Chapter 152
WHEN LAURA AND I GOT out on the street, we stood there for a minute or two, too stunned to move. The Via Principe Amedeo was a zoo, people everywhere, and many of them chanting “No americani, no sottomarini!”
“Try not to look American,” I said, which was a stupid attempt to be funny.
“Yeah, right,” said Laura with a nervous laugh. Between my red hair and Laura’s T-shirt, we had absolutely no chance of blending in with the crowd.
“My car’s this way,” I said, as we made our way down the narrow street, ceding what little sidewalk there was to protesters walking in the other direction.
Ahead, at the compound, I could already see that the Carabinieri had changed tactics.
Rather than just standing around with machine guns looking threatening, they’d lined up and were using their riot shields to form a barrier, preventing anyone—military or civilian—from entering the compound without their authorization.
Behind them were Hollingsworth and another couple of guys standing next to a flimsy mechanical gate, which the NSO had only recently installed. Everyone looked a little uneasy.
I’d have told you the whole thing was overkill, except that there was a large group of people shouting in the faces of the Carabinieri and waving their fists in the air. Several of them carried sticks, and one had a piece of pipe that I didn’t like the look of.
“Callaway was right,” I said to Laura. “We need to get out of here.”
We were maybe a hundred feet past the compound when we heard the first explosion.
I screamed, or at least I think I did, and we threw ourselves behind a couple of parked mopeds.
After that one deafening blast, there was nothing for the next five or ten seconds except the ringing in my ears, so we started to get up, and that was when the second explosion sounded.
I wrapped my arms around Laura, and we held on tight. I can still remember the stale smell of her breath and the feel of the heat on our backs. Like standing too close to a bonfire on a warm night.
We looked up to find not one but two cars ablaze.
Both had Armed Forces license plates; one was a Wagoneer, and the other was a Toyota Corolla that looked exactly like Rita’s.
My instincts kicked in, and I sprinted toward the car, terrified that Rita and the kids were inside.
That’s when Laura called to me, “It’s not them! ”
She was right, of course. Rita and J.R. had sold the Corolla before they’d left for Puget Sound. By the time this dawned on me, I was close enough to the flaming vehicle to see that no one was inside.
“Where’s your car?” said Laura when she caught up to me, and I pointed a little farther down the road.
“Near the piazza.”
“Let’s go,” she said, and we took off at a fast walk, not quite a run, in case that drew attention to us.
I could see the Chevelle where I’d left it in front of the Italian Admiralty, and I reached into my bag and got out the keys so I’d be ready to unlock the door as soon as we arrived in front of it.
The car was untouched, and I unlocked Laura’s door first, then ran around to the driver’s side and got in. The day had turned hot, and the car was boiling, but neither of us wanted to risk rolling down the windows.
“Take the back road,” said Laura. “It’ll be less crowded.”
I agreed with her, so I crept around the traffic circle and up the Via Ammiraglio Magnaghi, looking for the side street that would take us away from the water.
I made the turn, and it took me only about sixty seconds to realize my mistake.
At the end of this narrow street stood a group of eight or nine people, congregated near a shuttered pharmacy.
I recognized a few of them from the harbor.
When they saw our car, someone pointed at us, and another person stepped into the middle of the road.
I had plenty of time to brake, but that also gave the group time to organize.
Soon they were all in the road, walking toward us.
“Shit,” I said, then whipped around in my seat and tried to reverse down the tiny street. In my rearview mirror, I could see two people approaching the car from the rear.
“Dove vai?” said one guy who was maybe in charge. I was tempted to roll down my window and tell him it was none of his business, but everyone was already on edge, and I didn’t want to make things worse.
“Stupidi americani che non sanno guidare,” called one of them in a nasty tone, and the hairs on my arm stood up. Francesca had said that these guys had a reputation for creating chaos wherever they went, and I had no desire to be on the receiving end of whatever they had in store for La Maddalena.
“Say something to them,” said Laura. “In Italian. Then they’ll know you’re one of them.”
I wasn’t sure it worked like that, but we were running low on options, so I rolled down my window an inch or two and told them we didn’t want any trouble. “Per favore, lasciateci passare.”
