Edge of Tomorrow (46 page)

“Who is this guy Salvatore Bocca?” asked
Syd.

“He is the
capo régime
for Rome and its surrounds. The top
man of the
Catena di Morte
,
based in Naples, is Marco Lucchese. Although he calls all the shots
for the
catenari
, he may not
even know about this local problem Bocca and his people have
caused. I know we need to explore the meaning and impact of the
Carfagno letter, but my immediate concern is protecting the
witnesses against the two bastards who tried to kidnap Syd and
Teresa: namely, Syd and Teresa. If you two don’t show up in court,
the charges will be dropped, and the bastards will
walk.”

“You’re saying Teresa is a target, too?”
asked Syd with a gasp.

“I’m afraid so,” replied Carmelo. “I
know how these people work. No one—repeat,
no one
—ever testifies against them.”

Syd took a sip of wine as she absorbed the
seriousness of the situation. Teresa being a target bothered her
immensely.

“This situation has to be
neutralized
, Hatch,” said Syd
finally, using his word.

“I know,” he answered. “I’m thinking through
my options.”

Sara spoke up, “Hatch, we’ve got Colonel
Coffer’s HRT based here, and Shadow-4. They could really teach
those assholes a lesson they wouldn’t forget!”

“Like I said earlier, using Colonel Bill’s
strike team may not be feasible. Plus, that’s not really in their
mission plan—not what they signed on for. That doesn’t mean I
wouldn’t change the plan in an eye blink if I knew how to proceed,”
grumbled Hatch. “This situation seems personal, and I’ve never
asked our people to get involved in my personal problems
before.”

“Bullshit, Hatch!” said Sara. “You know that
wouldn’t matter! Besides, Bill and his people want some action.
They haven’t had a mission since May, and you can stay sharp
training for only so long, then you have morale problems. And this
is not personal—they killed a Triple Eye employee!”

Colonel William S. Coffer had been the OIC,
Officer in Charge, of training the Delta Forces at Fort Bragg. A
gunshot wound to the left leg had caused him to retire early from
the Army. Sara had immediately snapped him up for her Hostage
Rescue Team program. He had been delighted and excited to be taken
off the Army scrap heap. His team, now pulling duty in Rome, was
one of her best teams. Coffer’s team, and the hangar for Shadow-4,
was located in a concealed compound in the forest south of the
castle.

“I know, Sara. I have to think about this. We
need some satellite shots of Bocca’s building, Carmelo. I need to
know what we’re dealing with here,” answered Hatch. “Have we
located the missing Dr. Helen what’s-her-name yet, Carmelo?”

“Yes. She’s being housed in the U.S. Embassy.
Strange, wouldn’t you say? It will be difficult for us to interview
her, but I’ve got a man working that problem,” replied Carmelo.

Angelina Cifelli finally spoke up,
“
Signore
Hatch, pardon me for
speaking. I do not pretend to know what is going on here, but I do
know I cannot tolerate my husband going to work everyday with this
danger over his head! He has always had a dangerous job, I know,
but this is too much! I think we should take our children and leave
Rome for awhile!”

She was nearly in tears, Syd noticed, and
Angelina daubed her eyes with her napkin.

That won’t solve the
problem, Angelina
, thought Syd.
You can leave, I can leave, but what about Teresa? Alberto?
No, we can’t give in to those thugs!

Syd inquired, “Carmelo, how do the police
here deal with situations like this?”

“The problem here is that many of the
police—even high up in the chain of command—are either members of a
crime group, or paid to look the other way. Don’t get me wrong, I
know a lot of good cops, but I don’t trust the system in general. I
don’t expect the police to do anything about this, even if we had
solid evidence to present to them, which we do not,” Carmelo
informed her.

“What would happen if Teresa and I were
women in the
Sicilian Mafia
?
Or the
Calabrian Mafia
?”
asked Syd, a small smile on her lips.

Carmelo raised an eyebrow, then looked at
Hatch. Hatch peered at Carmelo, then back to Syd.

