CABAL

by Rick Jones

The children didn’t deserve this. Neither did sisters Patty and Kelly. The children should be playing, laughing, smiling. And the sisters should be guiding, raising, and nurturing. Instead, Death had come to steal away their lives.

  Father Jenkins had prayed and found peace believing that God would recognize a moment of violence on his part in order to preserve the lives of the innocent, this he was sure of. What he wasn’t sure of would be his measure of success at raising a hand against another, since he had never done so before.

  But the children . . .

  So he settled back into deeper, darker shadows, and waited.

  When Death came down the stairs and pointed his assault weapon at the children, when Sister Kelly pleaded with the man to spare their lives, when the grin of wicked amusement surfaced on the man’s face, Father Jenkins charged the terrorist and struck him full force with his shoulder, knocking the man off balance but not off his feet.

  The radical quickly regained himself and directed his weapon on Father Jenkins, who had the look of knowing that his life was about to come to a brutal end, but was at peace with himself because he had done all he could with no regrets.

  “I forgive you,” he whispered to Kader.

  But Kader didn’t understand. Instead, he responded in Arabic. “Infidel.” After leveling his weapon at Father Jenkins, he pulled the trigger. The burst of gunfire and the muzzle flashes lit up the room enough for everyone to see Father Jenkins lifted off his feet a moment before he came down against the floor, and watched his body skate another meter before coming to a full stop.

  Father Jenkins laid there with his arms and legs spread wide in the image of the Vitruvius Man. His eyes were at half-mast, showing slivers of white as pristine as the cleric’s collar around his throat. And his mouth was slightly ajar, a natural gateway for his soul to leave along with the wonderfully conscience mind that made Father Rob Jenkins who he was—a great man who cared.

  Sisters Patty and Kelly cried out, as did the children.

  And that was when Kader turned his attention back to them. He moved forward, raised his AK-47 so that the children could see the pitch-black mouth of the weapon’s barrel, and cried out to them in chastisement for being a blight to the Islamic nation.

  Just as he was about to pull the trigger, just as the last scolding word left his lips, his eyes suddenly flared to the size of communion wafers and grunted in pain as he lowered, then dropped, his weapon to the floor. He tried to reach behind him. Couldn’t. Then he turned awkwardly on his feet to reveal a knife sticking out of his back. Then just as clumsily, while performing some type of drunken tango, he tried to grab the knife to pull it free. But he failed.

  Kader slowly went to his knees making gah-gah-gah sounds.

  Within the glow of feeble light, Kader could see a large man descending the staircase. Around his neck was a cleric’s collar, the man a priest who carried the look of icy indifference. When the large man took the final step and stood before Kader, their eyes locked with pinning stares.

  Kader looked at the man’s collar, at his face, then back at the collar. Then he understood. There had been stories about a Catholic priest who was an angel to some and a demon to others. A folklore. A myth. Yet not a myth because here stood his demon. And as Kader’s sight began to close in at the edges, the last thing he would ever see in his life would be Kimball Hayden.

  The priest who is not a priest.

  Finally, Hadee Kader died.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It wasn’t right for such extensive gunfire, thought Hussaini. Not for soulless and weak individuals who could barely raise a finger in self-defense.

  When the terrorist on Hussaini’s right faced him sharing the same consideration, Hussaini inclined his head toward the direction of the church. Check it out.

  He did.

  But he only got as far as the steps before a marksman’s bullet found the back of the man’s head. The force of the impact sent the terrorist stumbling forward on coltish legs before he fell face-first to the ground.

  Hussaini turned, as did the other man, but neither could see anyone in the terrain, though they both knew they were probably being drawn within the crosshairs. Hussaini immediately issued an order to his acolyte to mount the machine gun while he drove the pickup.

  Another round hit the vehicle just as Hussaini got behind the wheel, the bullet ricocheting off the panel of the door just enough to miss Hussaini by a hairsbreadth. The other man jumped into the truck’s bed with ape-like agility, racked the weapon, directed it in the direction where he believed the shots were fired from, and set off his own volley of gunfire.

