Ferro’s new digs was a control room apart from the larger drone command center,. Inside were only two standard VSS drone control cockpits, but each pod included extra monitors and special bucket seats.
Now Ferro was seated in his control pod, studying incredibly detailed situation and op maps of New York City’s five boroughs. With a swirl of his joysticks, Ferro could zoom in and out with pinpoint accuracy. He had virtual and geographical maps, and satellite photography over which he could superimpose street maps and various grid types.
The doors swished open and Father Martin strode in, carrying two large go-cups.
“Giustino, we will be monitoring Simon Pound now, providing various types of support. Are you ready to engage?”
“Yes, director.”
The Vatican’s secret drone base near North America was located in Greenland, and the drone itself was fueled and ready. He would fly it to New York, where high-level diplomacy between the VSS and the NSA allowed it to occupy airspace as long as it avoided commercial flight paths.
“Let’s get the plane in the air.” The old man sank into the extra command seat. “We’re joining our friend Simon. Home in on the GPS beacon, if you will.”
“Once in the New York airspace, sir. The beacon’s range is not quite as long as the drone’s flying range.”
“Of course, of course, carry on.” Martin watched as Ferro went through the pre-flight checklist, monitored the drone’s systems, and then without preamble took it down a long narrow runway like a toy airplane and flew it into the darkening sky. Ferro’s face was split by a huge grin.
Martin didn’t disclose the beacon was Caterina Galassi herself. Well, her phone’s GPS, actually. He’d had doubts about sending her to handle Simon in person, but it seemed he required the personal touch especially since he was clearly a target. That also made Cat a target, and Martin wouldn’t forgive himself if something happened to her. But she could take care of herself—he’d never worked with a stronger adept, or one more powerful. The Church could never acknowledge the existence of the magical arts—and the trickier magick—but that didn’t mean they hadn’t exploited it for their own benefit.
But Martin knew they hadn’t always been ethical. In fact, many of the adepts who ended up working for the Opposition, the enemy, whoever, were disgruntled Church adepts. They’d had their share of shit thrown at them. Convents and monasteries were originally conceived to hide adepts who could then develop their gifts in relative privacy as agents of the Church. But all throughout history conservative, extremist members of these faith communities because of jealousy or envy or disgust occasionally denounced the adepts as evil and ruthlessly wiped them out.
What if they were evil? Martin thought. What if we’re wrong and adepts really are the enemy, and we just can’t see it?
He shook off the disturbing thought and turned his attention back to the piloting skills of Father Ferro.
He is iron, this kid. He’d have made a superb fighter pilot.
The drone streaked toward New York, aided by satellite guidance and an array of instrument panels on Ferro’s screens.
Later, Ferro said, “We’re in American airspace, sir. We’ve made the required contacts, permission granted.” He seemed awed.
“The Holy See wields much power, Giustino. Valuable alliances work both ways.”
Ferro nodded, returning to his instruments. “We should pick up the beacon’s signal soon. It’s in Manhattan?”
“Or nearby. Bring up all the borough maps. When you have it, put the dot where it belongs.”
“Yes sir. I have them now. They’re in…Queens, sir. Moving in an auto.”
“Bring up the camera and keep it on visual.”
In a moment they could see an amazing amount of detail, Simon’s damnable movie car streaking rapidly down a highway. A bright light, possibly flames or sparks, followed them off at an angle. Martin realized what it was because the dark lumps, other cars, seemed to stand still while Simon weaved in and out between them.
They’re being chased.
“Zoom in on the pursuing vehicle,” Martin directed.
Ferro jiggled the joystick. It was a black SUV, rocketing after Simon and Cat, clearly with homicidal intentions.
If we were weaponized…we could end this now, Martin thought.
All they could do was watch as the SUV kept close to the dark sports car, weaving just as quickly through the traffic. Flashes indicated there was gunfire.
Martin’s fingernails dug into his palms.
Simon streaked through the streets until his car reached the concrete jungle approach to the huge span of the Queensboro Bridge. The Mustang took the square-shaped array of ramps at speed, followed closely by the SUV. Both vehicles roared around the ninety-degree climbing turn and headed for the second…
Then all at once the SUV seemed to go airborne, disappearing in a flash of flame and a great gout of smoke, leaving a bright arc and then dying out like a snuffed candle.
“What’s happened?” Martin shouted, leaning forward.
Ferro circled the drone now, its camera surveying.
“It looks…it looks as if Simon outdrove them, taking the hard curve at speed and the pursuers couldn’t make the turn…”
Martin’s brow dripped stinging sweat into his eyes.
“Damn it, Simon,” he muttered. He hadn’t wanted to make them both targets.
But then, the best traps were those that didn’t seem to be traps at all. It seemed the Opposition was redoubling its efforts to terminate Simon to block his interference in their plans, that was clear. They’d already acted pre-emptively, and they weren’t likely to give up now as their plans coalesced.
“Good work,” he said. Ferro beamed. “Let me know what happens next. Can you monitor both our people and that crash site?”
