The Double Agents (Men at War 6)

Villa del Archimedes Partanna, Sicily 1720 5 April 1943

Dick Canidy, sound asleep on his back, was startled awake by a loud, high-pitched cry.

As he sat upright, struggling to get his bearings, there was a raucous flapping of wings as a score of seagulls took flight.

Canidy was up about a hundred yards on a ridge of the hillside that overlooked the Villa del Archimedes. The villa was another five hundred yards, give or take, to the northwest.

A cobblestone roadway had been constructed on the ridge, along with a stone wall two feet tall at the lip.

For whatever reason, he’d thought earlier, the goddamn Krauts or Wops took it out of play by taking a chunk of it, probably with more of those 105mm rounds from a field howitzer.

What remained of the wall provided for nice concealment, not to mention a place to fall asleep. And it served as a solid platform for the bipod of Canidy’s Johnson light machine gun.

Now Canidy thought: Dammit! I fell asleep!

Not surprised. I was exhausted.

He watched the birds disappear into the distance.

I probably disappointed those flying rats.

They were hoping for another tasty snack of eyeballs.

He shook his head, trying to shake the numbness he felt.

Jesus! That was a close call!

If I’d slept through till it turned dark…

Canidy had an almost-due-west exposure, which was exactly what he wanted—bright light to help mask the brightness of muzzle flash—but the brilliance of the sunset was forcing him to squint.

If I’d slept past dusk, the damn muzzle flash would’ve looked like a Fourth of July fireworks show….

He looked over the wall and down.

The ridge afforded Canidy one helluva view. In the distance was Cape Gallo, the northernmost point. To the northeast was Mondello, and he could make out the crescent beach where they had landed with the folding kayaks.

And here, below his feet, was Partanna…and the Villa del Archimedes.

Canidy had been looking down with the binoculars, waiting and watching —and snoozing— since he had come back alone from the apartment, where he’d left Frank Nola with Jim Fuller and retrieved the Johnny gun.

Having left the warehouse where the cargo ship was still being loaded, Nola had walked with Canidy the five kilometers to Partanna. There he’d pointed out the hillside to Canidy, somewhat needlessly as the looming rock was as hard to find as an angry zit on the forehead of a teenager.

They had followed the roadway up to where the hole had been blown into it and then sat watching the coarse-stone villa for more than an hour.

Canidy had had the binoculars to his eyes and was studying the big electrical power generator on steel skids that had been put beside the villa. It had a diesel engine with a manufacturer plaque that read MANN. And there was a wooden pallet covered with jerry cans, a few lying on their side, empty.

Ah, the well-labeled Wehrmachtkanisteren kraftstoff, the “armed forces cans” of “fuel.”

And my favorite part: Feuergefahrlich …“flammable.”

Nola tapped Canidy on the shoulder, then pointed out the dust cloud being kicked up on the dirt road by a car approaching the villa.

When the car, a 1940 Alfa-Romeo sedan, had gone through the gate in the stone wall surrounding the villa and pulled to a stop, Canidy trained the glasses on the driver’s door. It opened.

“Well, look at who we have here,” Canidy said.

He handed the binoculars to Nola.