by Rick Jones
With one foot rising and the other falling to stalk his prey, he was careful not to upset his surroundings.
Through the hanging leaves, he was able to catch a partial view of Kimball Hayden—either an arm or a portion of his leg, but never both. And as he approached with silence to close the gap between them, Kimball was suddenly gone with the Vatican Knight on the move.
McKinley immediately found himself in awe of the man. The Vatican Knight had drawn distance without making a sound. Nor did he leave behind any trace evidence to follow. McKinley soon realized that he was now standing on a same plot of land that had been occupied by the Vatican Knight seconds before. Through the NVG lenses of his mask, he spotted nothing within his surroundings.
The former Army Ranger maintained his cool as he scoped his current situation.
Nothing.
Then like all seasoned warriors, he felt the cloying menace of something approaching.
McKinley pivoted on the balls of his feet by first moving to his left and then to his right. Then he scoped the areas above and behind him with his movements silent but quick.
Nothing.
But the weight of the Vatican Knight’s looming presence was too great to dismiss, the enemy closing.
Where are you?
And like two trains about to collide head on, McKinley performed a 180 on his feet to find Kimball within arm’s reach. Through the built-in NVG of his mask, McKinley could see the brewing rage in the man’s eyes that communicated to the Ranger that the two men were about to enter the arena with one man leaving. Their arena, however, was little more than a small patch of dirt.
As McKinley tried to turn his weapon on the Vatican Knight, Kimball already had his directed to McKinley’s center mass and pulled the trigger. The area lit up with a staccato burst of light. Rounds pounded into McKinley’s armor and lifted him off his feet, then carried him into a soft bedding of shrubbery. The pain was excruciating, the blows coming as though from a sledgehammer hitting him repeatedly. He lay there wondering if his ribs had been broken, Kimball was on top of him with a knife pressed against McKinley’s throat.
“Shari Cohen,” he said. “Where is she inside that bunker and how many of you are there?”
McKinley, whose voice sounded metallic, came across as laughter. “Thousands,” he answered. “We are everywhere.”
This wasn’t necessarily a lie since the Nocturnal Saints were believed to be an organization that incorporated captains of industries, physicians, attorneys, politicians, blue- and white-collar workers, even priests. What Kimball wanted to know, obviously, was the manpower he was up against. “You know what I’m talking about,” he told McKinley. “Now is not the time to get cute.”
More metallic laughter. “We are thousands,” was the answer.
Kimball showed his frustration by shaking the man. “Where is she?”
“You broke the rules. You know the consequences.”
“We would have been dead either way,” Kimball said. “And trust me, if anything—and I do mean anything—happens to her, I will hunt down every last one of your kind until there’s no one left standing.”
“That would be a tall order, priest, since we are everywhere.”
“Not an order too much to overcome when you have nothing left to lose, I assure you.” Kimball then pressed the point of the blade at the underside of McKinley’s chin and prepared for an upward thrust into the skull. “Where is she?” he asked the Ranger firmly. “I won’t ask you again.”
McKinley had practiced this scenario countless times before as a man who appeared to be submissive with a weapon to his person, whether it be a gun or a knife. With a sweeping left hand, the former Ranger came across to knock the point of the knife off target, then he pulled the Vatican Knight close enough to administer a right elbow strike to Kimball’s jaw.
The Vatican Knight saw a starburst of lights within his mind’s eye, like fireworks, the embers a myriad of colors and hues before they started to fall and fade away. By this time, McKinley was throwing a cluster of accurate punches from his position on the ground while trying to shift his weight to unseat Kimball, who was a heavy man.
Kimball started to tilt, and then fall, with his uneven weight distribution allowing McKinley to free himself and regain his footing. Though he had lost his firearm, which was hidden beneath the leaves, the ex-Ranger reached for his knife and brandished it.
