Whether it was body memory or just the humidity, my knuckles swelled as I pulled the bright blue polizia windbreaker over the top of my black BDUs and stepped out of the car. Frankie, the FBI liaison, and I had driven about fifteen minutes north of the city, where we rendezvoused with a hastily assembled Italian strike force in the parking lot of an abandoned fish restaurant. State policemen and members of the GIS or Gruppo Intervento Speciale, one of Italy’s counterterrorist squads, were getting ready for the show, adjusting the straps on their body armor and double-checking their ammo. It had been quite some time since I’d worked with the GIS boys, and I didn’t know any of the kids around me. Two of them checked me out, making sure I had a bulletproof vest underneath the windbreaker, and offering me a helmet, which I declined. Their concern for my safety was touching, but what really impressed me was that someone had gone to the trouble of finding an H&K P7 pistol for me, just like the model Italy’s gun importation rules had forced me to keep home. The German handguns are not entirely rare in Italy, and maybe it was just a coincidence, but it would be just like an Italian to take the trouble to find out what sort of weapon I preferred to pack. They’re awesome hosts.
The Mafia bosses our suspect worked for had a nice little complex up the road, a kind of auto service mall and detail shop for stolen vehicles. Once delivered, cars were inspected, then altered in a state-of-the-art shop that exchanged some of the manufacturer’s parts for less-expensive replacements. These could be sold elsewhere, often used to make shipments of fakes appear authentic. A body shop in the complex could change a vehicle’s appearance if desired. There was even a railroad siding where the vehicles were loaded onto cars and shipped out, usually to Bari on the other side of the peninsula. There they would be taken aboard ship and transported to Africa, Asia, or the Middle East. Interestingly, the docks at Naples were never used, at least according to the inspector with the anti-Mafia unit of the national police who’d briefed us on the way over. He suspected this was because of a disagreement between different members of the local criminal hierarchy, but it may just have been an effort to keep prices down. Mafia control of the port made using it very expensive, and even the mob avoided it if possible.
You can’t put together an operation like that without a great deal of cooperation or at least strategic inattention from the authorities. There’s crime and then there’s crime, but this was more like a business enterprise. The local Mafia expert, a police lieutenant named Carlo di Giovanni, estimated that the auto ring handled between fifty and a hundred cars a week, every week. Both supply and demand were considerably higher, he claimed; the ring kept a lid on the number of vehicles transported to ensure fat profits and steady work.
Frankie and the FBI liaison had been very careful when explaining why Biondi had to be apprehended. Sigonella had not been mentioned at all. Biondi, they said, was wanted for crimes against Americans on Sicily. Frankie had hinted that a general’s car had been stolen and that the general demanded a scalp; la vendetta was a concept the Italians not only understood but wouldn’t question too deeply.
Three dozen members of the national police anti-Mafia unit, along with two dozen GIS people, would raid the complex, moving in after the suspect arrived. Another dozen policemen were already ringing the place. Sanmarco Biondi was being trailed in the city by an eight-member team using six cars; they’d watched him steal a Mercedes ten minutes earlier and were on their way north now. Our helicopters were in the air and would be arriving any second.
The plan looked great on paper; whether it would work or not depended on a number of factors impossible to predict.
Not the least of which was Biondi, who managed to slip the trail team shortly after we took off.
Situation normal: all fucked up.
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 Fucked 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—Fucked 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 hell 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—Crapinpants had made enough changes and brought in enough people that even Red Cell would have a difficult time snatching 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 café 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 fuck 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 fucking hell is this bullshit 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, Dick,” 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 bitchier 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 pissed 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 grassy 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 succumbed 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 passing 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 fashion, 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.
“Shit!” I yelled.
The van’s side door flew open and two men jumped out, machine guns blazing.
“Dick?” 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 t
he 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 windshield, 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, pushing 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 fashion was a good half hour behind schedule. But I wasn’t in a position to complain.)
“Buzz these bastards while I flank them,” I told her. “I’ll get south of them when you pass. 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 damn helicopter costs a fortune.”
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