"General, this is d.i.c.k Marcinko. I have the Mafioso responsible for trying to break into Sigonella, but Kohut wants to give him back to the Italians. We need to hold on to him long enough to flesh out the terrorist network, find out what the connections are, that sort of thing. Forty-eight hours-"

"Marcinko?" He p.r.o.nounced my name as if he'd never heard it before.

"Yes?"

"Marcinko?"

This time, the tone implied that he had heard my name once too often. I turned the phone over to Frankie, figuring that as a State Department employee he would be better at diplomacy. Frankie spent about ten minutes explaining the situation. His last words were, "but-but-but"-never a good sign.

"He said he'd have to sleep on it," said Frankie, handing the phone back.

Actually, Pus Face wasn't going to be sleeping on anything. He was exhibiting typical C2CO behavior. Translation: "Can't c.u.n.t Commanding Officer," a species which must test the water, get ducks in a row, run the flag up the pole, etc., etc., before making a controversial decision. For all his vim and vigor a few days before, Pus Face wouldn't get off the pot or take a s.h.i.t without making sure the air freshener was in place.

Ah well. It was worth a shot. Besides, I was due in Germany.

I gave di Giovanni another chance to punk out and come over to our side, but he only scowled. Frankie reluctantly turned him over to the two policemen who showed up a little past 11 a.m. the next day-the crack of dawn for an Italian government worker. By that time, I was on my way up to Rome to catch my flight to Germany.

Pretty much my whole life, I've gotten in trouble for sticking my nose where other people didn't want it. I'm so used to people telling me to f.u.c.k off that most days I figure it's part of my name. In this case, I had already gone above and beyond the call of duty. I'd done what I could to head off a theft at the base. We hadn't apprehended the tangos, but I did think that their operation had been derailed, at least temporarily. And my involvement had not cost the U.S. taxpayers a dime.

"Call me if the government wants to hire me to help flesh this out, check security procedures further, or what have you," I told Frankie when he made a pitch for me to stay-pro bono, of course. "In the meantime, I have honest work to do."

"Yeah, all right."

Maybe I'm a softy, or maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment-I felt bad when I punched the end b.u.t.ton on the sat phone, I really did. But I still punched it.

No, I didn't abandon them completely. I left Trace behind, and on my dime, too. If Pus Face came to his senses or Kohut lost his, she'd be in position to help interrogate di Giovanni. In the meantime, she would work with the Air Farcers to make sure their security was up to snuff in case the tangos returned. She even volunteered to help out with morning physical training. It was a proposition the numb-nut Air Farcers promptly agreed to, no doubt relishing the idea of her in workout togs.

The poor f.u.c.ks never knew what hit them.

I would not have made a good German: wiener schnitzel and oompah bands have never been my strong points. But I do love the beer. And German society has a certain precision, a kind of correctness to it that makes it easy for a visitor. You can count on the train schedules, and the bartenders always give the correct change.

Our big meeting took place in a city on the Rhine we'll call Rhineville, just on the off chance that we use it for a meeting again...and to help avoid possible civil suits. The people I employ work hard, and it's not unusual for them to blow off a little steam during downtime. I'd be a hypocrite if I said I couldn't understand bar fights or other team-building activities. (It's not true that we schedule them, however; the best bar fights are always spontaneous, and at Red Cell International, we always strive for the best.) As for the rumor that one of my people rode a motorcycle through the hall of a local hotel, I can categorically deny that the rumor is true.

To the best of my knowledge, at least two motorcycles were involved.

Just kidding. We didn't stay at any of the local inns. For one thing, security would have been a b.i.t.c.h and a half. Even if we managed to rent the rooms incognito-and I a.s.sure you we would have-my friend Mr. Murphy would have undoubtedly had a reservation there as well. Sooner or later the word would have gotten out, tempting all sorts of crazies to try and make their bones by frying ours. I imagine we'd also be a tempting target for some of the European intelligence services. One of these days I'll kill a few trees talking about how the spying operations are directed at the U.S. by our allies. I'm not exactly a high-priority target for them, but the krauts would have been interested, if only to trade some of the information with Mossad, which likes to keep as up to date as possible on American interests in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.

