by Rick Jones
Solomon knew immediately what Kimball was asking. He was asking for self-sacrifice—or just enough time to grant the children a possible chance. If they threw in the towel or waved the white flag, neither would be recognized by the Islamic State. They would die as sure as the sun rises and sets. All of them, including Sister Kelly. Solomon didn’t say a word. He simply nodded. Yes. Of course.
Jeremiah, Samuel and Isaiah stepped off the bed and lowered the gate, with each man coercing the children and Sister Kelly to vacate the vehicle and to follow them to the overhang. The children followed Sister Kelly, who took lead. And the Vatican Knights helped to usher them quickly along. Once they reached the rocky shelf that hung over to create a lean-to shelter, the children hunkered down with Jeremiah, Samuel and Isaiah setting a perimeter.
The moment Jeremiah shot Kimball a thumbs-up to indicate that they were situated, Kimball turned his attention back to Solomon. “Are you OK with this?” he asked him. “Really?”
“I’m all right, Kimball . . . I’m ready on all fronts.”
Kimball, however, never felt at ease with sacrificing his team under any circumstances. But he knew the gambles and the stakes, and he also knew the possible outcomes despite how the plans were drawn on paper. Everything was never truly by design or by a blueprint, but by resolve and courage to see things through to the end, whether your life was on the line or not. Kimball exhaled while managing a single thought: Everybody wants to go to Heaven, but nobody wants to pay the price of admission.
This time, he thought, we may not have a choice. Sooner or later we all pay the price.
Kimball slapped the roof of the cab. “Keep it true and to the center,” he told Solomon.
“You got it.” Solomon turned the pickup around and headed right into the hornet’s nest with Kimball manning the weapon.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
Ismail was stunned to see a lone vehicle come their direction. So much so that he leaned forward for a better view before bringing the binoculars up. “Is he out of his mind? One against many. He’s a desperate man, this one.” He turned the binoculars and began to scope the landscape. He couldn’t see the others but he knew they were out there, somewhere. Then he went back to the charging vehicle and focused the lens to clarity. In the rear of the truck stood a large man who would govern the machine gun. He had raw-boned features that spelled the look of a man who was determined to see this through to the end.
Sometimes desperation breeds foolish attempts, Ismail thought. Then he lowered the binoculars and called to his gunner in the back. “Do you see?” he asked plainly.
“I see them,” said the gunner.
“Mabus wants the man alive,” he told him, “if possible. But if the possibility doesn’t exist, take him.”
“Understood.”
The vehicles continued on their collision course; one against many.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
Vatican City
The ambulance that was under the command of Raamiz drove through St. Peter’s Square with its siren wailing and lights flashing. Sitting in the back of the vehicle were eight ISIS operatives who were ready to move.
After the explosions, Raamiz had banked on the immediate chaos to provide him access through the Square uncontested, which is what happened. Seeing an emergency vehicle at such a moment immediately drew inferences from officers that the ambulance was there to provide aid. So Raamiz was waved along by the officers of the Gendarmerie and by the members of the security detail, and made his way to the Apostolic Palace.
People were running pell-mell, screaming and wailing. Some lay on the ground with their hands held up imploringly for somebody to help them, anyone. Some did engage while others sought the safety of cover.
The van continued to weave its way across the open expanse of St. Peter’s Square, past the Basilica, and to the St. Domaso Courtyard that bordered the Apostolic Palace. To the northeast stood the barracks to the Swiss Guard. When the van stopped and the rear doors opened, Raamiz’s team hastened out of the vehicle, pulled out a collapsible gurney, and began to make their way to the Palace corridors.
Varkey and Ninan, two of the nine, broke off from the rest and headed for the barracks of the Swiss Guards, with both wearing the dress of medical technicians. But their coats appeared awkwardly cumbersome due to the Semtex vests they wore underneath. Yet they moved with the quickness and agility of monkeys carrying nothing but detonator switches, and driving on with the insane belief that a self-imposed death was a direct portal to seeing Allah’s Light.
