New Rome Rising

by Rene Fomby

  The elevator barely made any kind of noise as it glided slowly but deliberately down the shaft. There was an overhead light inside that Jack quickly unscrewed, leaving their only illumination a small backlit panel showing the floors slowly clicking by. The team activated their IR headsets, infrared flashlights on the right side of each of their helmets flickering on automatically.

  At Floor 13 they steeled themselves for action. Jack had one hand on the lever that would throw open the elevator door even as his men flanked him, their feet spread shoulder-width apart and their right hands positioned slightly behind them at hip level, ready to toss the grenades as soon as the door opened.

  Jack could feel his nerves tightening, as they always did just before everything went to hell in a handbasket. And that was a good thing—it left him fully alert and ready for anything. Like the possibility that someone down there might hear the elevator running, as quiet as it was, and be waiting for them when the doors popped open.

  Finally, the panel showed floor 14. Jack held his breath for a moment, listening for any telltale sounds on the other side, but everything was dead quiet. He held up his left hand in a closed fist, then suddenly jerked it down as he turned the lever to spring open the door.

  The next few seconds were a blur. For a brief moment, they could all see a dimly lit hallway just outside the door, then two flash bangs were launched in a soft curve through the air as Jack slammed the elevator closed again. They heard a muffled roar through the door as the grenades detonated, then Jack pulled the lever once more and they all leaped out, with Jack the last man through the gate as his team turned left and right to cover the hall.

  “Clear,” they called out. Jack checked off to his left, where the doors to the outside stood just a few yards away. He nodded, and the commando on that side moved quickly to open it. That would give them another possible escape route, and leaving it open would have little effect on slowing down anyone coming at them from outside.

  With that done, they spread out and moved right. Two Vatican guards were already down, temporarily stunned by the grenades, and Jack shot them at point-blank range with tranquilizer rounds. That would keep them immobilized until the next morning at least.

  Moving quickly, Jack and his two men shot out the overhead lights, leaving the room in pitch blackness. So far they were all alone in the hallway, but as Jack flicked on his front-facing sonic amplifier, he could hear someone heading their way in a hurry.

  Doorways opened into empty holding cells on either side of the hall. Jack motioned for each of them to pick a cell and take cover, just as an automatic weapon opened up at the other end of the hall, momentarily lighting up the small, enclosed space. Their IR headsets instantly adjusted for the sudden glare, then settled back to full-darkness mode.

  The automatic weapons fire blasted down the hallway again, this time much closer. Jack estimated that the shooter was now about thirty feet away and moving fast. With little in the hallway to trip over, the flare from his gun had given the shooter a momentary picture of the layout in front of him, and he stayed close to the wall on his right as he made his way steadily down the hall.

  The guard let off another quick hail of bullets, to no effect other than giving away his position at about ten feet down the hall, on Jack’s side. Jack waited until he estimated the shooter was about five feet from him, then bent a hand around the outside of the door frame and punched off four tranquilizer rounds. Almost instantly he heard a short cry, then an unmistakable clump as the shooter hit the floor.

  Across the hall from him, one of Jack’s men risked a quick glance outside and, not seeing anyone, signaled to Jack and the other commando that the hallway was empty. The three of them piled out, hugging the walls and checking each prison cell briefly as they passed by. Nothing.

  At the far end of the hall, a door had been flung open by the shooter, and, in his impatience, he had left it open, giving them easy entrance to the space beyond without having to deal with the security box hanging on the wall. They moved one at a time through the door, spreading out to either side and once again making quick work of the overhead lights. Just in front of them were three doors, each of them sealed with a key card reader.

  “Eenie, Meenie, Miney,” Jack mumbled to himself as he reached over and tapped the card reader for the middle door with a key card he had snagged off the shooter as he had stepped over his body in the dark. The door lock snapped back instantly with a loud click, and his two men immediately positioned themselves on either side of the door, away from any bullets that might come flying through the doorway. He grasped the handle and threw the door wide open.

  In the brief moment before he jumped back to safety himself, Jack made out three men inside the small room, two men standing with their handguns pointed toward the door, and one man slumped over in a chair between them, tied up securely, obviously a prisoner they had just been busily interrogating. Jack nodded, and another flash bang flew through the doorway as he swung the door almost but not quite closed, careful not to let the lock get set just in case the flash bang explosion took out the key card reader.

  Opening the door wide again, Jack loosed a couple of tranquilizers into each of the guards, then dropped to his knees before the prisoner, lifting the man’s head into camera range of his headset. “This your guy?” he asked, and immediately Gavin responded, “That’s him all right.”

  Untying Mehmed from the chair he was roped to, Jack threw the limp body over his left shoulder and signaled for the team to beat a hasty retreat back to the freight elevator. No sooner had they closed the doors and started the elevator on its way upward to freedom than they heard the muffled but unmistakable sounds of the Vatican posse arriving. Someone yelled something about the door being open from the outside, and Jack thought he heard someone issue an order to split up to check for intruders both inside and outside of the jail compound as the sounds from the fourteenth floor quickly faded away.