So instead of hunting down the local Holiday Inn, we went whole hog and rented a castle for our confab. I can't take the credit for finding the place. Al "Doc" Tremblay, one of the original plank holders of Red Cell and a close friend and business a.s.sociate, was in charge of making the arrangements. He selected it largely on the basis that it was easy to isolate and available at a reasonable cost; the fourteenth-century battlements were just a bonus. Towers with huge helmetlike domes stood at each corner. (Imagine the Kaiser helmets used by the German army in WWI and you get the picture.) The main building was a six-sided monstrosity that rose from the battlement wallson the river side. It had apparently had its own helmet at one time, though by the time the twenty-first century arrived only a few splinters of the support timbers and the shadow of a razed stairway remained. If you didn't mind the risk of falling-in other words, if you'd had enough beer to cloud your judgment but not enough to make you lose your sense of balance-you could climb all the way to the top by wedging your fingers against the stones. From there you could see all the way to Austria and France, or at least claim that you could.

At some point in the past fifty or sixty years, the family that owned the castle had tried to operate a small hotel there. They'd built a one-story building against one of the outer walls, setting it up like a no-tell motel with rooms opening directly onto a macadam walkway. The rooms all leaked, but were otherwise serviceable as temporary dorms, with electricity and running water; we spread tarps on the roofs and prayed for clear weather. We brought in two oversized rec vehicles to use primarily as kitchens, but the best cooking by far was done on the large portable grill Doc set up in the courtyard. (I do mean large. It could handle three medium-sized pigs, though Doc preferred to roast those in a homemade pit.) We held our company meetings in a stone chapel built against the northern wall. The relics and artwork had been stripped centuries ago, but the stone altar remained. Before long I was being called Cardinal d.i.c.k by one and sundry, to whom I of course returned the favor, sprinkling a few off-color religious epithets into my usual terms of endearment.

Security-wise, the place was a castle. Doc and the four men he chose for the reception committee (he called it the a.s.shole Patrol) came in a week early and went over the place with a variety of electronic doodads, making sure it was clean and would stay that way. Doc must have bought or borrowed toys from every "skunk works" we know in Europe, along with the goodies my friends at Law Enforcement Technologies in Colorado Springs lend us to field-test. Besides checking for bugs and guarding against intruders, they turned the chapel into a secure conferencing facility. It may not have been as secure as No Such Agency's "black" operations center in Maryland (they don't exist; you can't get any more secure than that), but by the time they were done, eavesdropping was out of the question.

There were only three ways in and out, each easily closed off and guarded. Small video cameras, as well as posted watchmen, surveyed the countryside and nearby river. We could have withstood a company-sized a.s.sault for three or four days, at least.

Our presence was explained in the nearby town with rumors that a secretive American pop band had rented the castle for rehearsals. According to the rumors, the band itself wasn't supposed to arrive for another month-Doc had taken a three-month lease-so there was no reason for the curious to come out and sneak a peak.

My "vacation" in Italy had left me out of the loop for a few days, and I had a lot of catching up to do on our various projects. Afghanistan was at the top of the list, of course, but our accounts in Iraq, Turkey, and Romania required hand-holding as well. Not that I mean to be so flip: My people had their nuts on the line in each and every instance, and they deserved and got my undivided attention. My name is the one at the top of the letterhead, but let me give credit where credit is due: Red Cell International kicks b.u.t.t because every single employee is first-rate. Honestly, the men and women who work with me make me better, and there's not a day that goes by that I don't realize that.

Not that they don't point it out constantly...

Some of what we talked about had to do with commonsense security precautions and where to draw the line when taking risks. You can't get too risk adverse in this field, but on the other hand you have to be able to keep everything in balance. It's one thing when a country's survival is on the line; I have no problem fighting for my country or ordering others to do so, even if it means close friends are likely to go home in a plastic baggie. It sucks big time. Believe me when I say I know exactly how much it sucks, but it's a necessary part of the struggle to remain free.

Getting killed so some corporate suit can report a five percent increase in annual profits is another matter entirely. I see absolutely no reason someone like Doc Tremblay should endanger his personal retirement plans to fatten Ken Lay's 401k.

