Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Nick knew what this was. Bad news. The worst.
Parker knew, too, only her mind rejected it. “Nick?” she whispered, face ashen. “What is this?”
She ran her hand along a tube ending in a bulbous nose cone.
“My guess? It’s an arms cache created under Operation Gladio. Do you know what that was?”
“I know what a gladio was. It was the service sword of Roman legionnaires. Short, a stabbing weapon.”
“Yeah. The program took its name from the Roman weapon. Operation Gladio was a concerted effort made by NATO and the Italian government to establish arms caches and communications networks in the fifties and early sixties. There was a general feeling that Russia was planning an invasion and was hell bent on conquering Italy, which at the time had the largest Communist party in the West. The idea being that if the Soviets invaded, the resistance could begin right away thanks to these hidden arms caches. But as time went on, apparently some of the locations were lost. But they included more or less everything a resistance would need in terms of arms, explosives, including grenades and mortars, communications equipment, first aid equipment. Including that nuclear warhead you are caressing, called a Davy Crockett.”
Parker snatched her hand away from the weapon as if it had turned boiling hot.
She looked around and lowered her voice. “How many nuclear weapons are there?”
Nick had already counted them. “Eight. Four Davy Crocketts and four man portable ones. Those round things over there.”
She followed his finger, frowning. They actually didn’t look like much, just big round balls of metal. A strong man could, in theory, carry them. Nick certainly could. An atom bomb that a person could carry.
Parker turned around, arms out. “There seems to be enough weaponry and equipment here to start a small war.”
Nick nodded. “That’s the general idea. The resistance in World War II was still on everyone’s mind, and everyone agreed the war would have been won sooner if the resistance had been better armed. So, they decided to arm a possible resistance in advance.”
“Were the Soviets really planning on invading Europe?”
“Nobody’s clear on that, but there was definitely a faction in the Soviet military arguing to pour tanks through the Fulda Gap, move down through Germany, over the Alps, and take over Italy. And everyone wanted to be ready if they did.”
Parker looked around and he could see that she was starting to appreciate the difficulties, though this wasn’t her world.
“What do we do?” she asked quietly.
Good girl. She understood the basics.
“We can’t leave these arms unattended. Not with tactical nuclear weapons in the mix.
We need to get out or at least get to a place where my satphone is in line of sight with a satellite and call the authorities.
And we stay here until a NEST team arrives or at least a team that can defend this arms cache. ”
“First we call Aunt Caroline, right?”
Nick put his good hand on her arm. “Not first, no. She wouldn’t have jurisdiction over nuclear weapons.
But we will call her eventually. I don’t have the numbers of anyone at the naval base who would be authorized to deal with this.
So I’m going to call my partner Jacob Black, who knows everyone and whose name is enough to get attention. ”
Nick looked up at the ceiling. There were points where he might be able to get through. It would be easy to lift himself through if he didn’t have an injured shoulder. But he could definitely push Parker up.
“Listen honey—I don’t know what resources there are here in Italy.
Don’t know if personnel will have to be airlifted from the States.
I have to stay here but you sure don’t. If I can get you through and if the vehicle wasn’t destroyed, you could drive back to Naples.
Or call someone to pick you up. I just can’t leave until I know this material is in safe hands. ”
She stiffened and scowled at him. She punched him lightly in the chest, in anger. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t even have felt it, but it jolted his shoulder and hurt, a little. He’d have died rather than show it, however.
“Nikolai Garin! There you go again! How dare you assume I’d just up and leave you. And you’re wounded for God’s sake!”
Nick shrugged. It hurt. Fuck. “Just a scratch,” he mumbled.
Her eyes bugged and she made a suppressed screaming sound, then stopped and took a deep breath, in and out. Like people did during yoga. He’d seen it in movies.
“Okay. We’re going to pretend you didn’t say what you just said, and if you did, I didn’t hear you. So, the way I see it, we have to somehow get out of here so you can contact the appropriate authorities, and the instant someone comes, we get you to a hospital.”
Nick recoiled. He hated hospitals. “No!” He softened his voice because he’d yelled. “I don’t need a hospital.”
