THE JUDAS HIT

by W. D. Gagliani

  He stepped gingerly, avoiding dead bodies and bloodstains, and reached the lower deck.

  “Goddamn it,” he muttered. “Goddamn it.”

  The shooters down below were all dead, three of them, as he had thought. But beforehand they had killed Jim. Tortured him first.

  For the first time in his long career he felt the urge to vomit. He swallowed the bile.

  “Don’t come down here!” he called up to Bella.

  But she was already approaching. Sobbing, and now shaking all over.

  He pulled a blanket off a nearby cot, ignoring the one large bloodstain, and drew it over her shaking shoulders.

  “Why?” she said, dropping the gun as if it were scalding.

  “I don’t know,” he said. He gathered her in his arms and tried to calm the tremors.

  But actually I think I do know.

  It was the vile statuette he’d lashed down below the surface. What else could it be? But how could they have known about it? No, it had to be something else, didn’t it?

  But then again, his gut was rarely wrong and his gut told him the bastards were after that damned thing and they somehow knew—knew—they’d laid hands on it today. He couldn’t explain it, couldn’t rationalize it, but the knot of certainty lay deep in the pit of his stomach.

  Now what?

  Then he realized what they had to do.

  Bella stood guard as he went down into the clear water again to retrieve the statue, then he bundled it up in a canvas cloth and tossed it into a gym carry-all. They both felt disgust in its presence.

  They pulled up anchor and let both boats drift a couple miles parallel to shore. But not before marking the exact location of the Nuestra Señora wreck.

  Straker looked around. They hadn’t done anything to the crime scene, except let it drift farther from the wreck site. He got on the radio and called in a mayday, giving the stunned dispatcher a grim description of what had happened.

  He didn’t mention the statue, but implied the pirates perhaps wanted the boat, or mistaken identities had led to the massacre. He was confident his credentials would compare well to those of the thugs who’d killed his brother and his partner.

  Then Straker and Bella clung to each other as they waited for the Coast Guard cruiser to reach them.

  Chapter 19

  Leonardo da Vinci—Fiumicino Airport

  Rome

  The smell of his favorite bread permeated the car’s interior. Two short loaves of the wonderful Roman bread and a box of particularly delicate sfoglie lay on the seat beside him, and he could barely hold himself back from eating more. After the briefing and their short field trip, he’d borrowed a maroon VSS Fiat from the motor pool and driven in the mentally unstable traffic to the forneria, where he had indulged in some of their prepared delicacies on-site and stocked up for the plane ride back to New York. He had splurged on a good, crisp spumante and a boxed antipasto platter. He was looking forward to a snack with Carolina, the pretty flight attendant, who had been very grateful for all his comforting on the rocky trip in.

  They’d zoomed through narrow side streets barely missing the curbs and down harrowing busy boulevards, and now they were entering the extensive acreage of the international airport. The sound of climbing jets gave Simon a shudder—near-immortality or not, the close call wasn’t pleasant. After swallowing some aspirin he looked forward to the snack and more, awaiting him on the plane.

  The driver maneuvered quickly and easily through the service roads, taking him past terminals and avoiding Customs with the authority granted by the Vatican plates and insignia.

  Simon glanced at the back of the driver’s head. His stomach twitched.

  Something wasn’t right. But he wasn’t sure what. He formulated a question he could push at the driver, who hadn’t said a word the whole time they’d been on the road. No swearing this time, from the monk.

  They pulled up to the door of one of a series of Vatican hangars and it rolled up in its tracks. Inside, Simon could see the Gulfstream and a refueling vehicle parked nearby.

  Almost there, he thought, relieved. But then why the twitch?

  The driver’s head turned slightly as he drove the Alfa sedan into the brightly lit hangar, and then Simon had it.

  The driver for the first trip had looked like a monk, with longish hair below the bald spot on top. Simon remembered his swearing had been amusing.

