by Rick Jones
“Delicate situation.”
Leviticus cast his eyes upward to the second-tier mirror. “You think he’s all right up there?”
“He can take care of himself.”
“Yeah, well, I hope so. I hate sitting blind as to what’s going on up there.”
“Don’t worry about Kimball,” said Isaiah. “He knows what he’s doing.”
“You think he’s making any progress with Tolimir?”
“One could only hope.”
Despite Jeremiah and Samuel, who were dispersed inside the room, Leviticus and Isaiah had become the focal points for the Croats. Isaiah could almost feel the heat of their intense glares.
He eased back in his chair, feeling his muscles tighten. Kimball’s time upstairs was stretching uncomfortably long. Leviticus is right, he thought. Like him, Isaiah hated sitting blind as to what was going on behind closed doors. “How much longer should we give him?”
Leviticus gave off a slight shrug. “I don’t know… I guess Kimball will let us know if diplomacy fails.”
“How’s he going to do that from behind closed doors?”
They immediately got their answer.
Kimball lashed out with his leg, a strong thrust, and hit the large man directly on the small of his back, sending him airborne through the mirrored pane. The crescendo of the mirrored-glass breaking was alarm enough to those below, as the big man cart-wheeled through space in fast revolutions and landed hard on a table, crushing it beneath his weight and setting off plumes of dust. The man didn’t move, as dust motes lingered around him like a slow-moving fog.
The opponent standing by the door quickly reacted with a flailing of arms and legs in a synchronized display of martial arts. He hammered the points of his fingers on each hand directly at Kimball—left, right, left, right—his arms working like pistons as they drove the Vatican Knight back against the wall. And then he lashed out with a roundhouse kick, his foot hitting Kimball squarely on the temple, knocking him off balance.
This guy is good.
The martial artist jumped in the air again. But this time he spun in a full circle, so he would come across with a kick that would completely disable Kimball with a crushing blow to the skull.
But the Knight was quick. He countered by catching the man’s leg and holding him aloft. For a period of a single heartbeat, he allowed their eyes to meet. Then: “Have a nice flight.” He pitched the much smaller man through the opening where the mirrored-glass used to be, the man barking out a cry a moment before he hit the ground below.
Kimball quickly pivoted toward Tolimir, who was now standing behind his chair, using the high back segment as a poor substitute for a shield. His once dominant look of cockiness had been replaced with a fusion of raw terror and uncertainty. In a period of ten seconds, Kimball had managed to take out two of his best.
Tolimir gave sidelong glances to the two men flanking him—first looking to his left, then to his right, and then straight at Kimball. Both men had their bolo machetes ready.
“You think that chair’s going to protect you?” asked Kimball.
“No. But my men will.”
When Tolimir uttered something in Croatian, the men advanced toward Kimball with their machetes held high.
When the large man came crashing through the mirrored pane and collapsed the table he fell upon, everyone down below knew that diplomacy had failed.
The Croatians didn’t hesitate, knowing all along that this would be the result.
Leviticus and Isaiah quickly got to their feet, flipped back the panels of their long coats, grabbed their firearms, and tipped the table onto its side, hunkering behind it.
Jeremiah immediately vaulted over the bar, as a volley of bullets stitched along the wood veneer a moment after the leap.
Samuel was completely exposed by the open stairwell, as he attempted to take refuge behind one of the empty tables, planning to flip it like Isaiah and Leviticus had done with theirs. But as he went for his Glock, a bullet caught him in the shoulder, causing the flesh to pare back and form a blooming rose petal of pulp and gore. As the impact of the strike knocked him back, more bullets found their marks, striking his arms, legs, and abdomen with eruptions of blood arcing through the air. His eyes rolled in his sockets with dizzying effect until he fell to the floor, hard, his blood fanning out beneath him in an obscene halo.