“You most certainly do. That gash is ugly, God knows how many microbes are in it, maybe Roman microbes, and it needs stitches. If you have a phobia for hospitals, I can call my doctor, who is good and has worked with psychiatric patients and understands phobias. He can stitch you up.”
She turned before he could answer her.
Gah.
She’d turned the tables on him very neatly. It was the downside to being with a smart woman.
Nick wisely chose not to answer.
She’d walked to the back of the huge chamber.
Nick estimated that there were at least a thousand rifles, including sniper rifles.
Each cache was expected to support at least one resistance cell.
There was a line of unbroken wooden boxes on brackets, no doubt also containing communications equipment, plastic explosives, ammo for the rifles and small arms.
Wait—he’d lost sight of Parker. He opened his mouth to call out to her when he heard her voice. “Nick!”
He hurried to the back of the chamber. There was another hatch, but the earth had moved more back here, and it was wrenched completely open.
The hatch had detached from the hinges and lay on the dusty concrete floor.
Beyond the hatch was a short passageway and the tunnel veered to the left and…
yes! It was almost completely open to the sky.
Parker turned to him, blue eyes glowing. “Is this a direct enough connection?”
Nick already had his satphone up. Yes indeed, there was a connection.
He’d thought about this. He would eventually find the people at DOD, but Jacob Black had a direct line to the top brass. So Jacob was first call. Then Dylan, who would be transiting through Rome right about now.
Then the Consulate. As a courtesy, because this was not a consular affair, it was a military affair.
Jesus. Eight nukes. And thousands of arms.
The nukes alone would be a terrorist’s wet dream. There were plenty of people in the Mediterranean who would kill to get their hands on eight nukes. Even old ones.
Because they were still workable. The military built nukes to last, though maybe not seventy years.
The Davy Crocketts outside this cache had all been decommissioned.
But the ones in this arms cache might still be viable in the hands of people who knew what they were doing.
And modern terrorists all had enough money to hire the best people.
And even if the nuclear weapons had degraded, there was quite enough uranium in them to create dirty bombs.
New York, London, Paris—they could be rendered no man’s land for generations.
These weapons had to be guarded with his life.
But not Parker’s.
He had to find a way to get her out of here.
But first—Jacob.
Jacob Black. His partner and best friend besides Dylan.
The three of them had fought together and bled together.
Jacob would know who to call at the Pentagon.
Nick avoided politics with fervor. Jacob hated politics too, but was better at the game.
Jacob would cut through all bullshit and get the right people here as fast as was humanly possible.
Nick made the call. Jacob was the first on speed dial.
It shocked him a little to think that soon Parker would be first.
Jacob picked up immediately. “’Sup Nick?
” he asked, his tone genial. His face was configured in weird lines, and it took Nick a second to realize that Jacob was smiling.
Jacob Black defined serious and never smiled.
Though, come to think of it, he smiled more and more since he’d gotten married to his wife, Alex Black.
“Broken Arrow,” Nick replied, the phrase universally recognized as danger involving nuclear weapons. Jacob immediately looked serious and slightly pissed, his normal expression. He didn’t ask Nick to repeat himself. He’d heard it well enough the first time.
Nick put the call on speakerphone.
“Sitrep!” Jacob barked.
“I’m in Naples. On Monday I start a contract to tighten security at the US Consulate. In the meantime, I’m helping the Consul’s niece, who is working at the excavation of a Roman villa. Parker, meet Jacob Black. Jacob, meet Parker Donovan. She wrote and directed The Smiling People.”
Jacob’s eyes widened slightly, a sign of huge surprise for him. Nick knew Jacob loved the book and documentary. Nick angled his satphone so that Jacob could see Parker and Parker could see Jacob.
Jacob’s expression didn’t change when he saw Parker. He only had eyes for his wife.
“Mr. Black,” Parker said.
“Jacob.”
“Jacob, then. Nick kindly offered to help me as I was doing some research on a Roman villa that has just been discovered. We were caught in a bad earthquake about two hours ago. We’ve only now come to a position where we can call for help.
But we also seem to have come across an arms cache.
Nick tells me that eight of these weapons—which apparently date from the nineteen fifties—are nuclear weapons. ”
“Davy Crocketts,” Nick said, “and some man portables.” Jacob nodded.