Jon Ellis walked up. “We got a crisis going on over here, Jaxon,” he said.
Jaxon gave Ellis a funny look. “This is Butch Karp’s son, Giancarlo. He says Lucy was using sign language before she came out of the cathedral. He thinks she’s still a hostage and was trying to give us an indication of how to find her.”
Ellis scoffed. “Come on, that’s crazy.”
“Is it?” Jaxon asked. He strode over to Denton. “Hey, Bill, would you get your guys to check on that ambulance that was taking Hodges and Lucy to the hospital.”
Denton got on the radio, then turned around and shrugged. “The ambulance isn’t responding,” he said. “It never arrived.”
Jaxon whirled expecting to see Ellis. But the man had disappeared. He turned back to Denton. “We need to find that ambulance,” he said. “I think Hodges is wrong.”
“Wrong? As in a bad guy?” Denton asked.
“Yeah, I don’t know how he pulled it off,” Jaxon said. “But I think if we find Hodges, we’ll find Kane, and he’s got Lucy and Clay Fulton with him.”
Jaxon ran the clues through his head again. Annoy Satan? Baker? Field? But just then the sound of gunfire erupted in the cathedral.
“Go, go, go!” Denton shouted into his microphone and immediately the NYPD and FBI SWAT teams surrounding the cathedral rushed for the entrances.
Inside the cathedral, two different women fought to keep their emotions in check. As she made her demands for the television audience, Samira Azzam had battled back tears. This was to be the best day of her life when she and the woman she loved would sacrifice themselves for the ultimate triumph of Islam.
When Kane left the building, she’d felt an enormous burden lifted from her shoulders. Never again would any man touch her. She turned to Ajmaani and smiled. “It is time, my darling,” she said. But Ajmaani had walked up to her shaking her head.
“Perhaps for you, my little warrior,” she said, kissing her on the cheeks. “But I have other duties. I will be leaving now for a part of the building that has not been booby-trapped.”
Azzam had looked at her for a moment before comprehending what her lover was saying. “You intend to let them capture you?” she asked, aghast.
“Only for the moment,” Ajmaani nee Nadya Malovo replied. “I will be ‘exchanged’ later. Perhaps, if you wish, you could also survive this day with me.”
Hot, angry tears flooded Azzam’s eyes. Once again, she’d been betrayed. She considered killing Ajmaani, who turned and walked toward the back of the cathedral. But even as she pointed her gun, she could not pull the trigger. Instead, she’d allowed the hatred to boil up in her as she began to make her demands.
Across the dais from Azzam, Marlene had taken as much inaction as she could stand. It had taken every bit of willpower not to do something when the initial attack took place, and even more when her daughter and husband were assaulted. But she’d known that if she moved, she would have died without accomplishing anything. Her heart told her to defend her family. But her mind knew that if there was any way to save the Pope and the two thousand others in the cathedral, it had to take precedence.
Still, she also knew that Azzam was building toward the big moment. Soon she would have to take action and most likely die in vain. Jojola had once told her that a warrior wasn’t someone who weighed whether he would survive the battle or not. “A warrior takes the necessary action on behalf of others, regardless of the consequences to himself,” he’d said. “This sets him free to be a perfect weapon.”
Marlene felt a hot tear spring to her eye. Several times over the past weeks, her mind had played tricks on her. She’d see a face in a crowd and start to cry out, “John Jojola!” But the face wouldn’t be there when she looked again. Or from a distance…or when the lighting was unsure…she’d see some old bum walking away with that curious, bowlegged gait that her friend had. But she could never quite catch up and had finally quit trying, realizing that her mind was seeing what she wanted to see.
I wish I could see you here, now, John, she thought. You were the perfect warrior, and we need you. But I guess we’ll have to settle for me.
The moment arrived when Azzam motioned for the big male terrorist to again take his place behind the Pope with his knife. Azzam was almost shrieking now as she began to read off a list of “crimes” committed by Christians against Muslims. Marlene had no idea where Yvgeny and Tran were, but she locked eyes with Alejandro and nodded. It was now or never.
