THE JUDAS HIT

by W. D. Gagliani

  Valessio, the sole woman in the room, replaced her glasses. “I have heard rumors of this group, but are we to take them seriously?” She had been with Mossad until the VSS had lured her away with the promise of unlimited power in her own specialty, security. Now she ran the tightest security ship in the world—but the world didn’t know it.

  “Yes, Monica, we must take them seriously. They’ve been trying for years, but something happened recently that placed the text in question in their hands. Without it, they could perform their rituals of sex magick all day long and not raise a single poltergeist. Plenty of fun, but they went nowhere. But when whoever approached them with the text came along, everything changed.”

  “What demon do they wish to unseal?” Moltisanti snarled.

  “The worst,” Martin said.

  They stared at him grimly, waiting.

  “Astaroth,” he said.

  Chapter 13

  Atlantic Ocean

  Ten Miles off Vero Beach, Florida

  Straker watched the bubbles bursting from Bella’s regulator. Then he surveyed the area. The water was about as clear as it ever got, but even so visibility was limited. They’d raised plenty of muck from the bottom in the last couple days, muck that hovered over the grid like sandy fog. The professional vacuum they used was responsible for that, and Straker was armed to fend off any curious sharks that might cruise past. Right now the vacuum was silent, and they were sweeping the bottom for any exposed items too heavy to have been moved by the air.

  The decayed ribs of one of the largest ships of the 1715 treasure fleet sunk only days out of Havana formed a delta shape on the bottom, which was mostly flat. The Nuestra Señora de Salvación wasn’t as famous as others from the same fleet sunk during that voyage, but considering what Straker and his associates had been finding, it may have been a lot more important—and a whole lot more unusual.

  He struggled to breathe regularly, because excitement threatened to overtake his usually calm demeanor. But breathing too quickly would mess with his air intake, so he forced himself to relax.

  As Bella now sifted through the nearest grid square, he tried to both keep watch for the eerily quiet predators and also to look over her shoulder. He hovered slightly above her to see where she was working, avoiding her bubbles by readjusting his position.

  And soon…Was that the glint of gold?

  In a corner of the overall grid, Bella had just swept some sand off a lump or hillock. But it was clear she had noticed something in the bump, because she had redoubled her efforts even though sweeping was nearly useless.

  Maybe a pile of cannonballs, or some ballast welded together.

  But no, it was more exciting than that, because it wasn’t drab or tarnished or soiled in any way.

  It was gold, because gold may be crusted over but it never changes color.

  Then they were rich because the ship was suspected of having carried a more precious cargo than many in the fleet. Where other galleons were loaded with silver and jewels, all of which would have been a sweet haul, no doubt, this particular Nuestra Señora may well have carried only gold plundered from any of the Central American civilizations the Spaniards had conquered and oppressed.

  And robbed blind, let’s not forget that fact.

  The ship had been like a Brink’s truck, and from what he had read, it had been disguised to seem less desirable than other treasure ships in order to fool pirates. The research had taken the better part of a decade, but here they were—and the ship’s true cargo was beginning to show itself. Already they had filled one strong-box with chains and pendants shaped out of soft, pure gold, embellished with fine South American emeralds. They’d expected to find more and larger pieces, like this one.

  Straker swam closer to Bella’s side, momentarily forgetting about sharks. They hovered together over the grid corner and her new find.

  Gold is distracting by its very nature.

  A hundred feet above them, a long and narrow shadow approached their main support vessel, the Caymans Account. It wasn’t a shark, but Straker should have been paying attention. The smaller vessel pulled alongside the bulkier Caymans.

  Straker breathed evenly as Bella lifted the heavy object out of its organic prison. She handled it carefully with her bright blue and yellow neoprene gloves, shaking off sand and sediment, and held it close to her chest due to its weight.

  But suddenly she opened her hands and the statuette plummeted back down to the sea floor, where it settled after kicking up a cloud of muck. Straker was shocked to see Bella’s eyes wide with horror behind the glass of her mask, more bubbles escaping her regulator due to her panic-stricken breathing.

  Straker wished they’d worn the helmets with the built-in radios, but they usually employed those at much greater depths.

  “What’s wrong?” he mouthed, his hands finding her forearms and steadying her beside him. Out of the corner of his eye and down he could still see the glint of the gold piece she had dropped, whatever it was.

  Bella shook her head fiercely and tried to break his grip, pulling away. Her face was ashen in the altered light from the surface far above them.

  Straker released her and aimed his body downwards, to retrieve the artifact, but now Bella grabbed him and would not let go. She kept shaking her head, eyes wide.

  No!

  He thought about it for a few seconds, but then shrugged and finned downward, digging the gold figurine or whatever it was out of the new layer of muck.

  With his face close to it, he saw why Bella had dropped it.

  It was the most obscene thing—statuette, idol, whatever—he had ever seen.

  His hands shook as he gripped it between his black neoprene gloved fingers and started to ascend. Bella pulled on his elbow, but he shook her off.

  Above them, two vessels waited but neither diver noticed the second one until it was too late.

