Karen shared no anxiety when I caught up with her by phone a few hours later. On the contrary, she was excited-she wanted to hop right down and spend our last two days in Italy basking in the Sicilian sun.
Who was I to stand in her way? Especially since the Air Farce was going to spring for her tickets.
"Dosdiere was disappointed that you weren"t at the ceremony," she told me.
"I"ll bet."
"He gave me the card of someone who needs help on an open-ended project. It has his cell and business numbers."
Open-ended projects being my stock-in-trade, I gave the someone a call while waiting for Karen"s plane to arrive that night. His name was Jean Capon, and he was an executive vice president for a company called BetaGo, which provided computer and electronic services in Asia and Europe. He was coy about what the services actually entailed, but his hints made it obvious that they were largely financial transactions involving decent-sized transfers between bank and brokerage accounts in a dozen or more countries. While the bulk of the work was electronic, the firm had to move paperwork and some hard currency around as well. There were regular transport routes in Asia, and this was the part of the operation they wanted checked by someone "impartial and competent."
Transporting currency and paperwork-the latter being information stored on computer media like disks and tapes, rather than actual paper-is unglamorous but potentially well-paying grunt work. A lot of international concerns need to move records and money around for various reasons, most of which are never revealed to the movers. Watching the shipments is not exactly sweat-breaking work, though it can become bloodletting if things go wrong. The fees take that into consideration. I"ve done it myself in Asia and Europe; one of these days I"ll write about helping provide security when one old-money firm shipped U.S. dollars from j.a.pan to Brussels. They had a way of fiddling with the international dateline to make big bucks off the interest-quite a gig.
The fact that BetaGo needed someone to observe the operation implied that there were questions about what was happening there. Answers to questions yield fees based on recovery commissions: big bucks as well as big risks to go with them. That"s a combination I couldn"t turn down. We firmed up a basic fee structure, then set up a meeting for the following week in Tokyo, immediately after our company conference in Germany. I love j.a.pan, and not just because I enjoy sushi. One of my favorite people in the world, Toshiro Okinaga, makes his living as a policeman in Tokyo. Calling Tosho a policeman is like calling me a sailor-he supervises his own team of Kunika warriors. Kunika is a special unit of the j.a.panese police that handles counterterrorism tasks; the group is so secret that if you plug the name into a search engine on the Internet you won"t find out anything about them. They shut down the j.a.panese Red Army in the 1980s, and have played an important role in fighting a variety of terrorists, foreign and homegrown, in the years since. They"re every bit as efficient and relentless as you would expect the descendants of samurai warriors to be.
I"d first met Tosho and friends back in my SEAL days, when Red Cell ran some exercises at a U.S-j.a.panese base at Yokosuka. Tosho is a h.e.l.l of a shot and a seventh-degree black belt; he can also put away the Kirin like there"s no tomorrow, a truly important quality for a SpecWarrior. A chance to spend some time and wet the whistle with an old friend would be a definite fringe benefit of the gig.
I checked my watch and called Rogue Manor, where my business affairs were being managed in absentia by Danny Barrett. I"ve known Danny since he was a Marine Corps captain a billion years ago in Vietnam. There he worked the CORDS program as an advisor, helping the Christians In Action gather intelligence from gooks. After graduating from the Marines, he went into police work and became a detective. We hooked up again a few years ago, and since then Danny"s been a vital part of the operation, in effect an executive vice president. He has a good head for numbers and a detective"s knack for ferreting out facts; he can be a little gruff at times, but who am I to complain about that? Most important, he understands that you lead from the front; that"s a prerequisite of being a Marine, and it"s one of my golden commandments of SpecWar.
Even though it was around midnight back home, Danny was up and working, scanning reports from Red Cell International"s far-flung empire. The big meeting in Germany was only three days away, and he was working hard to make sure everything was squared away before heading overseas. He brought me up to date. There had been another attack on one of our convoys in Afghanistan, but otherwise things were quiet. I told him about BetaGo, handing off the job of preparing the contract work and doing the background checks, which are routine before we begin an a.s.signment with a company we haven"t worked with before. Updates finished, he turned me over to Trace Dahlgren, who was burning the midnight oil overseeing the six Red Cell wannabes, fresh-faced recruits for our international security division.
