by Rick Jones
“Tell them we’re not here to hurt them. We’re here to help them.”
“Already told them that. But they don’t care, Mr. Hayden. They’re children who have seen things in this life that no one should ever see. Adults included. They’re impressionable because they’re young. They see certain things and believe that a violent death is a way of life. Unfortunately, beheadings have become all too common. Going hungry and thirsty and fighting for their lives has also become a way of life, I’m afraid. They’re children, Mr. Hayden—children who’ve been to Hell and never returned.”
“You think we can talk about this out of earshot?”
“Why? They don’t understand English.”
“So you speak Arabic?”
“Of course I do. This is Syria. So when in Rome . . . You get my meaning.”
Then Sister Kelly pointed to the white band surrounding his neckline. “I heard you mention that you were from the Vatican. Or did I hear you wrong?”
“No,” he said. “You heard right.”
“You mind elaborating then? It seems odd that the Vatican would send an armed unit of soldiers beyond the borders of Vatican City. Are you a detachment to the Swiss Guard?”
“You could say that we’re a separate unit of commandos who work outside the jurisdiction of the Vatican. We work missions under three criterions,” he said. “To protect the sovereignty of the Vatican. Protect the interests of the Church. And to protect the welfare of its citizenry.”
“And we, of course, come under the third principle.”
“We received a mayday call from Father Jenkins four days ago asking for assistance. It was under the agreement that extraction was necessary. But you had moved on from your previous position and took up residence in this church.”
“That’s because we’re constantly on the run, Mr. Hayden. We found this outpost with this church as a station of salvation from Sayed’s people.”
“Sayed?”
She nodded. “Sayed is the man we run from. He’s vicious. He’s cruel. And he’s demented like all the rest. But he works under the orders of a man called Mabus. I’m sure you’ve heard of that name, being in the business that you’re in.”
Kimball did. Mabus was reported to be the ISIS command leader who staged and planned several attacks that had recently begun to spread into Europe, with Paris the first major shot across the bow.
“He’s been pursuing us relentlessly. So we found that old church, which had already been abandoned, and waited for help. Father Jenkins never mentioned who it was that was coming to save us or how. He just said that we had to be at this particular church as a rendezvous point.” Then Sister Kelly started to rub a young girl’s head, a child of eight maybe, who fell into Sister Kelly’s embrace obviously searching for a mother’s sense of comfort.
“I’m sorry about Father Jenkins,” he finally said.
“In the end he saved us,” she said. “Just when that man was raising his weapon toward me and Sister Patty, Father Jenkins tried to intervene. You saw his body. The end result.”
“So Mabus want’s the children because they’re Christians?” When Kimball asked this question, he spoke as if the reasoning behind killing the children didn’t make any sense at all. They simply followed and learned routines from adults, such as Christian values. So now they were going to be hunted and killed because they didn’t know anything outside of what they were taught?
“Some are Muslim,” she said. “Some are Christian. And few are Jews. But the good thing about children, Mr. Hayden, is that they haven’t aged enough to be corrupted. They don’t see a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Jew. They don’t judge others whether they read the Bible, or the Qur’an, or the Torah. They’re children and they’re better for it.”
“Then why is Sayed hunting you down with a purpose if some of the children are Muslim?”
“Because we have something Mabus wants.”
“Yeah. And what’s that?”
“His son, Mr. Hayden. We have his son.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
After the pickup trucks were dug out and moving south, Sayed made a call on his sat-phone.
Mabus picked up. “Yes.”
“Hussaini’s team is dead,” he said.
“What?”
“It appears that a military unit of some kind intervened. They handled Hussaini’s team and took the children, but not before Hussaini killed the priest.”
“And this team?”
“They were white. Five commandos. One killed. So I’ll take a guess and say that they were French.”
“This deep into Syria? I’m not too sure about that. And where are they now?”
“They were heading south to an extraction point. But we were able to down the chopper before the children were loaded onboard. Then a haboob struck. We lost them, Mabus. I’m sorry. But we’ll find them.”
“How far behind are you?”
“Three hours at the most. We believe they’re were heading south through the storm to cover their tracks.”
“Then they’re either heading for Jordan, or better yet, turn west and head for Israel. I’ll contact units from Damascus. You, in the meantime, continue south. Maybe we can pinch them into a central point before they reach the border. And when they’re caught, Sayed, make sure that you bring my son back to me.”
“And the rest?”
“You do to them what we do to all infidels who do not follow the will of Allah. Spare no one.”
“Understood,” said Sayed, then he severed the call. Then to his driver: “Head south until I say otherwise.”
“Yes, Sayed.”
They headed south.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Mabus laid the sat-phone by his side. In a few minutes it would be time for prayer. He just wished his son was by his side rather than in the hands of pagan believers. The Christians would warp his sense of beliefs by making him question the will of a god that should never be questioned. Allah was the Light and the Way. And Islam would be spread by the point of a sword or the blade of a knife, if need be.
Mabus closed his eyes.