  Hussaini started the vehicle, shifted into gear, and floored the pedal. Rooster tails of dust and sand kicked out from beneath the rear wheels. Then as the pickup finally found traction and was in Hussaini’s complete control, the extremist headed directly for Isaiah’s position.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  When Kimball removed the knife from Kader’s back, it sounded off with wet suction. Then after wiping the blade clean against the terrorist’s garments and sheathing the weapon, he found himself standing before a group of wallowed-eyed children.

  They were painfully thin and their clothes hung on them like drapery. Some had blank stares, distant and hollow. While others had pleading eyes that were big and moist and filled with the need for a savior to take them away from this.

  Everyone was looking at the man’s collar, including sisters Patty and Kelly.

  The moment Sister Patty got to her feet, one of the children tried to hold her back. But Sister Patty assured the seven-year-old girl that this man was not the harbinger of Death . . . but their Deliverer.

  “You are our Deliverer,” she said to Kimball guardedly. Though when she said this it sounded more like a statement rather than a question.

  “Sister, my name is Kimball Hayden and I lead an extraction team to get you and the children out of here. And since time is running short, we need to hurry.”

  Sister Patty looked at the man’s collar, then at the man who looked more like a warrior than a priest, then at the body laying at Kimball’s feet. “And what matter of dress is this?”

  “I’m a Vatican Knight,” he answered. “One of few sent by the Vatican.”

  “A soldier?”

  He nodded. Yes. “My job is to protect those who cannot protect themselves.”

  She hiked the corner of her lip into a smile that communicated relief. “Then I thank you, Kimball Hayden. You’re a blessing, for sure.”

  Yeah, well . . . we’ll see.

  Then more urgently from Kimball: “We need to move. And quickly.” Like right now!

  “And Father Jenkins? We can’t leave him here.”

  “We don’t have a choice,” he said.

  Agreeing with obvious reluctance, she, along with Sister Kelly, hurriedly gathered the children and guided them up the stairway with Kimball leading the way.

  The moment Kimball exited the sublevel and stepped into the nave, he heard the distinctive gunfire from a .50 caliber machine gun.

  Isaiah was trying to maintain the perimeter.

  And if given the time, a .50 caliber weapon would eventually win out over the MP7.

  Kimball ran for the exit.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The rounds from a .50 caliber machine gun can literally tear a man apart. And though a pickup had the ability to maneuver across such ground to a degree, its speed was tempered simply for the fact that it is not fully engineered to conquer such topography, as would an all-terrain vehicle. So when the gunner in the bed of the pickup tried to maintain his balance as the truck took the rises and falls of the landscape, most of the shots went wild as he operated the mounted weapon. Most of the heavy rounds stitched across the desert floor and coughed up chunks of desert sand.

  But as Hussaini raced toward Isaiah and his team, the shots started to line up with the ammo-fire starting to home in on their positions. A line of gunfire raced along the desert floor toward Isai
ah and Jeremiah, who dove in opposite directions as the line of gunfire separated them.

  Hussaini continued to drive. The gunner started to find his marks. And though Isaiah and company battled back, an MP7 was little match against a heavily-armed vehicle.

  Often Hussaini would turn sharply so that the pickup’s wheels would create a dust screen. For a moment the truck would disappear behind the thick wall of dust, only to reappear moments later from a different angle with its machine gun firing.

  The Vatican Knights hunkered behind desert stones, with some of those stones having been cleaved by the impacts of the heavy caliber.

  Two of the rounds, after a stone was halved, found their marks when they smashed into Nahum and tore fist-size holes in his chest and abdomen, the shots nearly gutting his entire torso as entrails erupted from his backside in an explosion of gore. Nahum felt nothing as his nervous system shut down before he could feel the white-hot pain of the impacts.

