Gun Metal Heart (18 page)

She shivered. Diego watched her intently.

“But here's the thing to remember: The Croats did the same thing to the Serbs in World War II. You look at any atrocity in the former Yugoslavia, then go back a hundred years, and I guarantee you you'll find its reciprocal event. Now go back a hundred more. And a hundred more. These are people who believe it's right and justified and
sane
to remain angry that a village was burned in the Year of Our Lord seven hundred. And then to be genuinely confused when the West condemns them for that.”

Diego muttered, “
Dios
.”

“You're Indio,
Professor
?”

Diego nodded.

“You still pissed off—daily—about the Spanish decimating your land?”

Diego looked at John, then back at the diminutive woman. “No, Ma'am.”

“The Serbs and Croats would look at you and see that as weakness. You have to understand that. Both of you.” She turned to John. “How'd you get here?”

“Drove up from the coast.”

“Then you saw the remnants of the war. The civil war is remembered as the Serbs and Bosnian Serbs versus the Croatians and the Bosnian Muslims. Tell me: who do you think threw the grenades and fired the machine guns into the buildings in Mostar?”

“The defenders?”

“It was Muslims on the east bank firing at the Croats on the west bank. It was both of the victims of so-called Serbian atrocity, who took the opportunity to lay into each other as well.”

John and Diego exchanged looks.

Sylvia Rush ate a mouth full of potatoes. Downstairs, someone cheered for a shot on goal.

Sylvia said, “Welcome to the Balkans, boys.”

*   *   *

Another round of beers, Sarajeveski Piva, followed the fish. Diego remained very quiet, but John sensed he was listening intently to Sylvia Rush.

John said, “
Skorpjo
.”

Sylvia said, “White Scorpions. Serb mafia. What about them?” She quaffed her beer with the vigor of a much larger person and smacked her lips.

“They were responsible for the bombing of that hotel in Florence.”

Sylvia glared at him. “
Skorpjo
doesn't operate that far west.”

“I know. But we have good witnesses.”

Diego held up his right arm and pointed to it. “White scorpion tattoos.”

“You're sure?”

Diego lifted his stein. “Friends died there. Yeah. We're sure.”

John turned to him, surprised by the plural. “Friends?”

Diego turned only slightly in his direction. “Daria, maybe no. But they found the body of my friend Vince Guzman.”

John didn't know how to respond, so he didn't.

Sylvia Rush went into the restaurant to pay.

When she was gone, Diego muttered. “As for Daria…?” He gave a small flicker of a shrug. “Olsson got people in Slovenia, Croatia.”

Fredrik Olsson was the Viking, but John wasn't necessarily supposed to know so, so again he said nothing.

Diego looked around to make sure no one could hear them. “Everyone's looking for Daria. Haven't found her. Been four days. Almost five.”

“Doesn't mean she's dead. I told you she called me
after
the hotel blew up.”

Diego finished the remains of his beer. “Said she called you under fire from them Flying Monkeys.”

“Yeah.”

The Indio shrugged again. “Five days. No word.”

Sylvia emerged, her uncontrolled mass of gray hair bobbing and floating around her lined face. The men rose. Diego said, “Thank you, Ma'am.”

John said, “Who do we see in Belgrade who can speak for
Skorpjo
?”

“I don't know. They used to be a government-backed paramilitary but not as much any more.” Sylvia pointed up and to the right. “Pretty good hotel here. Quiet enough, until the call to prayer at five. Tomorrow you should head into Sarajevo. Go see Zoran Antic. He's a member of the Bosnia-Herzegovina Parliament. And a friend. He'll know more about
Skorpjo
. I'll call him in the morning.”

John bent and kissed her cheek, webbed with deep, dry age lines. “Thanks. This is helpful.”

She looked up at him with those startlingly blue eyes, eyes that didn't seem to fit into the midsixties face. “What are you hoping to accomplish, counselor?”

“Save a friend. Stop military tech from getting into the wrong hands.”

She shook her head ruefully and patted him on the arm. “All these years, and you're still naïve.”

He frowned in surprise.

“Military technology always gets in the wrong hands, John. That's what military technology is destined to do.”

