The trip was uneventful, though plenty of people had been stealing furtive glances at Younes. It was the curse of being a young Arab male in the wake of an Islamic terror attack. Tursunov was confident that ISIS would have already claimed credit for what had happened in Paris.
During the hour between trains in Milan, he kept a distant eye on the young chemist. Once again, he didn’t detect any surveillance.
He wasn’t surprised. Not only did the French authorities not have the resources to follow him all the way to Nice and then on to the border with Italy, the Italians had no actionable reason to take interest in him.
Boarding the new train, they found their seats. The Tajik hadn’t seen anyone that gave him any cause for concern. Nevertheless, he continued to scan for any hint of trouble.
At precisely four o’clock, the high-speed Alta Velocità train exited the central Milan station. The trip to Rome’s Termini station would take just under three hours. Then, provided Antonio Vottari had delivered his merchandise, the final step of the operation would begin.
Allah willing, it would be the biggest attack the world had ever seen.
CHAPTER 67
An Augusta AW109 transported Harvath and his team from Palermo back to Sigonella Air Base.
They stayed only long enough to pick up their gear and for Harvath to stop in the hospital to wish Haney and Gage a safe trip back to the United States. As soon as that was done, they climbed back on board and took off.
Argento and one of his lieutenants were with them. The rest of his men had been divided. Half had stayed at the safe house to watch over Ragusa, Naya, and the two bodyguards. The other half had flown on ahead to a different safe house in Calabria.
“We can make one, maybe two passes of La Formícula’s house, depending on our altitude,” Argento said over his headset. “Anything more than that and he’s going to know something is wrong.”
Harvath flashed him the thumbs-up. “If we can get it in one, let’s do it that way.”
The Italian nodded and said something to his lieutenant, who was seated next to the window with a large digital SLR camera. On the opposite side, Morrison also had a camera. Lovett sat next to Harvath with a map, Barton had his eyes closed, and Staelin was reading a new book.
Harvath looked at the title—The Obstacle Is the Way by an author named Holiday. Tapping it, he asked, “What’s this one about?”
“It’s about two hundred pages,” the Delta Force operative replied.
Harvath just shook his head.
Staelin looked up and smiled. “Stoicism,” he explained. “Turning obstacles into opportunities.”
“Any good?”
“I don’t know. My biggest obstacle right now is that my boss keeps asking me questions and won’t let me read it.”
Argento translated for his lieutenant and they both laughed.
Harvath shook his head once more and turned to look out the window.
The pilots raced up the Sicilian coastline, past the dramatic edifice of Mount Etna — the tallest active volcano in Europe — and crossed over the Strait of Messina to Calabria at the toe of Italy.
It was little moments like these that Harvath tried to savor. He hadn’t gotten much sleep and probably should have had his eyes closed like Barton, but it wasn’t every day you got a ride like this.
He could only imagine what it would have cost to privately hire a helicopter for this kind of tour. For the first time in a while, he thought of Lara. She would have loved it. He also thought about Reed Carlton. He would have loved it too.
In fact, the flight reminded Harvath of a story he used to tell. It was about Sicily and the CIA’s precursor, the OSS, and drew a stark contrast between the two.
The story centered on Max Corvo, an Italian immigrant to the United States who joined the Army in 1942. Corvo had excellent ideas on how to defeat the Axis Powers in Italy, but it looked as if he was going to end up being a Quartermaster and not see any action. Instead of being quiet, Corvo wrote up his plan for intelligence gathering and covert operations in Italy.
The young private quickly came to the attention of the OSS, who gave him a command position in its Italian section. He was dispatched to North Africa to prepare for the invasion of Sicily. But when Corvo arrived, he found next to no resources. Undeterred, he begged, borrowed, or stole whatever he could get his hands on that would make the invasion a success.
Within a month of arriving in North Africa, he had recruited his own boat squadron and had planned, trained, staffed, equipped, and executed the first covert OSS operation to the highly dangerous, Gestapo-infested island of Sardinia.
There, the OSS linked up with partisan and pro-Allied forces and began to lay the groundwork for an organized resistance that would be critical in the taking of Italy.
What the Old Man loved about the story was not only the risk-taking, but the win-at-all-cost mentality. The OSS fostered creativity and bravery. To them, no mission was impossible. The organization stood behind you, it didn’t get in your way. What they cared about most were results.
They had one mantra, and it came straight from the founder of the OSS, Wild Bill Donovan. If you fall, fall forward.
If the CIA bureaucracy were to have a mantra today, it could very well be, Don’t fall. Or better yet, Don’t do anything that might result in a fall.
That wasn’t the Old Man’s style. And it certainly wasn’t Harvath’s. For both of them, success was the only option.
As a SEAL, Harvath had had it drilled into him that the only easy day was yesterday. He had been trained to expect things to get worse and when they did, to persevere. No matter what happened, you were never out of the fight. No matter what happened, you never quit. You always found a way to successfully complete the mission.
It was a philosophy that called for quick and sometimes unorthodox thinking. It required dedication and a willingness to do whatever it took.
In air-conditioned offices across Washington, it was a mindset and steadfast determination most politicians and bureaucrats couldn’t understand. It was one of the biggest reasons the country was in the position it was.
Fortunately, there were just enough people in D.C. who did understand. The question, though, was whether there was enough time to still pull things together.
As the helicopter banked and headed north, the pilot radioed that they were five minutes out from Vottari’s.
Argento told his lieutenant and Morrison to get their cameras ready. They were going to want to take as many pictures as they could during the flyby. He wasn’t feeling very comfortable about the possibility of a second pass. The clouds were going to require them to fly lower than he would have liked.
Harvath watched as the landscape sped by beneath the helicopter. Vottari lived outside a small rural town in the foothills of the Aspromonte mountain range called Oppido Mamertina.
According to Lovett, the older members of N’drangheta tried to stay under the radar. They didn’t flash their massive wealth. They tried to blend in. The newer generation, Mafiosi like Vottari, were the opposite. They drove flashy cars, wore expensive clothes, and lived in big houses.
The older members blamed the change on television and social media. Everybody wanted to be a celebrity. Everyone wanted to flaunt what he had. They swore it would be the younger generation’s undoing. They warned them to tone it down, but very few listened.
The one area in which the younger generation respected tradition was in where they lived. They didn’t run off and move to big cities. They stayed local, often residing in the same towns or villages where they had grown up. The result was that the flashy ones stood out like sore thumbs.