by Rick Jones
After maneuvering through the streets of Rome, he came upon a Nucleo Operativo Centrale di Sicurezza team, which was a more militant breed of officer from Rome’s carabinieri. The ID card he carried would be studied, this he knew.
Avoiding the line, he drove the FIAT along the streets that circled Vatican City, which was the smallest country in the world that was landlocked by Rome, and a country that was no bigger than an 18-hole golf course.
First, he drove down Via dei Corridori, and then north along Via di Porta Angelica. Then he circled west onto Viale Vaticano and followed the road to navigate a loop around the entire city. During this recon mission, he discovered that the streets were occupied by a number of patrolling police cars, which allowed him to blend in. Then he drove once more along Via di Porta Angelica until he came to the Piazza del Risorgimento.
The square had been infiltrated by roving bands of pigeons, flocks of them, while a number of police vehicles and a pair of strike vans belonging to the Nucleo Operativo Centrale di Sicurezza parked together to set up a central command post.
The Bangladeshi, who in global circles had become known as a chameleon who could walk amongst his enemies, parked his vehicle approximately one hundred meters away from the central command, then exited his vehicle. Standing next to the car with the hems of his pant legs well above his ankles, and with the sleeves of his shirt obviously too short with the cuffs resting a few inches above his wrists, he focused on Vatican City, which was a few hundred meters west of his position.
Though his blending was not perfect due to the ill fit of the uniform, it was enough to cast aside any suspicion or investigative looks. Grabbing his laptop, the Bangladeshi went to the trunk of the vehicle and opened it. Inside lay the False Prophet. The emblazoned red image of an angel with demonic wings and a halo stared back at him. After spying the area once more to discover a potential threat and seeing none, he set the laptop inside the trunk and undid the clasps to the suitcase. Opening the lid, the Bangladeshi grazed the keypad with the tips of his fingers, and then he typed in a code by striking the keys with a pianist’s skill, fast and precise. After hitting the hashtag sign and then the ‘ENTER’ tab, a digital timer popped up with a series of LED zeros splashed across its face.
The Bangladeshi stood idle as he deciphered the time needed to create enough space from the blast site. He’d be on foot for the most part and moving east, at least until he found the means to drive north into Switzerland, and then into Germany, France or Austria, depending on the situation of the aftermath.
With the same dexterity, the Bangladeshi typed in 02:00:00. Then he hit the “ENTER’ tab for a second time. After the unit whirred as though it was powering on, the numbers started to wind down.
. . . 02:00:00 . . .
. . . 01:59:59 . . .
. . . 01:59:58 . . .
Closing and then locking the lid, the Bangladeshi had given himself time to draw distance.
. . . 01:59:57 . . .
. . . 01:59:56 . . .
. . . 01:59:55 . . .
Leaving his laptop behind, the Bangladeshi began to move towards the center of Rome at a brisk pace.
In less than two hours, Vatican City, which was the throne and hub of Catholic religion, was about to become a wasteland.
CHAPTER FORTY
Monte Soratte Bunker
30 Miles North of Rome
The Monte Soratte is a mountain ridge in the Metropolitan City of Rome that is an isolated limestone ridge with sawback features that contained six peaks. Located thirty miles north of Rome, it is the only noteworthy ridge in the Tiber Valley. And because of its isolated setting so close to Rome, Mussolini had a series of bunkers built from 1937 to 1943 to house the Fascist government, should Rome come under siege. But in 1943 when Mussolini was deposed, construction was halted on the bunkers and were soon forgotten, until the rise of the Cold War in the 1960s. Today, they served as tourist sites for visitors.
In a room constructed entirely of stone blocks, Shari Cohen started to come to.
The stone ceiling.
The odd shapes that danced along the walls within the flickers of candlelight.
The hollow cadence of her own moan.
The dimness of the room.
The feel of being bound by flexcuffs.
And the strange creature that sat across the room from her, watching.
Sitting up, though restricted in movement, Shari could sense the heated knot on her forehead throbbing from the rifle’s impact.
Narrowing her eyes, she could see the creature sitting at the edge of the light. Its face was skeletal with bony ridges for cheeks and an angular mandible. But its most unsettling features were its eyes, which glowed a gaseous hue of bright green, the swirls smoky and fluorescent. Located at its mouth was a circular screen about the size of a silver dollar, a speaker.
Sitting as still as a Bernini statue, it continued to watch her.
She tried her bonds which strangled her wrists to the point of nearly cutting off her blood flow. Then, of course, she asked the most basic questions: “Where am I? Why are you doing this?”
Silence.
Her head continued to throb.
“Hello,” she stated sarcastically.
The figure remained unmoving, just staring.
When she tried to get to her feet, that was when the creature sitting at the fringe of light began to move. It had crossed the floor in six strides with its advancement having purpose. And with a gentle hand, it aided her back into a seating position. “Don’t move,” it told her with a metallic sounding voice.
Shari continued to stare at the skull mask that was poised above her. In its hand was an assault weapon, a suppressed MP7. It also wore the dragon-skin body armor of a seasoned soldier along with composite shield guards that covered the shins, thighs and forearms.
