Juggernaut

by Rick Jones

  Even behind closed lids he could appreciate the visions that his mind allowed him to see. They were kind and pleasant and far from the images of his nightmares. Instead of the dead who followed him relentlessly through the desert of his dreamscape, he saw the Virgin Mother, instead. She appeared to him exactly as the stained-glass image did inside his quarters at the Vatican, with her beautiful smile and outstretched arms held out to him in invitation. Yet in his mind she was animated and very much alive, and not the chunks of colored glass that were pieced together.

  “Oh, yes,” he whispered as a dreamy smile surfaced. “Yes.”

  She spoke to him, though he could not hear her words or read her lips. But he knew that they were kind and benevolent words, words that were meant to soothe and pacify. She beckoned him with a smile that radiated compassion and with the humanity of acceptance.

  “Oh . . . yeeeeeeees.”

  The warmth of the sun’s light; the visions of the Virgin Mother; the imaginations of being with Shari while having children of their own, as well as the house—or cabin—surrounded by a white picket fence as roses bloomed with a multitude of riotous colors in the yard, was his little slice of Heaven.

  Then he heard the door of the cabin open and close, which snapped him out of this reverie.

  Shari was fully awake and coming down the steps towards him. She was wearing the tight clothing that accentuated her shape. And when she moved, she did so with grace.

  When she reached him, she said, “Enjoying Nature, I see.”

  He smiled at her. “More than you could ever imagine.”

  Then she pointed to a vacant spot on the stone beside him. “May I?”

  “Of course. You own it.”

  She took the seat beside him and looked out at the lake. “I always come here when I need absolute peace,” she told him.

  “I can see why,” he answered. “It is magnificent. I never knew that places like this existed.”

  “They do, Kimball. You only have to look for them. And when you do find them, then you make the most of it.”

  He nodded in agreement and said, “I could live here forever. Just leave the world behind.”

  “People like us can’t do that, especially not now. Not with what’s happening out there.” She tilted her chin to an imaginary place beyond the pines to indicate the world in general.

  But Kimball disagreed. “We’re two people, Shari. We can’t save the world. It’s too far gone.”

  “It’s not about saving the world, Kimball. It never was. It’s always been about saving pieces of it. And if we participate like we’re supposed to, and if there’s enough of us, then perhaps we can save it, after all. What do you think?”

  Kimball didn’t think too much about it since he wanted to consider himself as something more than a killing machine whose sole purpose was to destroy his opponent on the field of battle between the ‘Darkness’ and the ‘Light.’ He no longer wanted to be that fulcrum between sinner and saint. What he wanted was this, what he was seeing—this slice of paradise that was far from the maddening crowds.

  And as he sat there thinking how much he wanted to disassociate himself from civilization and let the world tear itself apart, which he believed it deserved, he picked up the scent of Shari Cohen, a naturally sweet perfume that had a wonderful trace of honeysuckle to it. It was pulling, the fragrance she exuded begging him to draw closer to her.

  Then his voice acted as a deterrent, as it always had. She thinks I’m an animal, he thought. That’s why she rejects me. She sees in me the untamed creature that I am.

  She knows that I kill people. That it’s what I do . . . And it’ll be the only thing I’ll ever be good at.

  The scent continued to linger, teasing him.

  They sat there watching the landscape.

  And then she moved closer to Kimball, just a hair, but perhaps enough of a signal.

  He wanted to reach out and sweep an arm around her, to embrace her. Was she waiting?

  Then he remembered the shrine inside the cabin—the photos and remembered when she told him about how much she missed them.

  Of course, she misses them. They were a part of her. Maybe now, after two years have passed, he thought, she wanted her life to move on.

  His courage to put his arm around her waxed and waned, the man indecisive as to what to do. Her scent, a magnetic aroma, was calling. And then another move on her part to edge closer, the woman surrendering her territory.

  Feeling his heart move at a rapid pace, Kimball started to lift his arm to drape around Shari’s shoulder and pull her close, to pull her tight, hoping that she would accept his advances by burying her head against his shoulder, so that they could watch the landscape together as one.

  Suddenly, her cellphone chirped. When it did, she bolted upright to look at the screen. She had received a text message from Larry Johnston, her director of operations. He just sent an encrypted message to her email over a secured line, something pertinent.

  “I have to take this,” she told Kimball. Then she was off and racing towards the cabin with Kimball’s arm partially extended with the intent to put it around her. But when the cabin door closed and she was out of sight, Kimball allowed his arm to drop by his side.

  While Shari was committing herself to saving a ‘part of the world,’ he turned his attention to the lake and sighed softly through his nostrils. No matter what, fate was not about to let him be happy, this he was sure of.

