Sunday, being the conventional day of rest, seemed as reasonable a time to catch Serafino napping as we were likely to find, which meant going in that night. There was almost a full moon, which didn’t please Burke much, but he was impatient to be off now that the ball was rolling again and bustled around, full of energy, checking everything.
We used a small private airstrip not far from the villa, a cow pasture really, with a hangar that was barely large enough to get the Cessna inside.
The plane was the 401 model with eight seats and we had those out for a start. A particularly good point was the Airstair door amidships which would give us a clear exit, something we badly needed if all four of us were to get out in time to drop in a nice tight group.
The pilot, a man called Nino Verda, was ex Italian air force, about thirty from the look of him and accord-ing to Hoffer the best money could buy. He needed to be. To fly that kind of country in the dark, graze a six thousand foot mountain and give us an eight hundred foot drop over that plateau was going to take genius.
We were using the X type parachute, the kind British paratroopers used before they changed to the new N.A.T.O. one. Burke preferred the X type. It got you down faster and could be guided with greater accuracy. The reserve chutes were of the same type, and identical with those we had used in the Congo.
Our weapons were unconventional by some stan-dards, but proved in combat, the only realistic test. We were using the Chinese A.K. assault rifle, probably the most reliable automatic combat rifle in the world at that time and the new Israeli sub machine gun, the Uzi, which was better than the Sterling in every way.
Two grenades each, a commando knife-the list seemed endless. Burke even had a kit inspection with each man’s camouflaged jump suit laid out together with every item of equipment.
And he went over the operation with the map and a stop-watch so many times that even Piet Jaeger looked sick by late evening. Towards me he seemed no differ-ent and I suppose any touch of formality in our re-lationship could have been put down to the exigencies of the situation.
At dinner, Hoffer was joviality personified. Only the best was good enough although Burke put his foot down as regards alcohol. But the food was excellent. Surprisingly, I found an appetite for it and Rosa was there, wearing her best, looking absolutely magnificent.
Afterwards, Burke took us through the plan again in detail, including the walk-out if everything went well, which he estimated would take eight or nine hours to the point on the Bellona road where we were to be met by Hoffer himself with the necessary transport.
He shook hands with us all solemnly when Burke had finished and made a little speech about how much he appreciated what we were doing and how he hoped before long to have his stepdaughter with him again,
God willing, which I thought was pushing it a bit far.
Later, when I was changing in my room, Rosa appeared. She zipped up the front of my camouflaged suit and kissed me on the cheek. ‘From you or from Hoffer?’ I said.
‘From me.’ She touched my face briefly. ‘Come back safe.’
She hesitated in the doorway, and looked at me, a strange expression on her face. She wanted to speak, wanted like hell to tell me something and was desper-ately afraid of the consequences.
I felt a sudden rush of affection for her, shook my head and smiled. ‘Don’t say it, Rosa, not if you’re truly afraid of him.’
‘But I am,’ she said, her face white. ‘He can be cruel, oh, so cruel, Stacey. You couldn’t imagine.’
‘Tell me about it when I return, when it doesn’t matter any more.’ I opened the door and kissed her as a woman should be kissed, moulding her ripeness into me. ‘I survive all things, Rosa Solazzo, especially the Hoffers of this world.’
After she had gone, I buckled on my belt with the Smith and Wesson in its spring holster and adjusted my beret. The man who stared out at me from the mirror was a stranger, someone from before the Hole. What then was he doing here? It was quite a thought, but the wrong time to be asking questions like that and I left and went down to join the others.