The Vatican Knight got to his feet with venom very much alive in his eyes. Like McKinley, his gun had been knocked aside during the flurry of received punches. But the knife, which had always been his weapon of choice, was gripped firmly within his hand.
In the darkness, McKinley could only wonder how the Vatican Knight could see without NVG capabilities. Without his mask, McKinley knew he wouldn’t be able to see much of anything. Yet the Vatican Knight appeared to be following his every move within the shadows. Was the sight granted to him by Satan? he wondered. Was this man truly the demon in priest’s clothing?
The two circled each other with both being masters of double-edged weaponry. McKinley had the sight of his mask; Kimball had the sight of the Dark Maker.
The two analyzed the position of the other, and then they converged with knife against knife, blade against blade, all pounding and slashing and clanging with near inhuman speed. Sparks erupted upon impact with embers dancing in space before dying, only for new sparks to take their places.
The two combated one another with Kimball moving on instinct rather than granted sight, the man assessing his opponent’s moves and countering. McKinley, however, depended upon his technology, which Kimball comprehended and, while driving his knife across in a sweeping arc that caused McKinley to deflect the move, Kimball, with his opposite hand and in coordination with the other, reached out and knocked the mask off McKinley’s head, rendering him blind.
McKinley backpedaled while swiping his knife errantly through the air while hoping to gash his mark. But to Kimball, the ex-Ranger suddenly appeared as someone who was unpracticed in the skill, sloppy and chaotic, the knife now moving in diagonal sweeps through the air to make perfect Xs, the ex-Ranger slashing at nothing.
Kimball closed the gap knowing that there were few soft spots to hit since McKinley was wearing a dragon-skin vest and composite shield guards. Then, after he disabled the man from his knife with a few uncontested blows, he once again sent McKinley to the ground.
But the ex-Army Ranger would not concede the battle and give up the secrets of the Nocturnal Saints, no matter how much Kimball pressed for answers. He would go to his grave knowing that he did so under the banner of God, and as a soldier who was destined to right the wrongs of changing social conventions.
With Kimball once more pinning him to the earth and holding the knife to McKinley’s throat, he asked, “Cohen, where is she? How many more do I have to go through in order to get to her?”
But the Nocturnal Saint was a realist who knew that he’d been bested by the devil’s minion. Two men had entered the ring, and the Vatican Knight would be the one who would exit. Reaching to close the hand of his ringed finger over Kimball’s, which was on the knife’s hilt, McKinley forced Kimball’s hand to drive the blade across the most delicate flesh of the ex-Ranger’s throat. The gash was deep, and the skin pared back to reveal a horrible second mouth. And then blood began to spill from the edges which, in the dark, glistened like black tar.
Kimball got to his feet and looked down at McKinley, who was dying by the inches, until he finally expended his final breath. Kimball’s rage and frustration became as entangled as a Gordian knot with McKinley’s death leaving him to slog through the mire in order to get to Shari. There was no doubt that she was inside the bunker. But the bunker was a huge labyrinth to canvas on limited time. And it wouldn’t take much for the Nocturnal Saints to figure out that he was the tip of the spear that was driving through their lines of defenses.
Continuing to look over McKinley, Kimball noted a star-spangled glitter
in the silver ray of the moon’s shine. Then he hunkered over the body and reached for the man’s hand. A moment later as he walked into an open field that was close to the bunker, Kimball stared at the ring that he had appropriated from McKinley’s finger. Though it was blood coated, Kimball could still see the emblem of the Nocturnal Saints: the letters NS under an inverted V.
After tucking it within the pocket of his clerical shirt, Kimball noted that the door to the bunker was open as though in invitation. He couldn’t recall if the door had been closed or open before, perhaps the invite new. Either way, and as someone who never wanted to disappoint, the Vatican Knight accepted it as encouragement, whether it had been openly granted or not.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
The Apostolic Palace
Vatican City
Pope Clement XV was standing along the balcony that overlooked St. Peter’s Square. To his north and beyond the wall of the Barracks of Papal Gendarmes, he watched the black of the night sky become infused with the swirling colors of blue and white from the police cruisers. According to Father Auciello, the False Prophet had been discovered within eyeshot of Vatican City. And to underscore the risk of the situation, the device was in countdown mode with less than forty-five minutes left on its timer.
