The jeep really wasn’t ready for the drive. I should have focused on the map before I started the trip, but life got in the way. I had to get across a couple of states and back to my barracks. My unit was deploying.

When I pulled off the highway and into the town streets, I realized quickly that this wasn’t going to be easy. I needed something to keep the truck from overheating. I hoped it wasn’t something more than a hose, a clamp, or simply more coolant. From the looks of the town, I wasn’t sure that they would be able to help on anything more than that.

Long ago, every gas station would have had a mechanic on duty. Today, gas stations are just that – places where you fill your tank, pay your bill and never see a human unless you need to buy something or use a toilet. The truck limped along the two lane blacktop of the town as I looked for someplace more than that.

Rural towns in the US used to be communities. Now, young people leave because they don’t want to be like their parents, working long hours in the field or in the barn, scrimping and saving and then dying with no escape.

It is a downward spiral. First a few leave, then shopkeepers no longer have customers, so they close. Then more leave. Doctors retire and are not replaced. Teachers retire and schools close. This town looked to be in that final stage where there was no one under the age of sixty. The last folks were residents who had nowhere to go and no money to get there.

I found a tin building that looked like it might have been a garage a long time ago. The signs were sand-blasted pale. The gas pumps offered fuel from companies that were long gone. On the side of the building was a sign announcing “ice cold Coca-Cola. 10 cents.” The jeep grumbled as I pulled in front of the building, rattled one last time and just quit.

A man in stained and torn coveralls approached. He fit my expectations – over sixty, missing a few teeth. He had gnarled hands and walked with a limp. He wore a pair of work boots where the leather was worn through so that the steel toes shined in the sun.

“Your truck looks to be in some trouble.”

I was already out of the truck having raised the hood and watched as the steam rose from the engine compartment. I thought about a sarcastic remark, but I needed help and I figured sarcasm wasn’t going to help me or amuse him.

“Yup.”

“That Jeep has seen some miles.”

“Over two hundred thousand and counting. I’m hoping to keep it running. Truth is I don’t have a choice.”

“Well son, let’s see if what we can do.” As he walked up to the Jeep, he noticed my New York State license plates. His look turned sour. “We don’t serve your kind.”

“What kind is that?”

“Yankees.”

“Would it help for you to know I’m a soldier?”

“Not since about 1840.”

“You folks hold a grudge.”

“Yup.”

“Well, if you can help me a bit, I will get out of your town as quick as I can. Otherwise, you will have a Yankee here permanently. This jeep holds everything I own and if it stays here, so will I.”

He turned and walked back toward the shed. “When you put it that way, I guess it’s my civic duty to get you out of town.”

O’Connell and his team worked South along the Apennines harassing small German patrols, killing Italian Fascists who were still trying to exert control over the villages, and generally making themselves an annoyance to anyone not supporting the allied cause. All along the route, Carlo Guido had served as his tran…

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O’Connell walked toward a small mountain hut that now served as their field headquarters. The hut was really nothing more than a wooden extension out of a cave in the mountain rocks. The smell of a small wood-burning stove mixed with damp air reminded him of the Northern Pennsy…

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O’Connell woke at dawn after three hours of restless sleep on a bed of pine needles and dirt. He struggled to get out of his sleeping bag and move from flat on his back, to sitting up and eventually to standing up. He wasn’t certain if it was the jump, the hike or the bed that made every joint ache…

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After waiting for an aircraft, the right weather and the right moonlight, the day finally came for O’Connell’s insertion. OSS “dispatchers” took him to the airfield outside Cairo and linked him up with his plane. The US Army Air Force had a special unit for OSS missions. They called…

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After “volunteering,” O’Connell was sent stateside to attend multiple Office of Strategic Services training schools in the Washington DC Area. After he reported to an undercover training camp, he was told that the training would take four to six months, depending on his skills. Some of the training was based on th…

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The aide knocked on Donovan’s office door. “Sir, there is a guy out here who insists he needs to see you.”