Raamiz, along with his team of seven, including himself, wheeled the collapsible gurney up the ramp and toward the Palace doors where several members of the Vatican’s Security Team were posted.
Just as they were nearing the Palace doors under the suspicious review of the security squad, that’s when the explosions happened.
It was the moment Raamiz needed.
#
Varkey and Ninan raced toward the barracks, both young men in their prime with the speed of athletes and their hands held high. But it was Varkey who took the lead with Ninan a good twenty meters behind. Just as the Swiss Guard started to move swiftly from their quarters, Varkey immediately became the object of their marksmanship. Just as he was raising the detonator and screaming out his allegiance to Allah, a unit of Swiss Guards, all deadly shots, leveled their firearms, called for the man’s cooperation to stand down, then set off a volley of gunfire.
Several rounds immediately struck center mass, the bullets striking the vest underneath. As Varkey took a few coltish steps forward, he depressed the button.
In a surreal moment where time seemed to move at a horribly sluggish pace, Varkey’s body appeared to explode outward. His skin, his skull, everything that made Varkey appealing to the opposite sex went up in a splash of gore that spread far and wide. His body evaporated within a fireball that consumed everything in its path. The Swiss Guards were blown off their feet and killed within the blink of an eye. And the entryway to the barracks had blown inward, leaving a gaping wound of opportunity for Ninan, who took cover a moment before the blast, to enter.
On the heels of Varkey’s death, the ISIS operative leapt over the rubble as cloying dust shielded him from additional guards inside the barracks. Then, once inside, just as a second force was beginning to make its way forward and before they could raise their weapons, Ninan raised his hand and cried “Allahu Akbar!” God is Great!
And then he pushed the button.
#
It was the first nearby explosion that fully captured the attention of the security team that manned the doors to the Apostolic Palace. When heads turned with natural curiosity to see the catalyst of a new threat, Raamiz peeled back the sheet on the gurney where several assault weapons were lying in wait.
Without hesitation, weapons were grabbed and quickly utilized without hesitation. Two of Raamiz’s teammates wheeled about their suppressed-tipped assault rifles and strafed the security team. Bullets quickly ripped the lives out of their bodies as blood splashed crazy designs on the wall behind them.
Leaving the gurney behind, Raamiz and his raiders entered the building.
CHAPTER EIGHTY
Syrian Desert
Kimball’s pickup was closing the gap at breakneck speed.
Leaning back with his hands gripping the handles and his fingers curled around the triggers, Kimball lined his shots, starting with the vehicles in the center. As soon as he could see the faces of the drivers, he opened up.
Bullets dotted a trail along the sandy terrain, striking the center pickup truck with the rounds punching holes along the hood, the windshield, and then the gunner, with the gunner being lifted off his feet and knocked out of the truck’s bed, at least neutralizing that one vehicle.
The other ten, however, opened up.
Bullets whizzed by Kimball and hummed like insects with two rounds striking the windshield, smashing it. But Solomon readjusted and swerved to the left, then to the right, zigz
agging, which caused Kimball to lose his balance.
When Kimball regained himself, he set off another round of heavy-caliber fire. For the most part the bullets missed their marks, since the ride along the terrain made targeting difficult.
Same for Ismail’s team. But with so many rounds going off, only a few were able to find their mark that was more from chance than from good aim.
Bullets punched holes in the sheets of metal. One even deflected off the mounting pole that held the Browning that was in Kimball’s grip.
Kimball continued to fire as he swung the weapon from left to right, then right to left. Bullets slammed into vehicles, into radiators, through windshields, but they kept on coming.
Just as Kimball’s pickup flew past Ismail’s line and kept going, the vehicles slowed and turned in unison with the exception of two, which were on the hunt for the children.
Solomon turned the vehicle around for another pass.
And that was when Kimball spotted the two vehicles heading for Sister Kelly. “Let’s go!” he shouted.