  But this guy was different. He had shorter hair and now that he looked carefully, Simon saw that the uniform wasn’t exactly the right shade of blue.

  As the car slowed, Simon started pulling the door handle with the intention of rolling out before the vehicle could come to a full stop.

  The driver’s head turned.

  One of the perks of flying private jets with Vatican markings is that there’s no TSA or equivalent intrusive personnel, including Customs, to check your person.

  Simon was already sliding the compact SIG Sauer SP2022 out of its holster even as his hand grasped the door latch. It was locked, as he’d expected.

  The driver was quick with a silenced pistol, but still a fraction of a second slow. The barrel of Simon’s SIG was just about touching the back of the front seat and the gun barked twice.

  The shots were loud in the enclosed space, but Simon didn’t wait for the driver to die, he aimed the gun’s muzzle up and shot out the bloodied windshield as well. The Hydra-Shok rounds did the trick nicely. As the driver’s body twitched violently and fell across the steering wheel, Simon leaped over the seat backs, punched through the broken windshield, and squeezed out of the jagged hole left by the demolished glass.

  He scuttled across the ticking hood and saw dark shapes surrounding the car before rolling off and landing on the concrete.

  They swooped in.

  Chapter 20

  Leonardo da Vinci—Fiumicino Airport

  Rome

  The fanatics were dressed in black, like ninjas, and as he moved toward where the plane was parked he laid down covering fire with the SIG. Five rounds took down five assailants, but there were at least another five.

  Their attack was eerily quiet and he had just enough time to wonder why they weren’t just shooting him, when he saw the blades they brandished.

  Obsidian daggers?

  A pair of preternaturally sharp blades swished past his head just as he dropped into a crouch.

  Two quick rounds from his SIG dispatched the dagger wielders, punching through their foreheads and leaving them spread on the bloody concrete like squashed insects.

  He was already rolling away from the others, who pressed their attack as if their lives didn’t matter. One he tripped with a low kick, finishing him with a bullet to the back of the head.

  Then the slide clicked open, the magazine empty.

  The last two attackers slowed and he was able to get a good look at them; they wore some kind of demonic mask, like Halloween costumes, but their mouths were visible and he could see their sneers. He set the useless pistol at his feet and backed up as they advanced on him, their eye-holes seeming to glow with supernatural glee.

  Simon doubted they were supernatural at all, despite the impression of their coordinated quiet attack.

  He was nearly at the plane, the boarding ladder lowered and waiting.

  But he was still alone against the assassins—no help from the jet’s crew probably meant they’d been murdered.

  He forced a laugh at the remaining assassins and it threw them off their swagger long enough…

  Simon drew his own blades, two well-hidden Gil Hibben throwing knives that slid into his hands and left them in a stainless steel flash.

  Each blade skewered an attacker in the throat. They died with barely a groan.

  That is, one died but the other thrashed around the hangar floor until Simon straddled him, removing the mask to reveal a hardened mercenary-type with a nondescript face. A hired gun. Or blade.

  “Who’s your leader?” Simon looked straight down at the dying man. />
  “See you back in hell,” the man spluttered, one hand wrapped around Simon’s knife where it protruded from his severed carotid. The assassin tried to spit up at Simon, but couldn’t raise any saliva.

  “Last chance,” Simon said patiently.

  “Roast in—”

  “Yeah, I get it,” Simon growled, and in one quick motion broke the man’s neck. He could have let the guy bleed out, but he’d lost his temper.

  He collected his blades, then picked up one of the obsidian daggers for the lab. Not that it would lead to anything, but one never knew.

  He surveyed the hangar, spotted no one, and climbed the steps into the Gulfstream.

  The pilots had been killed in the cockpit. He found the attendant stuffed into the lavatory, her lovely throat slashed open.

  The rage took him like a wave. His vision blurred.

  Now it was personal.

