The response team, twenty strong, wearing hip waders with Beretta submachine guns at their sides, gathered around Alessandro in the rowing club. Everyone quickly checked their radios, and Columbo handed Alessandro a detailed map of the area, a small gesture that meant he was also handing him his authority.
Alessandro quickly outlined the plan. “Pamela, Columbo, and I, as well as two members of the response team, will take Placido’s boat down the Rio Piccolo and enter the Calle dello Squero from the far end of the street. Keep the police boats at the mouth of the Rio de San Vio out of sight and ready. The rest of the team should get themselves into position in the street before the Calle dello Squero and wait for me to give the signal to move.” He counted off four men. “You take the ladders and be ready to go over the balcony. The next four will cover any other exits, four will stay put, four will be ready to join us as soon as the men on the balcony are inside, which leaves two men with the boat. Got it?”
“Yes,” the team sounded in unison.
It was understood that they’d do everything they could to get the hostages out alive.
If they were still alive.
The team moved out together, plowing through the water on the fondamenta and piling into the police boats, while Alessandro’s group jumped into Placido’s boat. Alessandro could see the excitement in Placido’s eyes. He knew that excitement—the adrenaline high of a dangerous mission. He’d be feeling it himself if it wasn’t Olivia in there.
Placido turned the boat and stopped at the mouth of the street hidden by the fog. Alessandro leaped out and ran as fast as he could through the knee-high water. Pamela and the rest of the team splashed behind him, and Alessandro thought they were as stealthy as a herd of water buffalo.
At the end of the street, he halted. It is house across canal from Signorina Olivia, Maria had said. First door in Calle dello Squero. But which side of the street?
“Across from Olivia’s apartment would make it the one on our right,” Alessandro said, though he knew he was splitting hairs. Still, he stared at the door on the left. Water was seeping out over the top.
Columbo noticed it too. “How the hell can the water be higher inside than out?”
“Broken water pipe, maybe,” Alessandro suggested. “But it answers our question—no one can be in there, so it’s the one on our right.”
“We could phone the city and see if this is occupied—”
“No time,” Pamela said. “We’ve got to make a decision now, and I’m with Alessandro on this one. Let’s do this.”
Alessandro raised his radio. “Okay, first balcony to the north of the Calle dello Squero. Let’s go!” He had barely spoken the words when he saw his men move past the mouth of the street. Pamela took a few steps and, craning her head around the corner, gave them a wave. Alessandro aimed his gun at the lock—there was no kicking these massive doors in—and the shots drowned out the sound of breaking glass as his other men went through the balcony doors.
They were inside and up the stairs in minutes.
What he saw made him stop short, causing Pamela to crash into him. There, sitting on a gaudy floral couch, dressed in bathrobes and bedroom slippers, was an elderly couple watching Walker, Texas Ranger dubbed into Italian. Holding shaky hands in the air, wrinkled faces frozen in shock, they couldn’t have looked less like Albanian kidnappers if they tried.
Alessandro let out a string of expletives that now had the woman crying, and as Pamela hastened to explain the mistake to the terrified couple, Alessandro shouted into his radio: “It’s the balcony on the other side of the street!”
The men who had come through the balcony were already back over the side, and one of Alessandro’s men on the ground was shouting into the radio that they’d been spotted by the kidnappers, no doubt given away by the gunshots and smashing glass. “And they’re armed!”
So much for the element of surprise.
Alessandro swore again and charged back down the stairs to the ground floor and out into the street. The ladders were already against the balcony and the men over the top. A volley of shots came from inside.
Olivia! It was all he could do not to shout her name. Please don’t let those shots be meant for her!
Pamela was on the radio calling for an ambulance for the elderly couple inside and then, as the shots rang out, demanded a second.
“We’re inside!” the radio crackled, as Alessandro ran down the stairs to the street. “One of our men has been shot in the chest! Suspects have fled to the roof—one’s gone over. We’re on them!”
“The hostages?” Alessandro shouted.
“They aren’t here.”
Alessandro looked at the water running over and down the door on the left.
“Olivia!” he shouted. No reason to be silent now, but no reply came.
Oh God, we’re too late.
“Watch out!” Alessandro cried to his team. He aimed his gun at the lock and fired a dozen bullets into it—a completely useless exercise, he quickly realized. Even with the lock broken, how do you push back a wall of water?
“Get an axe!” he shouted.
One of his men produced not one but two axes. Wildly, he and Alessandro swung them at the door. But several swings later, they still hadn’t broken through.
Alessandro handed his axe to Columbo. “I’m going in from upstairs,” he said.
He ran around the corner and was up the ladder in seconds. The shutters and windows had been smashed open and the piano nobile was littered with broken glass and splintered wood, a cappuccino maker the only sign that someone was occupying the space.
Where the hell is the door to the ground floor?
He ran through the rooms, wrenching open doors as he went, but none led downstairs. Mystified, he looked down at the terrazzo floor, knowing that trying to axe his way through it would be futile. He could still hear the blows of the axes, while over his radio came a triumphant cry: “We’ve got one!”
But Alessandro couldn’t revel in that victory with Olivia still trapped below. Dejected, he looked down at his feet, suddenly noticing that the rug beneath him was wet.
As he was wondering what that meant, he thought he heard something. Not much, a scratch maybe, but it was enough to make him throw back the rug. A trapdoor!
It was padlocked. Taking his gun, he blew off the lock, careful not to shoot through the wood. Looking up, he saw Pamela. “Help me,” he said.
Grasping the iron ring set in the wood, together they pulled it up to reveal Orlando, Marco, and Olivia huddled on the steps, their eyes closed.
He was too late.
Kneeling down, he and Pamela pulled them out as quickly as they could, their clothes leaving puddles on the marble floor.
“Marco and Orlando are alive!” Pamela cried. “Bring some blankets,” she said into her radio. “We’ll need another ambulance too.” She looked at Alessandro. “Olivia?” she whispered with little hope in her voice.
As Alessandro leaned over to listen for Olivia’s breathing, her eyes opened, and she coughed.
“Thank God!” he cried, taking her into his arms as she choked a sob into his chest. “I have you now, and I’m never going to let you go.”