Branca answered Ugo Troisi in kind: “Dextera Dei, how may I help you?”
“Today it is I who helps you. Is your scrambler engaged?”
“It is.”
Troisi hesitated for a beat, then said, “There have been...complications.”
“Please explain,” Branca urged his superior.
“Our temples in Massawa and in Addis Ababa have been raided. Bishops Sultan and Astatke are among the casualties. It can hardly be coincidence. Someone is seeking you and what you carry.”
“How can they find us,” Branca asked, “unless we are betrayed by someone in the fold?”
“In times like these,” Troisi said, “we must be doubly vigilant. Be prepared to fight at any moment, without warning.”
“We are ready,” Branca said, and meant it.
“If you find yourselves cut off and in a hopeless situation,” Troisi said, “use your own initiative in dealing with the object.”
Even on a scrambled line, he didn’t want to speak the word. In other circumstances Branca might have found that humorous, but not today.
“I understand, sir.”
“It must not be captured by the infidels.”
“I guarantee it,” Branca answered.
“With your life?”
“Yes, with my life.”
“May God protect you, Dei Legatus.”
“And you, Dextera Dei.”
Switching off the hiss of dead air in his ear, Branca considered the warning and orders. Of course his soldiers were ready to fight. Why else had he handpicked them for this mission? Only proved killers of the highest quality had been recruited for the team.
The problem, as he’d told Troisi, was betrayal from within. It seemed impossible to Branca that an enemy could track him overland through Europe without guidance from a traitor. Even guessing—knowing?—that his target was the Holy See, there were too many routes across the continent for any normal force to set a trap with confidence. They could defend the Vatican itself, or try to, with a wall of armored vehicles and guns, but what would that avail them in the face of God’s own wrath?
Only betrayal could undo him. And betrayal, God’s Lieutenant understood, could only come from certain individuals. One possibility, the topmost leadership of Custodes Foederis, seemed so unlikely as to be essentially impossible. That left the bishops who had helped him on his way, or who were scheduled to assist him in the future.
Two of those were dead, according to Troisi. Had they been compelled to speak before they died? Or was a traitor waiting to receive him somewhere on the winding road ahead?
His orders had been simple and explicit: “Be prepared to fight at any moment, without warning.”
And to execute a traitor, if it came to that. No mercy would be shown to anyone who broke faith with Almighty God. On earth, as in the fires of hell, their punishment would be severe.
His mission had to proceed to final victory.
The mission would proceed, no matter if he had to wade in blood from Istanbul to Rome.
Massawa International Airport
HALLORAN’S ASSESSMENT OF Eritrea’s second-largest airport had been accurate. The layout featured a small terminal and a single concrete runway, serving one commercial airline. Nasair could take you anywhere on earth—as long as you wanted to visit Asmara, Doha, Dubai, Jeddah, Khartoum or Nairobi. Beyond those destinations, forget it.
Fortunately, Halloran had also been correct in thinking that the airport harbored private pilots who would take on charter flights, no questions asked beyond the client’s destination and negotiation of a price. Their chosen pilot—one Ibrahim Abdella, owner-operator of a no-name, one-plane airline—quoted an outrageous price for flying two men and their bags to Alexandria and on from there to Istanbul, then bargained down to the equivalent of two years’ salary plus standard rates for fuel and “overhead.”
Before takeoff, a customs officer appeared, nosing around, and spoke with Abdella in a language Bolan took to be Tigrinya, since it clearly wasn’t Arabic or English. Smiling at his customers, Abdella named the cost of doing business at Massawa International and palmed another wad of Bolan’s cash. The customs officer departed with a smile, after he wished them bon voyage.
When it was just the three of them again, Abdella said, “We should be on our way, before his friends demand their own inspection fees.”
Airborne ten minutes later, they were winging over the Red Sea, skirting Sudanese air space and any potential contact with that troubled nation’s motley air force. Egypt was safer, Abdella explained, although officials at Alexandria’s Borg El Arab Airport would certainly demand the standard fees and taxes for arrival and departure on their way to Istanbul.