Behind the bar, the bartender went after Jeremiah with a machete that had been stocked on a shelf. As Jeremiah got to his feet, and with the bartender nearly on top of him, bullets crashed around them and summarily took out the mirror. The Knight kicked out his foot and caught the man in the chest, sending him crashing to the floor. The bartender lost his grip on the machete, and it skated out of his reach. When he tried to stand up, Jeremiah had his pistol out and struck the man over the head, rendering him unconscious. Though now free to support Isaiah and Leviticus, furious gunfire continued to strike and splinter the bar, forcing him to lay low.
Isaiah and Leviticus were under the same hail of gunfire, as bullets struck their makeshift tabletop shield, its surface becoming further decimated with every impact, as wood fell away in splinters.
“We’re getting slaughtered!” said Isaiah. “This table isn’t going to hold for much longer!”
When a bullet finally pierced through and missed them by inches, Leviticus reached around with his gun-hand and fired off his own succession of shots.
The Croats fell back and tried to hide behind whatever obstacle provided protection at the moment. When Leviticus’s magazine fell empty, he quickly seated another and began the fight all over again. “Go!” he yelled.
Isaiah took advantage of Leviticus’s cover of gunfire. He angled his way toward the bar with his gun-hand raised and looking for targets.
A Croat poorly hidden behind an upturned table saw Isaiah, attempted to raise his firearm, but fell short, when a bullet hole magically appeared at the center of his forehead. Isaiah had hit his mark.
Leviticus slipped in his third and final magazine, racked the weapon, and then angled to his right as the Croats were distracted by Isaiah’s movements.
They were flanking the enemy.
As Leviticus moved, holding his weapon in a cup-and-saucer grip, with one hand supporting the shooting hand from underneath, he crossed the floor until he had targets in view and fired off several rounds.
Bullets punched holes into shoulders, arms and legs—wounding shots that caused a couple of the Croats to cry out in pain.
Two more were down and a third was dead.
That left five healthy souls as Leviticus and Isaiah continued to fire, mostly missing their marks as the shots skipped off the floor and into distant walls. In return, the Croats shot off their weapons in random, with haphazard rounds hitting all points of the room with hopes that one or more would find their marks of a Vatican Knight.
None did, as the air filled with the smell of gunpowder.
“Jeremiah, go!” It was a launch code from Isaiah saying that the enemies’ attention was no longer concentrated on the bar. So Jeremiah stood and fired, pinning the Croats down as Isaiah and Leviticus continued to maneuver about the room for promising angles.
Volleys and hails of gunfire continued to erupt, smoke rising.
And then there was the awkward sound of multiple dry clicks, as everyone exhausted their ammunition. In the heat of battle, no one ever pulls the trigger just once.
Five Croats stood looking at their weapons questioningly, then looked at the Vatican Knights, who were doing the same with theirs, and then everyone holstered their firearms. Silently, the Croats began to divide and spread across the room, each man removing a knife from his sheath.
From behind the bar, Jeremiah cautiously made his way across the room, joining Isaiah and Leviticus.
“The bad thing about Glocks,” said the Croat who had frisked Kimball, “is that they eventually run out of ammo. But this,” he held his blade up in display, a combat knife that was wickedly sharp and k
een and whose metal shined with a mirror polish, “never fails to disappoint me.”
In unison the Croats raised their knives.
Having no choice, the Vatican Knights did the same.
The two men with the bolo machetes advanced on Kimball, as the sound of bullets strafing across wood and concrete carried on down below.
The Croat to his right attacked first, bringing the sharpened edge of his machete down at an angled arc, cutting the air as Kimball fell back, just enough to miss its cutting sweep. The man then came up and across, forcing Kimball to fall back beyond its reach again, finding himself up against the wall.
The second machete wielder was on his comrade’s heels, waiting to get in a lick.
