by Rick Jones
Two were down.
Now it was up to Kimball to work his magic in the front.
#
Well, they’re certainly not going to let me walk right through the front door, Kimball told himself.
Three men, two armed with AK-47s and the other carrying an RPG strapped to his back, were sitting on Chahine’s car, talking.
Kimball started to inch his way forward, a shadow amongst shadows.
The Vatican Knight then raised his weapon to align his sight. He could probably get two, maybe three if he was fast enough. But if he missed and the third alerted the others, then he and Isaiah would lose the advantage.
He pushed his weapon behind him.
And then he removed his knives by first sliding one from of its sheath, and then the other, and gripped them so tightly that they became a mere extension of him.
He hunkered low, keeping to the darkness where he felt most comfortable. As he was getting closer, the Vatican Knight could smell the sweat of their bodies and could hear the clear articulation of their words, all in Arabic.
Then he erupted from the darkness, a shape that was an angel to some and a demon to others.
The sentries were caught off guard, slow to react, and time seemed to be at a standstill as the shape came at them with uncontested fury with its arms and legs lashing out like something with tentacles, something with a number of limbs that one man surely could not possess.
The blows came fast and furious.
The sentries began to see bright flashes of light followed by closing darkness, but not quite yet in the realm of unconsciousness.
Kimball came down and across with the pommels of his KA-BARs, the anatomy of the knife that was the back end of the handle, and pounded them hard against the sentries’ skulls like the rounded points of ballpeen hammers.
One went down as something gelatinous and never recovered. The other two fell back, tried to regroup and failed. Kimball came across with a fist, the knife still in his hand, striking a blow that sent the second sentry into a maelstrom of dark descent, another going to the ground and not moving.
The third, however, seemed to regain his wits, the cobwebs gone. A kid.
Just as he was about to open his mouth and cry out, Kimball drove the point of his knife deep into the sentry’s throat. Kimball embraced the man-child, held him close, and watched his life bleed from his body while mouthing a silent protest. Then he coughed a fine mist of blood that coated Kimball’s face with a horrible warmth and wetness. And then he was gone, the young man’s pupils constricting to the size of pinprick dots.
Kimball was beside himself.
A damn kid who was not much older than sixteen, if that.
Kimball laid the body gently against the sand and closed his eyes with a gentle sweep of his hand. And then he got to his feet with his face covered with blood, an ominous mask.
Then a hand fell on his shoulder. Isaiah.
“He would have compromised the mission,” he whispered.
Kimball nodded. I know. Then he recalled the two boys he had murdered in Iraq for the same reason, to keep the mission from being compromised. It was this timely wasting of two young lives that made him finally see the animal he truly was when he was an assassin for the United States government, a devout killer who operated with the cold fortitude of a machine. It was also the catalytic moment that made him seek his redemption from the Light. Something he had yet to find.
He looked at the boy, could feel his blood against his face.
Then Kimball closed his eyes and sighed inwardly: Some things will never change.
When he opened them the boy was still there.
Nothing had changed.
Nothing at all.
They entered the stone hut.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Warehouse #12
Bethesda, Maryland
The blast of the grenade.
The concussive shockwave that followed.
As soon as the doors started to swing wide, Mohammad Allawi acted just as swiftly. He heard the grenade hit the concrete and go off while diving over a crate and landing on the other side. The concussive waves stunned him, though marginally because he was beyond the full range of its detonation.
HRT entered quickly and took control of the situation. Two officers fanned to the left, their weapons trained to the catwalk on the eastside, two to the right, their weapons aiming for the target on the westside. And then they set off volleys of gunfire in short, quick bursts.
Bullets caromed and ricocheted off the metal railings and corrugated walls, causing sparks to fire up and dance like fireflies before extinguishing themselves. Allawi’s team returned fire as bullets passed through their bodies, the rounds stitching across their abdomens, their chests, the impacts causing the terrorists to move in some crazy and drunken tango a moment before they fell dead on the walkways.
Shamen found himself not so lucky. When he finally began to orient himself and instinctively went for his weapon sitting on the crate beside him, he was struck with several rounds as holes suddenly appeared against his shirt and at center mass. Shamen went down like a rock, hard and fast.
The HRT unit moved in, fanned out, their heads on a swivel looking for additional targets through their sights. Shari followed on their heels holding her Glock in a two-handed grip. She looked from left to right, then right to left in even sweeps, scoping the area. The place smelled like gunfire, like spent powder. On the floor by the van was a body, its torso riddled with bullets, the holes bleeding out onto the concrete surface.
She looked up at the tiers, could see the bodies partially dangling over the sides of the catwalks. There was one on the eastside tier, another on the west. Neither was Mohammad Allawi. She continued the search along with her team, everyone cautious and prudent in the way they moved, in the way they reacted, each man having trained to the point where their actions became instinctive instead of practiced.
