by A. C. Fuller
Moments later, they reached a low wall.
Cole gazed across the wall into a vast open space, fields covered in snow, dotted with trees. Far in the distance, spaced every few feet with perfect symmetry, the tops of gravestones peeked out above the snow. “I don’t want to go in here,” she said.
Warren had already climbed over the wall. “Hop up.”
“No, I mean, I don’t want to go into the cemetery. It’s not…”
Warren shot an anxious look at her. “Cole, now.”
She glanced back, considering, then hoisted herself up, grazing her backside on the snowy ledge on the way over.
The man was about a hundred yards back. “If I’m right,” Warren said. “He’s not here to kill us. He wants to track us. Maybe relay location back to the driver, just keep tabs on us.”
“And we’re going to lose him here?”
He took her hand and pulled her forward. “That’s right.”
Through the snow they trudged across an open field, toward the first patch of graves and something that looked like a tall stone wall far in the distance. “How are we going to lose him here?”
“Head for that wall. It’s the Women in Military Service Memorial. That’s where we’ll lose him.”
“How?”
Warren didn’t reply. They continued until they reached the curved wall, which rose about ten feet high and was topped with a low stone railing. “Wait here,” Warren said. “Don’t move or make any tracks.”
Bounding to his left, he hung tight to the wall, a half-circle enclosing the memorial. A moment later he appeared from the other side, breathing heavily. “Now, go right, around the wall. I’ll be right behind you.”
She walked around the wall. Warren followed on tiptoes, landing in the center of her tracks, heels up like a ballet dancer, trying not to make additional imprints in her track. Looking back at their trail, it was as though a trail of two people had hit the wall, then split up, with Warren going left and her going right. A misdirection. About forty yards on, they came to a crevice where the main wall ended and connected with another.
Warren crouched, his hands cupped. “Up.”
Cole looked up. “I can’t make that.”
“Up,” Warren repeated. “Grab the railing, pull yourself up, and lay flat once you’re up there.”
She stepped onto his hands and he boosted her. She braced herself on the side of the wall. Extending his arms, he held her above his head as she reached over the short fence and pulled herself atop the wall. It was roughly two feet wide and covered with snow. She lay flat, peering down on Warren, who now took one large step into the crevice where the walls met.
From her perch above, she gazed into the black space before her. Below, the fields of snow took on a dark gray hue. Barely visible in the distance were hundreds of tiny headstones. In the silence, she thought about the hundreds of thousands of men and women who were buried here. And she thought about Matt.
After what seemed like minutes, footsteps crunched in the snow. A light flashed on. Not too bright, it might have been the flashlight of a phone.
Now she understood Warren’s plan. He’d circled around the wall, leaving his own set of tracks diverging from hers. He figured that the man would follow the larger set of tracks. Warren’s tracks. Matt had always told her that in any combat situation, you take out the most dangerous opponent first. After being led around the wall in vain, he’d picked up her tracks. Now he was walking right into Warren’s trap.
She sucked in her belly and pressed her cheek into the compacted snow, trying to make herself as small as possible. She slowed her breathing and peered down as the light approached, accompanied by louder and louder steps.
The wind picked up, screeching through the trees and blowing snow into her face. The light stopped moving. Everything went silent.
She held her breath until the footsteps resumed. One, two, crunch, crunch. One, two, crunch, crunch.
The light was right under her now. One, two, crunch, crunch.
A grunt and the whir of movement below. Thwack. She lifted her head for a better view. Warren had leapt out and struck the man, who now staggered backward, holding his face.
He looked up at Cole as he stumbled, then leveled his eyes on Warren and, like a bull, charged him. Warren waited, perfectly still. When the man was a foot in front of him, Warren tried to jump left, but his right foot slipped on the compacted snow and he hit the ground, face down.
The man fell on him, battering the back of his neck with a clumsy punch. Warren rolled onto his back, hands reaching for the man’s throat. The man threw a right hook, connecting with Warren’s temple, rocking his head back into the ground.