Slowly, this soldier leveled the point of the barrel to assure that Shari Cohen could view the open mouth of the gun’s barrel, as well as to take in the light scent of its gunpowder. “Remain seated,” the soldier said. The sound was warped and metallic like the machine-driven voice of a cheap robot, a toy, yet articulate.
“What do you want with me?”
From the shadows came a second voice that was natural in tenor, though gruff and gravelly. A woman, small and intense looking, emerged from the shadowy veils. In her hand was a cigarette. She moved with a swagger and with an upraised chin as though she had been bred with dignity. When she stood next to her soldier counterpart, the two were a complete antithesis of the other: She was short and powerful, and he was tall and submissive.
“Since you have chosen to turn a blind eye against the sins of the one you appreciate,” the short woman began, “that makes you equally culpable. His sins are your sins. And because of this, you must pay for betraying the values of God.”
Shari contorted her features into a puzzled look, as though the woman standing before her was raving nonsensically like the prophet of Doom.
When the woman intuited this, she asked, “Do you deny that you care for the sinner that is Kimball Hayden? The killer of innocent woman and children.”
The bulb of enlightenment suddenly went off in Shari’s head with her startled features transmitting this to the woman.
“Yes,” said the woman with the hoarse voice. “I thought so.”
“It’s not me that you want,” Shari stated. “It’s Kimball, isn’t it?”
“And you,” answered the woman. “You are party to sin as well since you know about his past. And yet you choose to see his committed offenses as something acceptable, simply because it was a part of a past for which he is trying to absolve himself from.” The woman leaned in. “Some sins are unpardonable, no matter how much he seeks the Light of Salvation.” She eased back into a standing position. “He is an abomination to the church and a demon who wears the clothing of a priest, which is unacceptable.”
“You’re out of your mind,” Shari tol
d her. “Are you even capable of listening to what you’re saying?”
The woman dismissed the insult. “And for choosing to walk in league with the devil’s minion,” the woman went on, “you have also chosen your fate. Since you have decided to shun the Lord’s Light, you may join Kimball Hayden’s side come Judgment.”
“You’re going to kill us.” This was a statement, not a question.
“Let’s say that I’m releasing you from sin. Perhaps the Lord will see enough inside you to grant you passage. Hayden, however, has no heavenly future.”
“And you think you’re doing God’s work?”
“What I do, I do at the command of another—someone who is closer to God than I am.”
Shari shook her head disbelievingly. This woman was a gibbering fanatic, she thought, an extremist. “Who?” she asked.
The woman, Antle, waved a dismissive hand at her. “It matters not,” she told her.
“And I’m the bait, is that it?”
The woman remained unmoving with a face that was stone cold.
Shari continued to lead her on, however. “You took me to a place that was secluded—a place that was out of sight and mind, right? You think Kimball’s going to walk right through the front door and buckle when he sees me bound and surrounded by your goons?” Shari barked a laugh at this. “You have no idea what you’ve resurrected,” she told the woman. “You’re right about him having a dark side that’s as savage and as primal as any man who allows himself to be commanded by uncontrollable anger. But there’s a greater Light within him, a Light so bright that it can outweigh anything of Darkness. But my guess is that he’s going to allow Darkness to rule his actions tonight. No one here stands a chance. So, if I were you, I’d walk away. In fact, I’d run. I’d run as fast and as far as I could.”
“He’s one man unarmed against four heavily armed men, all elite soldiers.”
“It’s said that a true warrior would rather go up against an elite army with his bare fists than to go up against a Vatican Knight with all the weapons he can carry. If you stay the course, then you’re about to put that proverb to the test.”
“He’s a man who’s lost, a sinner. My people have the Light deep within their hearts and are true servants of God. Not the one who wears the collar of a priest and believes himself to be so. Kimball Hayden is the devil’s minion, if not the devil himself.”
“Is that right?” Shari contested.
When the woman showed Shari the face of her wristwatch, Shari also noted the ring on her hand. The ring’s face was a ruby stone with an upside-down V, and under this tented V were the insignia letters N and S. But it was the watch that the woman was trying to drive Shari’s attention to as she tapped its face.
“Right now,” Antle began, “he’s been informed of your abduction and, as we speak, is on his way. His window of time is limited, however. If he fails to deliver himself according to our instructions, then you will die. So yes, and unlike you, I believe that when he walks through the gateway, he will fall to his knees in disgrace and beg not only for your life, but his. And then final judgment will be passed. This Darkness you say he will work in alliance with will have no bearing here.”
Shari remained silent. For someone who knew Kimball down to the very root and core of what motivates him, she knew it was because he had always moved to the beat of his own drum. They may have been rules and regulations and restrictions, but Kimball Hayden had been wired to cross these boundaries when necessary. Tonight, she knew, he would cross these lines by the urging of a great Darkness that would consume him, while serving the Light.
Shari could only stare at the woman’s watch that ticked down the moments to Kimball’s arrival.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Rome, Italy
Kimball could literally feel his insides churning. His stomach kept clenching and unclenching as though trying to contain itself. And his bowels, hot and writhing, were as equally unsettled.
