by Rick Jones
“Why? So that you can kill me?”
“No. So I can take you to the One.”
“I’m not interested in your proposal.”
“Then I guess you leave us both with no choice. I was hoping for little more foreplay. But apparently, you just want to get right down to the killing.”
With those final metallic words leaving Mannix’s built-in voice box, the two elite soldiers converged for the final assault.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Inside the Monte Soratte Bunker
Jennifer Antle was sitting inside of a stonewalled chamber, a small room. And candles gave off minimal light that was enough to shed a meager glow over the cigarette that was burning in the ashtray next to her.
As she sat waiting to become judge, jury and executioner, she had been monitoring the communication between her team until they went silent. Stallworth, McKinley and Bienemy had either broken protocol regarding constant and efficient communication, or the sinner had somehow broken through the ranks.
She had chosen the latter.
The pontiff would be disappointed in her, she thought, or perhaps angry that she and her team had failed him.
“It’s not over yet,” she murmured out loud to herself, her voice as coarse as sandpaper. It was an admission of hanging onto hope—though slim—since Mannix still remained as the last line of defense. The man had been a colossus as a Delta operator, this she knew, and a leader who inspired his troops to be the best they could be. He commanded forces in the most hostile theaters of operation in the world, namely the Middle East, and he had come away weighted down by too many medals to count.
Grabbing and placing the cigarette between pinching lips at the corner of her mouth, the door to her chamber clanged open. Standing silhouetted in the door’s frame was Mannix. The twin lights of his eyes were emblazoned as they stared at her in evaluation. And his vest—having been painted over to represent a rack of human ribs and a spinal column to coincide with the skeleton mask—glistened with a wetness that appeared like tar in the gloomy cast of light.
With her hand, she beckoned Mannix to approach with a wave. “Close the door,” she told him.
Mannix did. And then he took one of the three empty resin chairs close to the woman.
“And the sinner?”
Mannix swept a hand across his chest to emphasize the blood splashes that were not his own. “The sinner put them down,” he stated through the metallic voice box.
“And the blood on your vest?”
“The sinner’s,” he said. “He was unwillingly to comply with our demands. He thought he could best me.”
“So, you killed him?”
“He gave me no choice.”
“I see.” The woman’s eyes examined Mannix’s Kevlar and the bloody patterns, most which were amoeba-shaped splashes. Then she noted the dripping blood lines on the face of the mask and the blood on his hands. “It must have been one hell of a fight,” she added.
“When two soldiers of elite caliber go at it, there’s no such thing as a clean or easy kill.”
“No. Perhaps not.” Her voice remained even while her stoic features refused to betray her sentiments. And then: “I noticed that you’re not wearing a ring. You want to tell me why that is?”
Mannix sat unmoving and appeared to be at a loss for words. Then he examined both hands that were coated with the blood of his opponent, red and sticky. Then he reached up and removed his Kevlar helmet. Gone was the bloodied face of the skeleton. In its place was the face of Kimball Hayden.
“You must think I’m stupid,” the woman told him. “I knew who you were the moment you stood in the doorway.”
Kimball stared at her with deep bitterness from eyes that were heatedly passionate and poisonous. “Why?” he asked her. “Why come after me now?”
Antle shrugged. “Why not.”
When Kimball leaned forward, she could feel a tangible threat dripping off him that was as deadly and contagious as a pestilent disease, a virulent that most people could not walk away from after it was fully encountered. That was when he removed the combat knife from his sheath and held it up in display before her eyes. The blade was thick with Mannix’s blood, the Vatican Knight failing to wipe the knife clean. “Believe me when I say this: I will use this on you unless you give me the answers I want.”
Antle remained stoic. Whether her brave face was real or simply a veneer of underlying feelings of terror, Kimball could not tell. The woman was like stone.
“Why are you here?” Kimball asked her. “Who sent you? And where’s Shari?”
Antle removed the cigarette and stamped it out in the ashtray. “I expected no different from a sinner who has killed innocent women and children in the past,” she told him. “To coerce me into giving up my secrets by loosening my tongue through pain, do you not see your own evil?”
Kimball waited, though his muscles worked at the back of his jawline due to waning patience.
“You’ve infiltrated the highest ranks of the church as someone who seeks the Light but continues to live in the Dark, because you cannot make a choice between the two. When most surrender one for the other, you choose to remain in the middle because you’re enticed by both. You’re unable to make the proper choice, Sinner, because the Dark has too much of a hold on you. You’re the Prime Evil here. Not me. Not the pontiff. Not the Nocturnal Saints. It’s always been you.”
“Me? I’m the bad guy here?” Kimball appeared amused. And then: “I guess it really is about perspective and how we perceive things differently as individuals, isn’t it?” Easing back into his seat, Kimball removed the vest and set it aside. The white of his Catholic collar had been stained with Mannix’s blood.
“I see that the band of your collar which represents your station within the church is soiled,” she said. “It’s stained from your signature nature to kill. And yet you continue to wear it like a badge.”