Solomon floored the pedal.
The rear tires on the pickup spun and kicked up dirt, causing dust to rise and linger in the air behind them. And then it began to pick up traction.
The opposing trucks barreled forward, guns hammering away with gunfire.
Kimball pulled the trigger, the machine gun spitting out casings while the ammo belt continued to feed rounds that seemed never ending. Bullets pounded the vehicles, some smashing limbs and bodies into gore and red mist, the strikes causing the drivers of Ismail’s team to veer off and continue on to an unknown route with a dead man behind the wheel.
The gap between them closed once again. A joust. Six pickups against one. Whereas the other two of Ismail’s caravan were tracking his team in the distance.
And then it happened.
A single round hit the front tire of Kimball’s pickup, causing a front-tire explosion and a loss of control. Solomon tried to get command of the vehicle. Failed. Then the pickup started to tip, to roll. Kimball was in the back hanging on, could see the ground getting closer. And then a second round struck the underside of the vehicle’s carriage and hitting the gas tank.
All of a sudden Kimball’s world became a maelstrom of swirling dust and sand that was mixed with licks of fire, as he was hurled skyward. He saw the spinning of a blue sky, and then the thick tendrils of smoke the color of charcoal. Time had no bearing in this moment as his body seemed to lift and float with no pain or thoughts of remorse.
But then reality slammed back into him when he landed hard against the landscape. He heard the snap of bones in his spine, could feel the coming of white-hot pain and the sense of pins and needles riddling his legs. He could also hear the flames of a nearby fire and feel its heat against his skin.
When Kimball turned to see the wreckage of the pickup, it was completely engulfed in flames. Behind the wheel and within the flames sat Solomon. He was becoming a blackened husk as the fire chewed away the flesh of his skull, leaving behind that mocking grin that all skeletons offered when picked clean.
Kimball closed his eyes and felt incredible sorrow.
He was close to death, this he knew. And soon the mystery would be answered: Is there an Afterlife . . .
. . . Or is there just Absence?
The man was dying by the inches.
Then in his gaze he saw two men standing over him.
They called each other by names: Ismail and Sayed.
The one called Sayed pointed to him with a sardonic grin. And when he spoke his voice sounded hollow and distant. “He still lives,” he said. “Mabus wants him alive.”
“Unlikely,” said the one called Ismail. His voice, like Sayed’s, sounded miles away. “The man is almost dead.” Then after chortling he said,, “So this is the man everyone call’s the devil’s magician? The priest who is not a priest?” Then Ismail leaned down, removed the cleric’s collar from Kimball’s neck, held it up for Kimball to see, and then he released it to the course of the wind which carried it to the fires of the burning vehicle.
Kimball watched it curl and burn, like Solomon, until neither were recognizable.
He closed his eyes.
“Still,” said Sayed, “Mabus wants him—”
“I know what Mabus wants,” Ismail returned curtly. “But the man will be dead before we can get him there.”
When Kimball opened his eyes he saw a firearm gripped within Ismail’s hand.
“I think people have been afraid over nothing,” said Ismail, his words ringing. “I think his reputation far exceeds the truth. Don’t you, Sayed?”
The man nodded. And Kimball took everything about Sayed in with full examination, learning about the one who was responsible for killing tiny Yara. He was a little man with a slight built, irregular teeth, and a lateral scar that ran from the corner of his lip to the edge of his eye, with the pull of his wound causing the corner of his mouth to tilt upward into a lasting sneer.
“I will remember you,” Kimball managed to say in the softest whisper.
“What did he say?” asked Sayed. “He speaks English. I hate when they do that.”
“Does it matter?” said Ismail. Then he raised the point of his firearm and aimed it directly at the point between Kimball’s eyes. “I think not.”
Kimball closed his eyes with Sayed’s face burning on his lids like an afterimage. I will remember you.
And then Kimball heard a gunshot with a second report so close to the first that it could have been an echo.