Shari had become a pawn in the scheme of things—that dangling chain that swung before the subject’s eyes in order to hypnotize him to do certain biddings. He had become mesmerized with a will not his own, but that of the Nocturnal Saints. He had been seized by the gravelly-voiced woman, a person who was quite diminutive in size, but one who carried with her a constitution of magnificent power.
As he walked along the street, he was so engrossed with the study of the hexagon-shaped recorder in his hand that he did not see a gathering crowd. Standing on a wooden crate, a disheveled looking man with rawboned features and matted hair was giving a sermon. People milled about as though they were trying to determine if they were listening to the ravings of a madman or the wisdom of a prophet. But as the speaker took note of Kimball while the Vatican Knight approached, he stopped in mid-sentence with his eyes suddenly detonating with wide-eyed epiphany and pointed to Kimball.
Heads turned to see the Vatican Knight, whose attention lay elsewhere, as he remained oblivious to the gathering.
“And behold!” said this prophet who continued to point a filthy finger at the Vatican Knight. “God sends unto man a wingless angel . . .”
But Kimball moved along at a rapid pace having no idea of the Italian this man spoke, or that he had become the subject of the prophet’s lecture.
Following the instructions on the recorder, Kimball reached the Pantheon and found the car with the license plate number DH 730NB. Underneath the front seat, as promised, was an envelope containing keys. Inserting the key into the ignition and starting the vehicle, Kimball laid the hexagon-shaped recorder on the passenger seat. It would now serve as a radio beacon to those keeping watch from afar.
Uploading the predetermined directions already programmed into the vehicle’s GPS screen, Kimball realized that his final destination would be the Monte Soratte mountain ridge thirty miles north of his position, the spot secluded.
Putting the car into gear, Kimball went to meet his future with Darkness budding and burgeoning from his heart.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Vatican Intelligence
Vatican City
A Jesuit who was manning the banks of monitors that showed citywide images from CCTV scanners, had received information as part of a multi-team effort between agencies who were working together in collusion. Apparently, an officer remained nonresponsive to radio transmissions after trying to download data into his dash monitor after making a traffic stop, with the input incomplete. Calls were placed by dispatch to confirm his active duty, only for the channel to remain silent. Protocols were then initiated when the officer’s code of behavior became noncommittal. So, when CCTV cameras of the officer’s last known location were brought up to view, the recordings revealed that he had been approached by an unknown person who rapped on the officer’s window, and then a moment later, though the action was out of view, there was a spark of light and a possible muzzle flash. Then the unknown person appeared to have forced the officer, without any challenge, into the passenger seat. A moment later, the unknown figure returned to his vehicle and grabbed two items: a suitcase and a laptop. After he commandeered the police cruiser, he moved east according to the vehicle’s GPS tracker, and then west towards Vatican City, where it parked inside of the Piazza del Risorgimento. Car 336, now missing for almost two hours, was hiding in plain sight and close to the Vatican.
Under the direction of Vatican Intelligence, Isaiah and Nehemiah were summarily dispatched to the Piazza del Risorgimento to work with the authorities with joint interests. Kimball, however, was not among them, even as Fathers Essex and Auciello attempted to contact the Vatican Knight on multiple occasions, only to come up empty. And since the Piazza del Risorgimento was a wide-open lot, there were no CCTV cameras or means to locate or identify the driver. What was telling were the Rorschach-shaped blood stains on the passenger seat, which left little to the imagination in regard to the officer’s fate.
With vehicle number 336 having been located a few hundred yards
from the wall that divided Vatican City from the Piazza del Risorgimento, Isaiah smashed the window with his elbow, opened the door, found the trunk-release button, and pressed it. There was a click as the trunk lifted.
Hooking his fingers underneath the trunk’s lid, he lifted it. To Isaiah, it was like discovering that ‘thing’ that hid under the bed or within the closet. Outside of the cache of weaponry such as a shotgun and rounds of ammunition, there was also an aluminum suitcase. And beside that was a small laptop. But what caught the Vatican Knight’s attention was the emblem on the baggage, that of an angel with a halo and outspread demonic wings.
Here was the False Prophet.
Isaiah and Nehemiah looked at the Vatican wall that divided the city from the Piazza del Risorgimento, a poor barrier.
“Open it,” said Nehemiah, though his words were heavily weighted with a strong hint of caution.
Isaiah hesitated, “We don’t know if it’s rigged.”
“And we don’t know if we have seconds or minutes or hours, either.”
But it was a member of Italy’s Nucleo Operativo Centrale di Sicurezza who suggested that a bomb squad expert take lead, though it would take fifteen minutes for him to arrive on scene. But fifteen minutes could also be valuable time wasted. Since the Nucleo Operativo Centrale di Sicurezza and the Polizia di Stato had jurisdiction inside the Piazza del Risorgimento, even though it was a stone’s throw from Vatican City, they also believed it prudent to contact the bomb-squad unit. But the fifteen minutes ‘wasted’ would also turn out to be ‘fifteen minutes of needed time’ that would, unfortunately, push them beyond the point of no return.
At the moment, the Vatican Knights found themselves limited by jurisdictional laws, even with the Vatican a few hundred meters away.