“James, is it the President? Otherwise, I am pretty busy.”

A deep voice from behind the door reached into the office. It sounded like a person who had spent his life shouting. “…

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There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances.

Leon Trotsky

Prologue

12 April 1942 Eastern Mediterranean

It was a simple mission.

Hauptmann Jan Steinmark sat with his three commandos in the rear deck next to a dinghy hanging from the davits of the German Navy trawler. Hundreds of miles to the south and east, Afrika Corps Commander General Erwin Rommel intended to flank the British forces and capture Tobruk. Rommel needed the best possible intelligence on British land, sea and air forces. When German commanders needed intelligence and needed it quickly, they used the commando element of German intelligence known as the Brandenburg Division. Tonight, Steinmark’s team was that element using guile, audacity and a little luck to acquire the intelligence.

The mission required the team to infiltrate by sea to the Palestinian coast on a moonless night. Their goal was to capture codes and, with luck, a prisoner from a British Navy signals station at Jaffa on the Palestinian coast. They would return to the coast 24 hours later to be picked up by a submarine. As the modified fishing trawler sailed silently toward the coast, Steinmark thought about the good fortune that brought him to this mission, far away from the meatgrinder of the Eastern Front.

The Brandeburger’s missions often employed captured British vehicles and uniforms along with clandestine delivery from the sea by boat or submarine. In this case, infiltration was courtesy of another Brandenburger team running a small fleet of craft out of Rhodes. The boats looked like any of the other Greek and Turkish fishing vessels that still worked in the Eastern Mediterranean, but this one was modified to include two large diesel engines cannibalized from a damaged E-boat. That meant the boat was fast. The boat also had the new Seetakt, that used electromagnetic signals to identify ships. Steinmark was an engineer by training, but he barely understood how radio signals could be bounced off objects and deliver an accurate location of the enemy well outside the range of the most powerful Kriegsmarine binoculars. The lieutenant simply said the Seetakt made their job of infiltration and evasion much easier. The boat could deliver a team along the Egyptian and Palestinian coast from their base in Rhodes and disappear into the night.

Before he had time for his reminiscences, the chief petty officer for the boat came down from the pilot house and said, “Ten minutes to station, Sir.” Steinmark nodded and looked at the radium dial of his watch. The lieutenant in charge might look like he still belonged in school, but he had navigated the course perfectly. They should be right on time for their rendezvous on the Palestinian shore.

It wasn’t the first time Steinmark and his three trusted companions had gone behind British lines, but it was the first time they needed a guide. Steinmark knew a guide was a potential source of compromise. Local agents were susceptible to British security services just as the British agents in France or the Soviet agents in Poland were targets of their German counterparts.

“Sir, do you know the guide?” Oberfeldwebel Schmidt’s comment reflected his own concerns.

“Schmidt, I only know what we were told. A local resistance fighter. Tired of living under British rule. He has a reputation for delivering good intelligence.”

“And if he takes us into a trap, he will have seen his last sunrise.”

Steinmark nodded and said, “Exactly so.”

The approach went as planned. In the dead of night, the trawler dropped anchor less than 100 meters from shore and the trawler’s crew dropped the dinghy silently into the water. The four-man team went over the side into a wooden dinghy and two sets of oars quietly slipped into the water as the commandos pulled toward the beach. The men wore the deck uniform of the German submarine fleet: Dark blue wool and black wool knit caps. No insignia revealed their rank or unit. Only their weapons showed German affiliation: Schmeisser machine pistols, “potato masher” hand grenades, a German panzerfaust anti-tank grenade launcher, and a German field pack filled with explosives.

The team left the dinghy on the surf line and walked onto the beach. The row boat would float out to sea with the tide and disappear. After the mission, a German submarine would send in inflatables two miles further down the beach to pick up the team and, with luck, a British prisoner. Steinmark checked his dive watch. 0200hrs local. He was pleased with the precision so far. They were on time and in the right location. All they needed now was to linkup with their Palestinian guide and head to their target.