No problem, Bolan thought. His bankroll from D.C. was holding up so far, and he could always find more cash if it was necessary. Money was the least of their concerns, in fact.
What worried him was time.
The raiders who had taken whatever it was from Axum were ahead of Bolan, call it halfway to their target now. It seemed that they were traveling by land, presumably to keep from trundling their cargo through airport security time and again with the risks that entailed. Bolan was gaining on them, thanks at least in part to Halloran, but whether he could catch the team before they found their way to Rome was still an open question.
And if he got lucky...then what?
There’d been no survivors at the Chapel of the Tablet, leaving Bolan no idea as to the number of opponents he’d be dealing with, how they were armed, or any other vital matter. Then there was the question of the Ark itself. Assuming that it wasn’t just another tricked-up relic like the “yeti scalp” from Kathmandu he’d read about, which proved to be a phony stitched from goat’s hide, what was it? And what power might be caged inside it, other than the grip it held on some people’s minds?
Even Halloran, seemingly a true believer in the supernatural, stopped short of granting any special powers to the Ark. His fear involved the purely human actions of fanatics drawing inspiration from a symbol of divinity, the very terrorist attacks now being carried out worldwide by members of Custodes Foederis. Would recapturing the Ark—or, as a last resort, destroying it—stem the tide of violence the cult had unleashed?
Or was it all in vain?
Just focus on the job, Bolan thought. Don’t get distracted.
Words to live by, on a mission where just living had become a challenge in itself.
And at the end of days, it was the best that he or any other warrior could do.
Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building, Washington, D.C.
HAL BROGNOLA WAS on Google News, tracking the carnage as it spread, and feeling helpless in the face of so much violence. It wasn’t like a war with static battlefronts, or even a guerrilla conflict where the action was at least confined within a province or a given nation. Terrorism on this scale, propelled by pure religious hatred, was unprecedented in his personal experience.
Okay, the body count so far still hadn’t rivaled Oklahoma City, much less 9/11, but the dead and maimed were piling up. If things kept going as they were, Janus Marcellus and his acolytes might yet eclipse the older, more established groups that fought for a political objective, rather than a tenet of religious faith.
So far, as suited to the cult’s vitriolic propaganda, all the targets had been Roman Catholic, which didn’t mean that all the victims had been members of that faith. Machine-gun fire and shrapnel from explosives didn’t recognize or care whose flesh they shredded. Anyone within the line of fire was going down, with no exemptions based on age, sex, race or creed.
Unless somebody stopped the bastards cold.
So far, it wasn’t working. Law-enforcement agencies from New York City to Los Angeles, Montreal, Johannesburg and Adelaide had rounded up known leaders of the cult—it
s “bishops”—but the prisoners weren’t cracking, weren’t revealing anything. What violence? they asked, all injured innocence. What ark?
And still, the lone-wolf strikes went on. A man here or a woman there, with guns, grenades, Molotov cocktails—name your poison. Schools, churches and hospitals appeared to be the favored targets, but one Keeper in Illinois had shot up an Irish-themed bar, then doused himself in turpentine and struck a match as cops arrived. Eyewitnesses reported that his dying words were, “Fires of hell!”
Brognola wondered whether he was down there now, or if “down there” even existed in some parallel reality beyond the reach of scientists and all their instruments. It had been years since he’d given any thought to questions of an afterlife, but as his own time slowly dwindled, he was prone to think about it more and more.
Bolan had told him once, in passing, that if there was such a thing as Judgment Day, warriors would be examined for their scars, not for awards and commendations. Brognola himself had no idea what happened after death, beyond the obvious collapse, decomposition and the rest of it. He’d done some things he wasn’t proud of, granted, just like everybody else on earth, but if there was a judgment waiting, he believed he could defend most of his actions based on an objective code of right and wrong.