Then came a blow that caught Kimball across his upper chest, the blade cutting deep above the pectoral region. Wincing in pain, Kimball feigned to his left, causing the wielder to shift in balance, and then the Knight got low to the ground and swung his leg across and knocked the man off his feet and to the floor. As the second machete wielder watched his teammate go to the ground, Kimball came across with a series of elbow strikes—left, right, left, right, left, right—the lightning fast flurries breaking the bones of the man’s face, until it had somewhat of an asymmetrical look to it. And then the attacker fell to the floor, with his hand unknowingly extended, as if to pass off the mantle of the machete before he landed. Kimball grabbed it just as the first wielder got to his feet.
The men were now squaring off with each other. Each carrying a machete as they cautiously circled one another looking for an opportunity to strike.
And then the Croat lashed out with a jab that was easily deflected by Kimball, the two metals striking, which caused a spark to alight, dwindle, and die.
After pointing the tip of his weapon at Kimball, he said, “Now you will die, priest.”
Kimball said nothing. He simply waited for the man to make his move.
And he did.
The wielder jabbed and swept his machete across and down, with fluid motions and unpredictable speed, which drove Kimball back as he continuously warded off blows with stunted motions, because of the injury to his upper chest. Sparks flared in midair at the strike of the blades, the Knight losing ground. And he could see Tolimir smiling in his mind’s eye, as the man hid behind his chair, watching the Vatican Knight in a losing effort.
Another blow from the machete wielder caught Kimball on the left shoulder, the graze ripping the fabric of his shirt.
Then Kimball thought of the children again. Not just Shari’s, but all those who were being forced to live out horrendous lives because of a man such as this, a person who was so vile and without any moral compass. Then in a scream of savage anger, as laces of red stitching raced across the whites of his eyes, Kimball’s rage knew no boundaries.
Suddenly his motions became electric, his actions swift and coordinated as he fought through the pain. His arm, his hand, everything about him moved with blinding speed, almost too fast for the human eye to register.
The wielder’s eyes widened with surprise at his sudden conversion to fighting at a much higher level. The man was now on the defensive, as Kimball fought with savagery.
The machete’s blade coursed through the air with whipping speed, as Kimball struck blow after blow, the metals striking and sparks flying. And then Kimball kicked his leg out and caught his attacker in his midriff, sending the man hard against the wall. After shaking his head as if to clear away cobwebs, the machete wielder attacked Kimball with his attack hand held up, the blade of the machete glinting. Kimball reached up, grabbed the attacker’s wrist, and proceeded to dance around the room with him in a drunken tango.
The assailant then brought a knee up and connected with Kimball’s groin, striking a hard blow that forced Kimball to release his grip and retreat a few staggering steps, his face going scarlet. Then he went to the ground on a bent knee.
The moment Kimball went to his knee, his attacker brought the machete over in a downward rush. In quick response, Kimball deflected the blade and brought his bolo across in a horizontal sweep, gashing the man’s stomach. Then he punched the tip home and drove it clean through the attacker’s gut.
The Croat appeared stunned by this sudden transience of slipping between life and death. His eyes widened with shocked disbelief. He then dropped the weapon to the floor, fell to his knees, and as the light of his eyes faded, the Croat slumped forward like a flower slowly wilting, until his forehead rested against the floor.
And that was how he died, in a kneeling position.
Laboring to his feet and wincing as he did so, Kimball turned to see a panel closing flush against the wall behind the desk, the seams of the passageway barely visible to the naked eye.
Tolimir was gone.
There were five against three, as the Croats slowly advanced with the points of their knives leveled at the Vatican Knights.
When they went into a spread formation, so did Leviticus, Isaiah, and Jeremiah.
The five men spread across in a semi-circle, closing the gap and entering the kill zone—the area of combat with the most potential of affecting a fatal blow.
And then the teams converged, knives and blades swinging, cutting and slashing the air in arcs and sweeps and thrusting jabs.
Isaiah took on the two uniting from the left, Leviticus the two from the right, and Jeremiah the one in the center.