  Closing his eyes, Kimball once again found comfort in the province of imagination.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  After Shari booted up her computer, she decrypted the message from FBI Director Larry Johnston. The body of the memo stated that they had confirmed that Operation Herod was a real campaign. The specifics of the matter such as the ‘where’ and ‘when’ remained unknown, though it was believed that Operation Herod would be carried out against a targeted school in the Washington, D.C. area. Even though schools nationwide were on high alert, nobody within the White House had the confidence that Operation Herod could be negated, even with the high presence of police. All precautions were being taken, though it was something the director didn’t believe would be enough since Mohammad Allawi was still on the move. The house in Winchester, Virginia, which used to be Allawi’s stronghold, had been rigged with explosives that were powerful enough to level the home, killing all who were involved with the raid. Then she read additional notes regarding the White House conversations. Nothing but negative connotations. Mohammad Allawi was somehow moving undetected under the radar and off the grid. His whereabouts remained unknown and not a single, viable inference could be brought up by anyone as to where he might be, other than Washington, D.C. The man remained a ghost, as was his leading associate, a man by the name of Najm. Dragnets around Washington were being tightened as America was trying its best to get back on her feet. But if ‘Herod’ went through, it could possibly be the backbreaker that would shatter the already fragile mindset of the American people. Then Johnston provided her additional information that Allawi’s associate, Najm, was well versed in the techniques of drawing information from highly secured databases, which may be how Allawi’s team always remained a step ahead, even though the techs were adamant that there had been no such intrusion since there were no cyber finger or -footprints. But Shari understood that cyber highways could always be intruded upon by anyone with a skill set to detour and reroute points of entry, misappropriate information, then close the gateway. There was no doubt in her mind that Allawi was somehow monitoring the secured lines of the NSA and Homeland Security. Since she was the one who initially created Allawi’s psychological profile when he was emerging as a homegrown terrorist, she concluded that Allawi was a man of high intelligence, which was his highest asset. But he was also a man with a catastrophic ego, which would eventually lead to his downfall. And since his team had failed to terminate her in D.C., his psychological profile suggested that he would not let up on that front, either.

&
nbsp; And this gave her an idea.

  It would be a gamble, for sure. But one born from desperate necessity.

  Looking out the window to see Kimball gazing skyward, she watched him for a long moment as he bathed within the rays of a warm sun.

  My champion, she thought. A sleeping giant who had finally awakened.

  Returning her attention to the computer, she noted that FBI Director Johnston had given her the access engines to the NSA and Homeland Security, whose lines were protected and encrypted. What she had to do now was to log in by providing her Access ID # and password, which would bring up a face scanner to confirm facial ID, have her features examined, and then provide a voice recognition pattern that would allow her admission. Once inside, Johnston wanted her to use Allawi’s character traits to help develop a possible pattern of activity. But it was a crap shoot and a long shot, this she knew.

  To diminish the odds so that measures could play out evenly, she started to type nonsensical notes to FBI Director Johnston, which left a cyber trail to be followed. If the hypothesis regarding Najm’s capability of slipping in and out of created gateways that opened and closed immediately after data misappropriation was true, then he would no doubt be able to trace her transmissions.

  Sitting back in her seat, she waited. It didn’t take long for Johnston to text her.

  On her cellphone screen was the question-mark symbol. In response, she wrote:

  Trust me. There was no follow-up response.

  Going to her bedroom and retrieving her Glock, she seated a magazine and racked the slide; the action feeding a round into the chamber, then placed the weapon inside her waistband before covering it with the tail of her shirt. Returning to the computer, she stared at the screen and thought: Come on, you son of a bitch. If you’re out there watching, see me.

  Outside, Kimball continued to bathe within the sunlight, the man oblivious because he wanted to be.

  But not for long.

  In time he would become her juggernaut, an unstoppable force who would move mountains to protect the woman he loved.

  And Shari understood this side of Kimball, this untamed wildness when he was unleashed, he became Fury and Hell and Rage that was twisted into a Gordian tangle.

  Come on, she thought, looking at the computer monitor.

  Then she turned to see Kimball sitting on the large stone close to the pines with a passive look on his face, this man who wore the band of a Roman Catholic collar.

  And once again she returned her attention to the computer screen, her eyes moving back and forth from man to machine, and thought: Come and meet your demon, Allawi.

  He’s right here waiting for you.

  Chapter Forty

  Najm was working his magic. He had been tracking the data highways from the CIA, the NSA, Homeland Security and the FBI, with the information popping up on multiple screens. After collecting information and swiftly closing the gateway to the informational highway, he had gathered data that confirmed that all the members who partook in the event to abduct Shari Cohen were killed. The continuity of events that led to the killings, however, were still under investigation. The names of the dead, those whom Mohammad Allawi had cherished as good soldiers, were listed alongside their photos, both before and after death, along with their biographical histories that had been bandied about the intel agencies. Those who were considered as associates to those who were killed had already been named, with agents now flocking to question them. And Allawi could sense the dragnet getting tighter by the moment.

  More breaches.

  More data.

  Najm was barging through firewalls and plucking information with ease. But as good as he was at masking his tracks; he knew the agency techs would eventually home in and pinpoint their current location. Though they would be gone when they did so, it would be Aimu Ababneh, the store’s owner, who would suffer the consequences.

  Then as Najm poured over the data, it became obvious that they knew about Operation Herod and that it was a very real threat, the information provided by Jerhon Bellamy, an Allawi cast member.

