“Helluva mess at the Coliseum and the Campo dei Fiori. Someone trying to kill the tourist trade in Rome?” Rabinowich observed.
“Anybody say anything?” Scorpion asked over the echoes of people going by in the train station.
“Not a word from our Italian friend. He sees it like you do with respect to our C and B amigos. You two getting married?” Rabinowich joked, indicating that Moretti hadn’t spoken to anyone in the AISE or to the DIA or the Italian polizia about Scorpion’s possible involvement in the death of the bus driver or the explosion in Campo dei Fiori, which the Italian police were saying on TV was caused by a faulty gas line in the old building.
“First I’d have to divorce you.”
“No Hearing Aid?” Rabinowich was asking whether Hearing Aid got away. When Scorpion didn’t answer, he added, “Do you know moo?” asking Scorpion if he had an idea about how the Palestinian planned to do it, his method of operation.
“I think so,” Scorpion said, his voice barely audible over the sound of a train coming into the station.
“But you’re not sharing with any of our friends?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Because it’s like horseshoes. He only has to get close. So it has to be you.”
“You shouldn’t always be the smartest kid in the class, amigo. You’ll never get promoted,” Scorpion said, and ended the call. The good thing was that, at least for now, Rabinowich was on the same page: the Italians and the DIA couldn’t stop the Palestinian. Moretti hadn’t said anything about what happened at the Coliseum and the Campo dei Fiori for the same reason. As Rabinowich had pointed out, the Palestinian only needed to get close; if it started going south, he could detonate at any time. Scorpion was the only one who knew what Hassani looked like and what his plan was. He was the only one with a chance of stopping him.
He watched the demonstrators through the binoculars and on the TV monitors on the camera stand. People began to surge forward and fists and rocks were thrown at a number of the police barriers. There was a breach at a barrier on the Via Voltumo and a platoon of riot police with shields moved forward, clubs extended like the swords of Roman legionnaires. He watched on one of the monitors as a reporter from France 3 News shouted rapidly into his microphone as the demonstrators began throwing things at police at the Via Umbria barrier. Someone from the crowd tossed a Molotov cocktail in a high perfect arc that crashed against a police car, and the car burst into flames. More rocks and Molotov cocktails were thrown and things began to get out of control. A woman screamed and people were trampled as some demonstrators surged toward the polizia, while others tried to fall back. A troop of helmeted Carabinieri moved toward the demonstrators, pushing them back, marching over people who had fallen in the streets.
Scorpion focused his binoculars on the barrier on the Via Quintino Sella. The polizia were being swarmed as they tried to push the crowd back, and suddenly he saw what he had been looking for without knowing exactly what it would be until he saw it. A dark blue Mercedes UniMOG truck with the red stripe and insignia of the Carabinieri approached the barrier, and he knew, with a certainty he couldn’t explain, that it was the Palestinian. That’s how he had planned to do it, with a Carabinieri truck. That’s why he’d risked everything to ensure that there would be violent demonstrations.
The polizia moved the metal barrier aside and waved the UniMOG through. Scorpion watched it make its way toward the front of the palazzo. It pulled into the parking area right next to the building, where it had no need to be for riot control purposes. He caught a glimpse through the binoculars of the Palestinian’s face. He was sitting next to the driver, dressed as a Carabinieri officer, and a moment later Scorpion had ripped off the binoculars and was down from the platform, sprinting toward the UniMOG before it came to a stop.
He came at it from the street side as two men in Carabinieri uniforms got out of the back of the UniMOG. He was running hard, less than thirty meters away, Harris’s SIG Sauer in his hand, when one of the two spotted him. As the man started to unsling his Beretta assault rifle, Scorpion dropped to one knee and fired, hitting him in the chest. The second man turned, his rifle coming up toward Scorpion when he was dropped-by what, it wasn’t clear, till the sound of the shot echoed and Scorpion saw that he had been hit in the top of the head. It was one of the sharpshooters on the roof, who must have spotted his red armband and understood what was happening. The driver of the UniMOG, looking Moroccan despite his peaked Carabinieri cap, turned toward Scorpion, who fired three shots in quick succession through the UniMOG door and window, killing him.