  Trembling with primal fury, he made a call with the jet’s phone, reaching the local contact number, then sat waiting for a clean-up and relief pilots. He could have flown the plane, but he didn’t trust himself to remain calm enough.

  With weary sadness, he arranged Carolina’s body and covered it.

  Chapter 21

  The Pinnacle (Kessler Building)

  Pinnacle Industries International Headquarters

  Manhattan, New York

  He was jogging on his private indoor track atop the Pinnacle, the building named for the software operating system that had taken the market by storm and become the go-to for almost every major American corporation. The takeover was almost complete, and his market engineers and strategists predicted in barely a year his software would control fifty-one percent of the world’s computers.

  The Olympic-sized surface was a custom royal blue Durathon Elite and he’d been on it for almost a half hour when one of the double doors at the far end of the oval opened and Curtis loped in, waiting until his employer was almost parallel before joining him in the near-center lane. At each corner, an armed guard watched impassively.

  Cornelious Kessler was tall and trim in a black and gold running suit that complemented his fine blond mane and dark complexion. His famous chiseled jaw reminded one of the actor Kirk Douglas, but the resemblance ended there. His eyes were cold, steel-gray and piercing, and anyone who touched him—and that number was very small—remembered the coldness of his skin.

  Kessler nodded as Curtis fell in line and jogged along. South African by birth, Pieter Curtis was Kessler’s head of security, as far as the world knew. But he was also head of Kessler’s private army and right-hand man in charge of all jobs that needed doing in the dark. Curtis was short but square, muscular, compact and imposing, all at the same time. He was wearing a jumpsuit uniform with the Pinnacle insignia, a tall tower emitting two stylized lightning bolts from the very tip.

  Anyone who knew the Tarot would recognize it as a variation on The Tower card, except that the implied destruction was reversed. Kessler’s software had destroyed lesser competitors and now stood alone, and that was what most people saw in the logo.

  “Tell me good news, Pieter,” said Kessler without breaking stride.

  Curtis ran a few steps. “They messed up, sir. Something happened…they were all killed.”

  Kessler maintained his pace, but his calm voice belied the fury Curtis could feel as he ran alongside.

  “The statuette?” he said. “I don’t care about the followers.”

  “Looks like Straker held onto it, sir. Our people boarded their tub as soon as the Adept sensed the statue had been retrieved from the bottom. They commandeered the vessel without problem, but…”

  “But?” Kessler’s voice warned that excuses would not be tolerated.

  “Straker was a Ranger, sir. My guess is he wasn’t outnumbered by our crew. I considered four armed men capable of pacifying three normals and a soldier, but he doesn’t seem to have gone soft since he’s been out.”

  “You will not make the mistake again.”

  The simple words were threat enough. “No, sir.”

  “Did anyone survive this incompetent effort?”

  “Yes, the two who waited on the mainland.”

  “Bring them to the Round Room. I will convene a meeting.”

  “Yes.” A casual listener might have detected a slight uncertainty in Curtis’s voice.

  “Also, have the Adept locate the statue again, and then bring it to me.”

  Curtis nodded too quickly. “Yes, the Adept is already on it. She senses it’s on its way here—they are taking it here.”

  “They?”

  “Straker’s woman, Bella-something, also survived. They managed to keep all this from the police and Coast Guard. Probably they pointed to other finds as desirable treasure for pirates. Didn’t disclose everything. It also seems they managed to hide the true location of the wreck from the authorities.”

  Now Kessler stopped, seeming not at all out of breath. “Do they know what they have?”

  “Negative, I don’t think so. But this Straker, he has excellent instincts. His record shows—”

  “I don’t care about Straker and his prowess. Just get me the statue. We waited years to locate it and these idiots beat us to it by mere days. Days, Curtis. I don’t want a repeat of this fiasco. We need that statue, just as we need the others. They are useless otherwise. Get on their trail, remove the statue from their dead hands, and bring it to me!”

  “It shall be done, sir.”