Trace is a good example of the "new" military and what I mean when I say the young turks wearing U.S. togs are better than ever. The new breed is very different than the cla.s.s I graduated Frog School with back in the day. Not better necessarily, just different. And very good.
Trace worked for Delta"s female squadron* and is an expert in Jeet Kune Do, the martial art that Bruce Lee made famous. She"s as good a shot with a pistol as I am; h.e.l.l, she"ll tell you she"s better. At five-eight and one hundred and thirty pounds, she has a.s.sets male shooters don"t, which makes her deadly undercover. Trace"s green eyes sparkle like jewels in the light, but they are guaranteed to burn through your skull if you cross her.
Then again, if you do that you won"t have to worry about her stare-she"ll kick your a.s.s sooner than look at you.
Trace is a vicious trainer, which is why she oversees the program. Her workouts have been known to bring tears to the eyes of male recruits, and if anything, she"s tougher on the women.
There"s only one problem with having Trace in charge of the training programs-she hates the job. Not the duties, but the fact that she"s missing out on the action in the field. To get her to take the post, I had to promise to rotate in regular replacements-a promise she reminds me of at every opportunity. Her present stint was due to end with the meeting in Germany, and I could hear the antic.i.p.ation in her voice when she came on the line.
Trace"s replacement was Sean Mako, who was due back from some personal time any moment. Sean is a former SEAL who served with Teams Two and Six before freelancing for the CIA in Iraq and someplace in Central America so secret that even Sean isn"t sure where it was. Past affiliations are no testament to character, fortunately, because Sean has done yeoman"s service and then some with yours truly.
After squaring away some details about the newbies, Trace shared some of her latest research into her Chihuahua Apache forbears. Saying that her ancestors were hardy people doesn"t cover the half of it. According to some legends, they survived in the Mexican desert by drinking coyote urine. True or not, the Chihuahua feel they have a special relationship with the animal and the spirits they believe can inhabit the beast.
As a young girl, Trace had what we white folk would call a "vision," and for years the rituals and practices of her tribe were important to her. By the time she joined the Army, however, her beliefs had begun to waver. Gradually, she left many of the "old ways" behind. In the last year, a relative"s request that she act as a spiritual guide for a young girl, becoming a kind of "G.o.dmother," had brought her back to her roots. She told me now that over the past several nights she had had dreams of a jungle.
"Coyote ran with me," she said. "We were looking for Child-of-the-Water, but he could not be found."
"Weird dream."
"Child-of-the-Water made the white man from fish," said Trace. She said this in the same tone someone might use to describe the weather.
"In your dream?"
"No. After the beginning of time."
"What does the dream mean?"
"It means what it means," she said. And that was the end of the conversation.
I met Karen at the airport around 10 a.m. Since "first thing in the morning" in Italian translates into "sometime after lunch" in English, we had time for a quick nap at the hotel before I hooked up with Delano to visit the local investigators. With a few hours beauty rest and an ample lunch, Delano was in a much better mood, even telling me to call him Frankie. He"d spoken to c.r.a.pinpants and Kohut. They had nothing new to report; the security teams had not detected any probes or evidence of same over the past twenty-four hours.
"A good sign?" asked Frankie as we drove.
"Maybe a very bad one," I told him. "You only probe until you find a weakness."
He nodded, concentrating on the traffic for a while. Then he said, "You know a General Gill?"
"I don"t know. Air Force?"
"I"m not sure. He"s a two-star, and he has some sort of fancy t.i.tle at the Pentagon. Apparently he was stationed down here when he was a captain, and because of that or his job, or maybe both, he"s taking a special interest in the situation. He"s in Germany right now, but he"s flying down to meet with Kohut this afternoon. Kohut"s rather upset about it."