 

Twenty-One

The U.S. National Security Agency was the first organization to discover that Daria Gibron was still alive, due to an 85 percent match from a traffic camera on the A21 outside Turin, Italy.

The NSA alerted the CIA.

A disgruntled CIA employee informed former fair-haired boy and disgraced agent Owen Cain Thorson, who became the next to find out.

Thorson's surviving partner, Jake Kenner, had scored some morphine and patched up Thorson's blade-rent face the best he could. The two were waiting in a sweat-stink flophouse outside Florence. Stretch bandages held not-that-clean cotton swabs against the slice Daria had taken out of Thorson's cheek and ear. Kenner advised Thorson to stand down, but Thorson took note of the e-mail from Langley and dragged his body out of the camp cot.

Another person at the CIA leaked the information to the office and desk of General Howard Cathcart in army intelligence. Cathcart immediately contacted Colonel Olivia Crace in Sandpoint, Idaho. From there the drone pilots alerted the truck-and-trailer rig still based in Florence to get up on the A21, westbound, and to catch the bitch.

They had predicted she would head east from Florence, toward the Italian border with Slovenia. Their intelligence apparently had been wrong.

Bryan Snow, chief engineer on the Hotspur and Mercutio projects, began punching in a Level 1 diagnostic for the drones into one of his consoles. His eyebrows V'd behind his Buddy Holly frames. “She was spotted near Turin?”

One of his in-house pilots said, “According to the NSA.”

Snow shook his head. He couldn't help think that he'd heard the name of the town on the radio. Recently. “Why's that familiar…?”

Behind the backs of his pilots, he typed in the information on a secure outside communications line. That line went directly to the woman working under the pseudonym Major Arcana.

Next to learn of Daria's resurrection was the Italian state security agency, the Agenzia informazioni e sicurezza interna, or AISI. Intelligence agents there also began forming on the east–west highway that bisects northern Italy.

A great deal of intelligence and firepower and anger were aimed at Daria Gibron.

As she had anticipated.

*   *   *

Major Arcana informed the White Scorpions, but in her usual cryptic manner: “Forecast calls for Hell.”

*   *   *

Italian intelligence, or AISI, sent a request to the Carabinieri to monitor all of the closed-circuit cameras along the length of the A21 highway and throughout northwestern Italy. The notification went out at 8:00
A.M.
on a Saturday.

When the state police had not responded inside of ninety minutes, AISI contacted the Carabinieri again. The response was harried. “We hear you! We hear you! Believe me, we've received nothing but requests for that whole section! Goddamnit, show a little patience!”

*   *   *

Besides guarding the Italian-Slovenian border, members of
Skorpjo
also sent three SUVs, armed like pirate ships, across the border into Italy. If they could intercept Daria before she hit the border, all the better.

The SUVs made it through Verona and got north of Milan before hitting temporary barricades set up by the Carabinieri. The gunhands of the White Scorpions stowed their obvious weapons, and the lead SUV coasted up to a motorcycle cop in a tunic, helmet, sunglasses, and Sam Browne belt. The driver lowered his window. He spoke Italian. “What's going on?”

The motorcycle cop shook his head. “You're kidding.”

The driver glanced back at his cohorts, then at the cop again. “What?”

The motorcycle cop made a disparaging hand gesture. “Buy a fucking newspaper, Slav.”

Sandpoint, Idaho

Colonel Olivia Crace had been tasked to the unnamed and officially nonexistent U.S. Army intelligence unit assigned to procure military tech because she knew much of the science the geeks always assumed was over the heads of the military brass. She also knew to share what she knew and what she suspected only with General Cathcart.

At the American Citadel R&D offsite complex in Idaho, Crace opted to remain in civvies. She knew she fooled no one, but it seemed a prudent precaution. Today she wore corduroy trousers and boots and a light T-shirt under a summer-weight blazer. She could actually
feel
the absence of a holster and the weight of a .45 on her hip.

She stepped into the observation lounge at almost exactly midnight. It was 8:00
A.M.
in Italy.

She entered the underground observation lounge to find Todd Brevidge already there.

“Status?”

