and explain that he was trying to avert disaster at the Vatican, so could they turn a blind eye just this once to any killings that his agent might be forced to do along the way? Pretend that nothing was happening?
Sure. Try selling that to the attorney general, the State Department, or the magistrates in Sicily who risked assassination daily, building legal cases they could file against the Mafia. Who wouldn’t take a deal like that and toss it back to Brognola, maybe with a demand that he be cut loose and replaced with someone sane.
Stony Man operated covertly to cut through red tape and secure results where all routine efforts had failed. Or in cases like this one, when urgency ruled out the usual foot-dragging process of investigation, indictment and trial. Terrorists couldn’t be fought with writs, injunctions or restraining orders. Action was required, and that meant closing one eye to the law—hell, both eyes—while the job got done.
And there was still the possibility, on any given job, that they would fail. Which, in the present case, could mean a tragicomic fizzle in the heart of Rome, or a full-bore catastrophe.
Brognola, though prepared for either, almost wished he was a praying man.
Custodes Foederis Headquarters, Rome
UGO TROISI TURNED on the SCI-SC1 radio frequency scanner and studied its seven-digit liquid crystal display. The device was slightly larger than a pack of cigarettes, with a directional antenna sprouting from its top. It was designed to pick up frequencies emitted by wireless audio or video surveillance devices, while microprocessor filter circuitry prevented nuisance alarms from random noise frequencies. None of which concerned Troisi, as long as the damned thing worked.
He started at his desk, aiming the scanner at his telephone, then at the intercom, and finally running the antenna randomly around the desk and underneath it, deep into the knee well. Nothing registered, leaving Troisi torn between relief and...what? Confusion? Disappointment?
He’d been half convinced that he was under some sort of surveillance, after hearing the suspicions of his fellow Concilium members. It seemed like something Janus Marcellus might do, and bland denials from Marco Gianotti meant nothing. The church’s security chief would bug his own mother if Marcellus decreed it. And if Marcellus suspected Troisi’s secret relationship with Mania...
Troisi wasn’t techno-savvy, not what Americans labeled a geek, but he knew there were ways to tap phone lines without planting transmitters at the source. Headquarters had a switchboard downstairs, and Gianotti—or Marcellus himself—could order the operators to eavesdrop on anyone using a phone on the premises. Cell phones were even more vulnerable, Troisi knew, since their signals could simply be plucked from thin air.
Perhaps the scanner was a waste of time, then, but since he’d obtained it he might as well finish sweeping his office. Working outward from the desk, Troisi circled counterclockwise, moving slowly, feeling slightly foolish, as if he were a superstitious peasant dowsing for water in a barren field. At least no one was there to see him going through the fruitless ritual.
Halfway around the room he stopped, feeling the scanner vibrate in his palm, its LCD window revealing a hit. He moved the antenna back and forth, up and down, watching the sixteen-section bar graph rise and fall until he zeroed in. He moved closer to the bookcase on the east wall of his office, following the scanner’s lead—and found it.
Not a wiretap, obviously, but a tiny bug, attached by means of some adhesive to the underside of a shelf at chest height, lined with reference books. Kneeling to study it more closely, he confirmed that it was the size of a small coin, matte black, presumably some kind of plastic casing with the microworks inside.
His first impulse was to remove it, smash it, maybe flush it down the toilet in his private bathroom, but Troisi quickly recognized that that would be a rash response. Why tip his hand and let whoever placed the microphone know he had found it? It should be a relatively simple thing to censor any comments made within the office. He might even turn the bug to his advantage, find some way to trick his adversaries with it, if the opportunity arose. Marcellus or Gianotti? Both? Or someone else?
He’d have to finish covering the office, look for any other listening devices, cameras, whatever, then decide on his next action. Warning Mania could be a problem, if her quarters had the same kind of equipment tucked away, but he would manage somehow. And from there? What next?
Troisi realized that he had no idea what his next move should be, but he would have to think of something. And he’d have to do it soon.
Before the Ark reached Rome and altered everything, forever.
Autostrada A18, Catania Province, Sicily
NINO RICCOBONO TOOK a last drag on his cigarette and pitched it out the window of his black Lancia Thema. In his wing mirror, he saw the second carload of his soldiers, and the van behind them keeping pace, its driver and its front-seat passenger concealed by sun glare on the windscreen. Behind that, three more vehicles, the last in line more of his soldiers, bringing up the rear.
It was a shit job, Riccobono thought, but he’d been ordered to perform it by the Family’s underboss and he couldn’t refuse. Seen in another light, it was a kind of paid excursion through the countryside, though he would have preferred to stay at home, working the streets and earning money for himself.
