Shrouded In Silence

Part One

Night Falls





1

September 1, 2008





Murky shadows spread down the streets of Rome and darkened the narrow lanes winding through ancient thoroughfares. A heavyset man in a trench coat trotted down the steps of La Metropolitana, the metro system, not far from the Fontana di Trevi. When he turned the corner at the bottom of the stairs, the smell of hot pizza offered by a vendor near the metro entrance slowed him, but he didn't stop.

The fountains always attracted a bevy of tourists with cameras flashing like machine guns. They fluttered around the statue of Neptune in his shell-shaped chariot surrounded by a court of seahorses and giant tritons. Cold had already permeated the stone. The stout man walked at a quick clip as if he could distance himself from the chill of the evening. The press of late-night tourists strolling through the quaint streets only helped cover his movements.

A few people milled around the platform, looking indifferent. Leaning against the back wall, oblivious to the crowd, a young man stood locked in an embrace with a black-haired Italian woman. No one looked at them for more than a few seconds.

A rush of air surged out of the murky tunnel and signaled the arrival of the train. The roar of steel wheels clattered against the rails and telegraphed that the speeding vehicle would stop in a matter of moments. Waiting until the last second, the heavyset man jumped into the coach just before the train left the station and settled into a seat at the rear.

At this hour, there weren't many people traveling in his direction—only those who had worked hard all day. The men wore pullover long-sleeved jerseys underneath worn sport coats; tired women in wrinkled dresses paid no attention to him.

A surge of anxiety swept over him when he realized that his hands were sweating. Beads of perspiration popped up on his forehead. Never had he done anything like he planned. His face appeared calm, but his stomach churned. He gnawed at his bottom lip.

All the trains stopped running around 1:30 a.m., but that should give him plenty of time to set up in the tunnel just outside of the termini in the Piazza dei Cinquecento. Without moving his head, his eyes roamed around the car to make sure the police hadn't followed him.

He thought about Rome and how it had pushed the present moment into the tiny cracks left from three thousand years of history. It was a tight fit, particularly when the objective was to destroy a portion of the city. He remembered reading a historian who called Rome a palimpsest: a piece of parchment used again and again with the present day squeezed between the lines or written over the top of the faded original. Yet, the city really wasn't so hard to decipher. Central Rome was contained in only two and a half miles from the Basilica de San Pietro to the termini station as the crow flies, but for three millennia an entire world had been crammed into the small space.

The train suddenly lurched back and forth, jolting his body. Gingerly, he ran his hand down the side of his coat, feeling with a tender touch. Too much was at stake to risk an inadvertent disaster caused by an erratic train.

"Got a match?" a male voice said.

A worn young man in his late twenties appeared in front of him, wearing a black leather jacket. A cigarette dangled out of the corner of his mouth. It was illegal to smoke on the subway, but this wasn't the time for a lecture or an argument with an Elvis retread.

"No," he said flatly and looked the other way.

With the cigarette still hanging from his lips, the youth walked on up the car, but no one else responded affirmatively either.

The train slowed as it pulled into the next station. Signs along the wall read Piazza dei Cinquecento. Doors opened. The few remaining people filed out, leaving him alone at the rear. The crowd started up the steps toward the exit. He allowed them to move along in front of him before darting into a dim corner next to the wall. Reaching through the slit in his trench coat, he cradled the Glock 9mm pistol strapped in a holster on his hip.

The sound of shoes trudging up the cement steps died out, and in a few moments the platform emptied. Jogging on quiet soles, he rushed to the end of the tunnel as soon as the train left. One last glance around the area revealed he was alone. With a quick hop, he leaped from the platform down to the subway floor and hurried into the tunnel. Not ten feet in, the darkness swallowed him.

From rummaging around in the basement of the public archives, he had found the remnants of the plans for the metro system, which revealed that forty feet down this section of track there had been a storage area in the side of the tunnel. The architectural renderings indicated the area to be the size of a small room that would serve his purposes well. Feeling along the wall next to the steel tracks, he found that the plans were correct. Once inside the chamber, he pulled out a flashlight and made a quick inspection of the space. An old pickax stood against a blackened wall. Small hunks of volcanic rock covered the ground and made a slight crunching sound under his feet. With lights still beaming from the station, he could detect the subway tracks well enough to work quickly.

