by Rick Jones
“Kim—” A hand clasped over the cardinal’s mouth which caused the man’s eyes to flare in alarm, the whites clearly visible as they were the size of ping-pong balls.
“Shhhh. I need you to be quiet, Cardinal.” It was Kimball, who slowly removed his hand. Then he indicated to the cardinal with a sweep of his hand for him to return to his room. “Lock your door and don’t come out until you hear my voice.
You got that? My voice.”
“What’s going on?”
Kimball grabbed the cardinal by the triceps and escorted him back inside the room. “Lock the door and take cover,” he directed.
Then the Vatican Knight was gone.
* * *
Once the power went off, which included the TV monitors, Isaiah was able to catch a glimpse of five men, all heavily armed, moving along the fringes of darkness. When the monitors winked off simultaneously, Isaiah raced down the corridors to wake Jeremiah and Elijah, who followed the Vatican Knight into battle.
* * *
Team leader had maneuvered his unit to the east side of the building. The second lieutenant maneuvered his team to the west, where the team waited to react on synchronized timing. Once the digital numbers on their watches read doublezero, then they would enter the archdiocese and converge on their targets.
…57…
…58…
…59…
…00…
Two loud spits sounded off as two rounds took out the locking mechanisms from opposite sides of the archdiocese. Then in a coordinated effort the units entered the building, the teams moving with absolute silence as they spread out in formation, and pushed forward with their weapons raised to eye level.
* * *
Kimball and his team of Vatican Knights met up in the central hallway. “They’ll come in through the most advantageous ways,” Kimball whispered to them. “Which would be the east and west-side entrances. No lights and plenty of shadows. The cardinal is secured inside his chambers, as is Sister Godwin. But the advantage belongs to them since we don’t know their exact numbers. Isaiah counted five. But bet on more.” Kimball quickly divided the group into two two-man units. Kimball and Jeremiah as one team, Isaiah and Elijah the other. And then they separated with the teams quickly moving against their enemies.
* * *
Sister Godwin prayed like she had never prayed before. She sat within the bedroom’s closet with a crucifix crushed between the palms of her hands and asked God to spare her, which was a rare occasion since she always prayed with thankfulness. When the louvered doors to her closet opened and she saw a man standing over her with an assault weapon, she held a hand out to him. “Please don’t,” she begged.
The assailant saw the crucifix gripped inside her hand, then he looked into her eyes. “You’re not the one we seek,” he told her. “But I can’t allow you to compromise my position, either.” He raised the butt of his weapon to strike her.
“Pleeeeeease,” she pleaded.
And then he brought the weapon down.
Lights out.
* * *
While Team leader’s unit moved through the living and common areas and saw nothing on their approach, he then gestured for the team to divide up and venture through the corridors—eyes and ears open. While Team leader branched off with two of his own to police the area for hostiles in one wing, the other two-man unit went down a hallway on the building’s north side where the drapes to the floor-to-ceiling windows had been parted to allow in the light from the street lamps. But the glow appeared odd and refracted against the rain-spotted windows. The two-man team moved down the corridor with a man on each side. Their weapons were at eye level with the points of the barrels panning from side to side, up and down, scanning.
Nothing but shadows.
Then they came to a series of rooms opposite the windows. The doors were closed.
A soldier tried the knob of the first door. It moved smoothly in his hand, an easy turn. Then he pushed the door wide, entered the area, and moved swiftly to his right. His teammate entered the room and moved swiftly to his left, with both sweeping their weapons in search.
Nothing but a well-made bed, a bureau and a nightstand.
They quietly eased themselves out of the room and made their way to the next one. Same thing. An easy turn of the knob. When the door opened, the commando went inside and slid neatly to his right with his weapon aimed.
There in front of him was an image staring back at him with a weapon of his own and directing his aim, but the commando pulled the trigger first. A short burst went off in quick succession, the bullets finding his mirrored image and smashing the glass as myriad pieces of broken glass lay on the floor. Lowering his weapon as a ribbon of smoke curled from the tip of his barrel, he commented on the obvious.
“A mirror.”
His partner didn’t offer a humorous quip since the hunt was serious business.
After they cleared the room and the closets, they returned to the hallway that appeared as an endless stretch that reached into deeper shadows at the other end.
They pressed forward.
Slowly.
Their heads were on a swivel.
Then they came to a third room, also on their right.
The knob turned easily in the hostile’s hand. The door opened. Nothing but shadows.
He moved inside the room and panned his weapon from left to right, right to left.
His associate followed, moving to the opposite of the room, searching.
From a veil of darkness a shape sprung forward, something that was blacker than black. Its hands were moving with blinding speed, nothing but blurs as it came forward with a pair of knives within its rip, the blades swinging, slashing, the moves perfectly choreographed with fluid designs that had been brought on by years of training, the motions perfected.
The knives came across swiftly with horizontal strikes, the blades hitting the assault weapon of the attacker, the impact of metal against metal coughing up embers that danced in the air, then flickered and died off.
