TWENTY-NINE


BORDER OF EMILIA-ROMAGNA AND VENETO

NORTHEASTERN ITALY

SATURDAY AFTERNOON

The A13 ran straight and true between Bologna and Ferrara and behind the wheel of his Lamborghini Murciélago Roadster, Michele Pagani took advantage of that to quickly cover the kilometers. In the passenger seat, Kara sulked at the unfairness of it all. After her run-in with the Carabinieri, Michele "grounded" her driving privileges for two weeks, and yet here he was blitzing along at well over the posted limit.

What truly annoyed her was a Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4 of the Polizia Stradale had pulled up as they approached Florence. She'd privately smiled at the thought of him getting an even larger fine than herself, but Michele had merely pulled out his wallet and flashed something to the officer, who then not only immediately apologized for delaying him, but said he'd radio ahead to ensure he was not stopped by any other law enforcement teams working the A1 or A13.

They exited the A13 at the Boara on-ramp, which dumped them onto SS16, which they followed south to SR443, taking that road east through a succession of housing developments, farmland, and industrial parks to the commune of Adria. They switched to SR516 and drove southeast and then backtracked west across the Adige River, parking in an alley behind an apartment complex across the main street running in front of the shipyard.

"Call Vesper," Michele stated and the Lamborghini's audio system started dialing.

"About time," Monty Blacker's voice emerged from the car's speakers.

"We're in position," Michele noted.

"Understood; switch to the DRs; Alpha Echo," Monty instructed.

Michele pushed the button to open the luggage compartment and he and Kara exited the car. Michele removed a small case that held two digital radios and headsets. Both set the channel to 15 (Alpha Echo referred to the letters A and E, which were the first and fifth letters of the Roman alphabet). Operating on the TETRA system used by EU government, emergency, transport and military services, these radios also employed end-to-end encryption in addition to the standard air-interface encryption schema, as the Agency could not be sure that Dante did not have the ability to monitor the TETRA bands.

Kara removed another case, which held two FN Five_seveN pistols and extra magazines. She racked the slide on her own and verified it was ready to fire, placing it into a custom holster which she then slipped into her jeans behind her back, covering it with a black wool turtleneck sweater. Michele armed his weapon, placing his in a shoulder holster, which he concealed under a heavy leather jacket. Each put the radio in their left front pants pocket and connected the headsets.

"This is Monza. Comm check," Michele stated.

"Suzuka, check," Kara stated.

"Magny-Cours, check," Monty stated.

"Silverstone, check," Jethro stated.

"How do we want to play this?" Michele asked.

"I'd like to send Monty in to perform some reconnaissance, with Kara in a position to support her if she runs into non-friendlies," Jethro offered.

Michele looked to Kara, who nodded her acceptance.

"Concurred," Michele stated.


On the other side of the shipbuilding complex, Monty pulled on a pair of tan and black two-tone driving gloves and ensured the laces of her black Dunlop Volleys were done up before donning a black flat cap. She wore what Jethro referred to as her "cat burglar outfit", designed for freedom of movement. As a practitioner of the French discipline of l'art du déplacement or parkour, Monty leveraged her innate skill with her cyborg enhancements to chart the most direct path through her surrounding environment.

"You were a little brusque with Michele, don't you think?" Jethro asked.

"Hey, they weren't woken up at oh-dark-thirty by Jean Croce and ordered to abandon their current mission to drive 400 kilometers to watch some tramp steamer docked at an abandoned shipyard," Monty snapped.

Jethro turned and busied himself in the back of the Audi and Monty immediately felt bad about taking her frustrations out on her partner. She took a moment to examine the color print of an overhead satellite shot of the shipyard, committing the location of the main buildings to memory.

"Stay safe," Jethro ordered and Monty replied with a sly smile before exiting the Audi where Jethro had parked it along the river's edge on a road beside a copse of trees behind some commercial buildings. She jogged along the road back towards the shipyard, vaulting up and over the chain-link fence surrounding the perimeter of the dockyard. She landed on the balls of her feet and yard, staying low along the brush along the riverbank as she transited the distance between the fence and the primary warehouse. When she arrived at the first building, Monty placed an ear against the corrugated galvanized iron wall and listened, but heard nothing.