Just then, a large priest with a scarred face-the one she’d seen have words with Kane as he was leaving-stepped forward and grabbed the terrorist behind the Pope in a bear hug, pulling him back and away from the pontiff.
Distracted, Azzam pointed her gun and shot the big priest whose treachery had brought her so close to the glorious martyrdom she sought. At the same time, Marlene pushed through the crowd of nuns and began to sprint for the terrorist leader.
One of Azzam’s men shouted a warning and pointed behind her. Azzam whirled to confront the danger and was surprised to see that a nun had been moved to action. She was used to hostages going to the slaughter like sheep. She shouted at the assassin who was disengaging himself from the mortally wounded priest. “Kill the Pope!”
The man moved to carry out the command, but suddenly the top half of his head disappeared in a spray of blood, gray matter, and shattered bone. The sound of the.50-caliber sniper’s rifle stunned hostages and hostage takers long enough for FBI sniper K. C. Chalk to slam another bullet home and shoot a terrorist who was drawing a bead on the nun charging the female leader of the group.
Like Marlene, Chalk had sat quietly in the back of the cathedral biding his time. Earlier, Jaxon had asked him to quietly find a spot in the cathedral with his rifle “just in case.” The odd part of the request was to do it without letting the other security detail know he was doing it. So he’d disassembled the rifle and stashed it in a briefcase, which he’d hidden beneath the pew in front of him. With the help of hostages on either side of him who kept watch, he’d slowly reassembled the rifle, then kept it on the floor until the moment presented itself.
Chalk had almost gone for it the first time the terrorist put his knife to the Pope’s throat, but held off. This time, he had been sure that it was now or never, so in one well-rehearsed move, he’d stood and blown the head off the Pope’s assailant. He would have liked to kill the woman leader-chop off the head and the serpent dies-but other hostages had jumped to their feet and he couldn’t get a clear shot so he’d taken the second man.
Any moment he expected to feel a bullet from the two terrorists behind him. He heard one shot and then another, but neither was directed at him. Instead, the second shot took out the terrorist over to his side who’d turned to find him in the panicking crowd. Chalk glanced behind and saw a small Asian priest with one of the terrorist’s rifles taking aim at another. Sometimes one finds friends in the oddest places, Chalk thought as he turned and sought another target himself.
Tran, too, had waited, pretending to be a somewhat crippled, older priest as he worked his way toward the terrorist nearest to him. When the sniper stood and Marlene began her sprint, his target raised his rifle to shoot and so never saw him coming. Tran knocked the rifle up so that the bullet went harmlessly into the ceiling. He ripped the gun away with one hand and with the other delivered a killing atemi blow to the man’s throat, crushing his windpipe. Without pausing, Tran raised the rifle and shot his target’s partner, who seemed confused by the sudden turn of events.
One of the terrorists, who’d moved up the aisle to shoot Marlene, suddenly found himself on the receiving end of a left hook thrown by Karp, who’d appeared to be groggily out of action and leaning against the pew when the shooting started. The gunman went down hard, his head striking the floor with a sickening thud, like a watermelon dropped on a sidewalk. Karp jumped on the man and hammered him in the face with two more punches.
“Mr. Karp, watch out!” Ned yelled behind him.
Karp looked up and s
aw another terrorist on the other end of the pew aiming for him. He rolled off to the side just as the gun cracked, the bullet finding its mark in the man he’d been punching. He landed next to the handgun that had flown out of the hand of the gunman he’d knocked out. He tossed it to Ned, who put two bullets in the terrorist at the end of the pew, then turned and killed a man who was charging from the back of the cathedral.
Meanwhile, up on the dais, Marlene closed the distance to Azzam, who fumbled for her pistol only to have it kicked out of her hand by the crazy nun. “Blow them up,” Azzam screamed to her man at the electronic panel that was wired to the bombs. He did as ordered but nothing happened. A moment later, he was dead with a hole the size of an orange through his chest from Chalk’s.50 caliber.
“I know you,” Azzam said to Marlene as she pulled her knife. “You were at the beach.”
“Damn straight, sister,” Marlene said. “And we have a little unfinished business.”
