The Sicilian - Mario Puzo [56]
Pisciotta’s mocking voice broke into these daydreams of Hector Adonis. “Please say yes, Professor. I am the second in command of Guiliano’s band, but I have no one under me to give orders.” He was grinning. “I am willing to start small.”
Though Adonis was not provoked, Guiliano’s eyes flashed with anger. But he said quietly, “What is your answer?”
Hector Adonis said, “Yes.” What else could a godfather say?
Then Guiliano told him what he had to do when he returned to Montelepre and outlined his plans for the next day. Adonis was again appalled at the boldness and ferocity of this young man’s schemes. But when Guiliano lifted him onto his donkey he leaned over and kissed his godson.
Pisciotta and Guiliano watched Adonis riding down the trail toward Montelepre. “He’s such a little man,” Pisciotta said. “He would have fitted in much better when we were playing bandits as children.”
Guiliano turned to him and said gently, “And your jokes would have been better then. Be serious when we talk of serious things.” But that night before they went to sleep, they embraced each other. “You are my brother,” Guiliano said. “Remember that.” Then they wrapped themselves in their blankets and slept away the last night of their obscurity.
CHAPTER 9
TURI GUILIANO AND Aspanu Pisciotta were up before the dawn, before the first light, for though it was unlikely, the carabinieri might start in darkness to surprise them with the morning sun. They had seen the armored car from Palermo arrive in the Bellampo Barracks late the evening before with two jeeploads of reinforcements. During the night Guiliano made scouting patrols down the side of the mountain and listened for any sounds that would be made by anyone approaching their cliff—a precaution Pisciotta ridiculed. “When we were children we would have been such daredevils,” he told Guiliano, “but do you think those lazy carabinieri will risk their lives in darkness, or even miss a good night’s sleep in soft beds?”
“We have to train ourselves into good habits,” Turi Guiliano said. He knew that someday there would be better enemies.
Turi and Aspanu worked hard laying out guns on a blanket and checking them in every detail. Then they ate some of La Venera’s bread cake, washed down with a flask of wine Hector Adonis had left them. The cake, with its heat and spices, lay glowingly in their stomachs. It gave them the energy to construct a screen of saplings and boulders on the edge of the cliff. Behind this screen, they watched the town and the mountain paths with their binoculars. Guiliano loaded the guns and put boxes of ammunition into the pockets of his sheepskin jacket while Pisciotta kept watch. Guiliano did his job carefully and slowly. He even buried all the supplies and covered the ground with huge rocks himself. He was never to trust anyone to check these details. So it was Pisciotta who spotted the armored car leaving the Bellampo Barracks.
“You’re right,” Pisciotta said. “The car is going down the Castellammare plain away from us.”
They grinned at each other. Guiliano felt a quiet elation. Fighting the police would not be so difficult after all. It was a child’s game with a child’s cunning. The armored car would disappear around a curve of the road and then circle back and come into the mountains to the rear of their cliff. The authorities must know about the tunnel and expect them to use it to escape and run right into the armored car. And its machine guns.
In an hour the carabinieri would send a detachment up the sides to Monte d’Ora in a frontal attack to flush them out. It helped that the police thought of them as wild youths, simple outlaws. The scarlet and gold flag of Sicily that they flew from the cliff edge confirmed their careless impudence, or so the police would think.
An hour later, a troop van and a jeep carrying the Maresciallo Roccofino left through the gates of the Bellampo Barracks. The two vehicles