by Rick Jones
“Any news from Kimball or Leviticus?” Bonasero asked.
“Not yet, Your Holiness. But I’m sure everything’s going to plan.”
But Bonasero wasn’t too sure. He didn’t like it when there were long stretches of zero communication. Then he realized he had to work on his virtue of patience. So he closed his eyes, breathed evenly, and let inner peace wash over him.
Kimball’s going to be just fine, he told himself.
Just . . . fine.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Those who had disappeared three years earlier over the Brazilian jungle now stood before Kimball and his team. They appeared thinner and leaner, their skins pale from little sunlight. In each of their hands they carried an AK-47, a weapon far more devastating than the MP5s the Vatican Knights were in possession of.
There was Eli and Jacob, Kish and Zadok, all looking detached with vacant stares. Standing in the middle was Phinehas, which caught Kimball off guard.
Now they had become the centerpiece of interest with former Vatican Knights on one side of them, and Gunter Wilhelm and thirty of his machete-wielding converts on the other. They had been pinched inside the cathedral and were surrounded by stone walls. There was no doubt in Kimball’s mind that Gunter used himself as a focal point while the former Knights gathered and closed off their escape route.
“You’re losing your edge,” Phinehas stated evenly to Kimball. “The Kimball Hayden I know, or at least remember, once had eyes in the back of his head and could see everything. That Kimball Hayden would never have allowed a force to come up from behind without securing a way out.”
“You were in a Gendarmerie cell.” Kimball said this as if his eyes and ears were fooling him with astonishment.
“That’s because you trained your people a little too well,” Gunter said from behind. “Now it’s Phinehas who trains my people. And now they have the skill sets of Vatican Knights.” He pointed to his people on the altar’s stage. “These people you see here have been well trained. And you, Kimball Hayden, indirectly mentored them.” The corner of Gunter’s mouth curved in impish delight. The victory was his and he wanted Kimball to see this.
And Kimball knew he had committed a cardinal sin. He had allowed his team to be hemmed in. Worse, the cardinals were dead and the former Vatican Knights appeared reluctant to return, their minds so wasted away they were completely without free will.
Therefore, the mission was over.
“Herr Hayden,” Gunter announced from the elevated stage. “In your group you are the prized possession. Give yourself over to me and I will spare the lives of your people.”
Kimball knew immediately what he was talking about. Gunter wanted to turn him into a mindless puppet and strip him of his conscience. He wanted somebody whom the pontiff would trust enough to allow a man to walk an arm’s length away from him, and then kill him.
But Kimball Hayden was resourceful and a brilliant tactician as well. His adage: there was a solution for everything.
He slowly sidled up to Leviticus. “Eight Vatican Knights against five formers heavily armed,” he said. “The advantage is theirs. On the stage behind us is Gunter and his team of sacrificial lambs.”
“Crossfire exchange,” Leviticus said.
“Yup. We got the pews to conceal us. We just need to get Phinehas and his team to open up those 47s before Gunter’s lambs can take cover. Maybe the wildfire can neutralize enough of them where we can work our way back.” Kimball turned to see Gunter’s minions standing along the edge of the stage to block off any retreat. Each man was clapping the flat side of the machete’s blade against his palm, the slapping sounds an obvious psychological tool meant to intimidate.
Then darkness washed over Kimball. The odds against them were great. He had put his team at risk. These were good men, he considered. Those who were willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good of mankind by saving the next person who might become the next Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King, Jr. But sometimes good people died by the deeds of evil men. And this, he knew, had always been a way of life and would continue to be so.
After Kimball explained softly into his lip mic and briefed his team on the course of action about to be taken, he then spoke to them solemnly and from the heart. “You’re good men,” he told them. “Not only have I been blessed to have you all serve by my side, but I’m deeply honored as well.” He left it at that. It wasn’t exactly a vote of confidence of the outcome. But it was something that needed to be said.
“Herr Hayden,” Gunter Wilhelm finally said. All noise stopped. “Are you in agreement to drop your weapons and submit yourself and your team to my mercy?”
“Your mercy?” Kimball answered in a manner as if the question was incredulous. He quickly turned to Phinehas and the team of former Vatican Knights, raised the point of his weapon, and cried out, “Mercy this!”
Kimball pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
The first volley of gunfire peppered the walls around Phinehas and his team, causing an immediate response of return fire. The fired rounds from Kimball’s assault weapon went from left to right, with two shots striking Eli in the chest, the impacts causing wounds to burst forward like blooming rose petals before he spun around in a half-circle, and fell to the floor next to Phinehas’s kneeling position.
Gunfire from the former Knights and their AK-47s began to strafe from left to right, then from right to left as bullets smashed into stone pews, the impacts tearing them up. Stone chips took flight, the action causing Kimball and his team to take cover against the floor as smoke and dust formed large whorls.
The mummified bodies of the cardinals were completely obliterated. Limbs as fragile as sticks of chalk simply broke upon impact. Heads exploded, the skulls more like crucibles that contained dust spores that went airborne and floated dreamily about. And others simply fell forward against the bullet strikes, with one falling next to Kimball in such a way that the grinning skull of the cardinal stared him in the face from a foot away, as if mocking him.