Azzam feinted with her knife and kicked for Marlene’s leg. But her target had moved and instead landed a kick of her own to the terrorist’s jaw, spinning her around.
Marlene moved in with another kick, but had taken her opponent too lightly and felt the burning as Azzam’s knife cut a small gash in her thigh.
Seeing her opportunity, Azzam leaped for Marlene. But again Marlene was fast and ducked beneath the flashing blade and delivered an upper cut that staggered her back toward the Pope. At the same time, a large-caliber bullet whizzed by her head and slammed into the pipe organ.
Azzam realized that her moment of ultimate glory had passed. The bombs had not gone off, the cathedral was still standing, and she was a moment away from her own death without having accomplished anything that would be remembered. I can still kill the Pope, she thought and whirled to cross the few steps to the pontiff and sink her blade into his heart.
Instead, in the last moment of her life, Azzam was surprised to see an ancient weapon, half-battle ax, half spear whizzing toward her. She didn’t feel the halberd blade pass through her neck, there was no time for pain as her head fell from her shoulders and rolled down the stairs.
Marlene looked up in surprise at Alejandro, who stood looking at the headless body of Samira Azzam with the bloody halberd still in his hands. “Take that, you fucking bitch,” he said. “You fucked around in the wrong city this time.”
Suddenly realizing who was sitting in the chair behind him, Alejandro grimaced at Marlene and turned. “Sorry, Holy Father,” he said. “I got a little carried away.”
The Pope, looking a little pale, waved off the apology. “All things considered,” he said, “I think you deserve a little grace. One Hail Mary, and all’s forgiven.”
36
Two sets of ears had been listening from the storm sewer beneath the street at Fiftieth and Fifth when Giancarlo explained to the FBI agent the message his sister had sent from inside the cathedral.
What else did she say?
It didn’t make a lot of sense. She just kept signing the same thing. “Lucy hostage. Annoy Satan. Baker. Field.” That’s it, but I bet it’s a clue on where she was being taken.
From his vantage point on the ladder, David Grale could see the feet of those speaking but not much else. But he could hear fine. He motioned with his hand to his accomplice below him on the ladder and they both climbed down.
Grale was troubled, indecisive. An hour earlier, he and the man with him had been preparing to check out a rumor of unusual activity by foreign strangers on the north end of the island near Columbia University’s Baker Field when the news arrived that terrorists were holding the Pope and two thousand others hostage in St. Patrick’s.
It was Dirty Warren who’d brought the tidings. Kane… fucker…is leading them with that woman…shit, bitch, he’d stuttered after making his way to Grale’s lair among the Mole People beneath Grand Central Station. Karp and Lucy…aaahhh piss…are in there…. Marlene, Tran, and someone else-tall, patch over his eye-is too, son of a whore. But they’re in disguise so they must have known…holy crap, holy crap…something was up.
Grale and his partner had immediately grabbed their weapons and the long, loose cloaks they favored to keep out the moisture of life underground and departed for the cathedral. Grale cursed himself as they moved through the labyrinth of sewer tunnels for allowing himself to be lulled to sleep by the news that Kane had died in Aspen. He’d never really believed it…or, more accurately, he’d never felt that Kane was gone. Not in his soul, which told him that the man’s evil presence was still alive and well…and had returned to New York City.
Grale arrived at the cathedral-actually almost directly below where law enforcement officials had established their headquarters-as twilight fell over the city. He chafed at the idea, but he was going to have to wait until dark to try to slip with the other man past the police and enter the cathedral through a secret door and passage that he’d used a year before to surprise the child killer priest Hans Lichner.
He’d felt some relief when Lucy Karp was brought out of the cathedral and apparently unharmed though unconscious. But his instincts told him something was wrong. Something about what the agent who brought her out said, or maybe it was just a gut feeling again. But his concerns about Lucy and her rescuer he put aside when Giancarlo raced up with his information.
“I think Giancarlo’s right,” Grale said. “I think Lucy’s still a hostage…and now maybe Clay Fulton, too, if he’s not dead.”