The first three days of our five-day conference were a blast. Day One began before the sun rose with group PT in the castle yard, under Tiffany Alexander's grueling, s.a.d.i.s.tic leadership. Tiffany learned from the best-Trace Dahlgren-and she was every bit as evil as the master that first morning, jacking the bp of every male in the courtyard simply by rolling up the sleeves on her tight-fitting Lycra sweats and warming the group up with a few bends and stretches. By the time she moved onto fart-jacks, groans were echoing off the stones. Workouts with Trace are always motivational. She knows how to goose the male ego and make you feel like an absolute wimp-s.h.i.t if you can't keep up. And you can't keep up, unless she wants you to. Tiffany is slightly more subtle. You look at her and you just know you can't let her down by failing to give her that one, last, impossible repet.i.tion...and the next and the next and the next. Because if you didn't, you would break her heart. And you'd never want to do that.

Meanwhile, she's hopping up and down like the Energizer Bunny, not even breaking a sweat. ("Women don't sweat, d.i.c.k. They perspire. But they don't even do that. Now, can I have ten more push-ups, please? Just your left arm this time.") My b.u.t.t hung close to the ground by the time PT ended after ninety minutes. If we'd been back at Rogue Manor, I would have been able to escape by claiming there was paperwork to catch up on, but there was no rest for the wicked in Germany. Sean had organized a five-mile predawn run. In theory, it was a strictly voluntary affair, but of course it was mandatory, especially for yours truly. Being older than everyone else, or nearly everyone else, on my team brings with it a certain responsibility to keep up with the Joneses. If I can't quite beat their a.s.ses like I used to-I have to try harder.

I don't mind running, and even at my allegedly advanced age, eight-minute miles aren't too taxing. But good old Sean decided that things would be much more interesting if we ran with full packs. He loaded the packs with metal barbell weights and paper to keep them from shifting while we were running. Supposedly the packs were simulating combat kits. A "normal" (if there is such a thing) rucksack load for a special operator might weigh forty pounds or so, with as much of that as possible being ammunition. (You'd also carry as much as you could in a tactical vest, as well as in your pockets, on your belt, your head, clipped to your nose-you cannot have too many bullets.) But these packs were definitely heavier than forty pounds. One or two of my shooters questioned him about that. Sean just shrugged and said Danny had loaded them, and to take up the matter with him.

I've noticed that Marine officers have a little bit of the s.a.d.i.s.t in them, and even though he's retired from the Corps, Danny's no exception. Maybe it's learned behavior from basic, where Marine drill instructors are reputed to remain the most seriously ill f.u.c.kers in the business. Maybe that camo they apply to their faces does something to their brains. All I know is, complaining is the very worst thing you can do; it only encourages them. So I took my pack and carried it without a word.

Whatever the pack weighed when I started, it felt five times heavier by the end of the first mile. My chest heaved and I was having the d.a.m.nedest time keeping up. I'm built more like a linebacker than a receiver, and I accept that I can't keep up with the rabbits on my team, but ordinarily I can keep them relatively close, especially on a five-mile course where endurance is a little more important than sheer speed. But that morning it seemed like everyone was kicking my b.u.t.t, even young s.h.i.t-in-

a.s.s. (If he has a name other than that, no one has used it at Red Cell International since he came aboard. It's printed on all his paychecks.)

Now first let me say that s.h.i.t-in-a.s.s is a very fine shooter and an excellent all-around SpecWarrior. Allegedly, one of the youngest soldiers to get Ranger-qualified-he enlisted with the help of some bogus doc.u.ments, a fact the Army did not particularly appreciate when they found out several years later-s.h.i.t-in-a.s.s found his real calling as a demolitions expert. I'm not talking about garden-variety demolition either. s.h.i.t-in-a.s.s is a true artist, creative and knowledgeable. The young man can blow up a bridge with the stuff you have under your kitchen sink. He's the only person I know who can open a door with C4 and not only leave the door intact but leave it standing on its hinges. (I, by contrast, would turn it into a toothpick. But then no one has ever accused me of being cheap with explosives.) But s.h.i.t-in-a.s.s got his nickname on his very first day of boot camp because of the way he ran, and the name stuck. A big Louisiana lad, his b.u.t.t hangs down so far, the seat of his sweats are in danger of sc.r.a.ping the ground. Plop-plop-plop he runs, and with every step his backend gets lower and lower. He always manages to finish somehow; it must have something to do with the law of gravity. But he is always at the end of the line. Back home, I'm sure he's a "card carrying" c.o.o.n-a.s.s!