Kimball removed the collar and, like the vest, set it aside. “Feel better?” he asked her rhetorically. After a pause, he added, “Where is she? And who sent you? I know you wouldn’t be here unless your services were called for. You knew about Shari Cohen and where we lived. That kind of information is particularly sensitive since the Vatican Knights stay under the radar as much as possible. And Shari Cohen was an unknown to the Nocturnal Saints. Someone within the church who has ties to the Nocturnal, perhaps? Someone—” Kimball’s eyes popped as though the lightbulb of enlightenment suddenly went off in his head. And then: “You’re kidding.”
Antle remained absolutely silent. She even went as far as to raise her chin in defiance.
“You’re kidding,” he repeated, this time speaking in a rather troubled way.
Antle’s silence was answer enough to Kimball Hayden.
“And Shari,” he insisted. “Where is she?”
The woman’s continuing silence was beginning to grate on Kimball’s nerves.
Reaching up to tap the pocket of his shirt, it sounded as though loose coins were jingling against each other. Then he used his knife to point at her ruby-faced ring. “I like your ring,” he told her. “It’s rather different from the collection I have here in my pocket. Four so far. If you don’t give me the answers I want, I’ll add yours to the collection.”
“So now you’re taking trophies, is that it?”
“No,” he answered. He removed the rings and placed them on the table beside the ashtray. One was coated with dried blood. “These are to prove to you that your team is out of commission, unless there are a few more out there lurking about.”
She shook her head. “There’s no one else. If you made it this far, then you’ve deactivated the force. I’m the last.”
Kimball was surprised by her admission. He had followed the lights that led to her lair, a small stonewall chamber. It made sense that the queen would be protected at all costs, meaning that if there were others, then he would have come across them.
“So now what?” she asked. “You’ll kill me too?”
“I want to know where Shari is.”
“And if I refuse to tell you?”
“Then your ring will be added to those,” he said, pointing the tip of his knife at the jewelry sitting on the table. “I promise.”
* * *
Shari was frustrated because her bindings were impossible to loosen. Her head ached and throbbed with pulsations. And she was nauseous, which were no doubt signs of a concussion.
When she heard the metallic clanging of the door being unlocked from the other side, she tried her best to show a brave face, even as she was on the cusp of losing consciousness. Her world wavered across her field of vision as the stone walls surrounding her appeared to shudder with somewhat of a gelatinous movement to them, and strangely alive.
Then as the door opened, she saw an odd shape that quickly broke off into two separate entities, with one shadow much larger than the other. The larger shape closed the gap between it and her with its hands reaching out to grapple and hoist Shari to her feet. But the voice behind this black mass was gentle and soft and filled with a great deal of relief.
Then as the face fell into the marginal light of the candle’s glow, she honestly believed that her heart would misfire inside her chest. She was looking at the face of an angel whose cerulean blue eyes glimmered like sapphires. His touch was gentle as he lifted her to her feet and into his embrace, with the hug as encompassing as a warm blanket.
“Kimball,” she said. Then once more, but softer, “Kimball.”
“I’m right here,” he told her. He had been told by Mannix that she was dead, the lie striking him with a blow that sent him reeling emotionally, the false admission perhaps to knock Kimball off his game enough to give Mannix the leverage. And he did go off the rails, he recalled. He had lost focus and gone into a rage with the Vatican Knight quickly becoming bestial as he cried out with primal savagery, when informed of her death. He had fired off his weapon without keeping track of the rounds spent until it had finally gone dry. And wasting ammo was something a true warrior never did.
Holding her within his clutch, he told her, “Everything’s going to be all right.” Then after easing away a bit, he reached up to move a lock of hair that covered her bruised forehead. It was an awful rise, red and purple. Then he leaned forward and kissed the bump softly, the light peck stinging, but an act that was also medicinal. “You might have a concussion,” he told her.
“I know I do.”
Using his knife, Kimball cut the binds of her flexcuffs and held her steady.
Standing across from them with her hands clasped behind the small of her back was Antle, whose features remained stonelike. “Tell me, Sinner,” she began, “now that you have the woman, are you going to kill me? It is, after all, a part of your nature, is it not? To kill innocent women and children.”
Kimball directed the knife in her direction. “Your ring,” he said. “I want it.” Then the Vatican Knight started to advance on her position inside the room.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Above the Tyrrhenian Sea
15 Miles Offshore
The H155 chopper was flying at a speed that reached 193 miles per hour of the 200 mph of its listed capability. Isaiah remained in the bay whereas Nehemiah helmed the aircraft. With the moon the only source of light and the stars twinkling in concert, the lights of the shoreline had disappeared. Beneath them were the rolling caps and waves of the Tyrrhenian Sea.
As the timer continued its march towards zero hour, Nehemiah kept pushing the chopper. They had less than ten minutes.
And then from Nehemiah: “What about here? I think we’re far enough with sufficient time to fall back . . . Maybe.”
Isaiah looked at the suitcase with the emblazoned red stamp of the False Prophet on it—that of an angel with a halo and demonic wings. Then he undid the straps until the unit was free from its tethers. “All right!” he shouted above the rotors.