Scorpion could hear screaming and people running. Someone on a police loudspeaker shouted, “Non si muova! Posi la pistola!” Don’t move! Put down the gun! He couldn’t see the Palestinian, who had gotten out of the truck on the other side, and then he saw him running toward the building entrance. Hassani’s Carabinieri cap had fallen off and he was frantically opening his cell phone. The cell phone trigger would kill them all, Scorpion’s mind screamed.
Stopping in a two-hand stance, Scorpion barely had time to aim and fire at Hassani, who was leaping to the side. The shot missed, but another shot that came from the roof ricocheted off the pavement within an inch of Hassani’s foot. Hassani looked up, suddenly aware of the sharpshooters. He dodged under a window balcony overhang that screened him from above, but as he did so, crashed into an elderly diplomat, who cried out as he was slammed against an aide who had been guiding him to the entrance. The contact jarred Hassani, who dropped his cell phone. Scorpion dove for it as Hassani bent to pick it up and grabbed it.
He and Scorpion collided, and Hassani smashed at Scorpion’s face with his forearm. Scorpion parried and grabbed Hassani’s arm, his leg going under the arm, the two of them grappling desperately. Scorpion completed a Brazilian arm bar by putting his other leg around Hassani’s neck and pressing down with both legs to try to dislocate the parried arm’s elbow. Hassani screamed and let go of the cell phone. Scorpion had to release the arm bar to grope for the cell phone, managed to grab it just as Hassani smashed Scorpion’s head against the ground with his free hand, momentarily stunning him. Before Scorpion could respond, Hassani was up, quick as a cat, and running toward the entrance, staying close to the building so he was screened from the sharpshooters above. A polizia guard by the entrance was fumbling at his holster for his gun. Hassani shot him and ran into the palazzo.
Scorpion got up from the ground, the cell phone in his hand, more than twenty polizia running toward him and pulling their guns, since so far as they could see he had attacked a carabiniere. He had to make an instantaneous decision: disarm the bomb in the UniMOG or go after Hassani. The main threat was the bomb, but what if Hassani had another cell phone and could dial it in before he could deal with the polizia and disarm the bomb?
“Arresto! Non si muova!” one of the polizia shouted at him, snapping into a shooting position.
“E una bomba nel camion!” There’s a bomb in the truck, Scorpion shouted over his shoulder as he ducked and ran into the palazzo.
He entered into a long neo-Renaissance style hallway with an ornate marble stairway. The hallway and stairs were empty, though he could hear people shouting. Hassani was nowhere to be seen. Then he heard the shots on the second floor and ran for the stairway. He was halfway up the stairs when the polizia came in and started shooting at him, the bullets chipping pieces of marble from the stairs. Still running, Scorpion held up his badge toward them and yelled at the top of his lungs: “Sono Americano; Agenzia della Difesa!”
He raced along the second floor hallway. There was a body lying near a door, then a woman’s scream and shots farther down the hall. He ran toward the sound of shooting. He dove into a large conference room with a roll, snapping into a kneeling position firing stance as a shot cut through the air above him where he would have been had he come running in. The room was filled with delegates and aides standing in a frightened group at the side of a big mahogany conference table. Hassani was in a firing stance, his gun aimed at Scorpion, whose 9mm was aimed directly at Hassani. It was a Mexican standoff.
“Get out or I’ll start killing them,” Hassani said in English.
“Elif air ab tizak, Bassam,” Scorpion said, letting him know he knew his name and using the classic Arabic curse involving what a thousand penises would do to him. Then he dove to the side as he fired. Hassani moved at the same instant, the bullet missing him as he grabbed a blond woman and fired back, the bullet ripping through the table next to Scorpion.
There were sounds of automatic firing in the hallway, presumably from the polizia. Hassani shot a man standing near a doorway to another room and ran through it, pulling the blonde with him by her hair. Scorpion raced after him, but Hassani, beside the door, tripped him as he ran through the doorway, sending him flying. Scorpion’s hand banged against a chair, knocking the gun out of his hand. The blonde woman tried to pull away. Hassani shot her, then whirled to point the gun at Scorpion, who parried it with the back of his hand, going into the Krav Maga move, twisting Hassani’s wrist to take the gun away. Hassani countered with a Sambo counterwrist move combined with the start of a leg sweep to take Scorpion down, which Scorpion countered with a pullback heel kick to