“Hey, she’s Italian,” said one of the guys. But a woman, one of only two in the group, shook her head and said, “Not with that hair.”
I went to roll my window back up, but a man rushed forward and put his hand in the way. “Not so fast,” he said, but I continued to rotate the handle, trapping his hand between the glass and the metal frame. “Hey,” he said, “stop it. Guys, get her to stop.”
Someone hit the glass with something hard, a rock or a brick. The glass shattered, and Laura and I both screamed, more from surprise than because we were hurt. “Get out of the car!” said the guy, whose hand was now free but bleeding.
“Take your purse, Laura,” I said in a quiet voice, and she reached for her bag. I moved to turn off the car, but was told to leave it running, so I did.
“Are you really Italian?” asked a man holding a large rock. “You’ve got Armed Forces plates.”
I remembered what Francesca had said about my accent. “Yeah,” I said. “It’s our employer’s car.”
Laura knew what I was doing, but that didn’t help her when, a few moments later, someone turned to her and asked in Italian if I was bullshitting them. She gave me a panicked look, and I knew things were about to go from bad to worse.
“Lasciatela stare,” I said, trying to get them to leave her alone. “She’s about to have a baby, and she needs to get to the hospital.”
“That’s where you were going?” one of the women asked, and I lied for the second time in less than a minute.
“She’s having some contractions.” I acted them out a little for Laura’s benefit, then used the excuse to move around the car so that she and I were standing next to each other.
“Tuo marito lavora nei sottomarini?” the ringleader asked Laura, and I went to answer for her, but he silenced me. “I was asking her.”
Soon one of his friends switched to English. “He asked you if your husband works on the subs.”
Laura looked terrified but couldn’t tell a lie, so she gave him a small nod.
“What does he do?” the friend asked.
Say something dumb, I tried to telegraph to her. Special Services would have been great, or maybe Admin.
She swallowed. “He’s a nuclear engineer.”
I hung my head.
“Lo senti?” the ringleader said to another guy, carrying a backpack. “Un ingegnere nucleare.” Several of them started to laugh, and the guy with the backpack reached inside it and pulled out a bottle stuffed with rags and something that smelled a lot like gasoline.
“Shit, Laura,” I whispered, and we stood by, horror-struck, as the guy with the Molotov cocktail lit a match. Everyone moved away from the Chevelle, including Laura and me, and when we started to run, the ringleader shouted for someone to grab us.
I felt a pair of arms slip around my waist, saw a woman pin Laura’s hands behind her back, then watched as the guy with the Molotov cocktail tossed it—nonchalantly—through the car’s broken window. At that point, all it took was the flick of a match, and the Chevelle burst into flames.
For a second, I stared at the car in disbelief, but then Laura’s screams brought me back to myself. “Help!” she was calling to anyone who would listen, and I looked up into the windows of the homes that surrounded us to see if anyone was.
“Get them out of here,” said the ringleader, and I kicked at the guy who was holding me.
“Lasciami andare!” I was shrieking now, but whoever had grabbed hold of me was hoisting me into the air and off my feet, so all I was kicking was air.
“Calmati,” he whispered in my ear, and the voice was familiar to me, but I couldn’t figure out from where.
He had put me down near a retaining wall, and I looked for Laura, who was a dozen feet away, begging for mercy. “Please, I’m having a baby,” she cried.
“Non puoi tenerci così,” I spat over my shoulder, and in that same familiar voice, my captor said he wasn’t going to but that I needed to play along.
I froze then because I knew exactly who the voice belonged to.
You can have it any way you want.
It was Afonso, Teo’s friend from the bar. The guy Paul had wanted to punch in the face and Francesca had called an idiot.
“Aspetta,” I said, but he shushed me and, in a much louder voice, called me a whore. There was laughter from some of the men closest to us, but most everyone’s attention was on the car, which had turned into a fireball before our eyes.
“Ora,” Afonso whispered, and I could feel his grip on my waist loosen. I freed myself, then gave him a hard shove, which no doubt he had seen coming. Still, he fell over, and that gave me enough time to get to Laura, who was easy to tug free.
“Run!” I said, so she did.