by Gar Wilson
Annotation
The well-aimed 7.65 mm slug delivered more than one message. It signaled an end to the daily pilgrimage to St. Peter's Square, and it sparked an international incident that shocked the world's religious and political communities.
The Vatican is being held hostage, and the terrorists intend to succeed even in defeat. It's a no-win situation for the men of Phoenix Force, and the enemy is more than willing to give the American commandos their last rites.
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Gar Wilson
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Gar Wilson
Hostaged Vatican
Special thanks and acknowledgment to William Fieldhouse for his contribution to this work.
1
The pigeons scurried away from the gathering crowd. Cooing softly, the birds continued their rapid head-bobbing gait until they sensed that the approaching danger was very real. Then, in a well-timed exodus, the pigeons burst into flight, their gray and white wings flapping effortlessly as they flew to the rooftops and window ledges bordering St. Peter's Square.
Monsignor Giovanni Cellini's eyes followed a pair of the birds as they settled not more than twenty feet from him on the railing that lined the Bernini Corridor. The walkway, which topped the great horseshoe-shaped colonnade that defined the square, was the monsignor's favorite spot in Vatican City. From there he could view the gathering crowd of tourists and pilgrims that visited the spiritual center of the Roman Catholic Church everyday.
As the sosituto under the cardinal secretary of state, Cellini held the number three position in the secretariat of the Vatican Council. His post carried a great deal of responsibility and, although it had been a controversial position in the past, Cellini himself kept a low profile, attracting neither praise nor criticism. He did not believe that drawing attention to oneself was proper conduct for a servant of God and a representative of the Vatican. Cellini was not an ambitious man. Though he had once had great dreams of power, he had discovered that the burden of responsibility was often greater than the advantages of authority. He accepted his duties and quietly served God and His Holiness, the pope.
Cellini liked to watch the crowds in St. Peter's Square. It was reassuring to see that Catholicism still had so many loyal followers at a time when so few young men were choosing to enter the clergy and when the work of Satan seemed more powerful than ever.
The crowd was not large that day. The largest assemblies were usually during Easter services or when the pope either blessed the congregation or held High Mass. Indeed, the pope was probably the greatest attraction the Vatican offered. His Holiness was currently on tour outside of Europe, which accounted for the smaller turnout in the square.
Cellini estimated that the group of tourists and pilgrims numbered two hundred. Most were not Italian. The monsignor had learned to recognize different nationalities by their behavior; he seldom guessed incorrectly. The British entered the Vatican as if they were attending a funeral. The Germans examined St. Peter's Basilica as if they were planning to buy it. The Japanese took photographs of everything, often using two or more cameras to snap pictures of the same object. The French kept to themselves; they refused to mingle with other tourists. And the Americans seemed to think the Vatican was the Catholic answer to Disneyland.
But something troubled Monsignor Cellini as he looked down from the colonnade. Mental tentacles reached out from some secret chamber of his subconscious and invaded his usual serenity. Something was different about this crowd. He noticed a number of shepherds among the congregation. They were anachronisms from the past, products of remote villages and hamlets that had largely ignored the twentieth century. They were a colorful group, dressed in their sheepskin vests and boots and carrying the long crooked staffs associated with their ancient occupation.
Shepherds were a rare breed, but they were hardly cause for alarm. Monsignor Cellini's eyes moved from them to a large group of tourists dressed in black. The men wore suits with white shirts and narrow black ties. The women wore long black dresses and had veils draped across their faces.
The practice of veiling a woman's face was an Arab tradition. It was not part of the teachings of Islam or of the Koran. Yet the custom had been adopted by many Muslims in many non-Arab countries such as Iran and Turkey. The monsignor and many of his colleagues were now wary of Turks; after all, it had been a Turkish citizen who had attempted to assassinate the pope.
Cellini was relieved to see three Swiss Guards approach the group. Seventy-five of the guards were stationed at the Vatican to act as the traditional security force. Noted for their colorful seventeenth-century uniforms, similar to the British beefeater costume, the Swiss Guards were actually well-trained professional soldiers.
For centuries the Vatican had been regarded as a place of absolute sanctuary. Mussolini had been confident that the Allies would not bomb Rome for fear of damaging the Vatican. The pope was considered to be such an honored and revered figure that no assassin would dare to make him a target. Both notions had proved to be incorrect. The Swiss Guards took their job seriously. Although they still wore the traditional costumes, the officers carried side arms and were capable of using modern weapons.
Cellini waved at the guards and gestured for them to join him in the corridor. The soldiers obeyed. A young lieutenant, the only officer of the trio, snapped to attention and saluted. His men followed their lieutenant's example.
"Buon giorno, Monsignor," the officer greeted. "Come sta?"
"Bene, grazie," Cellini replied. Although Latin was the official language of the Vatican, the majority of residents and employees spoke Italian. Like most high-ranking priests, Cellini spoke several languages fluently. "But I am concerned about the group of visitors in the square. The group dressed in black."
"Si," the lieutenant said, nodding as he peered down at the tourists below. "I know the group. What is wrong, Monsignor?"
"They appear to be Arabs or possibly Muslims," Cellini stated. "I trust you checked on them?"
