The Saboteurs (Men at War 5)

He looked at his watch and saw that it was now almost one o’clock.

May as well get rest while I can.

He took a long leak on the pebble beach, then settled inside the boat, put his .45 under his duffel, rested his head on top of it, and yawned.

And the Gramercy Park has the nerve to call itself a luxury hotel….

The sound of small diesel engines came loudly across the water and almost echoed inside the boat hull where Canidy lay rubbing his eyes.

Judging by the light coming in the edges of the tarp, he figured it was just turning dawn and a glance at his wristwatch confirmed it. Both hands were on the six.

Men’s voices filled the air, and there was the sound of foot traffic on the wooden pier.

Canidy peeked out of the tarp, saw there was nothing but another boat hull looking back at him, and crawled out of the boat.

He peered around the boat. The piers were bustling with fishermen loading their boats for the day; some boats had already cast off lines and were headed out of the harbor.

Some of the shops were now open. Canidy noticed the smell of coffee on the salt air, and that someone had put ice in the display tables outside of the fish market. Customers were already coming and going.

Canidy turned around and relieved himself in what he thought was probably the same spot he had five hours earlier. He started to grab his duffel and throw it on his back but stopped. He made a close examination of the boat and the work done on it thus far and decided that the boat had not been touched in months.

No one’s coming in the next hour or so.

He slipped the .45 into the small of his back, adjusted his Greek cap, then headed for the shops, hoping he might get lucky sneaking a cup of coffee.

As he walked across the beach, he studied the steady traffic going on and off the pier. All of the men looked approximately the same—same dark pants and sweaters, same olive complexions, and p

retty much the same head of hair (though this varied greatly; some had beards or mustaches while others were clean-shaven).

Canidy stepped up on the pier and joined the line headed to the shops. He followed two men into one and saw that it wasn’t a shop so much as a bare-bones communal room. There were two wooden tables. On one were baskets of fruit and breads. On the other, in the corner, were two big coffeepots. One was being refilled by a tiny, wrinkled woman who Canidy guessed had to be eighty, eighty-five.

Hell, she could be a hundred and eighty-five, for all I know.

The fishermen were freely helping themselves, no one paying for anything.

The woman looked at Canidy and she moved her thin wrinkled lips into something of a smile. She poured coffee into a chipped and stained white porcelain cup and held it out to him.

Jackpot.

He smiled and nodded his thanks, then turned to leave, grabbing a fig from a basket on the way out.

Outside, standing beside one of the iced-down display tables, he took his first sip of coffee and looked out across the piers.

The boat with the drunk who’d thrown the cat off early that morning still had the tarp across it.

Sleeping in…must’ve been some bender he was on.

Canidy looked past that boat, to the end of the pier, where it made a T, and saw a good-sized fishing boat, about fifty feet, just arriving. Painted on its bow, just below the rusty anchor mounted there, was: STEFANIA.

Two more of the same-looking men—olive-skinned, dark clothes, dark hair, et cetera, et cetera—jumped off the Stefania and secured her lines to cleats on the pier.

Canidy took another sip of coffee—and almost blew it out when he saw a third man get off the boat.

It just can’t be…

He had to get a better look and quickly joined the line of fishermen walking out on the pier.

As he approached the Stefania, it became clear that he was not seeing things.