  Isaiah was on his lip mic calling for a uniform pattern fire from left to right, hoping that strafing gunshots from several weapons going off in unison would eventually find its target of the gunner.

  They didn’t.

  The vehicle was too much of a moving target. The dust clouds provided too much of a screen. So shots often went high or wide.

  Instead of firing off low-percentage shots, the team held up to save ammo and waited for Hussaini to move within range so that the shots would have a higher percentage to strike the objective of the shooter. But it would also come with a much higher risk; the high-caliber weapon would also have the same benefit of firing off at close range as well.

  Then Hussaini’s pickup took a knoll or a dune and became airborne the moment it broke through the wall of dust, and came down hard against the soil with the frontend striking the surface before leveling off and then coming at Isaiah and his team.

  The .50 caliber machine gun was directed on them.

  There was nowhere for the Vatican Knights to go, nowhere to take cover.

  Hussaini bore down on them with a smile of victory.

  The Vatican Knights raised their weapons while on bended knees, each drawing a bead on a target.

  The mouth of the machine gun loomed large and deadly, coming so close that one might be able to see the weapon’s boring a moment before they were struck down.

  Then something exploded from the wall of dust.

  To some he was an angel . . .

  To others, like Hussaini, they would see a demon.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The vehicle had come from Hussaini’s left and from the very same dust cloud Hussaini had created as a shield of sorts. Kimball had grabbed one of the three vehicles by the church, keys still in the ignition, and gave chase.

  The air was smoky with dust and visibility was hard to come by. But the tat-tat-tat of rapid gunfire guided Kimball until the dust cover became as thin as a scrim wall that enabled him to see the opposing pickup heading directly for Isaiah’s position.

  Kimball navigated his pickup by taking an angle to run interference. Then as he approached a hard-packed sand dune, he launched the vehicle up and over the mound as if it was a ramp and took flight. The pickup arced through the air and came down just enough to clip the rear quarter panel of Hussaini’s truck.

  Hussaini lost control of the vehicle when the pickup’s rear end swung wide, then tried to overcorrect by jerking the wheel too far to one side, causing the truck to tip and roll. The shooter in the back was badly crushed during the first of four quick rolls, and then the vehicle finally came to a stop on its wheels.

  Steam coiled skyward from beneath a dented hood. The windshield was broken. The roof had caved in on one side. And behind the wheel, with a badly gashed face and blood as thick as corn syrup flowing freely, moaned Hussaini.

  Kimball turned and directed his vehicle toward the damaged truck.

  Not too far from Hussaini’s truck lay the body of the gunner, who laid on the dust-laden terrain as a heap of broken bones and ugly-looking disfigurements.

  After jumping out of the truck, Kimball moved forward with his MP7 directed on Hussaini, who seemed completely unaware of the situation around him as he groaned heavily with drawn-out notes of agony. After Kimball checked to see if Hussaini was wearing a vest laden with explosives or if he was carrying a weapon, and then seeing that he had neither, Kimball called ‘clear!’ and lowered his firearm.

  Isaiah joined Kimball’s side, as did the rest of the team. “We lost Nahum,” he said.

  Kimball felt a sudden pain that was deep. Losing people in battle was a way of life, especially when the combatant was considered a fellow brother when, in most cases, you were drawn closer to him than that of an actual sibling because of the circumstance of war. Sometimes it was hard to try and feel nothing at all. For some it was easy. For others, not so. Kimball may have had the icy-cold fortitude of a machine when he killed for the sake of a mission when he was an assassin for the United States government, but when it came to his own he felt no greater pain.

  In the aftermath there were no prayers or pious words of farewell, only a dark and hollow feeling. “We can’t take him,” he said, forcing strength behind his will. “We’ll be back for him. Right now we have to be at the extraction point in two minutes.”

  “You know we’re never going to make it,” stated Isaiah.

  “We have two vehicles at our disposal. The chopper will wait.”

  “Kimball, there’s another unit coming. They’ll be here in a few minutes.”