Settling against the brick wall, he unzipped the lining of his trench coat and pulled out the paper-wrapped briquettes that he set in a row in front of him. The plastic explosives should not detonate until the blasting caps were ignited, but he was no expert, and the narrow clay-like bars made him anxious.

In the dim light, he studied the packages of C-4, the same material terrorists used when they attacked the U.S.S. Cole in October 2000 and killed seventeen sailors. In his other pocket, he carried the materials for the detonator that would set off the bomb. Expanding plasma from a small explosion of foil would drive a metal piece called a "slapper" across a gap and a shock would be detonated, exploding the C-4 with a bang about the size of Mount Vesuvius. From what he had learned, it should all go off like clockwork when the next subway coach rolled by in about three hours during the early morning commute.

Lights along the station platform flashed off, plunging the entire area into blackness except for his flashlight. It shouldn't take him long to set the C-4 on the tracks. His hands began to shake, and sweat poured down his face. The detonator mechanism wasn't fragile, but his unsteady hands were a liability. Leaning over the bars of plastic explosive, he took a deep breath and unwrapped the first paper package.

A single, piercing light suddenly appeared on the platform in the darkness, sending a beam down the tunnel. Probably a night watchman, maybe a polizia, making a final check for the evening. The stout man clicked off his flashlight and hugged the wall. His glimmer of light might have been spotted from the terminal platform. If so, he was in trouble. Pulling the Glock from his pocket, he dropped to one knee and aimed at the entrance to the tunnel. If whoever had the flashlight entered, one shot in the man's chest would end the threat, but it might also ruin his plans. He caught his breath and waited. The light bobbed his way, and then it stopped.

"Anybody down there?" a man yelled.

He released the safety, ready to kill.

"Anyone in the tunnel?" the voice called again.

A trickle of sweat ran down the side of the terrorist's corpulent face. Yelling down the tunnel was beyond stupid. The guy must be an idiot. If he had to kill a cop, then he would leave the body in the tunnel and hope the stiff went unnoticed until the bomb went off in a few hours. No one would find him in the debris. If the guy walked into the tunnel, he had signed his death warrant.

The flashlight stopped searching the walls of the tunnel and turned back in the other direction. The bomber started to breathe again.

After the light disappeared, he hurried out on the tracks and quickly assembled his bomb next to the rails. Once the detonators were positioned, he hurried out of the tunnel and climbed back on the arrival platform. His calculations suggested that the explosion might collapse the subway entrance and shut down the entire connection at this terminal. If not, the blast would certainly block the tunnel when it destroyed the front portion of the train. Either way, the blast would make a statement that Rome would never forget.

It wasn't that he hated Rome itself; it was the American presence and their constant interference in European commerce that had to stop. Uncle Sam's long, skinny fingers kept dipping into his business, messing up the ice market, fouling his imports, and screwing up Italian politics. The politico big boys wouldn't listen to someone like him, but a few of these explosions around the city, and they wouldn't need a hearing aid to tune him in. He wanted to sting them so badly that they would think twice before doing any more business with the Yanks. Uncle Sam had already gotten away with way, way too much. Now it was time for the Italians to wake up or go down the toilet in one giant flush.

Grabbing his flashlight and a can of white spray paint from his trench coat pocket, he rushed toward the subway wall. Since this was only a first sting, he'd leave a mark to let the police know they were messing with a poisonous snake that would return and bite again. He made a large sweeping arch on the brick wall with the paint. Quick, bold movements designed a wasp's stinger. Standing back with his flashlight, he assessed his artistic creation waiting in the midst of imminent destruction. This design would be his signature for future projects as well.

Once finished, he jumped back down to the tracks and started walking into the opposite tunnel, which would enable him to exit through a manhole cover several miles away. It should cover his tracks. After all, he had all night to reach his destination.