"Do not be concerned," the officer urged. "The group is comprised of Christian Lebanese who have made a pilgrimage to the Vatican. I was told the cardinal secretary had been informed of this matter."
"Si," Cellini confirmed. "Our office was told about this visit, but the Lebanese group was not expected until next week when the pope returns from his tour."
"We'll watch them if you like," the lieutenant offered. "Discreetly, of course."
"That won't be necessary," the monsignor assured him. "We don't want to do anything that might make our visitors from the Middle East uncomfortable."
"As you wish, Monsignor," the officer agreed.
"Grazie, Lieutenant," Cellini replied. "And I'm sorry to trouble you over this..."
Something hit the monsignor's left forearm. The projectile was small, yet it had moved with the speed of sound and had hit with a terrible force. Cellini felt hot metal tear through flesh and muscle. He cried out, but his voice was lost amid the roar of automatic weapon fire.
The gunfire had erupted from St. Peter's Square. Cellini fell to one knee, clutching his bullet-torn arm with his right hand. Blood seeped between his fingers. The monsignor's astonishment was greater than the pain of the punctured limb. He looked up at the three Swiss Guards. Their bodies convulsed wildly from the impact of high-velocity slugs.
> Blood splashed their uniforms. One soldier stumbled backward. A crimson liquid jetted from a bullet hole in the side of his neck. The man collapsed against the stone railing as the last remnants of life spewed from his body. The lieutenant and the other Swiss Guardsman fell to the paved walkway. Both men were seriously wounded, yet neither was unconscious.
Monsignor Cellini heard the pandemonium that had erupted in the crowd. The square had become a battlefield. The members of the alleged Christian-Lebanese group had suddenly drawn weapons. The men took pistols from shoulder holsters that had been hidden under their jackets.. The women stripped off the skirts from their black dresses. They wore trousers and boots beneath the long garments. Each carried a Skorpion or Ingram M-11 machine pistol strapped to a thigh.
The women unleashed their weapons with a vengeance. Two deadly females continued to fire at the Swiss Guards on the top of the colonnade. Monsignor Cellini did not present a threat so no one aimed directly at the priest. They did not care if a bullet claimed Cellini; his life meant nothing to them.
The other Swiss Guards were on duty in the square itself. The pair was immediately cut down by pistol rounds from the male gunmen. A burst of Ingram slugs chewed into the fallen soldiers to make certain neither would rise again.
Terrified tourists screamed. Many raised their hands in surrender. A French woman in a white linen suit panicked and desperately ran toward St. Peter's Basilica as if seeking sanctuary within the church. One of the shepherds calmly stepped forward and swung his staff in a low arch. The hooked end caught the woman's ankle. A quick twist yanked her off-balance. The woman was thrown forcibly to. the pavement. She tumbled across the hard surface. The white suit was torn at the knee and elbow. Blood dripped from her face where a large layer of skin had been scraped from her right cheek.
"Cochon!" the lady's husband exclaimed as he charged forward.
Another shepherd swung his staff and dropped the crook over the Frenchman's head. It snared his neck, bringing the French tourist to an abrupt halt. The shepherd's shoulders turned sharply, and the Frenchman felt a terrible pressure against his throat and shoulders. Vertebrae cracked. The shepherd removed the hook, and the tourist fell limply to the ground. The man's neck had been broken.
"Attenzione!" a swarthy man snapped as he waved a Russian Makarov pistol in the crowd. "We will shoot anyone who resists!"
His message was repeated in four other languages to make certain everyone understood. Voicing the threat had been unnecessary; the deadly Makarov had made the killer's intentions very clear. Monsignor Cellini listened to the gunmen's angry voices. He tried to concentrate on their words instead of the throbbing pain in his arm. He understood everything until a voice shouted something in a language Cellini guessed to be Japanese. Yet the sentences became jumbled in his skull, transformed into gibberish by the pain.
The Swiss lieutenant was curled in a fetal position, with both arms held tightly to his bullet-torn belly. The other surviving soldier slowly rose to his hands and knees. He dragged his bloodied body toward his lieutenant. With trembling fingers, he reached for the holstered pistol in the officer's hip.
Suddenly the soldier opened his mouth as if to scream. He did not cry out, although his features contorted with pain. The guardsman fell forward. Cellini gasped as the soldier's face hit the walkway. A star-shaped metal object protruded from the base of his skull.
Monsignor Cellini stared at the dead man. His mind swam in a black mist. Perhaps this was all a terrible dream. Why would anyone do these dreadful things? Only a madman would slaughter innocent people in the Vatican. But do madmen organize and coordinate their insane schemes?
Then Cellini was certain it was a nightmare. The figure that materialized before him could not be real. It was a product from the subconscious fears and imagined terror of his childhood. The shape was completely dark from head to toe. The form resembled a man, yet it had no face. Its feet were split in the center like the cloven hoof of the devil. A long steel blade extended from the creature's fist as it drew closer.
The thing advanced quickly. It raised the sword in a two-handed grip. With a fierce bestial shout, it swung the sword. The blade struck the wounded lieutenant at the nape of the neck. Cellini saw the Swiss officer's head roll from his body. A crimson fountain gushed from the stump of the lieutenant's neck like red wine from a ruptured goatskin.