  ※

  Jack clamped a heavy hand on Gavin’s shoulder as his men loaded up the assault trikes and other gear onto the truck behind them. “The boss man says I’m supposed to arrange transport for you back to Rabat toot sweet, so I’ve got a helicopter inbound to whisk you to an airbase where you’ll meet up with an Air Force jet. Anything you need to retrieve from a hotel or anyplace else before you’re wheels up?”

  “Nope, I’m good. Sam can put anything I’ve left behind back in Rome on the next Greyhound bound for Morocco. Hey, by the way, really nice work back there. I’ve trained with some of the very best back at Quantico, and you guys made us all look like amateurs.”

  Jack smiled grimly. “Different kind of enemy, different kind of tactics. But hey, speaking as professionals, I’ll be sure to let my men know. We all need to hear a ‘good job’ every now and then—it makes up a little bit for everything we’ve given up to take on this job. Speaking of which ...” He looked up at the sound of a helicopter zeroing in on their position from a few hundred yards away in the clear night sky. “Good luck with finding your buddy. She must be something pretty special if Sanders was willing to go to the ropes to get this rescue authorized at the very last moment, just to get your ass back to Morocco and your mind focused back on the hunt.”

  “She is, in a lot of ways.” The helicopter was now circling the dig site, looking for a place to land. Gavin gave Jack’s hand a firm shake, then jogged over to where Sam was standing with Dr. Greystone.

  “Hey, Sam, I gotta head out. Mehmed’s gonna be all right?”

  “I think so. He’s been pretty well roughed up, but not quite as bad as when he caught the ass end of that car bomb back in Akko. Thank God we got to him when we did—another day or so, and …”

  “Happy to be of service. Besides, that was pretty exciting stuff, sneaking into a private prison a hundred fifty feet underground and extracting a prisoner right out from under the noses of the Vatican’s finest, with nary a scratch left on any one of our guys. Why, I haven’t been near that much field action sinc
e my Xbox stopped working a few months back. Except, of course, for the two fifties I took to the chest the other day.”

  “Yeah, except for that,” Sam agreed with a worried set to her eyes. “Look, Superman, you watch yourself out there. At some point you’re going to come across a load of Kryptonite you won’t be able to dodge. You do know there’s a whole lot of people counting on you coming back home in one piece.”

  “And one secret agent in particular who’s counting on me to bring her back safe and sound, as well. So I don’t exactly have a lot of choice in that department, you know?”

  “Yeah, well, you can’t do anything about that if you’re dead, right?” Sam had a hand on the center of his back as they started walking toward the waiting helicopter. “After all, losing one secret agent is still a far better alternative to losing two. So alls I’m saying is, don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

  Gavin smiled at her sadly, and she couldn’t really translate what exactly was flickering across his eyes as he finally turned and ducked low to get on board the copter. Mehmed was already strapped in beside him, ready to be dropped off at a hospital in Rome. Gavin looked back one last time as the rotors sped up and the helicopter started to lift back off the ground.

  “Superman? Ha! That’s a good one, Sam,” he shouted, now just barely audible above the roar of the engine. “For the next few days, actually, I’m going to be nothing more than a good stinking man-sized chunk of Wisconsin cheddar cheese!”

  He waved goodbye as the aircraft spun toward the east, taking off at high speed into the night, leaving the quiet Italian coastline in its wake. Carrying him to his next assignment, and an almost certain rendezvous with death.

  the wall

  46

  St. Peter’s Square - Friday

  The crowds started filing into the square well before dawn, drawn by the Vatican’s surprising press release from the night before, and by early morning throngs of people began filling the streets in front of the Basilica all the way to the Tiber River. Street vendors pushed through the crowd, hawking food, water and papal souvenirs, but it wasn’t long before the crush of bodies made even that impossible. The police finally set up a barricade on the outer edges of the square in a feeble attempt to hold back the surging crowd, but still the mass of people inched inexorably toward the Loggia of the Blessings, a small balcony set in the center of the Basilica where the new pope would make his first appearance to the assembled masses. And to the almost one billion people watching the event on television and online. Dark red drapes framed the balcony, a balcony jutting out slightly from the face of the Basilica, which itself lay nestled between two ornate columns. Just below the balcony was a carved stone relief of Jesus handing St. Peter the keys to heaven, which had been created by Buonvicino in 1614. But nobody in the crowd was focusing on those little details—their eyes were all glued to the doorway just beyond.

  Finally, at ten minutes past nine in the morning, a single figure emerged onto the balcony. Traditionally, the Cardinal Protodeacon was given the special honor of announcing a new pope, but with that office now vacant, a decision was made to enlist the help of a senior Roman cardinal, one who had been too old to attend the conclave. As he stepped up to the rail of the loggia, a stir began to work its way quickly through the packed multitudes below. Every soul staring up at the tiny balcony or watching remotely on their televisions could sense that this was a historic moment unlike anything they had ever witnessed in their lifetimes.

  With his hands raised high above his head, the cardinal swept his eyes over the crown, his throat catching for just a second as he shouted the sacred words into his microphone. “Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum: Habemus Papam! We have a pope!”