The assailant’s gun went off, a suppressed burst of gunfire that lit up the room with muzzle flashes, the rounds going wild, toward the ceiling. Within those quick flashes of light the attacker saw the raw savagery and determination of the predator’s eyes looking to take down his prey, the eyes of a killer who wore the band of a cleric’s collar.
The knives moved in a composed arrangement of moves, hitting and striking the weapon. The sparks, the flashes, the commando losing ground to this shape, to this man whose eyes were streaked with red laces of stitching, the color of madness.
The shape continued to swing his weapons of choice. The assailant deflected the blows with his weapon, now a shield. But the blades were moving faster from all angles, from all sides, the movements too fast for him to comprehend. Then the edge sliced along the assailant’s forearm, the score of the flesh was so deep that the lips of the man’s wounds pared back to expose the muscle underneath. The assailant continued to fall back as he cried out, however, with his call more of pain rather than a call of seeking aid.
More bursts from the assault weapon. More strobe-like effect from the muzzle flashes.
Then the assailant’s associate showed up at the doorway with his weapon raised and leveled, the hostile drawing a bead to the shape and into the crosshairs, but the forms were too close together, a single mass in the shadows, fighting.
The second man cried out, telling his partner to fall back in order to give him an angle.
He couldn’t.
The dark shape moved against his enemy, conquering with ease, the knives moving in from all directions, the blades cutting a death of a thousand slices. Then as the second attacker tried to home in on his target, a hand snaked around his chin from behind, cupped it, and drew him out of the room and into the hallway. The mouth of the assault weapon went skyward as his finger pulled the trigger, a knee-jerk reaction, causing rounds to stitch across the ceiling and dust to cascade to the floor.
/> A second fight ensued inside the corridor with Jeremiah, while the other continued inside the room with Kimball.
Kimball Hayden fought on with purposeful blows, his arms moving in blurs, faster and faster, his movements too quick for his assailant to comprehend as the edges of the knives continued to slash and score, score and slash.
And like a fencer who steps forward to strike the killing blow with the point of his foil, Kimball found an opening as his right hand struck forward and plunged the knife into center mass, the point driving deep through the assailant’s heart, a quick and merciful kill. The soldier’s knees buckled as he fell to the floor as a boneless heap, the man dead before he hit the surface.
The dead man’s associate who had taken on Jeremiah fared no differently, the two men waging a battle within the yellowish-brown illumination of light coming in through the windows from the streetlamps, which appeared to be spotlighting the stage of their battleground inside the archdiocese.
Jeremiah gave a series of rapid punches to the man’s face and chin, causing the man’s eyes to roll up into sheer whites. Then he swung around on the ball of his foot and came around with a spinning hook kick that connected with the man’s jaw, a solid strike. There was an audible crunch as the man’s lower face became disfigured, the jawline now at a severe and crooked angle. With his assault weapon still within his grasp, the man fell backward against the floor.
Kimball and Jeremiah removed the weapons from their possession and returned to the shadows.
* * *
Isaiah and Elijah blended perfectly with the darkness. They went unnoticed as a pair of armed men who were clad entirely in black and were wearing black grease paint to disguise their faces, moved by them with their weapons raised. With feline silence and grace, the Vatican Knights emerged from the shadows the moment these men passed them by, and converged on their quarry. They moved quietly along the balls of their feet and their hands raised, with each man carrying a knife, and closed the gap between them.
Then one of the hostiles cocked his head as if to raise an antennae, his sixth sense of approaching danger obviously kicking in.
The Vatican Knights continued forward knowing that their advantage was about to be lost, if they didn’t act quickly.
The hostile then pivoted around to redirect the point of his aim with the mouth of his weapon coming around swiftly.
But Isaiah was quick as he brought his foot up and kicked the weapon, the im
pact knocking the assault rifle off balance just as a burst went off, the rounds punching dollar-sized holes in the wall. Then Isaiah pressed forward raining a series of straight blows to the man’s face and chest, driving him back against the wall. His fists continued to ram and strike with incredible force and speed, punch after punch, blow after blow, the opponent now dropping his weapon. Isaiah kept at it with his arms thrusting forward with the speed of an engine’s pistons, hitting and striking the man’s solar plexus, the Vatican Knight now pinning him against the wall and refusing to let up, the blows coming one right after the other, until he finalized the assault with an elbow strike to the man’s jaw, knocking him out cold. Then the wall to Isaiah’s right exploded from gunfire, the bullets punching quarter-sized holes into the drywall. And then the firing stopped as Isaiah turned to see Elijah eclipsing his opponent. Like a blanket, Elijah was on the second man and crippled any attempt for a repeat response of the weapon’s utilization from the assailant. Elijah came across the backside of his opponent’s neck with a horizontal slash of his knife, the blade biting deep to sever a muscle. And as the man fell to his knees with his eyes flaring in stark surprise, Elijah came down with the metal tip of the knife’s pommel to the man’s crown and struck him down.
Then they disabled the weapons and moved on.