The spotlight from the British jeep in the ambush position bathed the team in white light.

British Tommies in their distinctive helmets were standing in formation to either side of the light. In the shadow of the light, Steinmark could see the Tommies, their rifles with bayonets attached, standing in parade formation. A megaphone voice called out of the darkness: “All right then, gentlemen. The game is up. Raise your hands.” In that moment, Steinmark thought “They just expect us to surrender as if we were villains caught robbing a bank. As if this was some sort of movie. They are children in this type of war.” If Steinmark had been in charge of the ambush, he would have issued no warning and none of the team would have survived the first ten seconds of gunfire.

Instead, Steinmark made it clear to the Tommies that they were wrong to assume the commandos would surrender. He used the first burst from his machine pistol to shoot out the spotlight. To his right, Oberfeldwebel Schmidt tossed a smoke grenade followed by an anti-personnel grenade in front of the ambushers. To his left, Feldwebel Braunfels tossed a second anti-personnel grenade. Before the second grenade exploded and by the time the Tommies had recovered their night vision, Steinmark and his men were down the beach running for their lives. Schmidt had worked the team hard during rehearsals for actions on contact. His training saved them from initial capture or death. Now it was up to Steinmark’s leadership to evade the Tommies and get off the beach. That wouldn’t be easy.

Schmidt was the consummate professional NCO and had trained them mercilessly, but it was Steinmark who demanded they take the panzerfaust on the mission. Stealth was the Brandenburger trademark and Schmidt couldn’t imagine why they would need an anti-tank weapon. Steinmark was certain that if they had trouble, that trouble would think twice after receiving the killing end of a German anti-tank rocket. He had seen the panicked response of Soviet infantrymen in the Eastern Front when they faced an in-bound rocket headed toward any nearby T34 tank or bunker. Panic was predictable when the anti-tank round exploded in front of you, destroying your night vision. As soon as the team reached the first set of dunes away from their landing site, he instructed Feldwebel Mathias to load and fire the panzerfaust at the jeep. The anti-tank grenade exploded in a flash of white light sending its shaped charge through the engine, into the passenger space and distributing shrapnel everywhere as the round exited near the rear tire.

Even before the round exploded, they retreated for another 100 meters, and reached a dune closer to the water. The trawler had been watching the fight from the sea and had used the E-boat engines to move up the coast and as close to the surf line as they could risk. The team on the boat pulled the canvas from a quad-barreled anti-aircraft gun in the aft deck position and opened up on the British. This was no longer a clandestine encounter; it was now a full-fledged fire fight with the British suddenly facing the greater firepower. Under this new covering fire, the team entered the surf line and started to swim for the boat. Schmidt was hit as he left the beach. Mathias helped his senior NCO swim to their rescue ship.

Steinmark was the last man off the beach. In a final effort to dissuade the remaining pursuers, he set off a small charge that was intended for use when they arrived at their objective. The charge, a mix of plastic explosive and jellied gasoline, was designed to create a highly volatile fire inside the target. Exploding in the open, it threw burning jellied gasoline in all directions. The closest of the British troops were caught in the wall of flame. The charge did one other job. It burned the right side of Steinmark’s face including his right eye.

With the commandos aboard, the trawler retreated into the darkness, spreading a long smoke trail and opening up the two German diesel engines to full throttle. They were out in the open sea before the British troops could call for a Navy patrol boat. By the time they reached Rhodes, Oberfeldwebel Schmidt had died from his wounds and Steinmark had lost the use of his right eye. It was not a proper end to his year in Brandenburg Division but Steinmark had seen enough combat to know the randomness of war. Sometimes the best soldiers died, while the weakest soldiers survived to be hailed as heroes.