  Chapter 14

  Edificio Nuovo, Comitato per Interventi

  Vatican City, Rome

  Father Martin’s face turned ashen after checking the new text message. He cleared his throat and looked at his bureau heads, who still waited for the remainder of their briefing.

  “It’s our man Simon,” he said. “Simon Pound was on the ground in New York, his base, when this first piece of filth was found. He was able to check the scene, and he may have already had contact with an enemy agent. He’s on the jet now, coming for a face to face briefing, and I’ve just gotten word the plane is in trouble.”

  “Sabotage?” Monica Valessio’s always grim face seemed to have grown darker.

  “Of a sort,” Martin responded. He looked at the text again, then typed furiously, a brief response. He grimaced. “We’re working on it.”

  Certain secrets were too much to handle, even for his inner circle. Although they knew Simon Pound’s true nature and about the demon-sealing and that other magic existed, they were in the dark regarding certain aspects of the VSS’s weapons in the battle against encroaching magic—especially that the VSS itself employed carefully groomed adepts.

  “I have confidence in the…response team, so we’ll continue our briefing until we have further news.”

  He hoped it wouldn’t be that Simon’s plane had crashed or blown up, and that their best agent—the immortal assassin himself—had found his Final Death.

  Father Martin’s hand crept up almost unconsciously to his unbuttoned plain shirt collar—no clerical collar for him—and his fingers brushed the tiny pendant there. It was a twin of one Simon Pound wore on a bracelet, a thin medallion with a secret space between the two faces in which was a dull metal flake. On the faces were symbols only a handful of people could decipher.

  Annunzio and Moltisanti spoke over each other.

  “What can we do—”

  “Why the hell are—”

  Martin held up a warning hand. “I said we have it under control. Let’s move on.”

  He wondered if they could read through him. In his day he’d been an en
igma, but age had softened him. Maybe it was time to retire.

  No!

  Not while the damned statues were out there, handled by nut-jobs who wanted the end of the world so they could reshape the ruins. What the crazies never seemed to understand was that once you released enough demons, there would be nothing to reshape.

  Who was behind this New Golden Dawn? Who would dare go for unsealing the most feared demon in all of history?

  “When Simon joins us,” he continued, finally having quelled the two most hot-headed members of his team, “he’ll give us a better idea of what happened at the find site. He’s made a contact on the police there, in Queens, and he may be able to shed some light on the kill attempt on him.”

  Monica nodded. “For this you summoned him here? We have Skype,” she added sarcastically.

  Martin smiled grimly. “Don’t you think hackers have pierced enough of our mundane tech that we require a few levels more security? Weren’t you Mossad, Monica?”

  Her face reddened. “Of course, you are right, Father Martin.” She sat back, chastened.

  “All too new for me,” Bellucci griped. “All of this shit.”

  Martin turned to his iPad for notes regarding the statuettes and continued the briefing, but his heart wasn’t in it. He waited for a text that would tell him something had saved the plane.

  Something, indeed.

  He knew what that something might be, but he couldn’t tell anyone.

  Chapter 15

  Gulfstream G550

  Over the Atlantic Ocean

  The Gulfstream’s angle of descent turned into a straight-down plunge.

  The twin Rolls-Royce engines screamed like banshees and Simon clapped his hands over his ears. It was a reflex and it didn’t resolve the problem. His eardrums felt as if they were being drilled and drained.

  His drink was flung across the cabin and he heard other glassware breaking.

  Shouting came from the cockpit. They didn’t know what was happening, but he could hazard a guess. Due to the heat in his bracelet, it was more than a guess—the plane was under attack by an adept with a fair amount of magic ability. Whoever it was could take the plane down by sheer force of will, and that seemed to be happening.

  The fuselage trembled as the strain of the forced descent pushed its tolerance to the limit. It felt as though the jet would shake itself apart even before reaching the surface of the ocean. Either way it wouldn’t be a pleasant way to go.

  The flight attendant clung to a drawer handle to avoid winding up dashed against the opposite bulkhead, but the drawer itself slid all the way off its tracks and only Simon’s quick dive saved her. They crashed into the lavatory door and he took the brunt of it, feeling the handle and lock jab into the small of his back.

  Part of his contracted redemption included some imperviousness to pain, so even though he grunted when the metal gouged into him, he felt much less pain than she would have. They were wedged in now, so he gripped her in his arms and they rode the dive for a few seconds.

  “Simon! Simon! Simon!”

  He was admiring the attendant’s lustrous hair and wondering if he could maneuver so their faces were oriented eye to eye—or better yet, mouth to mouth—when the tinny voice calling out his name finally registered.

  It was Cat’s voice, her lovely face still filling the screen of his Mac. The computer had also flown off the table, but it had withstood the crash and ended up not far from Simon. It was almost flattened and there was a crack in the retina display (not exactly indestructible, was it?). A corner of the case was curled like a page in a used book.

  “Simon, what’s happening?”

  Momentarily regretful, he turned away from the flight attendant, whose body felt a lot more responsive to this sudden and forced proximity than he would have expected.