You helped defenseless people when they were beset by predators. If that meant killing, then you killed, without considering the legal niceties. The big Fed was prepared to stack his love of law and order against anybody else’s, but the system didn’t always work. Some evil shits had made themselves untouchable within the law, he knew, for all intents and purposes. To stop them and relieve the suffering of those they preyed upon, a person had to get down in the gutter with the scum and fight on their terms.
To the death.
His system wasn’t perfect, either, but it had an excellent success rate. And you couldn’t judge it by the fact that predators always waited to replace the ones you’d taken out. That was the nature of the human race, and barring some apocalypse or revelation that Brognola had no power to predict, it wouldn’t change.
Evil, from what he’d seen so far in life, appeared to be immortal. But the men and women who advanced its cause were not. They bled and died the same as saints. And that was where the Executioner came in.
This time, Brognola hoped he hadn’t come too late.
Custodes Foederis Headquarters, Rome
SOFT MUSIC WITH a vaguely Far Eastern air played from concealed speakers in the private apartment of Queen Mother Mania Justina. She lay nude atop sheets of Egyptian cotton, sprawled across a bed that was, appropriately, queen-size. Stretched out at her side, Ugo Troisi used his hand to trace aimless teasing patterns on her flat, tan stomach.
“If he saw us now,” Mania said, “what do you think he’d do?”
“Who knows?” Troisi answered, though a number of unpleasant possibilities came instantly to mind. “If we were...well...I’d never shunt you off to sleep alone this way.”
She stretched beneath the ministration of his hand. “He needs his privacy to meditate. And frankly, as you may have noticed, so do I.”
Troisi wondered whether that would qualify as blasphemy, not as a reference to her husband, but the Lord and Master of them all. The lines between permissible behavior and a violation of the Keepers’ code were prone to blurring. Any way he thought about it, though, bedding the sect’s Reginae Matris was a mortal sin and capital offense.
Then I am damned, Troisi thought. So be it.
“We could leave together,” he suggested, and was startled that he’d dared to speak the thought aloud.
“Leave?” she repeated, as if he had used a word she didn’t recognize. “All this? You don’t know where I’ve come from, Ugo. How it was for all those years before he saved me from myself.”
Troisi blinked at that. “Saved you?”
“Of course! He’s saved us all, don’t you agree? You must, Ugo. You are his right hand, after all.”
“That’s just a title, Mania. And it’s Right Hand of God, not any certain man.”
“But you’ll admit he has a godlike quality about him, eh? How else could he influence thousands as he does? And now, with victory before us... Ugo, I couldn’t consider leaving under any circumstances. It would cast me into outer darkness. I’d lose everything!”
“Not everything,” he said. “I’m hardly destitute. And you’d have love.”
“I have that now,” she said, and gripped his hand to guide it. “Yes. Right there.”
Hardly conscious of his fingers moving, Troisi said, “You still believe he loves you?”
“Absolutely. Why else would he name me as his queen?” She gave a little gasp before adding, “Slower, please.”
Troisi dared not tell her that he had misgivings, secret fears that something would go wrong. The Ark would fail them, or, worse yet, backfire and kill them all for daring to disturb it. He couldn’t confess a lapse in faith. If she tired of him or turned against him for whatever reason, he’d have placed a lethal weapon in her hands.
Mania purred and arched her back, brought both hands down to trap his own and guide it. “Here,” she said. “Like this. Ooh, yes!” One hand released his wrist, rummaged between his thighs, cupping him. “Ugo? Is something wrong?”
“No, no,” he said. Perhaps too quickly? “But the first two times...”
She laughed. “Perhaps I need a younger consort, eh?” Her hand released his flaccid manhood, came to rest atop his head and pushed him toward the juncture of her open legs. “No matter. You will think of something else, I’m sure.”
Troisi did. And as he worked, Mania’s moans rising to breathless cries of pleasure, he was thinking all the time about his future and the possibility that he had made a very dangerous mistake.