Paratrooper

Operation Husky. 09 July 1943

Captain Peter O’Connell looked out of the jump door on the left side of his C47 Dakota heading toward the Sicilian coast. His stick of paratroopers from the third battalion of the 504^th Parachute Infantry Regiment were going to Gela to support the allied invasion of Italy. They were part of a mission of the 82^nd Airborne Division to conduct disruption behind the German lines. The allied commanders hoped the disruption would reduce the German Army’s ability to defend the beaches of Sicily. This was the first US airborne operation in Europe and could mean the difference between success and failure for the invasion force. The sky around them held dozens of aircraft filled with paratroopers and dozens of Dakotas towing gliders with more soldiers and equipment headed to Sicily. It was also O’Connell’s first combat jump and on a personal level he was determined to get his part of it right.

As jumpmaster, it was O’Connell’s responsibility to make sure his paratroopers jumped at the right place and the right time. The pilot and crew chief might turn on the green light to signal it was time to go, but only O’Connell would lead the way. He leaned against the left side of the open cargo door, pushed his head further out into the slipstream, and looked toward the coast. Just forward of the engine, he could see a dozen other Dakotas traveling in what was called a V of Vs. He could also see the coast approaching. The crew chief tapped O’Connell on his right shoulder. He was wearing green coveralls, a leather flight jacket, and a headset linked by a long cable to the cockpit.

He shouted into O’Connell’s ear. “Sir, pilot says one minute.” O’Connell took another look down the length of the fuselage and he could see white surf breaking on the beach. He gave the crew chief a nod and gently pushed him away from the jump door. He wanted no one in the way of his paratroopers as they rushed out the door. During training, O’Connell came to realize that once the green jump light was on, nothing would stop paratroopers from exiting the aircraft. Nothing, including a crew chief who might be too close to the door. If all went well, the seventeen men in his stick would exit the aircraft in less than 15 seconds and would land together in an area the size of a football field. O’Connell knew from training that they would land together only if all went well.

He turned back into the aircraft, raised both hands with his index fingers extended and shouted as loud as he could over the noise of the engines. “One minute!” His paratroopers were already in line, using their right hands to balance against the skin of the aircraft and holding yellow static lines in their left hands. The opposite end of the static line was attached to a cable that ran the length of the aircraft. While they called it a “parachute jump,” the truth was combat loaded paratroopers simply fell out the door when the light turned green. The parachute pack was only part of their load which included weapons, ammunition, some explosives, at least one or two knives, water and rations for at least two days. All told, each paratrooper carried well over 50 pounds of weight in addition to their parachute.

The aircraft made a hard-right bank just as O’Connell was returning to his position at the door. The motion almost tossed him to the opposite side of the aircraft. He caught his balance by grabbing the jump door frame. “Pilots are such jerks,” he thought as he pulled himself back into the viewing position to determine the drop zone. What he saw instead was a wall of tracer rounds coming up from the ships off the coast. The pilots weren’t jerks, they were just trying to dodge the wall of fire coming at the fleet of Dakotas flying the 82^nd Airborne into the battle.

O’Connell shouted into the slipstream to no one in particular. “Shit. The Navy is shooting at us!” He saw the lead aircraft in the first V of Vs formation receive a hit in one of the engines and the fuel tanks in the wing burst into flame. Paratroopers from that aircraft started jumping out. O’Connell could see they were too far from the coast. He understood why they were jumping, but he was certain they would not survive a water landing. With the weight they were carrying and covered by sinking parachute silk, there was scant hope of survival. Still, it was better than staying in a burning aircraft as it tumbled to earth.

He turned back to his stick. “Stand in the door!” He turned back and grabbed the doorframe with both hands. He felt the next man push tight against his parachute pack. Meanwhile, the aircraft again banked first to the left and then to the right and back to the left. O’Connell’s grip on the door was weakened but he was determined - no matter what - to exit only once he could see they were over land.