  “Then I guess we better move.” Kimball waved his hand in the air like a cowboy swinging a lariat, then pointed to the pickup. “Gather up, people. It’s time to mount.”

  As the unit jumped into the bed of the truck, Kimball was staring at Hussaini, who seemed to be coming around. The terrorist started to cough mists of blood from his lungs, and then he looked at Kimball with one eye, white against red, the other forever closed. Then he raised a palsied hand towards the Vatican Knight, a feeble attempt asking for help. Kimball looked at the man with indifference, didn’t care, until the hand finally fell and Hussaini expelled his last breath.

  Getting behind the wheel of the pickup, Kimball hurried back to the church as fast as the truck would take them.

  They were down to two minutes and Nabi Sayed’s convey was closing.

  In fact, dust clouds could be seen rising less than nine kilometers from their position.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Less than five kilometers south of the church rested the extraction chopper. It was a CH-53K heavy-lift helicopter built to carry a large number of troops and artillery. But in this case: children. Lots of them. On one side of the chopper was the emblem of the Vatican: the crisscrossing keys—one gold and one silver—of St. Peter’s beneath the papal crown.

  The pilot was privy to the time, knowing that preciseness was key to the success of the mission. Problem was, the Vatican Knights had yet to call in as required per protocol, which meant one thing: the mission obviously didn’t go as planned. Nevertheless, the pilot started the rotors and allowed them to get to full-speed rotation.

  Sand and debris rose up from beneath the wash of the blades, kicking up a dust storm. And when they were up to blinding revolutions a call came in from Kimball.

  “Chopper One, this is Golden Retriever. Do you copy?”

  “This is Chopper One. Go.”

  “En route to the extraction site with primary assets. ETA is three minutes. I repeat, ETA is three minutes.”

  “ETA is three minutes. Copy that, Golden Retriever. Will be at the site ready for load and extraction.”

  “Copy.”

  The pilot pulled back on the throttle, lifted the chopper, and then he headed toward the embarkation point where Kimball and company would be waiting.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Nabi Sayed could see the church and the rising dust formations approximately five kilometers southeast of his position, along with a scattering of small buildin
gs that had been decimated by the civil war.

  As his unit neared the church, Sayed saw the wreck of a pickup truck sitting idle with spiraling vapors rising from beneath the hood. The roof had partially collapsed and the windshield was broken. Approximately twenty meters away from the truck lay a badly twisted body.

  “Pull over,” said Sayed.

  As soon as the pickup stopped, so did the others. Cautiously, Sayed made his way to the pickup with his firearm held at the ready.

  Sitting inside the cab with one eye open against a blood-encrusted face was Abdo Hussaini.

  Sayed holstered his weapon.

  The area surrounding the church was quiet. Perhaps too quiet, Sayed considered. Then he pointed to the bell tower and issued an order to the driver in the second pickup to take the observation post at the church’s highest point, and report.

  As soon as everyone vacated their vehicles, they headed for the church.

  Lying on the steps was one of their own. A young man by the name of Ayed Ashad. Apparently he’d been downed by a single gunshot wound to the back of his head, a well-placed shot. Sayed worked the muscles in the back of his jaw in frustration, then he took the steps.

  Inside the church shafts of light filtered down from gaping holes in the dome. In the nave two more bodies were discovered. In the transept by the basement door, two more. Hussaini’s entire unit had been wiped out with either headshots or shots to center mass, the hallmark signs of professionals.

  Sayed pointed to the basement door and issued commands for his second-in-command to take lead and commence a search for the children. “Careful,” he cautioned. “I would assume whomever did this has vacated the area. But still. Be alert, Musha. You never know who could be hiding in the shadows below.” Then after a short stretch he said: “Dead or alive. Find me the boy.”

  The second-in-command bowed his head, then beckoned two others to follow him to the basement below.

  #

  Musha took lead. The lights from the torches gave off little light, but enough to see the descending staircase.