“I should be able to.” Ferro set about driving the drone in large circles.
“Very good. I’m contacting them, making sure they’re all right.”
Martin decided to have that talk with the Big Man himself. The pontiff had asked to be kept apprised, but Father Martin wasn’t sure yet if he would tell the Man in the Hat everything. Plausible deniability wasn’t only for politicians.
Chapter 50
Westview Mall Construction Site
Queens, New York
The new car scent inside the black Lincoln Continental was overpowered by the animal scent of sex.
Hidden in shadows on a side street with a view of the construction site, with its tinted glass and black paint, the long car resembled a block of obsidian. The driver sat mute in the cockpit, separated from the rear compartment by a thick layer of smoked bullet-proof glass. In the rear seat, Stoyanova swore when the dark classic Mustang roared into a u-turn and pulled away from what had meant to be its fatal trap.
Following their instructions, the four men in the black Yukon immediately gave chase, but she knew already that the trap had failed. Something had warned the driver—the Betrayer, as Kessler referred to Simon Pound—and he hadn’t wasted any time getting the Vatican’s adept out of there.
Stoyanova stretched, her body still tingling from the ritual sex she’d used to recharge her powers and launch an attack at the other adept’s organs. She smiled thinking of the pain she’d inflicted, but it hadn’t been enough. Pound’s instinct was good. By leaving with haste he had forced a cut-off of the directed attack and probably saved the woman’s miserable life.
This was going to hurt.
Stoyanova had no more enthusiasm for reporting failure to Kessler than Curtis.
Frowning, sweat drying on her forehead, she pulled up her damp panties and straightened out the rest of her clothes. She ignored a sheen of new sweat. The man next to her had already adjusted his clothing and was sitting back, smoking a smelly cigarette.
What a damned cliché, she thought.
He might have been abstractly handsome, but his features seemed unfinished. His jaw was blunt rather than chiseled, his nose was bulky
instead of strong, and his cheeks were lumpy not sculpted.
She shuddered, happy the dome light was off.
They’d had quick, rough and rutting sex on the plush seat as she chanted out the ancient words that harnessed the power of the acts. She had squeezed the elemental force from his manhood and her body had converted it and redirected at the woman in the other car.
She’d lost interest in the vehicle carrying Kessler’s private soldiers—she was certain Simon Pound would evade them. Probably execute them. He was nearly impossible to kill, and Kessler chose to avoid admitting it, but he was concerned about this one man standing in the way of his plans. And her plans.
She reached into her small bag and removed a compact, then set about repairing her face, keeping to herself on one side of the seat. When she was finished, and he had put out that damnable cigarette, she finally turned to him.
He faced her, grinning. “It was pretty great, wasn’t it?”
She smiled tightly. “Even bad sex is certainly useful,” she said.
His face clouded, clearly wondering how to parse her remark.
“Step outside and check to make sure no one has pulled up to the site. I can’t see through these damned tinted windows.”
He smirked, but he knew she was with the boss, so he nodded and undid the door latch. He was large, muscular, and as he began unfolding himself out of the car’s rear seat she suddenly leaned toward him.
The suppressed pistol in her hand barked twice in rapid succession. The hollow-point .380 slugs took him in the back of the head and propelled him out of the car. He crumpled to the sidewalk in a heap.
Stoyanova replaced the gun in her bag, a slight smile twitching on her lips as she sniffed the powder scent now in the car. Perhaps she should have killed him during orgasm, but it would have been too messy. But perhaps it would have made all the difference. She moved over and pulled the door shut, glad she’d timed it perfectly and none of his blood stained the door or the window.
Moments later, when they nosed out of the shadows and crept quietly along the empty street on their way to the freeway ramp, she was framing the report she’d deliver to Kessler. If lucky she’d manage to do it during one of the vile acts he demanded, distracting him from her failure.
She already expected the other thugs, Pieter Curtis’s people, to fail. Then she could blame them. They’d been foiled often enough, it might all fall on Curtis.
She smiled, thinking how she could turn this failure of hers into an asset.
But the main objective was still on her mind, too.
I have to find a way to get that bitch.
Chapter 51
On the Silver Star, Florida to New York
Somewhere in the Carolinas
He’d kept the gun hidden. But they had keyed in on his identity, meaning they were here to kill them—and take the damned gold statuette.
Not so fast, assholes.
He put two rounds into the leader, the one in the conductor’s suit, and the bastard went tumbling down, tripping the two immediately on his heels.
The gunshots were louder than hell in the close space of the corridor in the middle of the night, and after a beat he heard some screams from behind closed compartment doors.
Stay inside your spaces. He hoped the innocents in those cabins would play it safe. Maybe get on their cell phones.
There were at least two more behind those who were trying to get themselves untangled from the dead conductor, and he took them out first with head shots.
Two rounds left.
Should have grabbed the SIG! The semi-auto held fifteen rounds in the magazine.
They were still several yards away, but he was a deadly shot and his last two rounds took out the other two assailants.
Six rounds, five assholes.