Carmelo answered, “A small gang war
would probably erupt. Either of those groups would execute a
few
catenari
, especially
those involved, and certainly Bocca. Marco Lucchese would probably
get a message he wouldn’t soon forget.”

Hatch chimed in, “I think I see where you are
going, Syd, but the Liberators aren’t the Mafia, and I don’t want
them involved in a gang war.”

“That’s not where I’m going, Hatch. I’m
thinking that maybe Anna Klein pays these folks a visit, pops a few
of them, and makes it look like a Mafia hit. The police won’t be
after Anna, and if Carmelo is right, they won’t look very hard for
the hit man at all. It will look like just another disagreement
between criminal organizations—good riddance!” explained Syd. “We
send a vague message to this Lucchese guy, making him think Bocca
stepped on some Mafia toes. He’ll make sure that no further action
is taken against us, unless he wants an all out war with the
Mafia.”

“Shit! I like that, Hatch! Turn Dr. Z. loose
on the fuckers!” exclaimed Sara.

“You two!” blurted Hatch. “This
is
serious
!”

“I
am
serious, Hatch!” snapped Syd. “Everyone hiding out from these
street thugs is ridiculous! You’re the one who lectured me
about
neutralizing
situations!
I
can
neutralize
this
one! And I wouldn’t complain if Bob Hatcher showed up to watch my
back!”

Carmelo interjected, “The concept is pretty
good, and might work, Hatch. And with Bocca dead, there would be no
one to push his personal agenda against us.”

Hatch said nothing as he pondered the
plan and its possible consequences. What Syd proposed was illegal,
of course, but legality was a very relative term to him. Ridding
the world of bad guys was always illegal under someone’s laws. The
tasks Anna Klein and Bob Hatcher had performed were certainly not
legal in the minds of their adversaries. Hatch did not know why he
wrestled with such thoughts. The old Bob Hatcher would have already
eliminated the problem without as much as a shrug of the shoulders.
What really bothered Hatch was letting Syd revert to being Anna
Klein, even for a moment. He knew Syd was dedicated to leaving Anna
Klein in the past. However, he liked Syd’s plan. He and she could
carry out the task, he was sure, with a minimum of risk.
Those
catenari
thugs had
never been up against
real
hit men before.

“What is going on here?” asked Angelina. “Who
are Anna Klein and Bob Hatcher?”

“Just some people we know, Angelina. Good
problem solvers,” answered Hatch, a glint in his eye. “Don’t you
worry. We’ll fix this problem.”

He then looked at Syd, smiled, and said,
“Your plan may very well be the best way. Let’s discuss it later
tonight. I want to think it all through for awhile. Now, I’m going
to go and have a cigarette.”

He got up and left the room abruptly.

“Something is bothering him, Sara,” said Syd
with a sigh.

“Yeah, you came up with a plan before he did!
He gets that way with me sometimes,” Sara answered with a
giggle.

“I don’t think that’s it. Let me help you
with the dishes, Angelina.”

Syd got up and started stacking plates,
helping Angelina clear the table.

• • •

Syd finally reached the top of the tower and
stepped onto the platform made of heavy wooden planks, which had
been hewn out of tree trunks in some distant time. As she stopped
to catch her breath after the long climb up the steep stairs, she
saw Hatch leaning against the thick stone wall, looking out into
the night through one of the notches in the wall, a notch once used
by ancient cannons, or possibly archers raining arrows down on
their attackers. He was smoking a cigarette, the red tip glowing in
the dark. She turned off her flashlight as he turned to see who was
there. The stars were bright and there was a half moon shining down
on the tower.

“Am I intruding?” she asked with the wicked
little smile that was meant to melt him into putty.

“No. Come on over. I was just having a
cigarette away from the madding crowd,” he sighed.

She moved over next to him in the notch and
took the cigarette from between his fingers, took a drag, then
handed it back. She held the smoke in her lungs for a few seconds,
then exhaled as she felt the unfamiliar rush of the nicotine.

“On a clear night like this, you can see the
lights of Rome,” he said.