Warren shouted in pain, then let out a long, deep yell as he reached for the man's neck. Grasping his throat, Warren absorbed a right and a left to the face, both glancing blows.
Cole sat up and scooched to the edge of the wall. The man had Warren pinned, but Warren’s hands around his throat were keeping him from landing any solid punches. Cole draped her legs over the wall, directly over the man’s head.
Then, she jumped.
22
In an instant, her outstretched legs connected with something. Maybe the man’s neck, maybe the top of his back. When her feet hit the ground her knees shot back toward her chin and she rolled to the side, striking her head on the bottom of the wall.
Warren rolled on top of the man, battering him with three short, vicious punches to the head, and for a moment their assailant didn’t seem to have control of his limbs. In that moment, Warren’s thick arm closed around the man’s neck and began to squeeze. The man tried to twist in his grip, to punch or elbow Warren, but his strength was draining. Within ten seconds, he shuddered and went still.
Panting, Warren rolled off him.
“Is he dead?” Cole asked.
“Unconscious.”
Warren stood and patted the man down. For the first time, Cole noticed his face. He was tanned, with a solid jaw and a diagonal red scar across his left cheek that looked like it had been made by a large cat, or a small knife. She didn’t recognize him. “He have any ID on him?”
“No weapon, no ID. Must’ve left everything in the SUV.”
“Phone? I saw a light.”
Warren gestured to a small flashlight in the snow. “No phone, which doesn’t make sense. If he wanted to track us, he’d need a...”
“What?”
Warren checked the man’s pockets again, then held up a small black disc the size of a poker chip. “Tracking device. Likely pinging the driver’s phone.”
“Why use that instead of a phone?”
Warren gestured down at the motionless body. “In case that happened. Now we have no idea who he is. Phone or ID or anything else, and if we got the jump on him, as we did, we’d know who was after us.”
“You still think it was Mazzalano’s guys?”
Warren ignored her question. He tossed the GPS chip onto the unconscious man’s chest. “He’ll be down for a few minutes. Let’s go.” He nodded toward a road that led from the memorial, barely visible in the snow. A faint set of tire tracks, likely left by a maintenance cart because they were narrow and close together, traced down the road and around a curve.
They followed the tracks until they saw the main cemetery entrance and a wall much too tall to climb. Warren jutted left. Cole followed.
A couple hundred yards from the entrance, they escaped the cemetery over a low stone wall. They walked along the cleared road to avoid leaving tracks, then turned right and walked onto Arlington Memorial Bridge, which led into downtown D.C.
The streetlights that lit an arched trail across the bridge were shrouded by a low fog from the Potomac, taking on the appearance of cloudy yellow orbs floating every twenty yards. It was nearly midnight and the bridge’s wide sidewalks were empty. At the halfway point, where the bridge hit its crest and sloped down toward the Lincoln Memorial, Cole looked back at the massive stone entrance to Arlington Nati
onal Cemetery.
She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t told Warren that Matt was buried there. She tried to tell herself it was because they were in a hurry. But she feared it was her own guilt. Since Matt’s funeral, she hadn’t visited his grave. Not once. Instead, she’d visited their favorite places in New York City—the north end of Central Park, a hole-in-the-wall noodle place in Hell’s Kitchen, a Seahawks bar where Matt watched the games with other Seattle expats. Sometimes, to make it through a difficult day or month, she’d chosen not to think about his death at all.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
Warren slowed until she caught up. “Train.”
“What about your car? Our stuff?”
“You want to head back there?”
“No.”
“Me neither.” They passed under a streetlight and Cole caught the side of Warren’s face. His mouth was half-open, like he was trying to decide whether to say something.
“I can see you thinking, Rob. What is it?”
“I need to tell you about Maiale da Tartufo.”