  Reaching out one hand to flip the computer so Cat could see him, he had to shout to be heard over the plane’s screaming dive. It wasn’t purely vertical, but at the speed they’d picked up even the gradual incline would take them into the deep, dark ocean. Soon.

  “Something’s wrong with the plane, Cat, we’re probably two minutes from ditching in the middle of the Atlantic. Got any quick prayers?”

  She made a hissing sound. He wasn’t sure if it was his little joke, or her view of him with an attractive and helpless woman in his arms. He chuckled.

  “That plane was just checked from nose to tail, Simon. Sounds like sabotage. What about the pilots?”

  “They’re busy not getting the plane’s nose back up.” Because the cockpit door was banging open, he could hear the pilot shouting and the copilot calmly issuing a desperate mayday into the radio.

  He mentioned his hot—almost scalding—bracelet against his skin. “It’s some kind of a magickal attack, Cat. Someone’s using some skills to bring us down. Well, me, I would think.”

  Cat knew very well he could sense the supernatural. Having been granted his near-immortality through supernatural means, he was most sensitive to disruptions of the “natural” order. He didn’t know how it worked, but it was part of the Deal and he’d come to accept it.

  “Anything you can do?” she asked tersely.

  “I suppose I can ask the captain,” he said, “but it would be a waste of time. I bet those controls are frozen in place and can’t be moved. Only a similar approach, a counterattack, will work. Someone needs to grab the yoke remotely, snatch it away from the adept’s control. Cat?”

  Her face seemed to change color, or maybe it was the computer screen failing.

  “You know I can’t without special permission,” she said softly.

  “Then it’s been nice knowin’ ya.” He turned and planted a kiss on the surprised flight attendant’s cheek. “Nice knowing you, too, my dear. Too bad it had to end so soon.” Her eyes widened, and then suddenly her soft, plump lips found his and for a few seconds they had nothing to say.

  Around them, the cabin’s angle had grown steeper. In the cockpit, the pilots had stopped screaming. Now they seemed to be praying.

  He broke off the kiss with the attendant just as her lips had begun to part.

  Damn it, he thought wryly.

  “Cat, I doubt I’ll make it through this. You know there are conditions to my, uh, longevity. So we’ll have an explosion on impact, body parts scattered, fire, sharks, watery grave, bracelet probably lost. No matter how we slice it, this is probably the end. For the others, certainly. Unless you do something!”

  The Rolls-Royces sounded close to exploding. He might survive the crash, but if his body was torn apart the silver flake was likely not going to stick to him, and they knew that.

  Plus, there’s nothing like a spectacular plane crash to make an adept blush with pride.

  “Cat?”

  “Damn it, Simon, you know I can’t—”

  “Sure, you may not be able to do it, but trying wouldn’t hurt.”

  “The rules…”

  “I’m a great example of what happens when you toss the rules, Cat.”

  “Fine!”

  The plane’s angle was now almost vertical. The centrifugal force wedged the flight attendant into his body, and he couldn’t help but smile. A good way to go. Her eyes were still wide, but their lips met again. He glanced at the computer screen and saw the emotions playing on Cat’s face—he sensed her dilemma, but his bracelet warmed even more and then he knew she was breaking her directive. He felt it in his guts, which were starting to unknot.

  As a secret adept, Caterina Galassi was a perfect handler for Simon’s assignments, but she was barred from using her own skills. What would the millions of religious think if their Church was known to employ magic? Or, even worse, magick?

  There were exceptions in her directives, and she had realized—almost too late, Cat!—that now was a good time to invoke one of them. He was certain Father Martin would approve the expenditure of magical intervention after the fact. Like most departments, he had a budget for such things.

  The brace
let still burned his skin, but he felt the plane’s attitude slowly righting. Through a nearby porthole, he was able to see what might have been the horizon apparently straightening, although there didn’t seem to be much air left below them.

  His body and the attendant’s weren’t forced together any longer, but he held her anyway.

  She clung to him as desperately as she had clung to that drawer earlier.

  The pilots weren’t praying anymore. One of them was speaking into the radio, issuing some sort of explanation-slash-apology. The other was starting to laugh with nervous release.

  “Thanks, Cat,” Simon whispered.

  She didn’t answer. He knew she’d be exhausted. And possibly in a spot of trouble.

  The Gulfstream was flying level again, though at a much lower altitude.

  On his wrist, his skin was scorched and blistered. He didn’t mind at all. It was healing.

  “I think you should give me your number,” he said as the attendant fixed her clothes and make-up. She smiled.

  No, he didn’t mind at all.

  Chapter 16

  Atlantic Ocean

  Ten Miles off Vero Beach, Florida

  Straker and Bella ascended slowly and made a two-minute safety stop halfway up at fifty feet, helping to eliminate the nitrogen that had built up in their blood. Then they ascended in ten-foot increments, waiting a minute at each stop.

  Straker kept an eye out for sharks, but the clear water around them was amazingly devoid of marine life.

  Strange, he thought. But not as strange as what I’m carrying.

  The figurine was heavy, but the gold made the effort worthwhile. He worried about predators, because the shark-tip spear gun was hanging from his weight belt now.