Not bad…
But then he heard a sound behind him. and turned to see two or three others running toward him from the opposite end of the car.
With instinctive speed he lunged for the compartment door, which opened from the inside with Bella’s hand on the latch.
Her face was wrenched with fear, and in her other hand she held out his semi-automatic pistol. He pushed her inside the compartment roughly, took the SIG, then turned in time to close and latch the door shut before the assailants reached it.
But they were there in seconds. Their guns were suppressed, jagged bullet holes appearing like magic in the thin-layered wood and metal door, throwing shrapnel-like splinters, slugs smashing into the bunks or blasting through the outside window.
They heard muffled screams, suddenly cut off.
Bella screamed too, but he had already wrestled her as far to the side of the cabin as he could. He racked the SIG’s slide and aimed at the door, popping three double-taps where he thought they might still be. He was rewarded with at least one scream of agony, and then more shots burst through the door.
Straker tried to protect Bella with his body, at least from the splinters and glass, but she was having none of it. With a furious roar, she dug into his duffel and came up with a Glock 9mm. It was ready to go, and she fired through the door, too.
Their ears ringing from their unsilenced guns, they waited.
Nothing. It was eerily quiet as the painful echoes faded.
Straker realized the train was rapidly slowing.
The whole attack had taken less than a minute.
But was it over?
Straker unlatched and whipped open the ruined door in one motion. Outside the compartment several bodies lay in awkward positions, riddled with his and Bella’s slugs. Blood was splattered across the corridor floor, and onto the shattered windows. The stench of sudden death permeated his nostrils, but he had smelled it all before. Bella was retching behind him.
“We have to go!”
He lunged back into their compartment and snatched up their belongings, handing half to Bella, who was near fainting.
“Bella, we have to get it together and get off this train. Now!”
It might have been a tall order, had the train been barreling along, but it was now in a long screeching, stopping maneuver, the wheels locked and dragging across the rails.
Straker kicked over a couple of the dead, then bent over them. They were just random thugs, puffed up, maybe on steroids or drugs, hard-faced and horror-movie bizarre for having died so silently. Some had suppressed pistols while some carried those funky long knives—not swords, as he’d thought.
Fuck me.
Straker snatched one from a dead hand. An obsidian dagger right out of Aztec legend!
He patted them down for wallets, found none.
He felt the train rapidly coming to a full stop. On second thought, Straker also scooped up a couple of the suppressed pistols. They were 9mm and he had plenty of ammunition.
Then, dragging a slow-motion Bella, he checked a couple of the compartments around them.
They recoiled, horrified. Other passengers were murdered, their throats slit or with a bullet to the forehead.
He couldn’t help thinking: We are in fucking hell right now.
Straker was carrying the bulk of their armaments and the duffel with the cursed statue, while Bella managed with Straker’s go-bag and her own backpack. He led them down the hall, past the first attackers’ bodies, saw one moving with a moan and put a quiet bullet through his brain. He slowed long enough to pat down a couple more in vain, grab another silenced handgun and magazines—you just never fucking know—and then they headed for the steps.
Below, Straker didn’t want to but Bella pleaded.
“We have to know,” she said. Her color was returning, and now she resembled a warrior with her backpack and a silenced handgun in one hand. Straker was proud of her. He’d seen guys in Iraq who hadn’t fared as well under fire.
“Okay,” he relented.
They quickly checked the roomettes. Everyone in the car’s lower level had also been slaughtered.
“Who are these fuckers?” Straker said, not for
the first time.
They popped open the outer door and stepped off the hissing train. He couldn’t see the GE Genesis diesel-electric locomotive that had been hauling the sleeper cars, as it was hidden by a bend in the track bed. There was loud talk and some screaming heading their way, but the people—probably the engineer and his crew—were also hidden by the train itself.
From the sound of it, they had less than two minutes to get lost.
Straker knew they’d just passed a town called Florence and were now somewhere straight east of that, with a sharp turn north coming up. Before them, tobacco fields stretched as far as they could see in the dark of the night.
There was nothing else, and nothing else to do.
They headed into the fields.
Chapter 52
The catacombs beneath the Edificio Nuovo, Comitato per Interventi
Vatican City, Rome
Hauptmann Emanuele Spada was slowly, inexorably going insane.
He was able to perform his routine duties with the same attention to detail he’d always displayed and which had led to his promotion to captain much quicker than most—but he was certain he could no longer pass the annual psychological tests required for the position.
Of course, he no longer cared.
Forcing himself to avoid chuckling madly, he recalled how the voices had finally helped rid him of the three people who had made his life a living hell.
They had begun as whispers, or the sound of people in a faraway room. But then the volume had started to increase, sounding as if they were next door. Eventually they seemed to be always behind him. Or like insects hovering near his ears. He found himself trying to wave them off and swatting them away. But they always came back, bringing their damnable whispering with them.
Eventually he couldn’t stand the silences, those few times the voices weren’t there. He started to wish for the voices to come back, to whisper again. He longed to hear what they said.
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