Except for that morning. When we hit the mile mark that morning, I was staring at his low-riding b.u.t.t, not a pretty sight. I'm not ashamed to say that this p.i.s.sed me off, and I sprinted to catch up, cursing at myself for missing several days of road work and obviously falling out of shape. This was the wrong thing to do-I caught and pa.s.sed him about two hundred yards later, but we had a long way to go, and the sprint drained my reserves. By the end of the second mile, s.h.i.t-in-a.s.s was huffin' and puffin' in my ear. I held on through the third mile, telling myself that I wasn't getting old. Even if I was getting old, I wasn't letting these young b.a.s.t.a.r.ds kick my a.s.s in public. By the fourth mile, I was conceding that I was getting old, but that I was not going to be the last one back at the castle. The pack had started to bunch up a bit and I was able to draw within ten yards or so, husbanding my strength for the last half-mile.

Anyone can run a half-mile. A half-mile is nothing. Eight hundred and eighty measly stinking yards. I've p.i.s.sed farther than that.

I had about ten yards on s.h.i.t-in-a.s.s and was about twenty behind everyone else when the castle ramparts came into view. The sun was just coming up over the horizon and one of the vans we'd taken out to keep an eye on the runners had pulled across the road ahead. Eighteen huffing and puffing shooters spread out in front of me, each runner a marker on my way to respectability. If I pa.s.sed nine, I'd have a respectable, middle-of-the pack showing.

I leaned forward and humped into high gear. My side st.i.tched up and I got a cramp the size of Colorado in my left calf. Now I've been through a h.e.l.l of a lot worse on runs like this. I had diarrhea during UDT h.e.l.l Week (Underwater Demolition Training, roughly the equivalent of today's BUDS school for SEALs). I ran just fast enough to escape the stench of the s.h.i.t dripping down my leg and complete the required laps. This was nothing compared to that.

But it wasn't kicking back on the couch with a beer and a bowl of chips, either. The people I was running with were every bit as compet.i.tive as I was. They might not have been used to beating my furry little a.s.s into the ground on a morning run, but now that they had me in their rearview mirrors they wanted to keep me there. I could hear the growls and curses as I picked up speed and pa.s.sed runner number seventeen. (I forget who was where in the line.) Sixteen started to sprint a half-second before I caught her. Fifteen was already fading but fourteen matched my pace and started to pull ahead. He didn't wear down until we hit the entrance to the castle; by then, we had pulled into the lead of our little section, finishing exactly at the midpoint of the group.

I shed my pack, flopped to the ground, then rolled back up to my feet, sensing that if I didn't wind my muscles down gradually I'd seize up into a statue and end up a lawn ornament. A big cooler of Gatorade had been set up near the north wall; I figured I'd hydrate and then hit the showers before breakfast. I was just about at the cooler when I realized that Sean, Danny, and Tiffany were laughing their a.s.ses off a few yards away. It was only then that I realized I had been seriously had. My pack had been weighed down to simulate a combat load, but everyone else ran with paper packed into their rucks. The whining had been a ruse to make me think everyone was being treated the same: like s.h.i.t.

Slimebags.

Of course, the fact that even so I had managed a decent finish meant the joke was on them, even if they were laughing.

I didn't mention it, and neither did they. They still don't know that I know what they did-or at least they didn't, until they read this.

The run earned everybody a hearty breakfast, postshower. Then we moved on to the entertainment portion of the program. We'd imported a Krav Maga specialist for an early-morning self-defense demonstration. For most of my people, this was just a brushup; the Israeli martial arts have been integrated into special-ops training over the past few years. But others were learning about the skill for the first time, and were impressed by the ability of the instructor to take down two armed a.s.sailants before they had a chance to shoot him.

The a.s.sailants were armed, and not with blanks. As part of the show, the instructor fired their weapons after the men were subdued. Theatrical, but effective.