He remembered the day young Farid disappeared from his life. The day was overcast. And there was a strange chill in the morning air as people knelt before him with their hands bound behind their backs. Judgment day had come.
He remembered condemning them for harboring a false faith. And those who could not recite verses from the Qur’an were summarily executed by beheading. He recalled going down the line asking each non-believer to narrate something from the Qur’an, knowing they knew about as much of the book as he did the Bible.
Head after head, taking life after life, Mabus came to the last, a young boy of twelve. The boy was sobbing as he took cursory glances at his deceased father, who laid beside him with his severed head positioned so that his deadened eyes looked directly at the boy with a dull glaze. The head’s arrangement was one of psychological torture.
“Farid.” He called his son over with a beckoning of his hand. “Come here you must.”
When young Farid stood beside him, Mabus then handed off the knife, hilt first, to his son like passing off the mantle of power, with the knife being the scepter of rule.
“Ask him to recite passages from the Qur’an. Those I have taught you.”
Farid did, though apprehensively and with a slight wobble to his tone.
The boy on his knees didn’t answer. He simply sobbed, which was answer enough. He obviously didn’t know how to respond since he was a person of Christian values.
When Mabus looked into his eyes, he knew his son would see unbridled bloodlust and the expectations of what he wanted his son to do next. Everything was always written in the eyes.
But Farid hesitated, which caused Mabus to hike an eyebrow up in anger. “You know what needs to be done. You know what happens to those who are without the faith.” Then as a whisper: “You must send him to Hell, Farid. Only the fires can cleanse him now.”
Farid’s face start
ed to crack. His arm lowered. And his fingers extended, which allowed the knife to fall from his grasp.
Mabus remembered becoming so furious that his vision clouded over with images of red rage. His son was a child of weak fortitude. The knife laid in the sand that ran with the blood of his victims. And all Mabus thought about at that moment was what others would think of him—that he had sired a coward.
Mabus then snatched the knife off the ground, forced it into his son’s hand, the boy now crying, and directed him to send the infidel to the hellfire where he belonged.
Once again the knife fell from his grasp.
And this time Mabus lashed out with a sweeping backhand that sent his son to the ground.
Farid yelped as he brought his hand to the hot sting alongside his face.
When Mabus grabbed the knife, he held it up for his son to examine. Since it was coated with blood, sand granules had stuck to the gummy substance on the blade which had covered over its once mirror polish.
Farid looked at the knife, then into his father’s eyes, then at the Christian boy. He knew what was coming next; a lesson to desensitize him to violence. It would be one of many.
“Watch, Farid. And learn. The more you watch, the more you’ll understand. The more you understand, the quicker you’ll embrace the will of Allah.”
Mabus then nodded to two of his acolytes who pinned the struggling boy to the ground with his legs kicking, the Christian pleading and calling for his God.
“Do you not hear his cries, Farid? Do you see his God here protecting him or come to his aid as he calls out? No. That’s because the will of Allah is much greater, much stronger, with no other path but the way I show you.
“Now you must watch, Farid. And do not turn away.”
Mabus leaned over the Christian boy, grabbed a hand of the child’s hair, pulled his head back enough to expose the soft flesh of his throat, and began to cut his way through muscle, bone and cartilage.
“Do not turn away, Farid!” he cried to his son.
It was awful. The Christian boy gagged and gurgled with his own blood. The blade moved back and forth, sawing, the knife working deeper from the front of the throat to the back of the neck. The boy’s eyes rolled upward, showing nothing but whites. Then when the last strands of attaching flesh snapped away like elastic bands, the head was free.
And Mabus held it inches away from his son’s face in display. “He is in Hell where he belongs, Farid. This is a good thing. We are the crusaders of righteousness. We bring Light to a Dark world. And you must be a part of it.” But Mabus could see in his son’s eyes that Farid wanted no part of this ritual or the ideologies that promoted it.
Mabus dropped the head at Farid’s feet. At one time in the boy’s life it would have been a soccer ball, something for Farid to enjoy.
But now . . .
Sighing, Mabus grabbed his son by the back of his neck and squeezed hard. “You will do this,” he told him softly. “In time, you will do this.”
That was when Farid fell into hitching sobs, which embarrassed Mabus in front of his unit. But he didn’t take it out on the boy. He took it out on the boy’s mother, blaming her for begetting such a cowardly son, one who was to rule someday. What he got instead was a child with a woman’s softness to his heart.
His rage spiraled, his embarrassment peaked, and the knife he used earlier in the day in the name of Allah to strike down those who did not believe, eventually found its mark with the woman who had birthed a coward. Mabus had killed her in a frenzy before his son, who witnessed stab after repeated stab until his mother’s life vanished. On the stone floor she bled out, the blood forming a fast-spreading halo beneath her.
And when Farid looked Mabus in the eyes as he stood over the child’s mother, he saw contempt that was complete and absolute. That night the boy was gone, having vanished into the darkness and right into the arms of Christian believers. Another sin and embarrassment as far as Mabus was concerned.