And then came a darkness that was complete and absolute.
What came to him was Absence.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE
The pickups on the hunt had spotted a rocky overhang—a perfect place to conceal many. But as soon as the trucks swung around they were met with gunfire.
The Vatican Knights were holding the perimeter by peppering rounds from their MP7s. Several of the shots took out the driver of one pickup, the windshield exploding in a hail of tempered glass that showered the driver the moment his head snapped violently backward from a bullet. Another lodged in his chest.
As the truck began to veer off, the gunner began to fire off his heavy-caliber weapon in response to fight or flight, forgetting about Farid’s welfare. Bullets raced along the ground marking a fast trail that smashed through the thin shale and caromed off the stones. Some of the bullets that ricocheted killed one child and destroyed the arm of Sister Kelly just below her left elbow, the arm hanging by tenuous strands of flesh that looked like rubber bands that were stretching to their limits. After pulling her loose arm close to her body, Sister Kelly began to go white with shock.
More bullets erupted from gun barrels as the second vehicle joined in, strafing the area which caused the Vatican Knights to duck and take cover.
And then the explosion—one so glorious it lifted both pickups off their wheels and sent them airborne with both vehicles somersaulting and casting off their occupants, and then landing as twisted debris.
The Strykers had arrived.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO
Sirens and klaxons blared outside the Apostolic Palace doors, adding to the confusion. People ran to all points of the compass to get away from the smoldering debris. But Raamiz’s team knew exactly where they were heading.
The corridors ran at right angles at the intersections opposite the Sistine Chapel, and in between the Belvedere and St. Damaso Courtyards. Nearing the residential quarters of the Palace the team divided, with Raamiz taking the corridor to the left, the other team to the right, in order not to be flanked and cornered as a single cell by the Swiss Guard.
The second group, led by a man named Pothen, headed his team toward the Belvedere Court where a security detail had established a post. There were six security officers, all armed with Glocks. When they saw the emergency techs approaching with high-end weapons, they immediately responded by taking aim and firing with no questions asked.
Rounds from both sides travers
ed the distance between them as the smell of gunpowder filled the air. Bullets smashed and peppered the walls and floor before finding their marks of bone and flesh.
Glocks against assault weapons was a mismatch as the bullets impacted with the members of the security detail who took hammer blows to their chests, face and neck. Gaping wounds opened up as the impacts knocked them off their feet and against the wall. And for those who were not killed in the firefight, those who tried to crawl off while leaving a ribbon of blood trailing in their wake, they were summarily executed with a quick bullet to the brain, as Pothen’s team pressed forward.
Taking the corridor to the hallway’s end and then taking a right at the L-shaped hallway, they were met by a highly trained unit of the Swiss Guard. Pothen’s unit was ready. But so were the Swiss Guards who were experts at marksmanship, all of them, a necessary prerequisite to serve at the Vatican as part of their private forces.
Bullet holes suddenly appeared in the foreheads of two of Pothen’s teammates, their bodies immediately going to the floor as boneless heaps. That left Pothen and one other, their weapons firing off quick bursts in retaliation with most shots going wild.
When Pothen took a hit to his shoulder he went to the ground, a round took his teammate in the throat with the shot severing his spine, which left Pothen alone.
As Pothen laid there feeling intense pain and agony, he knew that Paradise was but a thumb’s press away. As the Swiss Guard moved forward with weapons aimed and barking commands, Pothen laid his thumb on the detonator button, murmured something about the greatness of Allah, and pushed the button. Suddenly the corridor became the color of incredible brightness—a flash of intense white, then red—as his Semtex vest went off.
The guards were quickly engulfed within the flames and explosion as the power of the blast took out the walls and tossed the stones deep inside the Belvedere Courtyard. The hole in the wall was massively gaping and compromised the rest of the hallway’s structure. The few stone columns and pillars that continued to stand started to give under the stress of the overhead weight of unsupported floors.