With motions that were both elegant and graceful, Isaiah easily warded off the blows from the Croats, who struck at him simultaneously. Knives clashed in a series of strikes and metallic clangs, one against two, the blows furiously paced, as the Croats battled Isaiah in a showdown that appeared choreographed. The blades struck repeatedly as sparks ignited, flourished, and died.
Arms moved in synchronized concert until their motions became a blur of attacking and defending.
Leviticus was in the same mode of defensive maneuvers, fighting off two Croats with a single blade by artfully deflecting their blows. They struck, they jabbed, they came across in killing arcs and horizontal sweeps, as the Knight warded off the blows with superior countermeasures.
Jeremiah had no problem with his attacker, the man wielding the knife with no more skill than that of a first-time user. In a quick assault, Jeremiah turned aside the blow of his attacker’s knife with a simple flick of his own blade, went to a knee, and came across with a horizontal slash that cut deeply into his attacker’s legs above both knees. He sent the man crashing to the floor in pain.
Jeremiah quickly grabbed the assailant’s knife and segued beside Isaiah to battle against the two Croatian fighters. Arms flailed with blinding speed as the Knights fought side by side and drove the Croats back with their far superior skill set.
Isaiah then found an opening and brought his blade across, finding the mark of the Croat’s arm, where the bicep met the shoulder. The knife sliced easily through flesh and tendon, separating the muscle and rendering the arm useless. The Croat screamed as white-hot agony shot through his system with the venomous bite of acid, then he fell away from the fight.
Isaiah then joined Leviticus, who was losing marginal ground against his attackers. He worked his way beside Leviticus, intercepting blows, taking the strikes onto himself.
Their arms and hands moved in blurs, driving their opponents backward. And then Leviticus launched a series of jabs that pierced his attacker’s lower abdomen with five quick stabs—jab, jab, jab, jab, jab—all non-lethal blows that crippled the man and sent him to the floor in a fetal position.
Another had fallen out of the battle.
After seeing that they were outnumbered and out-skilled, the remaining two Croats retreated to the door.
When Jeremiah was about to go after them, Leviticus grabbed his arm. “Let them go,” he said. “We have more important issues to deal with.”
As soon as that statement left his lips, he looked at the hole where the mirror used to be on the second level.
It was much too quiet up there for his comf
ort.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Tolimir Jancovic was a man of quiet communication, saying only what needed to be said to get his point across. As a child growing up during the war-torn battlefields of Croatia, during the era of ‘ethnic cleansing,’ he had seen the atrocities that emphasized the word ‘genocide.’ Like Božanović, he had seen his family killed with no thought from the executioners, as if they had swatted flies with the club of a rolled up newspaper. Their bodies were left in the streets for the mangy curs to eat.
And in the ensuing months, as he avoided detection from opposing forces, Tolimir Jancovic hid in the skeletal remains of razed buildings and ruins, the smell of death all around him, until Božanović and his forces found him cowering behind the ruined beams of what used to be a mosque.
In the subsequent months, he had fought beside Božanović, but found himself to be a poor soldier and an elite coward. When firefights were waged, Tolimir found himself falling back without a single shot having been fired from his weapon; always taking to cover until the volley was over.
But Božanović was not swayed or disappointed in Tolimir’s actions, since a Croat was a Croat. And he kept with the Arabic proverb: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
And so they remained friends, speaking of war stories and reminding each other that they had so much in common—such as how they lost their families, how they had survived one of the most atrocious times in human history, and how they survived its aftermath.
When Božanović started out as a foot soldier with the mob, Tolimir stood by his side, as his aide, and he became Božanović’s voice. His eyes and ears in places that Božanović could not be, which extended his range through representation.
As Božanović began his operation as a trafficker and began to seize Bridges of Bones away from his competitors, Tolimir would stay at base camp sitting upon Božanović’s throne in proxy, relishing the fact that everyone feared him as much as they feared Božanović.