23
Half an hour later they sat side-by-side on the floor of the grand lobby in Union Station. Octagonal insets rimmed with gold dotted the high, curved ceilings, and the black and white marble floor gleamed from a recent waxing.
Cole had used cash to purchase two one-way tickets on the next train to Miami, which left in six hours. She’d withdrawn $500 from her checking account—the maximum allowed—and used $400 on the tickets, figuring it was better to be broke than to leave a credit card trail of where they were headed. She’d wanted to purchase toiletries and cell phone chargers, but, aside from an automatic coffee machine, everything was closed. That left them $100, two dying cell phones, and the clothes on their backs.
Warren slid a coffee across the floor to her, but she ignored it. “There’s something I don’t get,” she said. “Why would Samuel Bacon text you about Maiale...da...Tartufo?” She said the name slowly, poorly attempting an Italian accent.
“Feels guilty, probably. Saw the gun transaction go down in real time and didn’t do shit.”
“I get that, but why not tell his bosses, or the FBI?”
Warren considered this. “Complicated, but I see two options. One is, he did share it with his bosses. But the JTTF is NYPD and FBI, two groups who don’t always get along. It’s supposed to be butterflies and rainbows, sharing and caring, all for the greater good. Doesn’t always work out that way. JTTF team members like Bacon, who come from within the NYPD, leak stuff when they don’t think the FBI side is handling it right. Or, he didn’t report it to his superiors because he’s worried it’ll come back on him and his partner. If he admits they saw the post about the sale of the weapons and didn’t follow up, not good.”
An uneasy feeling settled in Cole. She didn’t like not knowing whether the FBI was following the same lead she and Warren were. “Earlier, why’d you say I wouldn’t want to know who Maiale da Tartufo is? And what does that name mean, anyway?”
“Maiale da Tartufo isn’t a name. It’s a nickname. It means The Truffle Pig.”
“Huh?”
“The Truffle Pig.”
“Odd.”
“It’s not odd, it’s terrifying. Maiale da Tartufo is one of the most notorious hitmen on earth. Came up in the old school mob in Italy. Said to have a hundred murders under his belt. First one at age eleven. Decade ago he killed a boss for no apparent reason, then escaped to the U.S.”
“No apparent reason?” she asked.
“I’m sure the reason was apparent to him. I’m saying I don’t know it. After three years, he resurfaced. Rumored to be responsible for at least six murders in the U.S. since then, though of course we don’t really know.”
“What’s his real name?”
Warren shrugged. “No one knows.”
“Why do they call him The Truffle Pig?”
“He’s from northern Italy, near the French border. Before he was taken in, he and his family hunted and sold truffles. Now, it’s the connotation. Even if you’re literally buried underground, he’ll sniff you out. No matter what, if your number is called, he’ll find you.”
Cole shivered. “And that’s the guy we’re following to Miami?”
Warren didn’t reply.
She took a long swig of coffee, expecting a cup of burnt black crap. It was sweet and creamy. “Thanks for not foisting your black coffee nonsense on me.”
“Obviously your body hasn’t yet been fully destroyed by sugar. You were able to get the drop on whoever the hell that was.” He looked at her, and for a moment she locked in on his dark eyes. “Thanks for that.”
His face was scratched and a few grains of dirt clung to his forehead. She brushed them away. “You would have gotten the upper hand on him eventually.”
“That’s true.”
Cole leaned back and shot him a look. “That’s not what you’re supposed to say.”
He looked at her, side-eyed.
“You’re supposed to say, ‘No I wouldn’t have, Jane Cole, you saved my ass.’”
“You did, but I would have rolled him in another few seconds. I don’t say that to brag. I know what I’m doing in a fight.”
“He did land a couple shots on you.”
Warren rubbed a swollen spot on his right temple. “Barely. But seriously, listen. I’ve got Marine Corps and NYPD hand-to-hand training, but that guy...he was big, but he was an amateur. Hadn’t been trained in anything. Makes me think.”