Kimball raised his weapon and set off bursts of fire while sliding the gun’s barrel along the top of a stone pew from left to right, then right to left, while he maintained cover. Bullets traversed the distance between him and Phinehas’s team within a split moment, and caught Jacob in the hip and lower abdomen, falling him, though he was still alive but in measurably great pain. That left three: Phinehas, Kish and Zadok, who continued to move forward with the points of their AK-47s firing off with some of the bullets going errant during the exchange.
Rounds went high over the pews and caught members on the stage, the shots taking them down as blood and gore burst forward from soiled cowls, killing them. Others either went to the floor or took cover behind the stone altar. Some stumbled about on coltish legs with their hands to their gut to keep innards from spilling out. But most survived.
Simon, ducking by instinct, eventually managed to wheel Gunter Wilhelm away from the shaft of light and into the shadows far from the exchange.
Leviticus joined in, the Vatican Knight remaining undercover behind a pew and showered a string of shots while running his weapon along the top of the stone bench. Bullets stitched along the wall from left to right, the peppering working its way toward Phinehas and what was left of his team. Phinehas saw the impacts along the wall coming his way. So he shouted a warning, ducked, as did Kish and Zadok. Bullets went over their heads as dust from the wall puffed out as little eruptions from the impacts.
Clips were ejected and new ones were seated.
When the gunfire from the pews ended, Phinehas and his team stood up and advanced forward with their guns blazing.
#
Kimball and Leviticus laid on the stone floor as the rounds from the AK-47s started to smash and demolish the stone pews, the powerful bullet strikes now sending chunks of rock the size of a man’s fist to rain down on them.
Leviticus raised his head enough to see over the body of the dead cardinal that divide
d them. “They’re cutting their way through!” he shouted.
Kimball nodded. Then he pointed to Leviticus’s backpack. “How many flash-bangs you got left?”
“Two!”
“Toss one! Wait three seconds, then toss the other! Phinehas, Kish and Zadok will know enough to duck when they see the first one, but they won’t expect the second, which will disable them long enough for me to respond!”
The tops of the pews were being smashed down by gunfire. Soon they wouldn’t have any cover at all.
“I’ll take out Phinehas and the rest!” Kimball added, then ducked as rock debris zipped by his head. Cover was becoming minimal. “I want you to take the team to the rear! Phinehas got here before us, which means there has to be a direct route out of here! Find it! Get our people out! The mission’s over!”
“And you?”
“I need to get upfront and personal with Gunter Wilhelm!”
“That’s not our mission!”
“It’s my mission! He and those he commands will always be a threat to Bonasero!”
Leviticus seemed to weigh this for a moment before he shrugged his way out of his backpack, and removed the two flash-bangs. He held them up to Kimball, who started a countdown by ticking his fingers down from three, two, one, and then a balled fist.
Leviticus disengaged the first pin and tossed it. A second later a concussive explosion shook the surroundings. The firing stopped.
A moment later he tossed the second.
#
Phinehas, Kish and Zadok could not hear the voices in their heads, but they knew they were there spurring them forward.
The cause is everything.
It’s the only thing.
Protect the cathedral.
Protect the Luminaries.
And do so at all costs.
Even if the cost is that of your own life.
They pressed forward, firing, getting closer to their targets.
Then they saw a flash-bang tumbling through the air as if in slow motion while their minds processed the moment. Fingers lifted from triggers, and then they turned and crouched low with their hands cupped over their ears and their eyes squeezed tight, a formation to absorb the concussive blast of the grenade they knew was coming.
The moment was quick and fleeting, the response time less than two seconds. They could feel the waves of the blast pound their bodies—could see the brilliant flash of light behind the lids of their eyes, no matter how tight they squeezed them. The effect, however, had been minimized.
When they gained their full stance and began to wheel around with their AK-47s within their grasps, a second blast went off, one they weren’t expecting. The world became blindingly white and their senses were numbed. The whispers had disappeared. Up was down and down was up as they held their arms forward and stumbled about like things from a zombie apocalypse.
But the one thing that stayed with Phinehas was the knowledge that Kimball Hayden was not a man of retreat. In fact, in his state of blindness, he recognized one certainty: Kimball Hayden was coming at him like a bull and he was the matador with neither sight nor cape.
Damn!
#
After the second grenade went off, Kimball quickly got to his feet and pointed to the team that lay low behind chipped and broken pews. “Get the team out of here!” he ordered. “Find the exit that will take you to the outskirts of the village!”
“Do we wait for you?”
“Negative!”
That one word struck Leviticus hard because it sounded so final.
Kimball’s eyes softened. “It’ll be all right, Leviticus! It will!” Then he was leaping up and over the broken pews, the man quick and agile as a gazelle as he closed in on Phinehas, Kish and Zadok, all former Vatican Knights with the skills to prove it.
Leviticus wanted to aid his friend to even the odds against superior opponents. But the primary objective was to see the mission for what it was: a failure based on misinformation. The cardinals, after all, were dead, and the former Knights were lost beyond all hope since they had surrendered themselves completely to Gunter’s dark tenets.
