The Crimson Dagger - Vatican Knights Series 23 (2020)

by Rick Jones

  . . . The fifty-second floor . . .

  Now, their uniforms had become saturated enough to show Rorschach stains of sweat that appeared on their backsides and underarms. Their breathing started to labor as the high heat started to affect their lungs, the air at near-scorching levels.

  . . . The fifty-third floor . . .

  Though the heat began to abate some, it was still hellishly hot as the Vatican Knights continued their upward climb.

  Just as they were about to reach the fifty-fourth floor, that’s when Hell finally came calling.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Inside the Kristallpalast

  Vienna, Austria

  When the hotel’s central nervous system shut down after the mainframe was destroyed, doing so did nothing to neutralize the gas lines, which were alternate and separate from the computer system. As natural gas continued to be piped through the lines, it also stoked the flames on the fiftieth floor. As the flames intensified, so did its power of wanting to spread its fiery wings. Just as city workers were working to kill the feed to the pipelines, there was a massive eruption and the pipelines ruptured, which introduced the flames that were inside these pipes to additional oxygen that created explosions and backdrafts. The pipelines that coursed along the building’s east and west sides went off in a chain reaction, with each floor detonating from the fiftieth floor down to ground level in a domino fashion.

  . . . whump . . . whump. . . whump . . . whump . . . whump . . .

  It appeared as though the building had been rigged with charges to implode the structure, with each level from top to bottom going off in perfect sync—

  . . . whump . . . whump. . . whump . . . whump . . . whump . . .

  —all the way down.

  Glass and metal debris exploded with dangerous and forceful trajectories. People ducked and placed their arms over their heads in acts of self-preservation. Cars rocked. And people screamed.

  Just about every glass in the building was either shattered or cracked or completely broken, the building now a skeleton of its former self. Ribbons of smoke climbed from every open port and through every smashed pane. The Kristallpalast was nothing more than a burning husk with its steel framework showing on the central levels.

  Since the sprinkler system was down and the ladders from the firetrucks could only reach the tenth level, all Müller, Zeller and the Einsatzkommando operators could do was watch. The lower levels of the building were entirely engulfed in flames. Even if the Einsatzkommando force wanted to perform a hard entry, there would be no way with the exception of a topside assault. But the flames were moving faster and appeared far more voracious in appetite than before, meaning that the timeclock had moved ahead prematurely. Ninety minutes all of a sudden had been recalibrated to sixty.

  And as for the Vatican Knights, the needle regarding their level of difficulty had ratcheted up a few notches on the seismic scale. If time was not a luxury before, it definitely was not one now.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Inside the Kristallpalast

  Vienna, Austria

  Ali Mustafa’s world rocked unexpectedly beneath him as the building shook with a high degree that was capable of destabilizing the foundation. Though Mustafa was not a structural engineer, he knew enough to know that no building could take this much punishment.

  Getting to his feet, he tapped his earbud. “Abd-al-Mumin.”

  “Here.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “We’re fine. What happened?”

  “The gas lines blew. The idiots did not shut them off in time.”

  “Has the structure of the building been compromised?”

  “I’m thinking so, yes. This forces a faster timeline, one I’m not sure can be met.”

  “Shall we prepare for Paradise?”

  Mustafa looked at the Holy Lance, then said, “Not yet. Wait until my call.”

  “Yes, Mustafa.”

  Tapping his earbud off, he grabbed the cellphone and thumbed the number nine. After three rings Müller answered.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Inside the Kristallpalast

  Vienna, Austria

  Hell had literally opened its doors to the Vatican Knights. As they were climbing the rails, a powerful explosion rocked the Kristallpalast. The walls of the shaft rocked and shook, causing Isaiah and Job to lose their grip, though each was able to hang on to a hot metal rung with a gloved hand.

  They had clung to the walls as though the walls themselves were trying to shake them free. And the elevator doors from levels fifty to fifty-three exploded into the shaft with incredible force, then caromed off the shaft’s opposite wall and bent as easily as thin sheets of aluminum, with the twisted pieces of metal then falling into the dark abyss below.

  Tendrils of fire entered the shaft to provide light where there was none before. Terrifying flames and an all-consuming heat started to climb upward taking new ground with the walls becoming charred.

  When the walls stopped shuddering and the flames continued their upward reach, something in the shaft above started to protest on their metal cords, something that sounded like straining violin strings being stretched to their max. What Kimball realized was that the moors that held an elevator cab suspended above their position was starting to give.

  This time Kimball’s voice wasn’t the voice of softness, but that of a menacing commander who screamed to instill fear as a means of motivation. “Move it, people! Now! MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!”

  Each member of the Vatican Knights reached deep into themselves to find that extra reserve and began to scale the rails beyond the fire’s reach. They hauled themselves upward with hand over hand, despite the heat of the rungs, by tucking the pain somewhere deep.