“Which means there’s something wrong with that guy who brought her out…and he’s a federal agent,” said his partner. “But the rest is still a riddle to me. Annoy Satan? Baker? Field?…And do we try to find Lucy and Fulton before something bad happens to them, or do we stick with the plan?”
John Jojola was suddenly filled with regret. His sister-not in blood, but in soul-Marlene Ciampi was in the cathedral, which was rigged to blow up and in the control of al Qaeda. If it blew up, he would have missed his chance to explain to her the subterfuge he’d planned after the terrorist attack in Taos.
He thought back to the night when he’d been listening on the other side of the courtyard wall to Tran and Marlene talking. His had been the first coyote howl to join the sounds of the ceremony his people were performing-not for his sham funeral, but to cleanse the land of evil spirits.
When Marlene expressed her grief for him, he’d almost had a change of heart and let her in on the plan. But like Tran had told her, Kane had eyes and ears all over Taos County, as well as spies in the various police agencies. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her, but he needed her grief and reactions to his “death” to be real, so that anyone watching would “know” that he was indeed dead.
He’d come up with the plan after the last of the would-be assassins had died with the fear on his face still from Lucy’s curse. Even then, it wasn’t so much to fool Marlene so she could fool Kane, but so that Jojola could fly beneath Kane’s radar. The psychopath wanted him dead, so he’d be dead and thus no longer a threat. They’d considered having Ned “die” too, but somebody had to have killed the last of the terrorists, and he was the likely choice. Besides, Ned had been reluctant to abandon his post as Lucy’s bodyguard.
So Jojola had been spirited out of Taos in the luxury of Tran’s private jet, after which the two friends had gone to the gangster’s home on Long Island. However, he’d remained there only as long as it took to contact David Grale, who was the man who would have the best intelligence on the whereabouts and plans of Andrew Kane and his al Qaeda assassins.
The liaison with Grale had been Dirty Warren who, cursing and asking him if he knew any movie trivia, met him in Central Park one night and then led him underground through to Grale’s hide-out, where he had once been a captive. For more than a month, Jojola had mostly lived underground with his host, a roller-coaster affair at times due to Grale’s wild mood swings. The former social worker at times brooded in darkness, unwilling to move.
In the worst moments, he pronounced that the �
�end of times” was near and that he welcomed the “coming of evil men” to the city so that the final battle could begin. Other times, he was a shadowy whirlwind of action, hunting “the Others,” a different breed of Under-Worlders, as the Mole People referred to their home-evil men and women, devoid of humanity-as he gathered information about Kane.
Grale and Jojola both were committed to watching over the Karp-Ciampi clan-partly because of a mutual affection for the family, but also the knowledge that Kane would be drawn to them. Several times, Jojola had nearly been caught by Marlene, who seemed to have an uncanny sense for when he was near.
Now, with the possibility that she wouldn’t survive the night, Jojola wished that he’d let Marlene know that he was alive. Suddenly, there was the sound of distant gunfire echoing down through the sewers from the cathedral above. Jojola started to climb the ladder back to the manhole cover to see if he could help, but Grale grabbed his arm.
In the dim light from above and the flashlights they carried, Jojola could just make out the other man’s gaunt face and the small spot of dried blood at the corner of his mouth. Grale had been coughing a lot of late, and Jojola suspected tuberculosis. But at the moment, his eyes were bright with some inner fire as he tugged and said, “Come on, John. Whatever is happening up there, we’re not going to be of much use now. Their fates are in the hands of God. But Lucy needs our help, and I think that if we find her, we’ll find Kane.”
Jojola looked down for a moment, then nodded. “Where do we go?”
“North, John,” Grale said turning to run. “We catch a ride north.”
As they moved swiftly, splashing through foul water of the sewers with only their flashlights for illumination, Grale explained that he thought he knew what Lucy was trying to say with her sign language. “It’s as we suspected,” he said.
His spies had reported an unusually large number of rough-looking men passing in and out of an old apartment building on the north end of the island near Baker Field. The strangers weren’t the usual age for students; plus they all seemed unusually fit and didn’t interact with anyone else in the multicultural neighborhood.
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