The afternoon consisted of two weapons seminars, with a demonstration of new nonlethal grenades and a Taser that could shock a bear at one hundred yards, a good distance farther than standard weapons. One of the grenades carried a net and tear gas combination to snare and disable a subject. We had some fun with a few of the grenades that lacked the tear gas. Tiffany found that the key to dealing with the net was to take a Zen-like approach, calmly slipping it off rather than going at the sticky material w.i.l.l.y-nilly. This would be harder with tear gas in your eyes, of course, but still possible. Nonlethal weapons are very much in vogue these days, both with police departments and military units tasked to dealing with civilian populations in urban environments, either as occupation troops or peacekeepers. But they've got a way to go before they're going to be a reliable answer to old-fashioned lead. Frankly, if somebody pulls a gun on me, I want my answer to be as lethal as possible. Let somebody else take a chance on fancy nets or sonic-wave machines, another crowd-control device being tested by the Army.

c.o.c.ktail hour, dinner, and then civilian-style entertainment capped the night. Nothing's too good for my employees, and while I bust their buns in the field, I do try to find ways to make it all worthwhile. Toward this end I had arranged to deploy several big-name entertainers to Europe, including a rap star and a comedian so funny and so foul-mouthed that he had us all in st.i.tches before he even opened his mouth. For security reasons, the entertainers weren't told in advance exactly where they were going, and the rap star was a little touchy because the ground rules called for no "bling bling." But I'd had personal dealings with each person before, and they welcomed the chance to do the shows, provided their regular fees were paid. We met them at a nearby airport, blindfolded 'em, choppered them in and choppered them out.

During the day, Danny, Doc, and I went through a regular series of debriefings, pulling guys out from sessions and basically getting them to brain dump on their situations. I asked as few questions as possible, trying not to get in the way as they regurgitated what they'd been through over the past ten to twelve months. Nearly as important for getting a true snap of the world situation were the evening "mixers," a genteel term for keg parties, itself a euphemism for the open-ended festivities following the entertainment portion of the program. Alcohol may not improve the memory, but it certainly loosens the tongue.

Before heading over to Europe, I'd studied the after-action reports, incident briefings, and situationers, so I had a context to fit the gossip into. We don't do much paperwork at Red Cell Inc. but we do pay attention to the inst.i.tutional memory that can help other members and future operations. For the last two or three years, we've used digital camcorders for more reports, dumping everything into a computer system that uses a language translator to form an index. (It's good, but not perfect; I'd say there's a fifty-fifty chance that "c.o.c.k breath" will show up as "c.o.c.ktail bread," a whole other thing.) The reports were pretty good, but the face-to-face sessions and lubricated debriefs gave me details that didn't seem important to the people in the field. Afghan tribesmen wearing boots instead of sneakers cut from tires, for example. M16s with grenade launchers replacing AK-47s in the field. Modern line-of-sight and satellite radios instead of tin cans for communications-all developments of the past three to four months in Afghanistan, and all signs that an outside source was shoveling funds to the local yokels.

This coincided with the noticeable uptick in attacks on our company personnel. Coincidence? I think not.

The main actor in these attacks was a mujahideen group under the leadership of Ali Goatf.u.c.k, a doctor who'd failed his licensing exam in Libya (which tells you how smart he was) before finding his true calling as a butcher for Allah in the borderland southwest of Islamabad, Pakistan. Our various sources said Goatf.u.c.k called the shots from the safety of Pakistan, leaving his mostly teenage followers to take the risks in Afghanistan. After two days and nights of gathering information, Doc, Danny, and I had a board meeting to discuss what we had found. We took all of five seconds to a reach a consensus: Ali Goatf.u.c.k had to be caught and strung up by the short hairs, a.s.suming he had any, the sooner the better. It would have to be done on the company dime-the U.S. wouldn't be interested because it was in Pakistan, and asking the Pakis to do anything would be about as useful and rewarding as p.i.s.sing into the wind.

I tasked Danny to come up with a plan by the end of the week.

"Slicing Goatf.u.c.k's neck will take care of half the problem," I told the boys. "Next we have to find out who's got the bankroll and hang him up by the short hairs."

"Follow the money," said Danny. He spent a good number of years living off the taxpayers as a detective with the D.C. police department, picking up investigative skills as well as an affection for doughnuts. The cash that was funding the guerillas would be a direct line back to the real slimebags we wanted-and very likely one of the people angling for Osama's spot as top raghead.

Saladin, perhaps?