  Overhead, there was a creaking metallic sound. Then came the sound of something being pulled at, a whine. It was the complaint of something that was straining and giving, like the multiple strings of that violin which had finally reached their breaking points—

  —And then there was a loud snap that was crisp, clean and sharp.

  * * *

  Above the elevator cab is the cable network deriving of magnets and pulleys. Since steel hawsers had their limitations regarding weight management after the magnets had failed, the heaviness of the elevator began to put a strain on the wires. And since it takes several thin wires wrapped around each other to create one steel cable, these wires began to stress and break one at a time; therefore, the cable began to thin and weaken under the pull of gravity with each snapping strand.

  The cab began to slip with the elevator falling inches with each wire breaking, with the hold of the side rails beginning to lose their grips. The breaking of wire strands sounded off as twangs that carried throughout the shaft. And the pulleys sounded as if they were straining to hang on as well, though they, too, were failing.

  And then one cable fully snapped with a clean break, the elevator now free from one rail and leaning heavily against the other. Its weight was magnificent as it contested the other cable. One by one the wires to the last cable began to snap because the tension was too great, the cable now unraveling until it hung by a single thread. And then that, too, snapped.

  The elevator started its downward drop into the abyss, the cab bouncing from wall to wall as the impacting friction caused sparks to light as small embers, with these small flickers glowing like fireflies that came and disappeared.

  The falling vehicle started to pick up momentum, falling and tumbling faster and faster down the shaft. It continued to carom horrifically off the walls, the cab bouncing and plummeting with the free weight heading for the Vatican Knights, all who clung to the rails with nowhere to go and nowhere to hide.

  The cab.

  The Vatican Knights.

  A collision course in the making.

  The noise of impending doom, getting louder and louder as the elevator neared their position.

  Below, Kimball encouraged his team forward.

  More bouncing.


  More sparks.

  The elevator picked up speed, falling faster and faster, an uncontested weight that would not be stopped until it hit bottom.

  And then disaster struck the Vatican Knights.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Medstar Washington Hospital Center

  Washington, DC

  Encapsulated by absolute darkness as alien voices spoke to her from a far-away land, Shari Cohen could hear her breaths that were both deep and regulated, as though she was on a respirator. Her breathing came in even measures, with each exhale and inhale having the sound of rushing air.

  But within these moments, she caught snippets of images that had a feeling of dread attached to them. In her mind’s eye, though the tale that be told to her had made no sense, she saw glimpses of hellfire and a towering black monolith. She saw a window pane with a spiderweb crack in its center, a bullseye feature, when fracturing lines suddenly expanded outward from this mark and snaked their way to the pane’s edges, where the window completely shattered to give view of what was behind the glass.

  She saw gargantuan flames roaring beyond this framed square where the window once stood. Within the flames stood the silhouette of a man, tall and wide of shoulder. She recognized the Shape and knew the contours well.

  Fire had raged all around this mass and lapped at the blackened floors as though to taste and to examine the real estate for the final consumption. And then this shape reached out a hand to her with the gesture asking for her help.

  Shari tried to move within her own darkness but found it impossible, her body too heavily weighted under the numbing agents that currently coursed through her veins.

  The hand of this Shadowman continued to stretch towards her until it could reach no more. Around it, a circle of flames threw off incredible amounts of light in different hues of reds and yellows and oranges, the colors of Hell. Yet the image remained blacker than black with its features staying unlit, the Shape now calling to her in banshee wails. In time, these flames began to quench its thirst by taking the Shadowman. Fires started to climb up the legs of this Shape and along its outstretched arm, the Shadowman crying out in white-hot agony. Then the Shape became a flaming light, a torch, the screams from deep inside its throat as tormenting for her to hear as it was for the Shadowman to cry out.

  And then the sounds and the image began to recede with the Burning Man falling away until it became a star-point glimmer, and then it was gone. Its voice, like the light, had also faded into obscurity.

  In her state, she wanted to fight against her bonds to be free and to help the Burning Man.

  . . . Come back . . . Kimball . . . Please . . . Come back . . .

  But she once again found herself alone within her own personal darkness that was absolute and complete.

  . . . Breathing . . .

  . . . Breathing . . .

  . . . Breathing . . .

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Inside the Kristallpalast

  Vienna, Austria

  The name of Daniel was a callsign that had been taken from the Old Testament, and one of the many callsigns that the Vatican Knights went by like Isaiah, Leviticus and Job, just to name a few. Daniel’s real name was Marino Abatangelo, with Abatangelo ironically meaning ‘abbot’ or ‘priest,’ which he was neither. Marino, who went by Daniel as a Vatican Knight, was discovered years ago in the streets of Rome, either begging or stealing, when a priest by the name of Bonasero Vessucci came upon the waif who boldly asked the then-cardinal for a simple coin. Vessucci, however, saw the boy’s value, which was far more than the pennies he asked for.

  Upon inquiries such as ‘who are your parents’ and where do you come from,’ it appeared that Marino had run away from an orphanage. His father was unknown and his mother too young to care for him. But the underlying truth was that the bastard child was more of an embarrassment to the family because he had been born from an unblessed union.

