The Sicilian   ::   Puzo Mario

They joked and laughed and the drivers of the lead jeeps put their weapons down on thefloors of their vehicles. But when the caravan rode over the top of the last hill that led down into Montelepre, they were amazed to see the road ahead filled with a vast flock of sheep. The jeeps leading the column made their way into the flock, and the guards shouted at the roughly clothed shepherds. The soldiers were anxious to get inside the cool barracks and eat a hot meal, to strip to their underwear and loll in the beds or play cards for their noon hour break. There could be no danger; Montelepre, only a few miles away, had a garrison of five hundred men of Colonel Luca's army. Behind them, they could see the truck carrying the payroll enter the vast sea of sheep but did not see that it had become becalmed there, that no path opened up for it.

The shepherds were trying to clear the way for the vehicle. They were so busy they did not seem to notice that the troop carriers blasted their horns, the guards shouted and laughed and cursed. There was still no alarm.

But suddenly there were six shepherds pressed close to the paymaster truck. Two of them produced guns from beneath their jackets and kicked the driver and paymaster out of the truck. They disarmed the two carabinieri. The other four men threw out the boxes full of pay envelopes. Passatempo was the leader of this band, and his brutish face, the violence of his body, cowed the guards as much as the guns.

At the same moment the slopes around the road came alive with bandits holding rifles and machine pistols. The two command cars at the rear had their tires blown out by gunfire and then Pisciotta stood in front of the first car. He called out, "Descend slowly, without your weapons, and you'll eat your spaghetti tonight in Palermo. Don't be heroes, it's not your money we're taking."

Far up in front, the troop carrier and the three scout jeeps reached the bottom of the last hill and were about to enter Montelepre when the officer in charge realized there was nothing behind him. Now even more sheep were on the road cutting him off from the rest of the convoy. He picked up his radio and ordered one of the jeeps to go back. With a hand signal he directed the other vehicles to pull over to the side of the road and wait.

The scout jeep made its turn and started back up the hill it had just come down. Halfway up it met a hail of machine-gun and rifle fire. The four men in the jeep were riddled with bullets, and without a driver the jeep lost momentum and slowly rolled back down the hilly road toward the convoy.