The name tickled something in the dark recesses of my brain. "How long ago was he stationed here?"
"Has to be close to twenty years, I"d say, if not more. I didn"t get into details. He had something to do with security, which is one reason he"s upset, I guess."
There had been a Captain Gill here around the time of our Red Cell activities. I remembered him vaguely as a hostage victim we"d used to get access to the base during one of the exercises. He"d given my men such a hard time that as punishment we had him take us out to several local bars and pay for drinks all night. Of course, given that he was a real jerk, sharing drinks with him would have been more torture than fun, so we left him home and just took his credit card. My memory was hazy, but it was likely that we had neglected to inform him that we"d borrowed it.
"I think I remember a Captain Gill, very vaguely," I said. "But I doubt he"s same guy. We called him Pus Face-he had a huge zit on his nose."
"Well he"s apparently heard of you. Kohut wants you to meet him in his office around three."
"I doubt I"ll be free."
Frankie glanced over at me, then smiled.
Mangia is Eye-talian for "eat until your brains explode," and Detective Maria Mangia was a feast. She had raven black hair and a smile that would have sent Mona Lisa into hiding. At five-three, I doubt she weighed much more than ninety pounds, but every ounce had been perfectly placed. (I would have volunteered to weigh her, but she was armed.) "Signor Marcinko, welcome to Sicily," she said, extending her hand as Frankie and I were shown into her office. The sleeve of her jacket hiked up just enough to expose well-muscled forearms. Sicilian women have evolved these over time to keep their men in line; one slap is generally good for a week to ten days of good behavior.
"I have heard very much about you," said Mangia, grabbing my hand like grip pliers. "We"re very honored to have a real dog-breath a.s.shole among us."
Being called a dog-breath a.s.shole by a beautiful woman can be an unnerving experience, but I remembered my manners. "Well, f.u.c.k you very much."
"You wish," she said, waving us in.
Ms. Mangia"s father was an American seaman who had remained in Italy after duty there in the late 1970s. Our paths had never crossed, but he was an avid reader of the Rogue Warrior books and she had absorbed the Demo d.i.c.k legend at a young age. I took out a pad and made a note of her address, promising to sign a few for her old man as soon as I got home.
Preliminaries out of the way, Ms. Mangia told us that the locals had connected the stolen truck with several others in the area. They had also connected it to a low-level lowlife who specialized in things like car thefts-not locally but in Naples on the mainland.
The lead had come from local car thieves, which made it somewhat suspicious. However, one of the vehicles had been recovered, and-because the Americans had filed the complaint-a forensics team had been put to work scouring it. They had obtained finger-prints that matched the suspect"s.
The suspect was someone named Sanmarco Biondi, and he was wanted by the police for auto thefts not just in Naples but in much of Sicily. The crimes were believed to be initiated by the Mafia, which ran a tidy operation finding late-model luxury sedans and shipping them to Africa and the Middle East, where they were sold as new vehicles.
I tried not to show any surprise, but I was floored. Tenuous as it was, the Mafia connection put the probes at Sigonella in a new light.
a.s.suming, of course, that it was related.
Ms. Mangia began pressing us for information about the crime the truck might be connected to. I had an easy excuse; I just shrugged, saying I"d only gotten involved recently as a favor for my friends at the base. Frankie bobbed and weaved in a friendly way, becoming vaguer and vaguer as the detective tried to find out which part of the facility the truck had been spotted near. She wasn"t dumb, though-the Air Force"s nuclear operation is an open secret locally, and the fact that I had shown up probably confirmed what she suspected when the information had been pa.s.sed along. The detective was properly worried about security operations at the base, since their failure could have dire consequences on the citizens she was sworn to protect. Frankie tried to address her concerns with a few words about a black market cigarette operation, but she wasn"t buying. She turned to me and said softly, "If there is something that concerns us, we expect to know immediately."