  When Najm shared this information with Allawi, the terrorist nodded at everything Najm had pointed out. They knew about Operation Herod but not about the actual designs of the plan, meaning that the government remained in limbo. And then Najm hit on a wealth of information which made Allawi smile from ear to ear with a horrible rictus grin. Shari Cohen was alive and supposedly off the grid, now that she had been targeted. But she remained connected to the case in a data-sharing measure to help locate their whereabouts, all from a covert location. Messages had been exchanged between the director and her, though they were encrypted. With a couple of taps on the keyboard, the encryption aspect of the contents quickly evaporated, and the text became easy to read.

  “Very good, Najm,” Allawi told him, the man very pleased. “Now zero in on the location of the IP address from Cohen’s point.”

  Najm did just that by coming up with a set of specific coordinates. After copying and pasting the coordinates into the search engine of Google World, the display of the planet on the monitor began to rotate until there was a satellite image of the United States. Then it automatically zoomed in to a location in Maryland.

  It was a cabin on the lake.

  “Zoom in,” Allawi told him.

  Najm did.

  It was a luxury cabin that sat alone on an amoeba-shaped lake that was surrounded by deep woods. It couldn’t have boded any better for Mohammad Allawi since the residence was surrounded by unpopulated acreage.

  A field of opportunity, he thought.

  He then placed a hand on Najm’s shoulder and inquired about the distance between Norfolk and the cabin. So, Najm told him.

  With eight foot-soldiers left, he would send four to clean up the mess that was Shari Cohen and send the rest to National Harbor.

  Since the feds were beginning to tighten the net by closing in on clan associates, he knew it would only be a matter of time before local law enforcement homed in onto their position, especially after they traced Najm’s pathway, so they decided to move tonight.

  Against Shari Cohen, he picked out his most lethal operators, four men who had served in the military, lost their way and were finally ejected from the ranks, only to discover Mohammad Allawi as their savior. So, they planned and strategized their method of attack, which was to arrive with overwhelming firepower and succeed where others had failed, so that Shari Cohen could finally pay reverence to her God face to face.

  “There’s something you might want to take into consideration,” Najm stated.

  Mohammad Allawi turned to him. “And that would be?”

  “You’ve read the reports on the first assault group in D.C.,” he told him. “Their injuries.”

  Allawi waited for Najm to finish. But when Najm didn’t say anything, Allawi prompted him, “And?”

  “A broken neck; a fatal stab wound; one eventually succumbed to a fractured skull; and the other had the blade of his nose thrust up into the cavity of his brain, which killed him instantly, per the findings of the preliminary reports.”

  Mohammad Allawi got the gist of what Najm was trying to tell him.

  And then from Najm: “Do you believe that Shari Cohen did all that? Alone?”

  Mohammad Allawi turned to his four-man team of assassins. “Najm’s right. I believe that there may be another who stays close to her. A priest. But do not take him lightly because he fights like no other.”

  “A priest?” This came from Farooq Aaziz, who would act as team commander. Allawi nodded. “I have gone against him and proved to be of no contest to him,” he said. “He is quite dangerous, if not overly lethal. The first wave may have been the result of this man, this priest. So be careful. All of you. If he stands by her side, then the odds may be equal.”

  “Nobody’s that good,” said Aaziz.

  But Allawi waved an admonishing finger at him. “Do not let your guard down or become complacent. Believe me when I tell you that if he�
�s there at the cabin and acting as her crusader, four against one are even odds against this man.”

  Aaziz couldn’t help the sardonic grin. “I’m supposed to be afraid of a priest. Seriously?”

  “This man is no ordinary priest,” said Allawi, “if he’s a priest at all. In fact, he comes from a very special order known as the Vatican Knights.”

  Aaziz’s smile quickly vanished. As a soldier working in the Middle East, he had heard the natives speak of the Vatican Knights and one other, a man they called the Devil’s Magician. Based on reports from seasoned fighters, Aaziz would rather go against a team of Navy SEALS with his bare fists, than go against a Vatican Knight with all the weapons he could carry. And that was because no one ever saw a Vatican Knight until he was right in front of you, when it was too late.

  “I see,” Aaziz finally said. “And understood.”

  “I would strongly suggest, my brother, that you shoot anything that moves. Even if it’s a leaf moving in the wind. Take absolutely nothing for granted.”

  After looking over the aerial view of the land’s layout, Farooq Aaziz geared up with a host of MP7s, all suppressed, and dragon-scale armor for body protection. After checking their firearms to see if they operated properly, the unit took the sedan and followed the GPS directions using the back roads. Estimated travel time was approximately four hours.

  That left four militants and four messengers to manage the final step of the jihad, with Allawi and Najm taking lead. Using one of Aimu Ababneh’s bakery trucks, Mohammad Allawi had the Messengers roll the ice chest filled with Semtex inside the cube van. There were enough bricks within the chest to level a stadium. “Very good,” said Allawi. “Now we must act quickly since the chest needs to be properly positioned to have the desired effect. The foot soldiers will manage the chest inside of the venue. And Najm will set the timer, which will go off at approximately ten tomorrow morning when the arena is filled. Any questions?”