Monty crossed to that adjacent building and listened, again hearing nothing. She made her way along the western end to the next building and sensed a faint pulsing high-frequency sound reverberating through the thin steel. A collection of pallets, used machines, raw materials, and other detritus were scattered between the two buildings and Monty clambered up these until she was level with a set of windows built into the upper part of each structure to allow natural light to assist illuminating the interior.

The windows were filthy, but not to the point of opaqueness. Monty looked inside the building where she'd heard noise and saw an electric forklift moving pallets stacked with crates. As it backed up, an audio alert emanated from the vehicle and Monty identified this as the sound she heard. She identified a number of men in military uniforms walking around, along with some people in civilian attire. All were working on the other end of the structure, so Monty heaved her body onto the roof and started across.

She found an air duct and removed the top, though the old steel protested with squeals and groans. When a fusillade of bullets did not crash through the roof around her, Monty leaned her body in and extended her arm with her iPhone on the end. She swept it around, snapping pictures, cursing the artificial shutter sound the device made with each press of the touchscreen. Complete, Monty pulled herself back and continued forward to the eastern edge, where she snapped more pictures of the two trucks and the ship.

On the floor below, as the forklift drove by one of the uniformed men, sunlight flashed off the polished hydraulic rams, temporarily blinding him. Cursing, he blinked his eyes furiously and then noted a spot of light on the floor. He looked up and saw blue sky through a hole that he'd not recalled seeing there earlier. He stepped outside and looked up…

…directly into the face of Monty, who'd chosen that moment to look down.

The man shouted a warning and yanked a pistol from the holster on his hip, firing up at the roof. Monty heard his yell and saw his movement and she somersaulted back, hearing the impact of the small-caliber rounds on the overhang she'd just been standing on.

Monty raced across the roof, making a flying leap to the adjoining building and continued in the opposite direction of her infiltration point.


As Kara approached a corner of the building farthest to the south of the complex, she heard the hard stomp of combat boots on asphalt and skidded to a halt, pressing herself against the wall. She counted off the approach based on the rising intensity of the sound. When she calculated the target was about to round the corner, she stabbed out with her left foot.

The mercenary's line of sight was already past the edge of the building when Kara attacked and therefore his first registration of being tripped involved a mix of pain in his shins and his sense of balance failing as he pitched forward and belly-flopped onto the ground, his momentum carrying him forward over three meters. His stunned senses were unable to re-orient themselves before Kara disconnected them by slamming the sole of her sneaker on the back of his neck, shattering the vertebra and rupturing the nerve bundles and blood vessels.

Kara leaned closer when she saw the large revolver jutting out of his holster. She released the catch and withdrew the weapon, quickly identifying it as a Smith & Wesson Model 500, designed to fire .500 S&W Magnum cartridges. She stuffed the revolver back into the holster, grabbed the mercenary by his belt and carried him back to a rusted industrial refuse container, his head bouncing like one of the bobble-headed dolls she'd seen at A.C. Milan games.

Kara heaved open the top of the container and pitched the corpse into it and then returned to secure his rifle, identifying it as a Heckler & Koch G3KA4, designed to fire the heavier 7.62x51mm NATO round. She tossed it in after its dead user and continued her extraction.


Unbeknownst to either, Kara and Monty passed each other at the middle structure, Monty rushing across the roof and Kara creeping along the ground. Both cyborgs could hear raised voices and knew the compound was coming alive with security forces. Kara, pistol in hand, peeked around the corner, only to be seen by one member of a group of three. She raised her Five_seveN and let off a group of four shots, causing the men to scatter.

Kara sprinted for the fence, not bothering trying to climb it, instead performing a forward somersault to land on a large steel tank nearby, compressing her legs on touchdown to launch herself over the fence. She landed on her feet and scrambled across the road, disappearing into the low brush on the other side.


As he waited, Michele fidgeted. Monty and Kara were both maintaining radio silence and neither handler felt like pestering them for information while they extricated themselves.

A shadow passed over him from behind and he would have jumped out of his seat if not for the three-point restraint and steering wheel as Monty somersaulted over the back of the Lamborghini and somehow positioned her feet perfectly to land in the passenger foot well as she used her hands on the top of the windshield to help brake her momentum and gracefully slip down into the seat.

"Where the hell did you come from?" Michele asked, too stunned to offer one of his usual pithy comments.

"Thought I'd drop in and see if you were free for a drink," Monty replied. "The skipper picked up Kara," she added as she reached behind her for her seatbelt. Once secured, she keyed the radio.