They took to the edges, set a perimeter, then closed in, slowly, their weapons forward.
Allawi was in the middle amongst the crates, had to be. The man hunkering down against the gunfire.
They inched forward, toward a group of crates, the circle tightening.
“Mohammad Allawi!” cried Shari. “Federal Bureau of Investigation! Come out with your hands on top of your head!”
Nothing.
The officers on the tiers who examined the bodies and concluded them dead had an advantage point. They saw the block of stacked crates and the defense they provided. But there was nobody hiding behind these wooden boxes. The area was vacant.
One of the offices standing along the catwalk called down. “There’s no target. I say again, there’s no target.”
Shari was immediately on her lip mic. “Charlie One, check your monitors. Did anyone get passed us?”
“That’s negative, Alpha Four.”
Shari was adamant about catching Mohammad Allawi alive. She gestured to an officer to drop another flash bang behind the crates.
He did.
And the team advanced quickly with their weapons leveled.
The area was clean.
Mohammad Allawi was nowhere in sight.
Shari was back on the lip mic. “Alpha Four to Charlie One, reexamine the situation. The main target is not on sight. I repeat, the main target is not on sight.”
“Copy.”
She instantly directed half the team to search the immediate proximity. The entire operation took 60 seconds, maybe less than that. So how on earth could Allawi slip the line?
“Commander.” An officer was beckoning her to his position.
On the floor between the crates was a manhole cover that wasn’t quite properly secured. It was as if the lid had been lifted off and returned improperly, with the cover hanging just over the lip of the opening.
“Son of a bitch!” cried Shari. “He knew! The son of a bitch picked this warehouse for this particular reason! Dammit!” She was back on her lip mic. “Alpha Four to Charlie One.”
“Go.”
“Bring up a schematic of the sewage system. The main target’s gone underground. Notify all local law enforcement and have them galvanize their units immediately. I repeat, the main target’s gone underground.”
“Copy that.”
She knew there were miles upon miles of tunnels underneath. Though Allawi couldn’t be too far off, he certainly had a multiple of channels to choose from. And knowing Allawi, thought Shari, he probably had his underground route already mapped out. Especially after his first cell had been taken down.
“Commander.”
She turned. It was her senior tactical officer. “Yeah, Ron.”
“We have four weapons,” he said. “The M600s … The fifth is missing.”
She looked down at the steel cover and how it wasn’t properly fitted over the hole, then she thought: Dammit.
One had gotten through.
#
Mohammad always said that you didn’t have to be punched in the face twice in order to realize that it hurt the first time. After the raid of his first team he had planned well for a second, just in case.
How the Feds caught on he didn’t know.
But he was ready.
He had mapped out the route and the tunnels to get him from point A to B quickly. He didn’t want to stay beneath for too long, knowing dogs would be used and teams would soon descend from points close by. After winding his way in a series of lefts and rights for about 500 yards, he ascended the ladder with the M600 strapped over his back, removed the lid of a manhole cover, checked the area, found it empty, and took to the surface. After returning the lid, he went to a parked car that was purposely placed if the need became necessary, which it did. Then he opened the truck, tossed in the rifle, got behind the wheel, started it, and drove casually away. As soon as he got on the highway he saw the flashes of several police cruisers barreling by him in the other way. A moment later a chopper followed.
Mabus would not be pleased, he thought.
Nor would Allah.
But he would make amends.
Sitting in the trunk of his vehicle was an M600. And what better way to test it by taking out the thorn in his side. He would find Shari Cohen. He would lock her within the weapon’s sights. And then he would pull the trigger.
According to the rifle’s manufacturer, the weapon would do the rest.
A kill shot was all but guaranteed. And by some, fully guaranteed.
Mohammad Allawi would soon find out.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Mabus’s Encampment
Syria
Four down, one dead. That left four missing guards, Chahine, and Mabus.
Kimball and Isaiah moved into the doorway. There was a small hallway. At its end was a doorway that was covered by a fabric. From the edges of the doorway where the fabric didn’t cover, they could tell that the light was coming from oil-fueled lanterns because the illumination was unsteady, like flames dancing.
Both men were light on their feet as they moved ahead. One took to the left, whereas the other took to the right.
Now they could hear voices.
Two, maybe three men talking.
They came to the cloth panel covering the door.
And listened.
Definitely three men.
That left three unknowns.
Was Mabus one of the three men talking?
Kimball used the point of his knife to push aside the fabric panel just enough for him to get a glimpse. There were three men sitting and chatting with guns across their laps, the guards he had seen earlier in the day. A fourth man, the one they called Chahine, was lying on a braided pillow that looked like a futon and appeared to be fast asleep. Next to Chahine and leaning against the wall was the True Cross.