Fathers Auciello and Essex had pleaded with the pontiff to vacate the city along with the cardinals—the Princes of the Church—only for him to turn a deaf ear on their proposals. ‘God will intervene,’ he told them. ‘God will save us.’ Though noble in his belief that God would interpose His will to stop the destruction of Vatican City, Pope Clement XV still had a blackened soul.
As he stood on the balcony, he was consumed by thoughts of Kimball Hayden. Like the False Prophet, he believed that God would be just as generous in disposing Kimball Hayden as He would at neutralizing a weapon of mass destruction. On this night, the pontiff was sure that the Lord would simply sweep His Mighty Hand over the Vatican to cleanse it of sin and worry.
Closing his eyes, the pontiff prayed, believing that everything would turn out for the better. The church would be saved, and Kimball Hayden would be forever removed as the final thorn of his crown.
With risk remaining thick and heavy in the air as his fellow cardinals took flight, Pope Clement XV believed that God was working in mysterious ways. What was going on at the moment, he considered, was simply the Darkness before the Light. What he didn’t know, however, was that the Darkness was closer than he could ever imagine.
Upon the balcony where the night sky was awash with the lights from police cruisers, the pontiff continued to pray.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Piazza del Risorgimento
Rome, Italy
. . . 00:41:21 . . .
. . . 00:41:20 . . .
. . . 00:41:19 . . .
The best that the bomb-squad expert could determine was that the parts originated from Israel, and that the device itself had been modernized with the antiquated Russian parts replaced. This was not news to either Isaiah or Nehemiah. This was information that had already been passed down by Vatican Intelligence, along with the Mossad and other intel agencies. What no one could verify, including the Israeli connections, was if Abesh Faruk, while altering components in a revitalization project, added a tripwire system that if the device should be tampered with once the timer had been initiated, would the suitcase detonate upon any attempt to deactivate it.
. . . 00:40:37 . . .
. . . 00:40:36 . . .
. . . 00:40:35 . . .
Time had now become their biggest enemy. Even with the common sense to utilize the only option of driving the vehicle away from ground zero, Rome was still a big city with nearly three million people. A forty-minute drive, even with a speedy police escort, would only push the problem to another vicinity that would still be close to the heart of Rome. There was simply not enough time to create distance from a populated region. There would still be more than a hundred thousand lives caught within the blast radius at any given time, no matter the route taken.
“Give me your final assessment,” Isaiah finally asked the bomb-squad expert in fluid Italian.
“I cannot defuse the unit until I know what exactly each component is utilized for. The unit itself has been pieced together like Frankenstein’s monster, with a mishmash of Russian and Israeli components that may work together or counter each other, depending upon how the device has been programmed.”
Isaiah pointed to the timer. “You see that?”
. . . 00:40:09 . . .
. . . 00:40:08 . . .
. . . 00:40:07 . . .
“Even with a police escort,” Isaiah told him, “we wouldn’t have the time to clear the borders of Rome.”
“So, what are you asking? That I move ahead recklessly?”
“It won’t matter much in forty minutes, will it?”
The two tagged each other strongly with their eyes for a brief moment until Isaiah took the initiative. Reaching into the trunk, he closed the lid and clasped it locked. Then, to the field commanders of the Polizia di Stato and the Nucleo Operativo Centrale di Sicurezza, he said, “Call in a chopper.”
But it was the commander of the Nucleo Operativo Centrale di Sicurezza who objected by patting the air with his hand and saying, “Whoa-whoa-whoa. Wait a minute now. The Piazza del Risorgimento is not the jurisdiction of the Vatican. Your right to lead ends inside those walls.”