Leviticus then barked orders into his lip mic during the period of the downed firefight. The team stood as one, raised their weapons to eye-level, and pivoted around to face the stage. The remaining members of Gunter’s hooded cabal stood and waited along the lip of the tier, their machetes waiting.
Leviticus led his team forward.
#
Kimball was upon Phinehas the moment the former Vatican Knight seemed to come to his wits just in time for their eyes to lock on to each other. Kimball could see Phinehas’s pupils constrict and dilate as if in a tug-of-war, with the pupils finally constricting and remaining as pinprick points to block everything out.
Kish and Zadok were starting to come around as well, with Zadok bringing his weapon up and around. The moment he leveled his AK-47, Kimball kicked the barrel with the mouth directed at the ceiling. A burst went off, the rounds piercing the domed roof that already had deep cracks and fissures running through it, and looking as if it was being held together by a network of clinging vines.
In a subsequent move Kimball gave an elbow strike to Phinehas’s jaw, knocking him off balance. Then he came around with his MP5 and strafed a volley of shots against Kish’s legs, his thighs popping open with gunshot wounds as he went to the ground with the AK-47 skating off to the side. With a side kick Kimball struck Zadok at the point of his chin. The man’s head snapped back and his eyes began their upward roll into sheer whites, Zadok obviously seeing internal stars a moment before falling unconscious.
Phinehas, however, was much quicker than the other two.
After the elbow strike Phinehas fell back, regained himself, and just as Kimball was beginning to turn on him after laying out Zadok, Phinehas came across with the butt of his weapon and caught Kimball on the cheek, the strike ripping Kimball’s flesh as the MP5 suddenly disappeared from the Vatican Knight’s grasp.
Kimball stumbled and regained himself just as Phinehas was drawing on him. When the mouth of the weapon was leveled, Kimball grabbed the barrel and forced it upward. Gunshots rang out as rounds struck the ceiling, weakening it even further as cracks and fissures began to run and stretch from crack to crack, from line to broken line, the gaps widening.
Rock and dust began to shower down on them as they struggled for the weapon while doing a crazy waltz, neither winning nor losing the battle for ownership.
The ceiling started to rumble, the structure beginning to give, and then light began to slip through the thin gaps and seams as the ceiling started to yield to pressures.
But neither man noticed.
All they were concerned about was getting command of the weapon.
#
Leviticus led his team toward the stage. Each man held his weapon at eye-level as they advanced down the aisles. Converts, at least twenty, leaped from the stage and to the floor with their machetes held high.
And converged.
“Bursts over their heads,” Leviticus said into his lip mic.
The Vatican Knights raised the points of their assault weapons and set off volleys of gunfire, the bullets flying over the heads of the order and striking the far wall. Some of the members ducked and stayed their ground, while others continued fearlessly forward.
“Again!”
Another stream of gunfire.
More converts ducked, crouched down, then exited the area and disappeared in shadows, their courage deserting them.
Eleven, maybe twelve members of the order remained and pressed closer to combat.
Then the men wearing cowls rushed them from all points.
“Low! Low! Low!” cried Leviticus.
The seven Vatican Knights directed their weapons to their attackers’ thighs and sent off quick shots, downing most with wounds, leaving others to advance. Just as the groups combined the Vatican Knights kicked into a higher gear.
They used their assault weapons to defle
ct the arcs of the machete blades, then came across with sweeping arcs of their own, the butts and barrels of their MP5s inflicting heavy damage, striking skulls and jawlines, removing converts from action.
Machete blades came down and across with expertise, the motions graceful and practiced. But the Vatican Knights were quicker, faster, knowing the moves and countering with proficiency. Their actions were fluid as they shifted from one maneuver to another, their legs kicking and finding their marks by striking the joint of a knee or connecting with the point of a convert’s chin. Their weapons continued to repel machete attacks in seemingly toying play, the measures of defense coming easy to them.
Machetes whipped blindingly about as glints of polished silver, with blade edges continuing to hit the composite of gun barrels, the blows repelled and then countered with sidekicks and elbow strikes from the Vatican Knights, rendering their opponents off balance. The moment a convert fell back, the moment the man lost his footing, a Vatican Knight would respond with a series of hammer blows with the butt of his weapon and roundhouse kicks, disabling the attacker for the count.
Seeing their numbers being reduced exponentially and effortlessly, some of the converts fell away from the skirmish line and looked down at the bodies of their comrades, some moving and some not, then left the scene with the tails of their cowls flagging behind them like the whipping manes of horses.
The Vatican Knights pressed forward, clearing the area and looking for the hidden exit. At the wings of the stage were staircases that led into darkness, then to the tunnels that led beneath the jungle floor and to the outskirts.
When Leviticus pivoted on the balls of his feet to catch Kimball and Phinehas in a struggle over the AK-47, a long string of gunfire went off, the rounds smashing into the dome. Cracks and fissures trailed along the dome’s surface with lives of their own, racing from spot to spot, area to area, creating loose blocks of stone about to give to gravity.