Bang, bang, bang, bang. A sound like a nail being driven into a tin can. The aircraft was being hit by the tracer fire. O’Connell looked back into the darkened interior. No one was hurt but he could see more holes in the aircraft now as the cannon rounds went through the aircraft. O’Connell looked out the door and straight down between his jump boots. The beach was passing under his feet. Still a distance from the airfield that was their drop zone, but if he had to, he could lead the stick out the door now. An explosion rocked the plane hard to the left and O’Connell was tossed out the door. His stick followed him.

“One, one thousand; two, one thousand; three, one thousand;…,” O’Connell counted as he fell out of the sky. At airborne school, they made you say it out loud during every drill. If you got to five, you were supposed to pull your reserve parachute. He never made it to four one thousand which was a good thing because at jump altitude of 600 feet, it only took six seconds of freefall to hit the ground. A reserve parachute might or might not save your life in that last one hundred feet. This jump was no different from any of his previous jumps. Just as he shouted the number three, the opening shock of the parachute drove the air out of his lungs and dragged his crotch up to his chest. It wasn’t pleasant, but it meant his parachute was open. He looked up at the green canopy; it was sound. He looked around. His seventeen paratroopers were in the sky around him. In the distance, he saw his aircraft banking hard and away from the beach. The port engine was on fire, but the fire didn’t look to be spreading to the wing fuel tanks. No telling if the Dakota and crew would make it back to Africa.

For the first time since he exited the aircraft, O’Connell looked down at the ground. At this jump altitude, there wasn’t much time on the descent to worry about where you were going to land. Still, he could see that he was drifting toward the Mediterranean. Not a good plan, so he pulled the two canvas risers attached to the harness on his right shoulder all the way to his chest. Months of pullups gave him the strength to pull and hold as the parachute slowly responded to O’Connell’s efforts to change the parabolic shape of the parachute. His parachute slipped to his right, taking him away from the water and toward a cliff face overlooking the beach. Not an ideal landing spot but it would have to do.

“Hunnhmh.” The landing drove the air from O’Connell’s lungs and the parachute began to drag him along the ground toward the cliff face and the sea. “I am not going into the water tonight!” O’Connell said to himself as he used the canopy release assembly on his left shoulder to collapse the parachute. He then used the disc shaped chest release to clear himself of the harness. He rolled over on his stomach to catch his breath. At airborne school, the instructors taught you to stay in the prone position for a moment, just to be sure no one was shooting at you before you got up and moved to the fight. At this point, O’Connell wasn’t entirely certain where the fight was. But there were no bullets flying overhead and no gunshots to be heard, so he decided it was time to get up, get his Garand rifle out of its canvas weapons case and assemble his paratroopers and start killing Germans.

“Welcome to Italy, Captain!” O’Connell looked to his right to see his First Sergeant walking to see if he was ok. First Sergeant Terry Tannenbaum was tall and lean. “A fence post with arms” was how the Battalion Sergeant Major described Tannenbaum. It hardly mattered to O’Connell what Tannenbaum looked like. He was one of the earliest volunteers for parachute training. He was also a graduate of the British commando school in Scotland. He never seemed to have anything but a smile on his face no matter how serious the situation. If anyone was going to keep O’Connell alive in Sicily, it was his first sergeant.

“Top, did your stick exit ok?”

“If you mean, did we all get out before our aircraft was shot to shit, yes sir. We all made it. I know the flyboys in my bird didn’t.”

“What the hell was the Navy thinking?”

“They were thinking we were Germans about to bomb them, sir. Scared kids sitting off the beach in their little boats. We’ll see how that gets reported up the chain of command.”

“OK, Top. Let’s get our guys assembled and see if we can start a fight someplace on this island.”

“Airborne, sir.” They both walked away from the cliff face assembling soldiers from their own company and any other company they could find. They were nowhere near the planned drop zone. They knew the Germans were out there and they would find them and fight them, ideally before dawn. As they walked, O’Connell’s First Sergeant fixed the bayonet to his Garand rifle and said to his young captain, “SIr, you never know when you are going to need your bayonet.”