Cole followed his eyes across the station, waiting for him to continue. In the far corner, a young couple sat on a large backpack, giggling under the twinkling lights of a thirty-foot-high Christmas tree. Across from the couple, a man in a filthy coat sat on a bed of garbage bags, mumbling to himself. And in the center of the cavernous station, a couple in evening wear slow danced, tipsy and oblivious to the world around them.
“Mazzalano would have sent cops, or ex-cops,” he said finally. “Cops would have been trained. That guy was unarmed, untrained. He wanted to follow us, to keep an eye on us, but he had no intention of killing us. That guy wasn’t sent by Mazzalano.”
“So you think Mazzalano had us trailed to Jersey, but someone else picked us up in D.C?”
Warren nodded.
Cole leaned her head on his shoulder. She was tired and increasingly confused. “Who?” she asked quietly. “And why?”
Warren let out a long sigh. “I have no idea.”
—End—
Episode 3: Miami
1
Friday
Marco De Santis eased the eighteen-foot runabout through the misty bay, guided by the blinking blue light on his phone. The water glimmered as the sun appeared in the east, a speck of orange across miles of dark water. His phone beeped every few seconds, keeping time with the light of the GPS marker.
He was only a thousand yards from the weapon.
It was barely five a.m. and already the air was sixty-five degrees. De Santis was comfortable in his black speedo and plain white t-shirt. Knowing he’d have to swim, he’d tucked his clothes and keys in a duffel bag. He’d noticed that, in most of America, men didn’t wear speedos as European men did. But everything was different in Miami. A fit sixty-year-old man in a speedo wouldn’t even draw attention. It didn’t matter anyway. He wouldn’t run into anyone out here. Not this early.
He navigated the boat around a small island the shape of a crescent moon. According to his phone, he was still on course. The dead drop location was four hundred yards away.
He slowed the boat, enjoying the thick, salty air. For ten years he’d toiled, working to stash away two million, enough to retire. Tomorrow, he’d have it. The money he was about to pick up—plus the additional $150,000 he’d receive once the job was done—would give him two million plus enough for three or four plastic surgeries. Enough to ensure his anonymity and safety long term. He’d always been proud of his nose. When he was a boy, his mother called it a “Roman nose.” She’d said the pr
ominent raised bump in the center was the mark of a “true Italian.” It was too distinctive, though. Flattening it would be his first surgery.
Hell, maybe he’d retire in Miami. Going home to Italy was never in the cards. He’d planned to go to a small country where his olive skin would blend in—Latvia, or maybe Crete. But a day in Miami had made him reconsider. He had fifteen more good years, maybe twenty, and he vowed to spend them in the sun. A good surgeon could sculpt a few Cuban features, allowing him to blend in with the community in Miami. Then again, actual Cubans would be more likely to know he was a fraud. In any case, he was less than a week from retirement and he could already taste the Barolo. No matter how hard he tried to not appear Italian any more, he couldn’t give up the wine.
Tied to a dinghy fifty yards from the tip of the crescent island, a rowboat bobbed in the water. De Santis killed the engine, drifted, then threw the anchor. A second later it landed with a light tug against his boat. He was still in shallow water.
He put on goggles and pulled an exacto knife and a diving light from the duffel bag, then folded his t-shirt neatly, flicked on the light, and slipped silently into the water.
The water was warmer than the air, an odd sensation. The lakes of Northern Italy had never been this warm, especially in December. He swam easily—his taut, wiry body a coiled spring—and found the bottom of the rowboat. The package was there. Three feet long and maybe a foot deep, it was held in place by duct tape. With four deft strokes of the exacto knife, he cut it loose, expecting it to drift down into his arms. It didn’t. He tugged, but the package didn’t move.
He came up for air, holding the side of the boat and emptying droplets of water from his goggles. Across Biscayne Bay, a boat moved through the orange dawn. Judging by its lights, it was roughly the same size as his runabout.