Then the thing turned toward Cellini.
It had a face. Gray cloth covered the top of its head and its nose and mouth. Dark almond-shaped eyes peered through the gap in the mask. The killer snapped his wrist, flicking blood from the blade of his sword.
"Get up, priest," the masked figure ordered. He spoke broken Italian with a thick accent. "I hate priest. I kill you if you not get up."
"Perche?" Cellini asked. "Why are you doing this?"
"Quiet," the Oriental warned, pointing the sword at the monsignor's face. "Get up."
Cellini slowly rose to his feet. The masked figure gestured with his sword, indicating that Cellini was to walk toward the basilica. The monsignor nodded and cradled his wounded arm against his chest. Cellini's knees felt weak and his vision blurred. He feared he might pass out. The man with the sword would kill him if he fainted.
I must reach the basilica, Cellini thought. I will be safe there...
The grim reality of the situation suddenly struck the monsignor. He would find no sanctuary in St. Peter's Basilica. There was no place of safety.
Sanctuary was a dream, and reality had become a nightmare.
2
"Gentlemen," Hal Brognola began as he leaned back in his chair at the head of the conference table in the Stony Man war room. "The shit has hit the fan. And I mean a bucketful of it."
Brognola was the head of operations for Stony Man, an ultrasecret organization created to combat the growing threat of international terrorism. Stony Man had originally been developed to utilize the uncanny skills and remarkable strategies of Mack Bolan, better known to the world as the one-man army called the Executioner. Bolan's insight was as impressive as his talent for battle. He had selected the best men in the world for the job. The primary mission for Stony Man operations was simple — find the enemy and stop him cold.
No one was better at stopping terrorists than the five men seated at the conference table with Brognola. They were the men of Phoenix Force. Each was an expert in combat, tactics and survival. Their backgrounds and national origin varied greatly, yet all the men of Phoenix Force were veteran warriors. They were experts in the arts of infiltration, covert operations and seek-and-destroy missions. They were the best trained, the most experienced and highly skilled elite fighting unit ever assembled.
"So the shit hit the fan," Rafael Encizo remarked with a smile. "Glad to see nothing has changed while I was away."
Encizo had spent the last six months in a U.S. Army hospital in Nuremberg. He had been wounded during a mission in France. A bullet had creased Encizo's skull. If the 9 mm round had struck a centimeter to the left, that mission would have been the Cuban warrior's last.
Rafael Encizo was not an easy man to kill. Many had tried in the past and most had paid for their failure with their lives. Encizo had learned the code of the jungle at a very early age. The rules were kill or be killed. Encizo was not dead yet.
Young Rafael's education had started in Cuba when Fidel Castro had seized the reins of power. Like most young Cubans in the early sixties, Rafael had known little about communism or politics in general. He had known only that he was disgusted with the Batista regime and he had assumed that things would not be any worse under Castro.
Encizo's opinion changed drastically when Castro's troops arrested and executed thousands of alleged dissidents. The Encizo family had never been involved in politics, yet Rafael's parents and older brother were victims of this slaughter. His two sisters and younger brother were taken to "reeducation centers" to be instructed in Marxism and the socialist revolution.
Rafael Encizo joined the counterrevoluti
on. He became part of a small band of guerrilla fighters who conducted hit-and-run raids on Castro's storm troopers. Their attempt was doomed from the beginning. Inexperienced and poorly armed, the counterrevolutionaries were no match for Castro's professional soldiers, many of whom were veteran guerrillas. The rebels were hunted down and slaughtered. Only Encizo and a handful of others survived to flee the country. The survivors were no longer inexperienced, but they realized the odds against them were too great.
During the early years of Castro's reign, almost one-tenth of the entire Cuban population fled the tiny country. Many others were expelled as " undesirables." Thousands of exiles found their way to the United States.
More than forty thousand young Cubans participated in the abortive Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961. Rafael Encizo was among them. The assault on the shores of Cuba was a terrible disaster. Communist troops easily overpowered the invaders, killing many and capturing the survivors. Encizo was taken to El Principe, Castro's notorious political prison.
Starved, beaten and tortured, Encizo still did not break, although he certainly appeared to surrender to the physical and mental abuse. Encizo told his jailers he had been wrong. He told them he now believed Fidel Castro was a great liberator and that Marxist-Leninism was the wave of the future. The Communists thought they had a new convert. Encizo was soon given medical treatment and better food and allowed to sleep eight hours a day.
The jailers decided that Encizo was no longer dangerous. It was a fatal mistake for one careless guard. Encizo seized the man from behind, twisted his head with savage force and broke his neck. The Cuban warrior successfully escaped from El Principe and returned to the United States.
Encizo became a naturalized U.S. citizen. He worked in many unusual occupations. The Cuban was a scuba instructor, a professional bodyguard and an insurance investigator, specializing in maritime claims. He participated in diving operations off the coast of Jamaica and Puerto Rico in search of underwater treasure from the doomed Spanish and British ships which, according to legend, now lay on the ocean floor.