  “See to it personally, if you have to.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And one more thing,” Kessler said, showing his teeth in what could have been a smile but was not. “Bring me Straker and Bella’s heads along with that other one, the Betrayer. I think I’ll start a new collection.”

  Curtis swallowed. “Yes, it shall be done.”

  “Yes it will,” Kessler said. His gravelly whisper was more menacing than any shout.

  They parted company and Kessler jogged on, while Curtis wiped his brow and galloped to the door.

  Chapter 22

  Edificio Nuovo, Comitato per Interventi

  Vatican City, Rome

  Father Martin stirred his espresso in its delicate demitasse and replayed the briefing in his head. Judas—Simon—was a loose cannon and had been for decades, indeed centuries. The bizarre prolonging of his life had made him cocky and careless.

  Near immortality would really mess with one’s wiring, he thought. In fact, he sometimes considered the possibility that Simon was clinically insane. Functional, but borderline in every other way. His extreme behavior had led Martin’s constant warnings to be wary, but Simon the agent walked headlong into situations that often qualified as insane, barely concerned about his own Final Death.

  Martin figured that even if he wasn’t crazy, in some part of Simon’s brain was the need to end his own life, having seen and done too much for one single human in so many lifetimes.

  Sooner or later, Simon Pound would run into his own death and welcome it.

  Until then, he would continue to play hard and plow a wide swath through his favorite gender. Judas was decidedly not a monk.

  Martin chuckled then blew on the hot coffee and sipped. It was a grim chuckle, and he’d caught himself doing that a lot lately.

  Until then, the VSS would continue to benefit from what was essentially a supernatural being. And that was appropriate, Martin believed, because on the wall behind him hidden by a benign religious painting was an electronic map of underground Rome that showed each special prison chamber. Green lights were good, red lights were bad. And he wanted to keep the Astaroth light green. The map and its tiny bulb lighting system was old, from 1974, and had never been updated. All living demons it represented had been bound by that year and Martin could have had it all transferred to modern technology. Indeed, there was a computer version accessible only to the highest security clearances—which included all members of his council—but late at night Martin liked staring at the old-school tiny
lights to remind himself of the awesome responsibility that came with the chair in the top VSS office.

  He’d reprimanded Caterina lightly after her unauthorized use of magic to keep Simon’s jet flying, but they both knew she’d saved the day.

  He remembered when his predecessor had explained the very existence of the supernatural to him, and how he’d listened wide-eyed. Half-Irish, he’d always secretly hoped there were leprechauns and fairies and all sorts of magical creatures, but his pragmatic side told him they did not exist. And then the head of the VSS told him about demons and how they’d been bound by supernatural means.

  Then Father Taglieri had introduced him to Simon Pound—or Jonathan Mark, at the time—and he’d been shocked, yet somehow also pleased to know his Irish side had been vindicated.

  “It’s a well-kept secret, Martin,” Taglieri had said, lighting a dark foul-smelling cigarette. Smoking indoors was not frowned upon in those days, and the head of the VSS was known for the Turkish blend tobacco smell he carried with him like an invisible shadow. “Catholics would succumb to hysteria or even insanity if they knew there is magic loose in their world.”

  “But wouldn’t it help elevate their world if they knew?”

  “In some cases, perhaps, but you are naïve if you think magic is benign. We’re not talking about concert hall prestidigitators and illusionists, tin-pot magicians with hackneyed acts and frayed suits, dragging rabbits out of hats and worn handkerchiefs out of rigged pockets. This is real magic, an embrace of the dark powers that swirl all around us just out of our view or reach, powers whose capability for destruction is incalculable.”

  Taglieri had given the speech before, Martin recalled thinking. But he had shuddered.

  “You’ll know what I’m talking about after this meeting,” the old man had said with a grim smile. “You’ll never be the same, and you will understand both why we keep this knowledge a secret and why we must continue to use all weapons at our disposal, including on occasion the vary magic we condemn.”