RPG attack on Floriano Conti

The RPG attack on Floriano Conti turns a carefully prepared ambush into a sudden scene of catastrophic destruction in Rome. Two rockets fired at Conti’s departing convoy demolish his armored Cadillac and throw it into the car behind; amid the wreckage, only one bodyguard is shown escaping immediate death. The scene’s blunt irony comes afterward, when Mario Satta recognizes the weapon and remarks on Conti’s insurance.

Preparation and Positioning

The attack begins with a weapon small enough to pass through city streets in an inconspicuous canvas bag. The RPG-7 Stroke D is a thirty-seven-inch tube that unscrews into two halves; it weighs about fifteen pounds, while each rocket weighs less than five. The attacker carries the launcher and two rockets together, a practical detail that makes the coming violence depend on concealment and assembly rather than on a conspicuous armed approach.

At Giuseppe and Theresa Benetti’s home, the attacker briefly exposes the weapon. Giuseppe first sees a silenced pistol and freezes in fear. The visitor reassures the couple that he means no harm, then takes two tubes from the bag, screws them together, and fits an attachment into a grooved slot. Giuseppe, who had served in the army, recognizes the device as a weapon and the attachment as a sight. The attacker loads one of the cone-shaped missiles, takes the second missile and goggles, and moves into the backyard, where he peers over the low wall toward the avenue. The sequence establishes his firing position across from the building where Conti is about to leave, while withholding the attacker’s identity.

The Strike on the Convoy

Conti has just finished lunch in the penthouse of the building opposite. At precisely 2:30, he leaves the basement garage with his personal bodyguard. His Cadillac is already running, and a black Lancia carrying four more bodyguards waits directly behind it. The cars ascend the ramp and emerge into bright sunlight. Across the wide avenue, the men see a figure rise behind a low wall: goggles distort his face, and the launcher rests on his right shoulder.

There is almost no time to respond. A gout of flame bursts from the back of the tube, and the first missile strikes the center of the Cadillac’s radiator. The driver brakes hard; the heavy car dips and rebounds on its reinforced springs, but the missile has demolished its engine and burned everything inside. The Cadillac teeters upright on its rear fender. Then the second missile hits just below the front axle and hurls the five-ton vehicle backward onto the Lancia behind it. The attack is not a warning shot or an attempt to stop the convoy gently: both rockets are used against the cars in a sequence that overwhelms their protection and turns the garage exit into a wreckage field.

The Survivor and the Immediate Aftermath

As the Lancia crumples, a bodyguard is thrown out through a rear door. He scrabbles away from the twisted, hissing metal, gets to his feet, and instinctively draws his gun. At first he starts up the ramp, but then stops and looks back. The narration marks the break in his response: instinct gives way to shock. He backs against the garage wall, sinks down onto his haunches, and drops the gun onto the concrete. He remains crouched there when the first police car arrives. The scene identifies him as the sole person to escape immediate death, without turning his escape into triumph; his weapon is useless against an attack whose source he cannot see.

Recognition and Narrative Significance

The attack is reported almost at once. Three minutes after Guido has said they must wait, the radio comes alive with Captain Bellu urgently calling Colonel Satta. Satta and Bellu stand at the top of the ramp and look down at destruction beyond their experience. Satta then notices Guido facing the avenue. Following his gaze, he sees a circular black burn mark on the side of the whitewashed house and asks whether the weapon was an RPG-7 Stroke D. Guido nods and answers, “I told you-it has other uses.” The mark across the avenue links the devastated garage to the firing position and makes the weapon’s role legible to the investigators.

Satta’s final observation, “Conti lost his no-claims bonus,” gives the aftermath a dry, mordant turn. Its joke reduces the armored Cadillac and the convoy’s apparent security to an insurance matter, but the preceding scene has shown the limits of both: reinforced springs do not protect the car from a direct missile strike, and the bodyguards’ guns cannot prevent the attack. The contrast between the technical precision of the ambush and Satta’s sardonic understatement closes the episode without diminishing its cost. The weapon’s route through an ordinary street, its assembly behind a low wall, and the two successive impacts have transformed a scheduled departure into an unmistakable public catastrophe.