Villa Colacci assault

The Villa Colacci assault is Creasy’s armed penetration of Don Cantarella’s fortified residence, an attack that ends with Cantarella dead and Creasy critically wounded. Its approach is calculated and covert; once Creasy enters the villa, the operation turns into a violent sequence of close-quarters encounters that carries him to Cantarella’s study.

Infiltration and Initial Assault

Cantarella waits inside a sealed villa, watching the dark garden from his study. His fear has given way to frustration and anger: he believes people who had long obeyed him are beginning to question his authority, and expects to reassert his power once Creasy is dead. He draws the curtains and turns back to his desk just before Creasy floats over the wall by parachute.

Creasy lands near the orchard, cushions the impact with his legs, rolls, releases the parachute, and drags its canopy into the fruit trees. He equips his Colt with a silencer and takes a Trilux night sight from his chest pouch. When two Doberman pinschers come running toward him, he tracks them through the sight and shoots both before they can reach him. The dogs had been trained to attack and kill silently; Creasy kills them just as quietly.

The first human casualties come in the kitchen, where the household staff are watching a Juventus–Naples football match. A grenade arcs through a shattered window. Three people die immediately, two more are incapacitated by shrapnel, and two are stunned by the blast. Before the stunned survivors can reach for weapons, Creasy kicks in the door. He scans for anyone still alive and fires his Ingram at them, ending the kitchen resistance. The shift from a room absorbed in football to an armed assault establishes the speed and brutality with which the villa’s apparent security is overcome.

The Assault Reaches Cantarella’s Study

The attack moves from the kitchen into the villa’s upper passage, where Maurizio Dicandia edges onto the first step. Cantarella can see only the upper part of him when gunfire breaks out: Dicandia jerks upward, a row of wounds opens across his chest, and he collapses down the stairs. Cesare Gravelli and Abrata retreat across the landing rather than descend. They look toward Cantarella, ten meters away behind his bodyguard, but when they turn back a grenade explodes between them. The landing’s corner shields Cantarella and the bodyguard from the blast.

Terror now overrides Cantarella’s show of authority. He shoves the bodyguard forward, stumbles into his study, and slams the door. At the window he tears aside the curtains but does not try to open it; instead, he smashes the glass with his pistol and calls for the others to come upstairs. The call exposes the collapse of the confidence he had displayed only moments earlier, when he expected to kill Creasy and punish those whose loyalty he doubted.

A blast splinters the study door from its hinges and catapults the bodyguard into the room. Cantarella crouches behind his heavy desk, pistol extended, and waits for the men he believes are coming to help. Creasy dives through the doorway in a roll, clears the fallen bodyguard, and rises to his knees. Cantarella fires twice. One hurried shot hits Creasy, shattering his right shoulder and leaving that arm useless; Cantarella rises and fires twice more, but his inexperience turns the second burst wild.

Creasy still has the Ingram Submachine Gun hanging from his neck. He grips it with his left hand and sends bullets across the room, then stands slowly and painfully and moves around the desk. Cantarella lies on his back, clutching his wounded belly as blood seeps between his fingers. Creasy recognizes that the wounds are fatal, but does not leave the dying man to them: he lifts Cantarella’s chin with the toe of his boot, presses the boot onto his throat, and tells him he will choke to death as she did. He shifts his weight forward, completing the revenge in the study itself.

The guards who eventually reach the passage move cautiously past the bodies of Gravelli and Abrata and look into the room. They hear a low, gasping moan, which then stops. The assault leaves both Creasy and Cantarella gravely wounded, but its final image is not a contest between armed forces: it is Creasy standing over the boss of bosses and delivering a personal sentence.

Aftermath and the Battle for Life

A month after the assault, reporters were still following its consequences, and the attack had become known in headlines as the Battle of Palermo. Public attention shifted from the villa to Creasy’s struggle to survive: while he lay in intensive care in Palermo, doctors initially gave him little or no chance, but he clung to life and surprised them. The assault’s outcome therefore remained unsettled even after Cantarella’s death; Creasy had reached his target, but his own survival was uncertain.

After two weeks, a special Carabinieri aircraft transferred Creasy to Naples. Mario Satta had arranged the move because Cardarelli Hospital was both better equipped than the Palermo hospital and more secure. Satta’s brother led the team of doctors fighting to save him. By the time the story reaches a well-attended funeral on a cold winter day in the hills above Naples, the press’s continuing interest has been shaped by that prolonged battle for life, linking the assault’s violence to an aftermath measured in weeks of medical uncertainty.

Immediate Aftermath

As Massimo Bellu spoke urgently on the phone, Mario Satta kept pressure on Creasy’s wounds while Guido Arrellio packed cloth against them to stem the blood soaking into the carpet. Nearby lay Cantarella, dead, his face swollen and discolored, his eyes bulging and tongue protruding. A flash of gold amid the blood drew Satta’s attention to the crucifix; when he looked back, Creasy’s eyes were closed. Satta’s fingers began to tire, but he maintained the pressure, acutely aware that Creasy’s life depended on his hands. Sirens wailed, and Guido sobbed with frustration as he worked. The room that had held Creasy’s final confrontation with Cantarella became, in its immediate aftermath, a desperate effort to keep Creasy alive.