“Mabus?”
The radical opened his eyes. Abbad Chahine was standing in the doorway.
“Yes, Abbad.”
“We just got word that all four teams have situated themselves in Rome.”
“Any problems.”
“None.”
Mabus nodded. “Good. And everything else is moving as planned?”
“It is. The teams are working in conjunction with one another.”
There was a stretch of time were Mabus said nothing. Then: “In two days’ time,” he said more to himself than to Chahine. “The Vatican will have its own Paris.”
“This will be a great victory,” added Chahine. “Surely Allah will be pleased.
No more than I will be, thought Mabus. A strike on the Vatican would cause worldwide ripples that would reach far and wide, elevating angers and creating a divide so deep between the religions that there would be a cry for war so loud, even the gods would hear.
“Yes,” he finally answered. “See that everything moves along smoothly.”
Chahine bowed his head. “Yes, Mabus.” Then he left the quarters.
Mabus watched the man go. Chahine was small and diminutive, a lackey with no skills to fight in the battlefield, but a good tactician, nonetheless. He was cerebral in matters that Mabus was not, a right-hand man who offered Mabus wise counsel. So Mabus kept him close like a dog who served as a loyal companion.
In two days, he thought, the Islamic State would march on Rome and Vatican City, killing people by the hundreds. But the person he had most in his sights, the person who had power over more than one billion followers, over one billion heathens, was the pontiff.
ISIS was marching on Rome. And war would follow with them.
Mabus smiled inwardly. Everything they had done in the past had culminated to this point. Paris was certainly not the first blow, but it was the strongest so far. This strike at the Vatican, however, would be the blow that would hit hard enough to drive Muslims against Christians, and God against God.
Someone had to win in the end.
Or perhaps no one at all if the world remained in ruins.
But Mabus was willing to take the gamble believing that Allah was all-powerful and almighty, so victory would surely be on their side. So in two days’ time and believing that his son would be by his side by then, Mabus would roll the dice.
He would strike against the Vatican.
And the strike would be vicious.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“You have the son of Mabus?” Kimball asked Sister Kelly.
“He came to us. In the night four days after he watched his father murder his mother. The boy was starving, thirsty and cold. We didn’t care if he was Muslim, Christian or a person of any other denomination. He was a child seeking help. We gave it. And in the process we placed ourselves in Mabus’ crosshairs. So we gave him food, water, and whatever love that was possible in such times. He told us who he was and that his name was Farid. But being the son of Mabus mattered little to Father Jenkins, Sister Patty or to myself.”
Kimball saw only goodness in Sister Kelly that he wished he had within himself. “Because he’s a boy who doesn’t yet hold the prejudices his father tried to introduce him to.”
“Farid’s not there yet. But he’s getting old enough to understand them. If not for the brutal actions of his father, Farid might not be within our company.”
“How so?”
Kelly looked at Kimball with a pinning stare. “His mother,” she said simply. “Mabus murdered her right in front of him, while blaming her for granting him a cowardly son. Unfortunately, Farid now blames himself for his mother’s death.”
“He had no control over that.”
“Of course he didn’t. But he’s still a child not fully developed emotionally. He believes he could have prevented his mother’s death if he had done what his father asked him to do, but refused.”
“Yeah. And what’s that?”
“Mabus wanted him to behead another child. Farid declined. So now
his mother is dead. And the one thing you don’t do in front of a child, Mr. Hayden, is to kill the child’s mother and expect compliancy from him by using fear as a motivator. You must remember one thing: the word ‘Mother’ is ‘God’ in the eyes of a child. You steal away the god of a child, then anger burns deep enough to overcome fear. So he ran out of hatred for his father, never wanting to see him again. But that wish might be a short-lived.”
Kimball mulled this over. How many children had he killed in the past as an assassin for the American government in order to keep a mission from being compromised? How many burning hatreds did he create? Ezekiel was one such example. He had killed the boy’s grandfather, a high-profile state senator, in front of the child. In the aftermath he tried to raise the boy from a waif to a Vatican Knight, by becoming a paternal figure and a mentor for him at the same time, when what he was actually trying to do was appease his own sense of deep-lying guilt. In the end, however, the boy grew with an all-consuming hatred for Kimball and attempted to take his life away, only for Kimball to come out on top of this personally proclaimed war on the part of Ezekiel, by killing his protégé in self-defense. How many gods have I stolen from children? Kimball asked himself. How many?
In hindsight, he knew there were many. “He’ll be fine,” Kimball promised. “Young Farid will grow to see a good life.”
“And you know this how?”
“I believe in the abilities of my team,” he answered. “Farid and everybody here will live to see a good life.”
“And you can promise this?”
“To the best of my abilities.”
“Then I will hold you accountable for their lives, Mr. Hayden. And believe me-you, you will hear from me if you don’t hold up your end of the deal.”
And Kimball was sure that he would hear from Sister Kelly if his assurances weren’t kept, and that she would voice them long and loud as if a bullhorn was going off in his ear.