The PA system was active, so Bryan Snow and the pilots in the control room could communicate with the observers.

Brevidge looked like a guy trying desperately to control his bowels while looking calm. “Hi. We're getting into—”

Colonel Crace spoke louder. “Mr. Snow?”

Over the PA, Bryan Snow said, “We're moving the truck out of Florence. It's heading west, on an intercept for Gibron.”

Brevidge opened his mouth to speak and Crace rode over him. “Time to intercept?”

Snow said, “The Away Team said they're hitting surprising traffic on the A21.”

Crace closed her eyes.
Damn it. If I'd wanted traffic and weather …
She said, “Can I get a map?”

A few seconds later one of the screens that made up the full wall of the observation lounge popped to life. It showed much of northern Italy, stretching from Florence in the south, France in the west, the Alps to the north, and the Adriatic Sea in the east. Near the top of the map was a highway marked A21, which stretched along the route described by the northwest wedge of Italy and the southeast wedge of France. Between which was a serious mountain range.

Crace said, “That's a lot of territory.”

Brevidge chortled. “It would be for a team of soldiers on the ground. Even for an armored platoon. But that's the beauty of Mercutio and Hotspur.”

The colonel turned to him.

“If this chick is out there, then we can find her. She can't use any telephonic communication, because we can monitor all of them, landlines and cells. She can't pass any CCTV cameras, and European cities are busting out of their seams with closed circuit. She's traveling by highway, right? We control the airspace above the highways!”

Crace was impressed. The lethal reach and firepower of the micro air vehicles was becoming clearer. She was starting to be glad this Gibron woman was giving them a run for their money. She and Major Arcana might be the exact targets they needed to convince the brass to pour black-budget money into this tech.

She started brainstorming problems, looking for the weaknesses.

“What if Gibron gets around too many phones? Can't she max out the Mercutio's capacity to monitor comms?”

Before Brevidge could answer the godlike voice of Bryan Snow rained down from the ceiling-mounted PA system. “Negative, Colonel. We know how many cell towers there are in any given metropolitan area. And we've written an algorithm to monitor the traffic in the towers. Landlines are easier, of course. We actually just bribed phone company personnel rather than using technology to make sure we secure all those calls.”

Crace nodded, as if Snow and the two in-house pilots could see her. “Outstanding. So she can't fool us by hiding among too many cell phones.”

“Correct,” Brevidge preened a bit. “She'd have to storm … I don't know, New York's Thanksgiving Day Parade or something. Otherwise, her ass is ours.”

Turin, Italy

Paco Montoya took the steps two at a time down to the hotel exercise facility. He wore a scowl as thick as his mustache. He expected to find the youngest member of Team Tarantola warming up on a treadmill. At least, he was supposed to be on the treadmill. And if that idiot Docetti wasn't where he was supposed to be, then God help him.

Fortunately, he was. Gianni Docetti jogged methodically, wearing gym shorts and cross-trainers. He wore a black elastic headband to keep his long, wavy, sun-bleached hair out of his eyes. Like the rest of Team Tarantola, Docetti was long and lean, his legs much more finely defined than his upper body.

“Docetti!” the team manager bellowed.

The youngster stopped jogging and grinned. “Skipper! Feeling good. I got—”

“There's a girl.” Paco Montoya jabbed a thumb in the direction he'd come. “Up in lobby. I tell her you not available. She insist. She very insistent.”

Docetti let a smug smile alter the planes of his face. “She pretty, skipper?”

But Paco Montoya didn't find his enfant terrible all that charming. “Get your ass upstairs. Sign her autograph, get your photo taken. Whatever. But…!” He stabbed a stiff finger in the younger man's face. “No sex! You understand?”

Docetti said, “Sure, sure. I understand.” He smiled warmly. One of the things he loved about Team Tarantola was how the skipper pretended not to like him. Docetti found it endearing.

*   *   *

Downstairs, Gianni Docetti pulled on a T-shirt with the team's colors and whisked off the headband. His thighs were sculpted like a Greek statue, and he loved the effect they had on people, so he didn't bother with sweatpants. He jogged easily up the stairs, feeling energized.