“Do you come up here often when you’re here?
Those steps are quite a climb,” she remarked, making small
talk.

“It’s good exercise, and worth the climb. I
come up here to clear my head, think. I heard that great men go to
the mountain top to get inspiration and guidance—maybe to find
themselves. This is the closest thing to a mountain around
here.”

“You mean like Jesus—or Moses?”

“I was thinking more like John Denver,”
he laughed quietly. “I think he wrote
Rocky Mountain High
on the top of a
mountain.”

He took another drag off his cigarette, and
took a sip out of a glass snifter containing amber fluid. He
offered it to Syd.

“A very good sherry, not too sweet,” he
said.

She took a sip and nodded. She put it back
down in the recess in the battlement and looked at the lights of
Rome in the distance. It was a balmy night, 75 degrees still, and
very little wind.

Neither spoke for a moment, then she said, “A
penny for your thoughts.”

“Ein pfennig fur das thoughten ist often
oberchargen,” he replied in a mock German accent, smiling.

“You never seem able to have a serious talk
with me, Hatch Lincoln. Are you trying to send me some sort of
message?” she said softly.

He turned and looked at her, their eyes
locking in the pale moonlight. When he did not reply right away,
she took the cigarette again and took a puff. Then she sipped the
sherry again, looking back out into the night.

I shouldn’t have come up here. I’ve intruded
on his private space, and he really doesn’t want to talk right
now.

So she stayed silent, looking at the
dark view, and enjoying his closeness. He smoked in silence, trying
to decide his course of action against the
catenari
thugs. He really hated them for drawing
his friends into this situation. His plan all along had been for
Bob Hatcher to come to life for a day and pay those bastards a
lethal visit. But now that Syd had spoken her plan aloud, how could
he keep her out of it without an argument? He was happy that both
of them had arrived at the same solution, although her idea to
blame the Mafia was a nice touch—even brilliant. In the past, Bob
Hatcher had always worked alone because he could not trust anyone
to watch his back. He knew, however, that he could certainly trust
Syd, but he was deathly afraid of getting another woman killed
because he cared for her. He had to admit, he was becoming too fond
of Syd, relishing every moment they were together. Not just the sex
part—though it was exceptionally good—but moments like now, when
they were just standing close to each other, saying nothing. Syd
had sensed his mood and did not push for conversation.

They both saw it at the same time: the tiny
flash of light in the night below.

“Incoming!” they both yelled in unison, each
pushing the other out of the opening in the battlement. The bullet
chipped a piece of stone out of the left side of the recess where
Syd had been standing. There was no sound of a gunshot.

“Fucker’s using a silencer! Good thing we
were looking straight down the barrel or we’d have never seen the
muzzle flash,” exhaled Syd. “You OK?”

“Yes. You?”

“Fine. Give me that sherry before the asshole
breaks it,” she said, reaching for the snifter and then taking a
large swig.

Hatch was on his Blue Phone, giving orders to
Colonel Coffer to get Shadow-4 in the air, and to block the access
road at both ends. Shadow-4's IR system would find the shooter
without much trouble.

“I wish I had a rifle and I would make that
asshole shit his pants,” fumed Syd.

“There’s one up here, if it hasn’t been
moved. I told you this castle is laced with secret passageways. I
meant to give you a tour and show some of them to you, but we
haven’t had time. You notice how the north wall of this tower is
thicker than the others?” asked Hatch.

“Now that you mention it, yes.”

“Pull on that iron ring there and a door
should open.”

Syd grabbed the large metal ring and pulled,
and a large chunk of the wall pulled smoothly away, exposing a
small room at the top of a steep set of stairs. She stepped into
the room, following her flashlight beam, so she could inspect it.
She shined her light down the dark stairwell and saw that the steps
descended at a 45 degree angle until they reached a small landing,
then reversed a continued down into the darkness. She wondered
where in the castle the stairs ended.

“On the far wall is another ring. Pull it to
open a cabinet in that wall. There should be some weapons in
there,” explained Hatch.