Isaiah pointed a finger towards Vatican City. “Do you see that wall?” he asked. “Behind that wall is one of the most valued religious leaders on the planet. His sits inside the Apostolic Palace refusing to leave his post. Now, we know for certain that this weapon cannot be defused, at least not here without the possibility of detonation, because we don’t have the time to break down its internal processes. So where does that leave us? It leaves us with no choice. We have to take the gamble by removing the unit from this location.”
“Moving the suitcase,” the team’s field commander firmly stated, “can also be the fuse that sets it off right here, inside this plaza.”
“Possibly. But there’s also a chance that it might not. Right now, it’s a fifty-fifty chance that it will not go off. We don’t have any other option at this point but one: removal. Driving is not an option—not enough time to draw distance from a populated region. But a chopper provides us with a chance.”
“To do what?”
Isaiah pointed to his east. “We take it as far as we can into the Tyrrhenian Sea where we can dispose of it.”
“With the time remaining,” the field commander pointed at the timer, “it would be a one-way trip.”
“Sacrifice the life of the few to save the lives of the many,” the Vatican Knight returned.
“Uh-huh. And the one who would serve as the moral sacrifice here would be?”
“Me,” Isaiah answered.
The field commander stared at Isaiah, who couldn’t determine if the man was measuring him with admiration, or if he was considering him as someone running a fool’s errand. And then: “You’ll have your chopper. Finding a pilot, however, who is willing to sacrifice his life might be difficult to find, however.”
“I fly,” said Nehemiah. “Small planes and choppers. I’m one of three men in the VK unit trained to do so for specific operations when the mission calls for extractions.”
The field commander looked at both men, and then at the suitcase. “The moment you move that thing, even an inch, may set it off. You know that, right?”
“That’s why you need to clear the area,” Isaiah told him. “Evacuate as many people as possible from the location. Take your team and draw distance.”
The field commander looked in the direction of Vatican City and at the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica. Vatican City had been the throne of Catholicism for centuries. The bones of Saint Peter, along with other religious treasures and troves, were about to be incinerated. The pontiff himself, a leader of more than a billion people, was about to
be lost within the consuming flames.
“We now have less than forty minutes,” Isaiah told him. “We need that chopper.”
The field commander did not hesitate from this point on. He quickly contacted his leadership at the Nucleo Operativo Centrale di Sicurezza to dispatch a chopper immediately to the Piazza del Risorgimento, with the helicopter arriving from Fiumicino International Airport.
By the time the orders were relayed, there was less than thirty-five minutes remaining.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Monte Soratte Bunker
30 Miles North of Rome
Mannix was sitting in the shadows keeping watch over Shari while trying to communicate with his unit. Stallworth, Bienemy and McKinley had all gone dark, something that went against operational conventions, since communication was paramount to any mission. There had been no orders to ‘go dark.’ Yet Mannix received nothing in return but static and white noise. Apparently, Kimball Hayden was proving himself as an elite soldier who led a selected few known as the Vatican Knights.
After making several more attempts over the course of several minutes and receiving no feedback, Mannix had no choice but to consider his team neutralized. Kimball Hayden had been cutting his way through the lines with surgical precision, while leaving a trail of bodies in his wake.
From beyond the circle of light and sitting within the shadows, Mannix got to his feet and approached Shari Cohen. In the dim illumination of candlelight, he appeared wraithlike in his skeleton-painted mask.
“The sinner,” he started with his metallic-sounding voice, “approaches.”
“You already told me that.”
Mannix remained silent.
After the stare off between them, the Nocturnal Saint looked at his weapon and examined the chamber to see if a round was chambered. There was, which was something he already knew, but he did so in front of Shari to let her know that the weapon was ready.
Then from Mannix: “When situations in the field of operation changes,” he said, “then as a good soldier, I must adapt.”