  But Bonasero had seen a light behind the dirty and grimy face of this wayward child. It was a flicker of goodness that could easily be fanned into a bonfire. After the then-cardinal took the boy in after legal approval, Bonasero raised the child as though he was his own. He educated him and taught him the power of prayer. Then Marino was introduced to the world of sports, which he excelled at and developed coordination. Further studies had familiarized him with philosophies and the art of deductive reasoning. In time, the boy grew into a teenager, and then the teenager became an adult, and the adult chose a life as a Vatican Knight instead of becoming a priest.

  Marino Abatangelo had turned out well—the boy now a man who wanted to change the world for the better with the direct guiding of his moral compass. He had always been a good soldier who was always willing to fall on his sword. And he performed his duties knowing that what he did was right in the eyes of his Lord.

  And it was these thoughts that comforted him as he watched the cab of the elevator caroming off the walls to his position, knowing that he was totally defenseless to save himself. There were no recesses or gaps to tuck himself into, nor were there means of escape with the fire below and the doorways above. Here was a man who was unfortunately caught in the Between.

  As the elevator continued to drop and bounce off the walls, he watched the other Vatican Knights slide into small openings, perhaps a blessing from God that they had more in life to do. But his time had come, and God was calling him home. So strong was Marino’s faith that he smiled at the thought of his life coming to an end, because an eternity of happiness within the Ethereal Light awaited.

  Marino, after closing his eyes knowing there was nowhere to go or hide, waited.

  The elevator was a ruined cube that had been misshapen on its downward flight within the shaft, the falling vehicle bouncing and smashing and indenting against the side walls and rails.

  From above, the Vatican Knights cried out to Daniel. But Daniel maintained an airy smile of peace as Death approached.

  Pounding and banging, the elevator fell and coughed up sparks. And then the cab clipped Daniel off the rail and carried him into the depths below, through the flames and into the abyss. The hearts of the Vatican Knights became sickened with grief, the loss palpable enough to cause their stomachs to turn into slick fists.

  From their safe perches, the Vatican Knights could still hear the elevator falling with the thumping and bumping fading, until it could be heard no more. But it was Kimball who moved his team forward and upward, though he did so with overwhelming sorrow. Losing a Vatican Knight was the same as losing a sibling, a brother, which any soldier in the field would understand. The camaraderie between all warriors was something uniquely special and umbilical at the same time.

  Pressing forward, the Vatican Knights climbed to greater heights with the flames and escalating heat giving formidable chase. When they reached the fifty-sixth floor, Job managed to force the elevator doors to the level wide. One by one, the Vatican Knights entered the floor which was much cooler than the shaft. But even here, the temperature was well above the norm.

  Kimball’s face was darkened and soiled with soot, as were the faces of his teammates. Job, Isaiah and Jeremiah looked upon Kimball with even features, though Kimball knew they were all angry and despondent. Suffering the loss of Daniel, after all, brought with it the many different sides of emotion that was the human condition.

  “Daniel’s at peace,” Kimball told them after discerning what they were feeling. Their emotions were no different from his. And as a Vatican Knight their priority was to see the mission through and deal with their emotions later. Fight through it for the greater good of the many.

  Daniel’s at peace, three simple words that were simple, yet impactful.

  From that point on the Vatican Knights realized and committed to their primary role ‘to help those who cannot help themselves.’

  With the building becoming an inferno underneath them, Kimball Hayden led his team of Vatican Knights forward.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Vien
na, Austria

  Müller’s cellphone rang and he answered it begrudgingly.

  “As you can see, Müller, the gas lines decided to accelerate the time of our airlift. The building is fully engulfed in flames,” said Mustafa. “Eventually, the supports on the lower levels will become molten enough for the building to buckle and collapse.”

  “We tried everything to shut the lines off.”

  “Once Again, Müller, you have proved yourself worthless.”

  “Mustafa, listen to me. There’s a chopper on the way and a plane is already fueled and ready to go at the airport.”

  “Question is: will the chopper be here in time to airlift my team to safety?”

  Müller remained silent for a moment before answering. Then: “Yes. Of course.”

  “Your hesitation, Müller, doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. That chopper needs to be here twenty to thirty minutes sooner since the window of our safe departure is quickly closing. Is that clear?”

  “I hear you.”

  “I’m sure you do. But is that doable? To be here within that timeframe?”

  “Even the chopper you requested has its limits, Mustafa. But I’ll see that it arrives on time.”

  “You better hope so, Müller, because if we’re not airlifted in time, then the Cardinal Secretary of State and the associate judge of the United States Supreme Court, along with dozens of others who are trapped topside, will burn because of your ineptitude.”

  “The chopper will be here on time,” Müller stated flatly.

  “Look at the building, Müller. It’s burning like the Wicker Man, fast and steady. Remember what I said about limited time.”

  Click!