Last to Die

Until the moment it all fell apart, the operation was running perfectly. When disaster strikes, you can usually look back and pinpoint exactly where it starts to unravel, where one unlucky event sets off the sequence leading inevitably to disaster. As the saying goes, For want of a nail, the shoe was lost, and it’s true; the smallest detail, overlooked, can doom a horse, a soldier, a battle.

But on that June evening in Rome, with our target in sight, the battle seemed ours to win.

Inside La Nonna, Icarus and his party were finishing up their desserts. We were all in position when they finally emerged, the bodyguards first, followed by Icarus with his wife and sons. A heavy meal, washed down with glasses of excellent wine, had rendered Icarus mellow that evening, and he did not stop to scan his surroundings, but headed directly to his car. He helped his wife, Lucia, and their two sons into the Volvo, then slid behind the steering wheel. Right behind him, the bodyguards climbed into their BMW.

Icarus was the first to pull away, into the road.

At that instant the produce truck veered into position, lurching to an angled stop that blocked the BMW. The bodyguards climbed out, shouting at the truck driver to move, but he ignored them as he nonchalantly carried a crate of onions into La Nonna’s kitchen.

That’s when the bodyguards realized their tire had been slashed, and they were stranded. An ambush. Icarus saw at once what was happening, and he reacted as we expected he would.

He hit his accelerator and roared away, speeding toward the safety of his hilltop home.

We were in the car right behind him. A second car, with two more members of our team, waited a hundred yards up the road. It cut into position just in front of Icarus, and the Volvo was now boxed between our two vehicles.

The road narrowed as it wound up the hillside, carving hairpin turns. A blind curve was coming up, and the first car braked to slow down the Volvo. Our plan was to force it to a stop, to yank Icarus from the Volvo and bundle him into our vehicle. But instead of slowing, Icarus surprised us. Recklessly he accelerated, squeezing past the first car, with barely an inch to spare.

No one saw the oncoming truck until it was too late.

Icarus desperately swerved right, but that sent the Volvo into the guardrail. It caromed off and skidded.

The truck hit it broadside, crumpling the passenger doors.

Even before I scrambled out of my car, I knew that the wife was dead. I was the one who yanked open Icarus’s door, the one who first glimpsed the carnage inside. Lucia’s broken body. The destroyed face of the ten-year-old. And little Carlo, still conscious but dying. Carlo looked at me, and I saw the question in his eyes. It is a question that I still struggle to answer: Why?

We dragged Icarus from the Volvo. Unlike his family, he was very much alive and fighting us. Within seconds we had his wrists and ankles bound. We tossed him into the backseat of my vehicle and threw a blanket over him.

The hapless truck driver, dazed and light-headed from the collision, had no idea what had really happened. Later he would tell the police that Good Samaritans had stopped to rescue the Volvo’s driver, and must have brought him to a hospital. But our destination was a private airstrip forty-eight miles away, where a chartered jet was fueled and waiting.

We had accomplished what we came to do, but this was not the way it should have ended, with three dead innocents. After any other successful mission, we would have celebrated with a round of whiskey and high fives. But that night we were subdued. Anxious about the repercussions to follow.

We had no idea how terrible they would be.