I nodded. I agreed we owed her that. But it wouldn"t be up to me; I was at best an unpaid consultant.
"You"ve done a lot as it is," said Frankie. "There"s no danger. This is merely routine."
Ms. Mangia"s frown said she didn"t believe us, and she was still wearing it when we left.
Frankie and I discussed the Mafia angle as we drove away. Southern Italy was in one of its periodic economic troughs-you and I would call it a depression-and even the mob was having a hard time. Turf wars in Naples as well as Sicily had taken their toll on all the local bad guys. Murder, extortion, and robbery just didn"t pay what they used to, and many of the local "Men of Honor" were looking for new ways to make a dishonest living. Grabbing a nuke might be the ultimate get-rich-quick scheme; anyone who s.n.a.t.c.hed it would be able to purchase the small country they"d need to hide in when the operation was over.
"Most likely it"s a coincidence of some kind," Frankie concluded finally. "But just to be sure, maybe we should try finding this car thief Biondi in Naples. The FBI agent who"s been helping our task force has some contacts with the unit there that watches the Mafia."
I grunted. The idea wasn"t terrible, but I had a better one. Rather than increasing security at the base, the thing to do was make it even sloppier. With a little strategic incompetence, we could direct the probe to a prepared target, then follow them after the s.n.a.t.c.h. This way we"d do a lot more than simply stop the theft of a nuclear device-we"d know who wanted to steal it, and who had put up the money for them to do so.
"If the Mafia really is involved, it"s potentially a bombsh.e.l.l development," I told Kohut when I presented my idea back at his office. "If they have a buyer already-this is very bad news. Stopping them here may not stop the next operation. It certainly won"t discourage the buyer."
Kohut was too fond of his pension to give the green light. Fortunately for him, he had a superior officer to pa.s.s the buck to-Pus Face, who, an aide reported, was even now touching down on the other side of the field, beyond the roaming flocks of goats and sheep.
In my excitement about finding that the Mafia might be involved, I"d forgotten about the general. Now I was trapped.
Pus Face and I had our tearless reunion in Kohut"s office twenty minutes later. He"d gained fifty pounds at least, but his face remained as blotchy as ever.
"Commander Marcinko," he said when he saw me. He didn"t take my hand-a good thing, since it saved me from having to hunt down some antibacterial soap later on. "How are you, d.i.c.k?"
"Fine, General, yourself?"
"p.i.s.sed off," said Pus Face. "Mad. Angry." He turned his glare toward c.r.a.pinpants, who just about did. The colonel briefed the two-star on the probes and their implication. Pus Face"s nose began glowing about halfway through, and by the time the security officer was done, his entire face was as red as his pimples. He"d been put in charge of a special Pentagon security task force a few days before, and was still in the process of pulling together a staff. A successful operation to steal a nuke was the last thing he wanted to deal with. Even if the fallout on his career was likely to be light, he"d still be expected to devote considerable resources to the situation. At a minimum, that would cut into his golf time.
As of this writing, Pus Face is considered a candidate for the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Pus Face earned his exalted position the old-fashioned way: He licked a thousand b.u.t.ts to get it. There"s a long tradition in the Air Force of promoting combat pilots to leadership positions, basically on the theory that having flak explode in your face qualifies you to make the hard decisions at the top of the chain of command. The theory may be flawed, but it does contain a certain nugget of logic. Pus Face is proof of what happens when you try to "open things up" to a "variety of experiences," as a PR specialist would spin the fact that he"s never served in harm"s way. True, he"s pushed paper around the globe: Hawaii, Germany, and even Riyadh, where he was a.s.signed after the first Gulf War for a grand total of two weeks. After acting as a security flunky at Sigonella-far down on the bloated chain of command at the time-his most important job ever was to make sure a squadron of cargo planes had enough jet fuel to fulfill their mission. Not that that"s not important, but it should give you some idea of the level of his "engagement" in weighty defense matters.