The idea certainly occurred to me. Saladin had singled me out obviously; that's why I was getting the faxes. It wasn't unreasonable that he had given money to Ali Goatf.u.c.k (and presumably others) with the expectation that my people would be targeted, quid pro quo. From what I could see, the idea wasn't necessarily to get me, or at least that wasn't a main goal. Saladin wanted attention: publicity, fame, anything that would lift him in the eyes of the maniacs he wanted to follow him in the Great War of Civilizations, as he called it. Taking on Demo d.i.c.k was a means to that larger end.

Of course, it could be someone with a grudge; there were plenty of those. The one thing I knew for sure was that this wasn't going to end with us taking out Goatf.u.c.k; we had to terminate his sugar daddy as well.

First we had to find him. Danny suggested that the trail of bank transfers would lay out the framework of the organization, showing where all of its nooks and crannies were. That sounded good in theory, but in real life it was going to be harder to do than finding a speck of flour in a snowstorm. We might be able to do it when we got Ali Goatf.u.c.k-but only if he got his money from a bank, and only then if he kept some sort of paper record of his transactions that we could use to find the account. Call me cynical, but I'm guessing Goatf.u.c.k would be a cash-and-carry kind of guy.

"I say, follow the shoes," suggested Doc. "These guys are all wearing new boots. A lot of people have mentioned them. Made by Bota, or something like that. Mountain boots, not combat boots and certainly not the rubber tires they were wearing a few months back." He dug into his pocket for the small memo pad he'd used to take notes. The boots were high quality, light, with a rigid sole. One of our guys who did technical climbs said they were on par with mountaineering boots made by Scarpa or Kayland, shoes used by professionals that would go for more than $300 a pair. "They're not Nikes," added Doc. "Who paid for them? Where did they come from? There's where the money is."

"Probably stole them," said Danny. "Or smuggled them over the border."

"Maybe," said Doc. "But maybe not. They're not banned for importation or anything, and they're not obviously dangerous. Why go through the ha.s.sle of hiding them?"

"Couple of pair of shoes, s.h.i.t, who's going to notice or remember, one way or another," said Danny.

"There've been more than a couple," said Doc. "Everybody has mentioned the shoes. They had to come in the same shipment at the same time-you figure Ali Goatf.u.c.k has a couple of hundred guys? Unless he gives out these boots as a door prize for going after our guys, I'll bet he outfitted his whole army with them. Two hundred boots-that's enough to remember. Serious dough, too."

Danny didn't concede exactly, but he grunted in a way that made it clear he thought it was worth checking. We decided to zero in on the shoes, asking our guys specific questions about them to try and nail down as many details as we could. Then we'd feed the information to a private investigator I knew back home who specialized in tracking down overseas a.s.sets. His most lucrative work was for divorce lawyers and plaintiffs' attorneys suing the pants off foreign companies.

I went to bed feeling as if we'd made some good progress on the problem. Even more important, I was looking forward to hurting Ali Goatf.u.c.k where it would hurt for generations.

Yes, I intended on doing more than just looking over the plan. You lead from the front, remember? Besides, I hadn't been to Pakistan since the days of the Afghanistan operations against the Russians.* I was anxious to go back. The part of the country where the mujahideen were operating is so wickedly rugged that just walking through reminds you how awesomely adaptable the human species is. I fell asleep with visions of a.s.s-kicking dancing in my head, and my stomach fluttering from an adrenaline rush.

Alas, dreams don't always come true, and they didn't in this case. And for once, I couldn't blame Mr. Murphy.

Somewhere around 3 a.m. local time the next morning, an hour and a half before reveille (and an hour and a half after I had hit the sack), my satellite phone rang. I answered and found myself talking to a duty officer at the U.S. emba.s.sy in Rome. Before I could tell him to get bent, he told me there had been an "incident" in Sicily, and Trace needed my help right away.

"Why didn't she call me herself?" I asked.

Never ask questions you don't want to know the answer to.

Among the things that I realized after our adventure at the auto mall was that the attack we interrupted had not been engineered by another Mafia group. It wasn't because I thought a Mafia hit would have been better planned and executed. A rival would never have wasted the skilled workers inside the warehouse, preferring instead to eliminate the leadership and then appropriate the business. Di Giovanni must have realized it as well; otherwise, he would have tried to cut some sort of deal to keep himself out of Italian custody where presumably his rivals could get him.