-------------------

They worked through the early morning hours trying to find their men. O’Connell and Tannebaum quickly found a dozen paratroopers from their company and with that fighting force, they headed inland. As they did, they found other members of the 504^th though not from their company. The paratroopers joined them and, by dawn, they had the equivalent of one platoon.

They had assembled near a stone fence line two miles from the drop zone. Paratroopers being mostly kids, they sat along the fence line and started eating from one of their two ration packs.

O’Connell said, “Top, what do you think? Do we just start the fight or continue to round up our guys?”

“Sir, my guess is that we aren’t going to have much success finding more guys anytime soon. I reckon we just get started, but that’s your call.”

“They didn’t send us here to round up strays. So, let’s go find some Germans.”

As O’Connell climbed over the fence, to his right he heard the sound of a German machine gun opening fire. In training, command had exposed the 504^th to the different sounds of American, British and German weapons. The regimental training sergeant said, “Men, we are going to fight in the dark. We need to know the sound of friendly weapons and enemy weapons. If they are friendlies, we go help. If they are enemy weapons, we run to the sound of the guns and take the fight to them.” At the time, O’Connell thought it was a pretty corny instruction. In the current confusion, he understood. Paratroopers don’t have the luxury of battle lines or trenches that tell them where the enemy is located. Paratroopers have to run to the guns.

“Gents, it’s time to fight. Let’s go.” O’Connell headed toward the shooting. Behind him a rag tag group of young paratroopers dropped their food, stood up and followed. Tannenbaum pushed the last paratrooper over the wall. O’Connell could hear his first sergeant controlling their formation, fanning the men out in to a V formation, and telling each soldier to fix his bayonet.

As they crested a small hill, they finally saw what they had been hearing. Fifty yards to their front, four paratroopers were pinned down near another low stone wall facing a squad of German troops deployed from a half tracked armored personnel carrier. At the front the carrier, a German soldier was using a heavy machine gun to tear holes in the wall while a dozen of soldiers in field gray uniforms advanced. O’Connell turned to Tannebaum and said, “Who’s the best shot here?”

“Sullivan.”

“Get him up here and have him pick off the machine gunner. Once he does that, we open fire on the German squad. Let the guys know, our guys are behind that wall. No one shoots close to the wall.”

“Check. Sullivan, get your nasty ass up here.” Sullivan arrived. His shooting skills meant that he was issued a bolt action Springfield rifle with a telescopic scope. Not much more than the sort of scope used by deer hunters in the states, but it would give him a better chance of hitting targets at longer ranges. “The machine gunner, son. Take him out.”

Sullivan nodded. He set up in the prone position, took aim and fired. His first round hit six inches below the machine gunner on the armor plate of the half track. The noise of machine gun must have masked the noise of the round hitting the carrier. Tannenbaum was watching with a pair of field glasses that probably belonged in a war museum. He said, “You missed, knucklehead. You were six inches below the gunner. Raise your point of aim ten inches.”

Sullivan responded immediately with another shot. The round hit the German in the neck. He dropped like a stone. The gun stopped firing. The German troops advancing on the wall looked back at their fire support. O’Connell shouted, “Let them have it.”

Twenty Garand rifles opened up at once sending rounds into the Germans. The remaining Germans who survived this initial barrage realized they had been flanked and, in good order, moved back to the half track carrier. This allowed the four paratroopers to finally open fire on the retreating Germans. Only two Germans were left when they got to the carrier. One was obviously the driver. He started the big German diesel, backed up the track and headed away from the fight. Sullivan used his rifle to sight in the driver as the half track pulled away. He fired again and Tannebaum saw the driver slump over the wheel. He watched as the half track drove into a small pond associated with the local farm.