  The crowd let out a thunderous roar of approval, drowning out his next words, so he repeated them in his loudest voice. “Eminentissimum ac Reverendissimum Dominum, Dominum Francesco, Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalem Orso, qui sibi nomen imposuit Petri Secundus.”

  Once again the square swelled with an explosion of heartfelt cries from the faithful, a joyous noise so intense the cardinal could feel the balcony vibrating beneath his feet. When the shouting at last settled down, the cardinal bowed his head and shuffled off to one side, making room for two papal aides to unfurl a large, maroon banner bearing the late pope’s coat of arms across the railing of the loggia. But he did not retreat before stepping up to the rail one last time for his final introduction.

  “Fratelli e sorelle, vi do il nostro Papa Miracoloso! I give you our Miracle pope!”

  Pope Peter II strode through the doorway of the balcony, his head held high, his hands waving a warm Christian greeting to the delirious crowd. It took well over ten minutes for the celebration to die down enough for him to be heard, even with the speakers set up throughout the square to blare his first papal blessing out to almost every corner of Rome. And to every corner of the world. He began with a simple greeting in several languages, a reflection of the greeting given by Cardinal Jorge Arturo Medina Estévez upon the election of pope Benedict XVI in 2005.

  “Fratelli e sorelle carissimi. Queridísimos hermanos y hermanas. Bien chers frères et sœurs. Liebe Brüder und Schwestern. Dear brothers and sisters.”

  Once again he was forced to wait for the roar of the crowd to quiet down before proceeding, but the delay gave him a great opportunity to look down upon his prepared speech, clutched tightly in his hands. A standard and innocuous blessing written mostly by the Vatican staff that they considered routine and proper for this lofty occasion. But as he stared down at the words printed out on the simple white sheets of paper, as he reflected on the events of the past few days, and on the very explicit instructions he had been given by Peter Boucher, the pope suddenly realized that this occasion was anything but routine, anything but ordinary. The very head of the holy Church had been sliced from its body by Christendom’s greatest enemy, and this crowd was eager for answers, not platitudes. Eager for him to impart some tiny bit of wisdom, some inkling of understanding as to what it all meant. Why God in all His glory could ever allow such unthinkable evil to exist. It was the age-old question that had plagued the Church from its earliest beginnings. Theodicy. Why does God let bad things happen to good people?

  As the crowd finally grew less boisterous, he let the carefully prepared speech drop from his hands. The cameras zoomed in on his face, filling the giant screens mounted off to either side of him, and he made a decision.

  “Brothers and sisters in Christ!”

  The original plan had been for him to deliver his blessing in Latin, a nod to the more conservative elements of the Church, of which he had been the primary leader for many years. But now, with the entire world watching and listening, the new pope—this so-called Miracle pope—decided it was best to give the address in the planet’s universal language. English.

  “For almost two thousand years,” he intoned, softly at first, but growing stronger with every word. “For almost two thousand years this Church has preached a message of peace. For almost two thousand years, as Jesus himself taught us, this Church has turned its other cheek to its enemies, choosing righteousness over revenge, patient forgiveness and tolerance over its own self-defense.”

  To the pope’s left, smoke from the smoldering embers of the Sistine Chapel still rose and wafted acridly across the crowd, reminding all of them just what had happened in this place only three days earlier.

  “Yes, my children, for almost two thousand years, this Church has been living a lie.”

  With those words, the stunned crowd of over half a million that were stretched out below him—and the billion or so watching the speech from homes and workplaces around the world—collectively sucked in their breaths. They had expected a soothing homily, a rhetorical balm to cover their wounds, wounds still very raw from the unconscionable attack on their Church, their faith. But this sounded like something else, something they would never in their lives have expected to hear coming from the mouth of their pope.

  He co
ntinued, raising his voice a half-notch higher in pitch. “When our Lord Jesus was still walking upon this earth, when he was still preaching to his followers in Galilee and Jerusalem, his message was quite clear. As the Gospel of Mark tells us, Jesus spoke to the multitudes and proclaimed the good news. ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The Kingdom of God has come near.’ But Jesus was not talking about a kingdom in the sky. He never told us that our souls would be rent from our bodies when we die, that the good would ascend into Heaven while the evil ones were dashed upon the rocks of Hell. No! That was a fiction, a lie! The Kingdom of God is not perched above us in the sky, it is not in some unearthly heaven. The Kingdom is here, my children, it is of this Earth, it is upon us even as we stand here today! The time is now upon us when we shall see the Son of Man arrive before our very eyes, arrive in clouds of fury with great power and majesty and glory. And He shall send his angels and gather His elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens. The time is now when the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and all the heavenly bodies will themselves be shaken!”

  St. Peter’s Square had turned deathly quiet, the faces below turning toward each other in puzzlement.

  He pointed toward the smoking ruins of the Sistine Chapel. “Look, I tell you! Look! See with your own eyes the ‘abomination that causes desolation, standing where it does not belong.’ This demonic act was not an act of terrorism. It was a sign! It was an act of war! But not a war against humanity. No! Not simply a war against our holy Church. No! This attack was nothing less than a war that Satan’s Islam has declared against all of Christendom. Indeed, it is a war pitted against God Himself!”