But I will give him this: He knows how to cover his a.s.s. And he was definitely in that mode right now. There were a dozen* devices at the base; Pus Face wanted them moved to a safer facility immediately.
Kohut objected vehemently. Authorization to move the weapons had to come directly from his boss and would present a number of problems, not the least of which was the inherent danger involved in transporting such cargo at a moment"s notice. There were a host of reasons, practical and strategic, why such a move made no sense at all. What if these probes had been designed to get the U.S. to move the devices out? What if some protest group found out? Would we start shuffling bombs and missiles around the world anytime some joker lobbed a warm can of soda over a perimeter fence?
I"m not sure how much of an impact these arguments actually had on Pus Face. The bottom line was that he didn"t have the authority to order that the bombs be transported. Rather than say that, however, he turned to me and asked what I thought.
"I agree with General Kohut," I said. This was an historic occasion, the first time ever I had agreed with anything an Air Force officer had said. I celebrated by changing the subject-and pushing my own plan. "We should do everything we can to protect the weapons. But we can"t stop there. These people may turn out to be quite relentless. We have to catch them in the act, and hang them up by their nuts."
Kohut winced as I continued. He didn"t want any intrusion onto the base, and he made that clear. Pus Face, however, seemed interested. It might have been simply a reaction to Kohut"s discomfort. More likely, he suddenly saw an opportunity to take a lemon and turn it into lemonade. Capturing a nuclear thief red-handed would shine even the dullest star on his collar.
Still, it wasn"t the sort of idea that could be signed off on without testing the political waters back home.
"Let me take it under advis.e.m.e.nt, d.i.c.k," he said, his voice oily. He hesitated for a moment, and I got the feeling he was going to ask me if I knew what had happened to his credit card. Then he frowned and told me I was free to go.
Generous of him, really, given that my presence in Sicily was purely voluntary. I didn"t bother to point that out. I went back to the hotel. When I got there, Karen told me that Danny had forwarded a Web address; Saladin had sent another fax.
The rant was familiar; a war of civilizations was coming, and devout Muslims must prepare themselves for battle. Again, the cataclysm would begin "at a time of their choosing and a place of great significance." Saladin continued on for three thousand or so words, proclaiming that the days of the crusaders were numbered. He ended by saying, "Yesterday was nothing. Look to the future."
The page had been dated yesterday. Which meant the reference might have been to St. Peter"s. At least in Karen"s eyes.
"It was more general than that," I told her. "It"s like saying the past. This is why people think Nostradamus predicted the future," I added. "If you say something generic enough, it can be interpreted in many ways."
"You still think he"s just a crazy?"
"He"s definitely a crazy."
"You know what I mean, d.i.c.k." She frowned, and I felt a little uneasy, as if I"d let her down.
"I don"t think he"s a serious contender for bin Laden"s spot at the top of the food chain. Even if he had something to do with that tanker, there are too many other legitimate candidates."
"If he"s responsible for the murders in St. Peter"s, that would add to his reputation."
"To an extent. But it wasn"t spectacular enough."
"Because of you."
There was only one way to meet that argument-I kissed her, and suggested a little downtime before dinner.
Though pleasurable, that may have been a mistake, since it meant I was in the hotel when Frankie called forty-five minutes later.
"Do you want to meet at the airport in the morning, or can you find your own transportation?"
"Excuse me?" I said.
"Naples. Do you need a ride, or do you have your own transportation?"
"What"s in Naples?"
"Our car thief, remember? The Italians have a good lead on him and are setting up an operation to arrest him," said Frankie. "I figured you"d want to be in on it."
"Not even tempted. I can"t stand Naples."
"Naples?" said Karen, lying on the bed next to me. "I"ve always wanted to see an opera there. When are we going?"
Naples is a crowded, dirty little city on the western coast of Italy below Rome, about where the shin would be if the peninsula really were a leg. It"s belonged to just about everyone during its checkered history. It will always hold a special place in my heart: Some of the best bar fights of my life took place there.
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 a.s.sembled 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 f.u.c.ked up.