O’Connell’s first fight was over. He looked at his men, some he had never met before. They were a mix of seventeen and eighteen year olds. It was no wonder that they called him “the old man.” At twenty one he must have seemed old and Tannenbaum at thirty must have seemed ancient. He looked at these kids who had just killed their first men and survived their first fight. They looked relieved and excited like kids who just won a football game. Tannenbaum solved that quickly. “Get up you mopes! You haven’t won the war yet. Let’s get down to see if we have any prisoners and to see if those four troopers are ok. Hurry up!”

O’Connell responded to his first sergeant’s commands and led his small band of paratroopers to the field below. He realized later that he was relieved when he saw the Germans were all dead. He had no idea how to take prisoners when you were wandering behind enemy lines. The four paratroopers behind the wall were also relieved to be alive. Tannenbaum checked them to be sure there were no injuries and then told them they were now part of his company. As the sun started to beat down on his steel helmet, O’Connell smiled. He realized long ago that he might be the company commander but Tannenbaum owned the company.

Sue got off the defense attaché’s aircraft followed by the six members of the S&R team. Sue was in her Class A uniform: short sleeve blouse; jacket with her medals and the SOF flash on both sleeves designating her as a command combat veteran; green trousers, shined jump boots; and beret. The S&R team …

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Sue was sitting in the Magic Bus, responsible for playing “zero” tonight. Nate was doing the needful driving the bus: slowly circling around the port and the associated streets of Limassol. This would give the S&R team the maximum number of surveillance operators on the street. Plus, since Sue knew all of the players …

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The morning briefing resulted in action on all fronts. Dentmann and the military attaché told the attendees on the video teleconference that they would fly down from Nicosia. The air commodore gave the SBS team the warning order to prepare for a takedown operation, targets, and venue to be determined. The S&R crew was …

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Sue was sitting at one end of the shipping container holding a cup of coffee. Jameson, Billy and the newly appointed “Young George” were perched on the tables that normally held Sue’s commo equipment and maps. They were all dressed in European style casual clothes. Sue was working through the plan for the evening. Ther…

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Sue felt the change in humidity as soon as they landed and the tail gate of the RAF Hercules opened. Cyprus in June was warm, but the sea air and sea breezes kept the island comfortable. Even with the smell of aviation fuel, Sue could smell everything that made the island green.

“No wonder the Germans and Russians …

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The conference room was just as spartan as the rest of the SOF facility in Iraq. It was inside the center of one of the inflatable structures. Folding tables and chairs in a U-shape with some additional chairs against the plywood walls that created the fiction of a “formal” conference room. The chairs in the center …

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Sue walked down the lower level of the Galatea bridge. Moored next to the fishing boats was an old, all-wood cruiser with an open cabin and inboard/outboard motors. It looked like something from Istanbul in the 1960s. Standing on the dock was a man in his fifties and dressed like the rest of the fishermen.

“Madame wishes a …

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Barb sat alone on the patio, in the cool shade of the awning, looking out on the sunny harbor. She was trying to put together a plan. Pursuing the Beroslavs from here didn’t make any sense, but returning home wasn’t satisfying after coming this far.

“Deep in thought?” Longstreet hadn’t made any noise as he approached. Ba…

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Sue walked over to Flash’s work-station. They were both in their workout gear. Flash was wearing a black, Under Armour t-shirt—two sizes too big—and a pair of black sweat pants. Sue was in similar kit except in Navy. Sue thought they looked like a pair of dancers instead of a pair of special operators. She ga…

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Barb pulled into the neighborhood where Beth’s office had rented a house. Not exactly low profile. The houses looked old, expensive, and filled with wealthy old Europeans looking for sun.

Barb was pleased that Beth’s office had also rented her car at the airport, a gray Mercedes E class. It was fast but boring to look at and ju…

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Barb called Beth on her cellphone. She hoped to catch her before she was involved in some downtown soiree.

“Parsons.”

“Beth, just wanted to let you know that I’m having a wonderful time here in the Sacher. “

They had arranged an open code before Barb left, and Barb’s response meant that it was time to assemble. She just needed to know w…

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