“You’re in Sicily?” she asked, her voice a little louder than she wanted.
“Yes. We came here today from Malta. Anyway, this Zendo was ordered to go to Syracuse to find the American professor and this man named Adams.”
They had discussed Jake Adams in the past, but Elisa had been cryptic with her knowledge of the man.
When Elisa didn’t say anything right away, the woman asked, “Are you in Siracusa?”
“Yes. But how did Petros Caras find that out?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “and it’s not like I can ask the man. He thinks I don’t speak or understand Greek. Should I get off the yacht?”
Her contact sounded scared and desperate — two characteristics Elisa had not seen in her before. “Anything else?”
“Petros said not to harm the American professor, but that Zendo can do anything he wants with Adams.” She paused. “And you. They’re going to kill him.”
“They can try,” Elisa said.
“You don’t understand. It’s not just the Greeks now. They have hired the Sicilian Mafia to help them. And they might already be there. The Greeks will be there in the morning. Someone’s coming.”
The line went blank and Elisa just stared at her phone now. She wasn’t normally concerned with the Mafia. At least not in northern Italy. But those in Calabria and Sicily could be quite brutal. Could she tell Jake? Warn him? If so, how would she explain how she knew this?
17
Somehow Jake had been able to fall asleep, but he didn’t stay that way for long. He woke up a number of times. Got up for a drink of water and to relieve himself.
It was one of these times when he thought he heard a noise outside his door. Perhaps it was Elisa coming back for round three, he thought. But something didn’t seem right. The hair on the back of his neck caught the breeze from the ceiling fan and sent a chill down his back.
He picked up the gun on the nightstand and quietly peered out the peep hole. All he could see was darkness. Damn it! He dove to the floor just as a bullet smashed through the peep.
Scurrying to the end of the bed, the door crashed in followed by three flashes.
Jake shot twice, the report of his 9mm breaking the silence, and he rolled to his right.
More flashes with bullets hitting the floor where he’d just been.
Then he heard another crash and he realized the intruders were going into the room across the hall. Raising his gun up over the bed, two more shots came his way. He was pinned down. Nowhere to go.
Two loud shots broke through the night air and the familiar sound of a man hitting the ground a second later. Followed by yelling in Italian. A man and a woman. Elisa.
Jake rushed to his feet and to the edge of the door. As he aimed his gun out, he saw Elisa across the hall crouched only in her undergarments, her gun trained in his direction. She pointed toward the staircase to his left. A man lay on the floor outside his door, so Jake dove out behind the man and aimed his gun down toward the staircase.
Nothing. The other one had gotten away.
Checking the man’s pulse, Jake shook his head at Elisa. He was gone.
“You all right?” Jake asked her.
She simply nodded.
“And Sara?”
“Still out cold.”
“Let’s go. Get dressed and gather your stuff. We can’t explain this to the local Polizia.”
Within less than a minute they had gotten back into their clothes and rounded up their backpacks. Jake hoisted Sara Halsey Jones over his shoulder, thankful the woman was petite. They hurried downstairs, Elisa leading the way in case the other man was waiting downstairs for them. At the bottom of the staircase was the old man who ran the pension, his stomach and chest bloody from knife wounds.
Just as they got through the patron entrance, a car cruised by on the street out front. Jake grabbed Elisa by her collar and yanked her to the ground as the bullets flew from the front passenger window. They rolled onto the pavement unable to shoot back as the car squealed its tires and rushed off around the corner.
Jake checked over the two women on the ground. “Are you all right, Elisa?”
She brushed herself off and got up. “Yeah. How is she?”
“She’s fine. She landed on me.”
He got up and was able to lift the professor back over his shoulder with ease.
Sirens sounded in the distance and Jake knew they had just moments to get the hell out of there. But they had no car. There was only one way to go and that was back through the narrow streets of the old town of Siracusa — streets that dated back a few hundred years before Christ. As the sirens got closer to their former residence, Jake could hear the cars a few blocks away. They were swiftly putting distance between the Polizia responding to the shooting and their escape. But he couldn’t carry this woman all over the city. Someone would notice them and conclude something wasn’t right.
When they came across a small, dark park, they sat onto a bench to rest, Jake taking the time to slap the professor a few times across the face to try to wake her.
“Christ, how much did you give her?” Jake asked.
“Not that much,” Elisa said, concerned.
“We’ve gotta keep moving, but we really stand out with her over my shoulder.”
“What about a taxi? We could say she had too much to drink.”
“No. They might have heard about a shooting. Siracusa is still a pretty small town. Did you get a good look at any of the shooters?”
Elisa shook her head. “Only the one I shot. You?”
“Same here. But I don’t think either of them, three with the driver, were Greek. They looked like local talent.”
“Mafia,” Elisa concluded.
“Great. Now that Greek billionaire has hired the Mafia? We’ll be lucky to get out of Sicily.” Who knew how many the Mafia had killed over the years and either sunk in the waters off the coast or buried somewhere in the surrounding mountains? But at least he understood their motivation. They worked for money and not ideology. He could deal with that. “Watch her. I’ll get us a ride.”
Jake ran off toward a bar at the edge of the park. He went inside and took up a position at the end of the bar. This place resembled a bar in the U.S. more than those found in Sicily. It was dark and the music was provided by a jukebox. At this hour, after midnight, he guessed most of the patrons would be well on their way to forgetting all of their various troubles. He ordered a beer and paid the young bartender when it came. By then he had identified his target — a young man who looked trashed — just a few positions down the bar from him.
He couldn’t wait for the guy to get up and go to the bathroom. Instead, Jake sucked down half his beer and then got up to go there himself, his beer in his right hand. As he got close to the man, he tripped and dumped the beer on the drunk young man. Apologizing profusely, Jake helped the man wipe the beer from the guy’s clothes. Then he gave the man twenty Euros to clean his clothes, and Jake walked out of the bar.
He looked at the keys he’d taken from the drunk and saw they were for a Fiat. He hoped it was nicer than the last one he acquired at the train station. Glancing about the street, Jake saw five potential Fiats. But when he pressed the button on the key only one flashed its lights. Nice, a Punto sedan in aqua blue, not the flashy red. Perhaps he was doing the drunk a favor.
Jake got in and drove around to the other side of the park, where he left the car running as he collected the women. By now Sara Halsey Jones was awake somewhat. Enough to be confused and groggy. They got into the car and Jake drove off toward the outskirts of town. He had no idea how the Polizia would respond to the death of two men, but he had to guess they would set up roadblocks on the autostrada.