So if the mob didn't go after him, who did?

To me, the only possible suspects were Biondi and the tangos who had been working with him. Biondi might want to take out di Giovanni if he thought he had crossed him or otherwise ratted on him, which of course I knew wasn't the case; whether Biondi knew it or not was another question. But if he wanted revenge, Biondi would presumably have found an easier place to extract it.

The tangos, on the other hand, would have a limited knowledge of di Giovanni or his enterprise. Their interest would be entirely in erasing any link to them. Which was something they would only bother to do if their operation was ongoing.

So I left Trace behind, not just to make sure the Air Farcers followed my directions about increasing security, but to help them set up a decoy in case the tangos went ahead with their operation. Kohut had told me I couldn't set up anything along those lines, but he hadn't told her that. And c.r.a.pinpants was too busy sticking his nose up Kohut's b.u.t.t to notice what his captains and noncoms, with help from Frankie and Trace, were doing.

Which was basically gift wrapping an AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missile and leaving it for the tangos to steal.

Background: The Advanced Cruise Missile carries a W80 nuclear bomb, and looks like your typical long slender pointy thing-in other words, a middle finger with wings. (Just so you draw the proper mental picture, these wings face backward. Either that's to give the bomb more maneuverability once launched, or the contractor made a mistake and the Air Farce was too dumb to realize it.) Under ordinary circ.u.mstances, the bomb carried by the missile is a very serious piece of meat, many times more powerful than the atomic weapons dropped on the j.a.ps during WWII. Let me put it to you this way: if it were dropped on Moscow, everybody within a ten-mile radius would get more than a bad case of sunburn.

In this case, the weapon's nuclear payload had been replaced with metal and concrete, approximating the weight of the real deal. Tracking devices had been inserted, and the complicated innards had been removed or disabled. Surveillance teams were set up and rotated clandestinely. (Measures were taken to safeguard the actual weapons at the base. I'm not stupid enough to say what they were.) A little past midnight, the tangos got into the compound with an eight-wheel commercial truck, the sort of thing an appliance store might use to deliver washing machines and refrigerators with. They grabbed the missile and took off. Six different teams began following the truck with the weapon across the Sicilian countryside. A tracking aircraft aloft picked up the signals from the fake bomb.* With all these people involved, it would have been truly f.u.c.ked up if the thieves managed to give them the slip.

And they didn't. The truck rendezvoused with a second vehicle that had taken part in the operation; a short time later they were met by a third car, which possibly was running surveillance or had simply been held in reserve. They did a Chinese fire drill, with everyone changing places while the "gadget" remained in place. They then set off in three different directions. The Air Farcers and Christians running the surveillance operation stayed with the program, breaking teams to trail the two other cars but keeping most of their resources on the truck.

If anyone had asked me-and they had-I would have predicted that the bomb would be transported to the coast, transferred to a large boat, and brought out to a cargo vessel just offsh.o.r.e, which would transport it to its final destination. Sicily is an island, after all, with a long history of smuggling and maybe a million hidden landings, harbors, caves, and beaches per square mile. The American and Italian navies had been alerted for just such a contingency, and immediately after the s.n.a.t.c.h an Italian destroyer a few miles offsh.o.r.e closed in, training its surface radar and searchlight on every twig and piece of flotsam nearby.

Both of the cars, after some switchbacks and feints, headed in the direction of Brucoli, a small fishing village on the coast. The truck, though, went north, roughly in the direction of Mount Etna. (That's the big volcano smoldering in the background of the postcards.) The route was along one of the better roads in that part of Sicily, roughly the equivalent of a county highway in America, a.s.suming that county highway curved every twenty yards to miss old buildings and had last been paved during World War II. The approaching dawn meant traffic would soon be increasing, and the planners began debating whether to move in immediately or wait to see how things shook out, taking the risk of complicating the apprehension.

When the intrusion was detected, the Air Farce captain in charge of the detail on duty had alerted c.r.a.pinpants to what was going on. The colonel reacted well enough, demonstrating considerable fort.i.tude by not only stifling whatever anger he had at having been left out of the loop but actually joining the operation, which made it impossible for him to duck responsibility if it went to s.h.i.t. (It also positioned him to get some of the credit for its success, which was probably what he was thinking.) Unfortunately, this meant he had to be consulted on what to do as the operation continued. In and of itself that might not have been fatal-Frankie seems to have a way of talking people into doing what was right-but when the time came for a decision on what to do about the truck, c.r.a.pinpants decided it was time to get input from General Kohut.