Basta! he thought. They would be in Messina soon enough, and he could drop his party at the ferry docks, put this obnoxious babysitting chore behind him and get back to normal business. Riccobono didn’t know what sort of cargo was concealed inside the van, but it was certain his padrino had been paid, and handsomely, for furnishing a dozen armed escorts.
So far, they’d served no purpose other than intimidating peasants in the towns they passed through, glowering at faces on the sidewalks and in slower vehicles. Riccobono kept a sharp eye out for police, cruising the autostrada in their Alfa Romeo 159 Panteras or crouched atop their M
oto Guzzi Falcone motorcycles.
Riccobono assumed that the van he’d been assigned to escort had to be hauling contraband. What kind? He neither knew nor cared. If its occupants were terrorists, it made no difference. They would be on the mainland soon, free to conduct whatever bloody business suited them without disrupting Nino’s life or interfering with his business. If they killed a dozen or a thousand strangers, what was it to him? Perhaps, by chance, they’d take out some Camorra thugs, and do the Mafia a favor.
Thinking that made Riccobono smile. He wouldn’t mind if they wiped Naples off the map, now that he thought about it. The Camorra had been putting feelers out toward Sicily, trying to poach his drug customers, meddle in some of its construction and extortion schemes. A war was brewing, and he’d welcome anything that thinned the opposition’s ranks before the shooting started.
Meanwhile, he would sit back, enjoy the ride and hope they met no opposition during the remainder of their journey north. It had been smooth running so far, but with the tension simmering between organizations, a mafioso never knew when he might stumble into danger without warning.
Thus, the arsenal they carried with them. Each man had at least one pistol on his person, backed up with Beretta AR70/90 assault rifles, Franchi SPAS-15 combat shotguns, and MP-5 K submachine guns. Riccobono had considered bringing hand grenades, but thought they were a bit too much for a simple ride in the country.
With any luck, none of the weapons would be needed. If they were, however, Nino and his hand-picked crew were all veteran killers. Nothing fazed them, least of all police or members of some rival syndicate. If anyone got in their way...well, it would be the last mistake the bastard ever made.
Giarre, Sicily
THEY CIRCLED ONCE over the seaside town before Ekrem Arikan got his amphibian aircraft lined up for landing. There was no airfield at Giarre, but he didn’t need one, gliding in much as he had at Sikinos and touching down on the aircraft’s pontoons. Taxiing toward the nearest dock, he called back from the cockpit, “Safe and sound! Thank you for flying with Aegean Tours!”
Despite the smile that brought to Bolan’s face, he kept a sharp eye on the pier and shore beyond it, watching for police or any other kind of welcoming committee. There was no reason to think they’d be expected here, but this was Sicily, where nothing ever was precisely as it seemed to unfamiliar eyes.
Bolan and Halloran removed their own bags from the plane and paused to settle up with Arikan, before he topped the tanks and started back for home. Their pilot eyed the wad of currency that Bolan handed him, frowning, and said, “It is too much.”
“Consider it a bonus,” Bolan said. “You’ve been a great help.”
“Now I get what you call the amnesia?”
“It’s the safest way to go,” Bolan agreed.
“Good luck to you!” the pilot said. “Long life!”
“Back at you.”
Bolan and Halloran rode in a taxi to the car rental agency on Via Don Luigi Sturzo, showing up without a reservation but with credit cards aplenty. Twenty minutes later they were rolling in an Alfa Romeo Giulietta five-door hatchback, heading up the A18 to seek their quarry.
“Have you seen the advertisements for this car?” Halloran asked from behind the wheel.
“I don’t think so,” Bolan answered.
“One says, ‘I am Giulietta, and I am such stuff as dreams are made on.’ Another says, ‘Without heart, we would be mere machines.’”
“I can’t argue with that,” Bolan said. “But this isn’t a dream.”
“No, a nightmare,” Halloran replied. “If we don’t catch them on the highway to Messina...”
“Then we push on to the mainland. Since we’re this close to Rome, have your people got some kind of backup plan in place?”
“You mean, in case we fail?” Halloran nodded. “You may rest assured that measures have been taken. The inspector general of the Corpo della Gendarmeria will have spoken to headquarters of the Polizia di Stato in Rome. All possible precautions will be taken—without upsetting visitors, of course.”
“The show must go on?”
“It is more than a show to the pilgrims who turn up each day, seeking miracles,” Halloran said. “Even those who just snap photographs or patronize the gift shops come away with something that may comfort them, something they’ll cherish in their hearts for the remainder of their lives.”