“This is it!” Nehemiah returned. “We do it now if we want to draw distance!”
But Isaiah wanted to tell him that no matter how fast the chopper might be, they would never be able to fly beyond its blast radius, even if the explosion was contained and muted by the sea.
The aircraft hovered about three hundred feet above the waves. “You ready?” Nehemiah asked him.
Is anyone ever ready for something like this? Isaiah thought. And then he slid the suitcase across the bay and towards the edge. As it hung precariously over the side with half the unit still inside the chopper’s bay, all it would take is a final heave. If it was rigged, then the unit would sense a tumbling sensation during freefall and detonate soon after it was shoved into space.
After a final and silent prayer had been said, Isaiah pushed the suitcase over the side and beyond the skids, the False Prophet now tumbling freely towards the sea’s surface.
Once Isaiah informed Nehemiah that the unit was on its way, the pilot quickly peeled back and started his eastbound flight back to the mainland at the fastest possible speed.
* * *
When the False Prophet splashed down in the Tyrrhenian Sea, the suitcase had slapped the surface hard enough to dent the aluminum shell, but the device did not activate upon impact. In fact, as the anchor weights of the lead shields carried it further into the depths, the countdown meter managed to keep flawless time.
. . . 00:00:03 . . .
. . . 00:00:02 . . .
. . . 00:00:01 . . .
Detonation.
* * *
At the 120-foot level, the False Prophet detonated with the result of its blast a sudden illumination of an underwater fireball. While the swelling gas bubble created a shockwave, an expanding ring of dark water at the surface called the ‘slick’ was followed by a second expanding ring of white water called the ‘crack.’ From the core of these rings, a mound of water and spray called the ‘spray dome’ had formed at the water's surface to become more columnlike as it rose. As soon as the rising gas bubble broke the surface, it then created a shockwave as the water vapor in the air condensed as a result of the expansion fans that decreased air pressure, density, and temperature, which made a spherical cloud at the precise location of the reaction. Water then filled the cavity that was formed by the bubble to create a hollow column of water, a ‘chimney,’ which rose to 3,000 feet in the air and broke through the top of the cloud. Then in response, a succession of surface waves moved outward from the center as concentric circles. The first wave was about 100 feet high and approximately 1,000 feet from the center. Other waves soon followed with some of them much higher than the first wave. Then as gravity caused the column to fall to the surface, it also created a cloud of mist that moved rapidly away from the base of the column, or a ‘base surge,’ which was two miles in diameter and 1,000 feet high. The base surge then rose from the surface to merge with other creations of the explosion to form clouds that would produce heavy rainfall for nearly an hour. And while this was forming within moments, brutal concussive waves moved through the air at more than ten times the speed of sound.
Less than three miles from the eruption point was the U155 helicopter.
It didn’t take long for these atmospheric surges to catch up to the aircraft.
* * *
The chopper began to shudder as though it was riding the edge of a leading wind. Then the alarms inside the cockpit started to signal with the electronic chimes, bells and whistles sounding off in a hideous symphony denoting danger. Nehemiah started to hit the toggle switches while trying to maintain control of the steering mechanism, which appeared to be fighting against his control. And then the helicopter started to lift and bounce as though riding the heavy gales of turbulence.
Isaiah hung onto the straps inside the bay as the chopper began to go into an uncontrollable spin. The alarms continued to sound off, loud and persistent, with each annoying whine predicting a coming tragedy. And then there was a snap and po
p with the U155 starting to reel in a clockwise motion with its spinning turning faster and faster like a top.
The alarms.
The spinning.
The quick and sudden loss of altitude.
The surface of the water raced up at them with incredible speed, the churning waves white with caps and froth.
And then the cockpit windshield fractured into a myriad of weblike patterns with Nehemiah’s world, the approaching sea, lost behind the cracks.
And then the rotors started to crack and break away with the pieces thrown to all points of the compass.
The whining of the alarms continued as an awful and bleating rhythm.
. . . And then impact.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Rome, Italy
The Bangladeshi, who continued to wear the ill-fitting police garments, stood beyond the blast radius and watched the countdown on his watch that had been synchronized with the timer of the False Prophet.
. . . 00:00:03 . . .
. . . 00:00:02 . . .
. . . 00:00:01 . . .
. . . 00:00:00 . . .
The Bangladeshi looked south of his position expecting to see the night sky light up, but nothing happened. In dismay, he looked at the numbers on his watch, all zeros, and once again set his attention towards the south.
Night did not turn into day, as expected. There had been no rising mushroom cloud. And the earth did not tremor beneath his feet and the air did not smell of crisping ozone. The False Prophet had failed to detonate.
As a man who often exhibited a thin range of emotions, the Bangladeshi started to pound the heel of his fists against the roof of a nearby car to vent his frustrations. After striking the vehicle enough times to be winded, the Bangladeshi realized his failures. And along with these failures, he thought, consequences would follow him like a shadow.