Big mistake.

Let me back up half a step and explain something. While I would have voted for hanging back, there were decent arguments for moving in right away. Two a.s.sault teams, one composed of SEALs and one Italian paratroopers, were airborne and ready to pounce. The helicopters could not stay up indefinitely. Taking the van on the highway would be relatively easy at night when the road was deserted; there would be next to no chance of innocent bystanders being injured or blowing the operation. Plus, they knew where the truck was; there was always the possibility that Murphy might show up and hide it somehow.

Worse than making the wrong decision, however, was making no decision. The a.s.sault teams were told to stand by as c.r.a.pinpants tried to get his boss. Since they didn't know if they were attacking or not, they had to a.s.sume they were and couldn't refuel, etc. The trail teams had to back off. Uncertainty began to creep in. The infamous question, "Are we going or not?" began to run through people's heads. Its brother, "Well, what the h.e.l.l are we doing?" soon followed. Questions and debate are great during the planning stages. They help focus an operation and eliminate the unknown, or at least reduce it to a manageable level. But once the bell rings, they become devastating. They introduce hesitation, and he who hesitates gets lost.

Literally, in this case.

The truck continued on its merry way, pa.s.sing east of Etna and then up an unmarked road into the foothills of Monte Pizzillo. The road wasn't on the maps, but satellite photos of the area had been prepared ahead of time and it was quickly located. The photos showed that the road was steep and narrow; switchback followed switchback. It ran up the mountainside and then down the other, connecting with the highway again. It couldn't really be called a shortcut because of the terrain. Which told Frankie and the others that something was up. The thinking was this: The road was c.r.a.ppy and the terrain was for s.h.i.t. The only reason the truck would go up here was to stop somewhere along the way, either to transfer the weapon or perhaps hide it for someone else's pickup.

Or, to see if they were being followed.

Which was it? If the former, following them up the road wasn't that big a deal, even if the trail team was spotted; it'd be academic in two minutes, which was how long it would take the helos to arrive. If the latter, however, following them was the worst possible thing to do.

The trail team closest to the vehicle was running about a quarter-mile behind when the truck turned off. Worried that they would end up too close and be spotted, they stopped at the turnoff and radioed for instructions. The pooh-bahs had them continue down the highway to the other end of the dirt road and wait. A second team was directed to stop a short distance from the turnoff in case the truck pulled a U-turn.

The debate on what to do hit high gear. Now there were additional factors to consider-the local terrain and vegetation made a helicopter landing problematic. The ground teams might have trouble here as well. A pair of Marine Corps Cobra gunships were available at Sigonella. Should they be scrambled? Their firepower might be welcome, but their distinctive engines might tip off the people in the truck that someone was coming for them.

Trace-remember her?-was part of the trail operation. She had rented an MV Augusta F4 "Viper" motorcycle, a stylish Italian bike as pretty to look at as it was sweet to ride. When she caught up to the team at the turnoff, she decided to ride up the road as a scout. With the help of a local motorcycle shop, Trace had made one further alteration to the customized kit, adding extra-large m.u.f.flers to quiet its throaty roar. Sacrilege, I know, but it made it possible for her to get close without being heard.

Meanwhile, the truck kept going, though very slowly. The switchbacks and steep, rutted road made its progress gradual to say the least, and at least once or twice it stopped for a few seconds, only to start moving again. Three minutes, five minutes, ten minutes-the truck ambled slowly on its way. Finally, it started on the downhill side and the teams scrambled to resume the surveillance. Unsure whether the truck would go north or south, they took up a variety of posts.

a.s.suming a decision had been made to stop it sooner rather than later, the intersection with the highway would have been the place to grab it. But no decision had been made. c.r.a.pinpants still hadn't been able to reach Kohut.

The truck made it onto the highway and started north. Trace, who'd been about a half-mile behind, gunned the macaroni machine and closed the distance, keeping the brake lights in view as it danced down the macadam. Within about two minutes, they neared a small village called Casa di Nero.