Kimball took in the entire area with complete absorption and noted a feeble-looking door at the opposite side of the room. The door’s bottom was jagged as if gnawed on by rats. But no light shown from beneath it. Mabus? Kimball slowly allowed the fabric to fall back into place.
Then with a series of hand gestures and signals, Kimball outlined the position of each man and the door.
Isaiah would take the one on the left, Kimball would take the two on the right, and then he would handle Chahine. This particular situation, however, would command an unavoidable casualty rate. Two of the guards were facing the door. With a simple lifting of their weapons and a quick sweep of gunfire, they could easily take out the Vatican Knights. So a hand-to-hand combat condition was not possible in this situation.
Kimball readied up with his suppressed MP7, as did Isaiah. And then Kimball began to tick down the time by lowering his fingers:
… Three …
… Two …
… One …
Kimball pulled back the curtain panel with the point of his weapon, and quickly neutralized the two guards with the AKs on their laps with double spits of his weapon. Bullet-holes appeared magically to the center of both foreheads, the impacts driving them back against the floor.
The third started to cry out in warning, the language strange to Kimball. But a couple of rounds to the man’s back from Isaiah had cut him down. As the man fell forward his weapon went off. One of the rounds from the weapon smashed the glass of an oil-fueled lantern and knocked the lamp to the ground.
Fire quickly spread along the pillows and threadbare curtains, the place going up as quickly as wildfire.
Chahine stirred, saw the flames, and rose to his feet. From the garments of his dress he pulled out a small knife, the steak-cutting variety. Kimball sent a backhand to the man’s face, which drove Chahine off his feet and onto a table, the table collapsing.
Chahine was out cold.
Then the door that adjoined with this room opened. A man stood shirtless within its frame.
Mabus.
He was not wearing any of his guises to mask his features.
And when he saw this great and massive figure standing there wearing a red mask with licks of flame burning around him as if this was his element, Mabus’s eyes flared the moment he took note of the cleric’s collar around this man’s neck.
Their eyes met.
And suddenly they knew each other without introduction. Whether it was something symbiotic or something indescribable, there was some kind of an umbilical tie that bound them.
Mabus could hear the voices of his tribesmen echo in his brain: He is called the priest who is not a priest. He is an angel to some … and a demon to others.
Flames grew around Kimball, they climbed the walls, then across the ceiling and defied gravity. The Vatican Knight continued to stand there, undaunted, fearing nothing, his face a bloody mask of hatred and rage.
Here was Mabus’s demon.
And then the demon came forward.
Mabus slammed the door and climbed a makeshift ladder to an opening in the rooftop.
Suddenly the door exploded inward, the wood splintering into tiny pieces as if a bomb had gone off. Kimball stood silhouetted against the flames burning uncontrollably in the other room, a shape that was blacker than black.
Then Mabus took flight, running from rooftop to rooftop wondering if his demon was giving chase.
#
Kimball was standing within the framework of the doorway while Isaiah gathered the True Cross.
The moment Isaiah grabbed the relic, he cradled it as if it was a baby and held it with such endearment that a tear had fallen from the corner of his eye. Here was the remnants of the Cross for which Jesus was crucified on.
He turned to Kimball with a tear streak running along his cheek. “Kimball, let’s go. I’ve got the True Cross.”
The structure began to crack and buckle against the devouring flames.
“Kimball, let’s go! We’re done here! The mission’s over!”
Kimball stood there for a moment, saw the tear running from Isaiah’s eye and understood the importance of what the True Cross meant to him. “It is for you,” he said over the growing crackle of the flames. “But Mabus is still out there. It’s not over until he’s no longer a threat to me, you, or to anyone else. He masterminded the raid on Vatican City. Now Bonasero lies dead in the tombs beneath the Basilica because of him.”
“Kimball, this isn’t what we do. The world courts will take care of him.”
“The world courts don’t even know what he looks like or where he is. We do.”
Isaiah shook his head disapprovingly. “You know I can’t go any further than this.”
“I know.”
The ceiling above them was beginning to crack and buckle.
And it was at this point that Kimball removed his cleric’s collar and placed it in his shirt pocket. “For what I’m about to do … I do so in my own name!” he said. “I will not shame the church by wearing the collar!”
“Kimball, come with me!” Isaiah was beginning to back through the door as the flames heightened.
“I can’t!” he was barely audible over the hellishly hot flames of the fire. “Get the True Cross back to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre! Stand upon Golgotha and never forget what you mean to the church!”
“Stand with me!”
“There’s no point!” Kimball said sadly. “When I am done here … redemption will forever be out of my reach!”
Then the roof between them collapsed, the stones falling until Isaiah could no longer see Kimball.