* * *
Cardinal Bishop thought his heart was going to misfire inside his chest, its beating against the wall of his ribcage was that brutal. Bringing a hand to his chest and leaving it there, he grasped the crucifix hanging around his neck with the other hand. He had been sitting inside the closet for a long time. There had been no contact from Kimball to say that the danger had been offset, or if the archdiocese had been secured from the hostile threat.
The cardinal prayed as he squeezed the cross within his hand, the edges biting deep into his flesh that would leave impressions.
Have my sins caught up with me? he asked as his words caromed hollowly through his mind. Is my life about to come to an end?
He continued to squeeze the cross as he mouthed words of prayer. And then he reflected on the past images that had plagued him for five decades. In his mind he could see the Vietnamese woman begging for salvation as she raised a pleading hand to him. He could see her children embracing her, sobbing, all of them too impotent to do anything to change the course of their lives.
…Puuuuuuuuull the triiiiiiiiggeeeeeeer…
The platoon leader’s voice sounded like it was in the lowest mode of a record player, with the voice very deep and slow, the words drawn out.
…Puuuuuuuuull the triiiiiiiiggeeeeeeer…
He could see the waving of the woman’s hand, could see the lines of her palm, especially the life line that promised a long life, a myth that was about to be put to rest as a lie as he raised his weapon in the same slow measure of time, and pulled the trigger.
The cardinal began to sob. He continued to pray. And still there was no word from his savior. There was no word from Kimball Hayden.
* * *
Team Leader moved his unit of three through the hallways of the archdiocese. So far the rooms were vacant with the exception of Sister Godwin, who’d been removed from the equation. So they pressed on, moving with quiet and stealth. He was a big man—huge, in fact, one who sported a prognathous jaw and simian brow. His associates were combatants who had served with America’s elite fighting forces, but had since retired from service. Nevertheless, their expertise to kill remained. They moved cautiously along the corridors knowing that the Vatican Knights would be on full alert. They took the turns, the hard bends and the T hallways, until they came to the bodies of two of their own. One was dead inside the room, a knife wound to the chest. The other was disabled but still alive, his jaw disconnected from alignment and badly disfigured.
When they moved further along the adjacent corridor they found two more.
Both alive but barely, with one having a wound to the back of his neck that looked like a horrible second mouth.
Then from Team Leader, he whispered, “The Vatican knights are watching us. They’re somewhere in the shadows. I can feel them.”
“We have four down,” another proffered through whispers. “And we’ve yet to lay eyes on these Vatican Knights.”
Team leader debated his next moves as to whether or not to press on or abort.
“We have two badly wounded,” he said. “One is out cold. I need you two to gather the wounded and get them away from the battle zone. I’ll connect with the remaining two to see this mission through.”
“You’ll be three against four,” stated one of the commandos.
The man with the prognathous jaw and simian brow turned on him with sharp eyes. “We’re here to do God’s work,” he told him. “God has the upper hand in everything we do. He has done so for centuries. So get these men to safety. I’ll find the other two and we’ll see this done.”
They didn’t argue and they didn’t hesitate, either. As they went to gather the wounded, team leader continued on to regroup with the balance of his unit, both one-time Rangers who knew combat as well as any man.
* * *
The Vatican Knights had watched everything from the shadows. A three-man team had found the bodies of the wounded, those too crippled to vacate the archdiocese under their own power. One, however, remained dead inside one of the rooms, a burden too great to carry with the wounded in tow. The one who appeared to do the directing of the team broke from his unit and appeared determined to continue on with the mission. And as the l
arge man moved along the corridor the Vatican Knights watched from the shadows.
And then they followed.
A great battle was about to be waged.
* * *
“Anyone?” asked team leader. He joined his Army Rangers with everyone now hunkering close together in a pool of darkness.
One of the Rangers shook his head ‘no.’ “Outside of the nun?” he whispered to him. “Nothing. This is a big place with a whole lot of rooms.”
Then team leader informed them about the others, those who had been severely wounded and the one KIA.
“And we have yet to get a glimpse of these Vatican Knights,” commented one of the Rangers. “Not a single one. And by the time the others saw them, it was apparently too late.”
“Nevertheless,” said team leader, “we have a mission to finish. Find the cardinal…And then we deal with Hayden.”
The three-man team pressed forward with their weapons ready, and with each member of the unit examining every shadow and every crevice, finding nothing but furniture like ornamental chairs that were divided by small tables, with massive paintings hanging above them.
Then they took a turn at the end of the hallway.
Through the windows came a brilliant stroke of illumination that turned night into day that for a brief moment gave a glimpse of four men standing at corridor’s end, the Vatican Knights. When the flash was gone and nothing existed but a wall of absolute darkness, team leader and his commando unit opened fire. Teardrop spits of fire erupted from the tips of their barrels, the muzzle flashes lighting up the hallway with brief flickers of orange and yellow light. The team moved forward with their weapons firing rounds at 900 feet-per-second, the myriad of gunfire muted through the suppressors.