Borg El Arab Airport, Egypt
MACK BOLAN’S FIRST impression of the airport, situated twenty-five miles southwest of Alexandria, was that it needed work. In fact, construction was ongoing and expected to be finished by year’s end, expanding from the airport’s roughly boat-shaped, three-story passenger terminal and administration building. With Alexandria International Airport’s having closed for remodeling in December 2011, Borg El Arab was—however briefly—the region’s principal airport, with a capacity for handling one million passengers per year.
If he’d been hungry, Bolan could have ducked inside the terminal and patronized the food court, but he didn’t plan to hang around that long. Ibrahim Abdella had already greased the necessary palms, and now was supervising the refueling of his aircraft. No inspection had been necessary once the bribes were paid, and they should soon be on their way to Istanbul.
Beyond that, Bolan couldn’t say.
The soldier had made several visits to Turkey, a land where East literally met West at the Turkish Straits, a geographical dividing line between Europe and Asia. The country itself was divided along that same line, with East Thrace—also known as European Turkey—to the west, and Anatolia, or Asia Minor, to the east, home to the fabled city of Troy.
Unlike the Spartans, who had come before him, Bolan didn’t plan on laying siege to anything. His style was very different, the classic hit-and-git, employing tactics that the media had lately labeled “shock and awe.” Bolan hadn’t required a name for it when he began his lonely war against the Mafia, since he was issuing no press releases, and he didn’t care what television pundits called it now. It worked, and that was all that mattered to a warrior on the firing line.
His prior experience with Turks had taught him that they were a proud and stubborn people, fierce in battle, quick to take offense and slow to make amends. Once he and Halloran began their Turkish blitz, there’d be no room for hesitation, second-guessing or retreat. If Halloran could lead him to the Temple of the Resurrection, he would treat it just like any other target. A facade of faith disguising malice
and aggression rated no consideration from the Executioner.
“Ready!” their pilot called, and Bolan walked back to the plane, perfectly at ease within his priestly garb, black jacket large enough to hide the shoulder rig he wore underneath his arm. Bolan had never preached a sermon in his life, but he could dish out hellfire with the best of them.
This was the edgy time, when they were seated, buckled in and had begun to taxi toward the airport’s single asphalt runway. Anything could happen at the final instant prior to takeoff: a denial of permission from the tower, soldiers or police racing to meet them in official vehicles, even a blowout that would send them cartwheeling to fiery death.
But nothing happened, and a moment later they were airborne once again, with less than seven hundred miles remaining on the last leg of their journey out of Africa and into Europe. While remaining in the same time zone—no jet lag to concern them—they were leaving one culture behind and soon would be immersed in yet another.
Not that it made any difference.
Bolan’s assignment and his enemy remained the same. As always, right. When it came down to hunting human predators, he had found that there was nothing new under the sun.
Temple of the Resurrection, Çorlu, Turkey
BISHOP MEHMET AKDEMIR surveyed the stock of groceries that had been purchased for his expected visitors, satisfied that there would be enough to feed fifteen with no one going hungry. As for wine, he had enough to keep a village tipsy for a week, but he supposed the travelers would limit their intake of alcohol. They still had far to go, with deadly peril waiting at the end of their heroic quest.
And following them, too, as Akdemir had learned through warnings from the Sedem Illustratio. Already, infidels had struck at temples in Addis Ababa and Massawa, indicating knowledge of the path Dei Legatus and his soldiers were pursuing with the mighty weapon in their custody. Would enemies target Mehmet’s Temple of the Resurrection next?
If so, they would be in for a surprise.
Despite Turkey’s restrictive firearms legislation—banning civilian possession of automatic or semiautomatic weapons, permitting ownership of other guns to persons who had reached the age of twenty-one, with licensing dependent on a demonstrated need—the temple had acquired a decent arsenal of small arms used by Turkish military forces: Heckler & Koch G3A7 battle rifles, M4A1 carbines, MP-5 submachine guns, and Yavuz 16 semiautomatic pistols—the classic Beretta 92, produced under license by Turkey’s Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation. When trouble came, as it was bound to do during the Final Days, Bishop Akdemir’s parishioners were well prepared.
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