And Bolan’s job—or one of them, at least—was to prevent those lives from being cut short by a terrorist attack. If it came down to confrontation at the Holy See, he didn’t know how many adversaries they’d be facing or what kind of weapons they were packing for the knockout punch. It strained credulity to think an ancient relic posed any threat to modern Rome, but he was conscious of the various alternatives available on open markets in the world today.
A suitcase nuke, for instance. Or a Semtex charge that would disperse virulent pathogens and let the wind make its deliveries of death. The Keepers could have planned their move for months, or years, waiting until the opportunity arose to slip their lethal calling card inside an envelope with ritual significance.
In this case, Bolan was the guy assigned to interrupt delivery.
And he was running out of time.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Giardini Naxos, Sicily
Fabio Gravina lit another cigarette, hoping the nicotine would calm his nerves. It wasn’t working so far, and he wished he’d brought some marijuana to chill out with, but that would be the end of him, if he got high and botched the job. No second chances this time. If the mafiosi didn’t kill him, worse would happen back in Naples.
As a soldier of the Camorra, it was forbidden for Gravina to show fear. What would the men serving under him think if they knew he felt apprehension over their impending clash with mortal enemies? They had a job to do, and every man had to play his part without exemption.
The five men riding with him in the Fiat Scudo van were all accomplished killers and survivors of the long, running war between Camorra and Mafia. If he had to guess, Gravina would have said they had some fifty kills among them, with his own fifteen the highest number. By the time the sun went down this day, that total would have been substantially increased.
The call from Naples had been urgent, although short on details. Word had come from Rome that something big was in the offing, not a Cosa Nostra project in its own right, but supported by the Sicilians, and thus worth disrupting. Gravina was the soldier closest to the crossing at Messina, so the task fell to him. He’d grabbed the best men available on short notice, and here they were, waiting for a convoy of sorts to appear, bearing its unknown cargo northward along the A18 Motorway.
Their mission: first, to stop it at all costs, then to discover what the cargo was. If possible, obtain it for the profit of their own Family; if not, destroy it and deny that profit to their enemies. Dispose of anyone who tried to interfere, including witnesses who could betray them to police.
Simple.
They had come well armed for the assignment. Gravina himself would man the Belgian FN Minimi light machine gun, belt-feeding 5.56 mm NATO rounds from a 200-round polymer ammunition box attached to the base of its receiver. With a cyclic rate of 700 rounds per minute, it alone could ventilate any civilian vehicle and the unlucky passengers. Bearing in mind the odds that they might face, though, Gravina’s men also carried a variety of small arms: Heckler & Koch G41 assault rifles, Spectre M-4 submachine guns, a Benelli M-4 Super 90 shotgun and various pistols.
By all rights, it should be a massacre.
Of course, there was a possibility that they would find themselves outnumbered by their adversaries. Surprise and firepower would help them in that case, but they’d still need ample nerve to pull it off. Whatever one might think of mafiosi, most were brave enough when it came to fighting, and some fanatically so.
Best to kill them outright and be done with it, if they could manage.
“I wish they’d get here,” Tito Grassi muttered, from the driver’s seat.
“We haven’t missed them,” Gravina said. “They’ll be coming.”
“Still.”
“Just be prepared to block them, eh?”
“We should have brought a second car,” Ennio Fracastro suggested, from the rear.
“One van’s enough,” Gravina said. “We won’t be taking any passengers.”
“I meant for blocking them. Or chasing,” Ennio replied.
“We stop them here,” Gravina answered. “Stop them dead.”
“We may upset the tourists,” Mario Tartaglia remarked.
“To hell with them,” Gravina said. “To hell with anyone who interferes.”
Fiumefreddo di Sicilia
“THAT’S A MOUTHFUL,” Bolan said, as they approached and passed the sign announcing the next commune on the northbound A18 Motorway.
“It means ‘cold river,’” Halloran translated. “The Fiumefreddo gets its chill from snowmelt on Mount Etna. Did you know they filmed most of the Sicilian scenes from your movie The Godfather here?”
“Good to know,” Bolan said. “But it wasn’t my movie.”
“Of course. I only meant—”
“We need to keep an eye out for the real-life Mafia,” said Bolan, interrupting, with another quick glance toward his outside mirror. No tails yet. “They shouldn’t know we’re coming, but they haven’t lasted this long by letting people surprise them.”
“We have no business with them, eh?” Halloran asked.
“Unless they make our business theirs.”
The Alfa Romeo Giulietta was fast, for a family car. Halloran was a skilled and confident driver, whose taking the wheel left Bolan’s mind and hands free for emergencies along the way. He’d also make a better spokesman if they happened to be stopped by the police, though Bolan had seen no patrol cars on the A18 so far. Was that unusual? Or was it possible someone had made a call to clear the way?
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