"Silverstone, this is Magny-Cours with Monza. We're in transit to

Lascaux."

"Acknowledged."

"Lascaux?" Michele exclaimed as he pulled out and started driving away, his thoughts on the famous caves of prehistoric human art in Southwestern France.

"More code," Monty said. Owned by Audi, Lamborghini used the same navigation system and Monty quickly programmed in the commune of Villadose, halfway between Adria and Rovigo.

"What did you see?" Michele asked as he followed the on-screen directions towards SR443.

"Trouble," Monty replied, cryptically.


Michele pulled in behind Jethro's Allroad at a public park northwest of the city. Jethro and Kara walked up to the Lamborghini and Monty started her debrief.

"I saw at least a dozen men dressed in combat uniforms and none of them looked Italian. They were guarding multiple pallets of what I'm guessing were weapons and other military items. I snapped some pictures on my phone."

Monty handed her iPhone to Jethro, who started examining them.

"There were civilians in there as well," she added.

"Seems like a lot of gear for a single terrorist operation," Jethro noted. "I think we might have stumbled on a run-of-the-mill weapons smuggling operation. The Albanians have been pretty active in this area."

He stopped at one and held the phone up to Michele, who saw a picture of a pallet stacked with long wooden crates stamped 'Barrett Firearms Manufacturing'."

"Shit," Michele cursed.

"What?" Kara asked.

"Five hundred Euro says those are anti-material rifles. Probably the M82 since everybody and their mother uses it, which means it should be easy to get on the black arms market if you can afford the price. A 12.7x99mm NATO round may not pack the punch of the 20x82mm round that tore Beatrice in half, but it will still easily defeat the armor of any of you girls within half a kilometer."

"That's not proof it's Dante," Jethro noted, though his own skepticism started to fade.

"No, but somehow Dante knows about the girls. Venice was proof of that. So it makes sense he is arming himself appropriately."

"Well they're going to be on the alert now," Kara noted, a bit sheepishly, the other three thought.

"What did you do?" Michele asked.

"Well I killed one of them and shot at another three," she said after taking a deep breath.

"Great," Monty said with venom.

"Hey, you were the reason they were chasing us to begin with," Kara shot back.

"Yes, but maybe they would have dismissed me as some curious teenager. Now they know cyborgs are in the area, so they're going to be on full alert," Monty retorted.

Jethro put a restraining hand on his cyborg.

"I'm going to contact Croce and get instructions," he said. He motioned for Monty to follow him and the two walked out of easy earshot.

"I'm sorry, Michele. I really fucked things up, didn't I?"

"First, language; second, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. I'd rather have you safe and our cover blown than you wounded."

Kara smiled wanly. She looked up to the senior cyborgs like Monty, and she knew her performance had not left a good impression.

"Croce is mustering the troops," Jethro reported. "Whoever it is, a weapons cache this large is something he feels we can't allow to be distributed. We've been ordered to remote observe the facility so they don't escape by boat or truck."

Kara pulled her iPad out from behind the driver's seat of the Lamborghini and called up an overhead map of the area.

"Batsu," she cursed. To the south of the shipyard, the Via Leonardo da Vinci crossed the south fork of the river, but the surrounding area was open field with absolutely no cover. It was much the same to the north, where the north fork was pinched down and crossed by a narrow bridge with an open field.

After examining the map, Jethro offered his suggestions.

"Your car really stands out, Pagani, so I think you should park in the open area west near the Via Chieppara. That will put you out of sight of the shipyard, and give you a view of where the Via Leonardo da Vinci crosses the river. I'd recommend having Kara set up shop with Monty's field glasses near this building, where the Località Amolara crosses the river. From there she'll be able to see the ship at the docks as well as any loading or unloading operations. I'm going to put Monty on the roof of that apartment complex across from the front gate and I'm going to position myself up the Località Amolara where I can watch them if they cross either at the chokepoint or the Via Leonardo da Vinci."

"That pretty much boxes them in," Michele concurred. "Any idea when the cavalry will arrive?"

"They said not to expect them much before dawn. Hilshire is on his way back from Naples and de Luca tripped down a flight of stairs and broke his damned ankle, so they're temporarily pairing Giada up with Marco. It's going to be a cold night of staking out, I'm afraid," Jethro said.

"Lovely," Kara stated.