Apocalypse Ark

by Don Pendleton

  Bolan considered that. Suppose the Ark or whatever it was had been inside the burned-out van at Giardini Naxos. Say, one of the Keepers guarding it had managed to escape the ambush and report the mission’s failure. Bolan’s job was to prevent the Ark from reaching Rome, not chase a straggler or two around the countryside after his target was destroyed.

  “Coordinates for where they called from?” Bolan asked. Kurtzman replied with digits he could use to find the spot by GPS.

  “Okay, thanks,” the soldier said. “If you find out any more—”

  “I’ll be in touch. So long.”

  He turned, found Halloran just closing up his cell phone. “Someone in my prefect’s office called a friend with the police. It’s not official yet, but he was told that officers found nothing in the van like stolen icons or objets d’art. That’s the cover, incidentally. A theft of gold and art belonging to the Church.”

  “No Ark, then.”

  “No. Nothing even close.”

  Bolan relayed his news from Stony Man, closing with, “So they’re still in motion. Or at least they got away from here. I can’t say why they stopped to make their last call, or how long they stayed at the coordinates we have.”

  “Some damage to their vehicles, perhaps,” Halloran suggested. “If they’re disabled, they may still be trying to procure replacements.”

  “Giving us a chance to catch them,” Bolan said. “Let’s roll. We’re burning daylight.”

  “Burning—?”

  “Never mind,” Bolan said. “I was channeling John Wayne.”

  “Ah, yes. The Shootist.”

  “Close enough.”

  Another moment found them burning up the A18, their vehicle’s 1.4-liter turbo multiair engine pushing the hatchback from zero to one hundred kilometers per hour in seven seconds flat. Bolan programmed the dashboard GPS device to home on the coordinates that Kurtzman had provided, then sat back to watch the countryside stream past his window, keeping one eye on the mirror for police.

  Was it too much to hope that unknown enemies might stall the Ark in Sicily and let him overtake it there, a safe three hundred miles and change from Rome? It seemed unlikely, given all that Bolan and Halloran had endured so far, but he was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth if opportunities arose to make a tough job easier.

  And if the Ark had already moved on, at least he knew where it was going, and he had a spotty means of tracking it, dependent on who used the sat phone Stony Man had monitored.

  It wasn’t much, but he had worked with less.

  And told himself that this should be enough.

  Taormina, Sicily

  THE HARDEST PART of switching vehicles—and the most dangerous—was moving the Ark from its old van to a newer Volkswagen Transporter with blacked-out windows on the sides and at the rear. Claudio Branca balked at letting any of their escorts help shift it, fearing that some inappropriate behavior might force him to kill them, or worse yet, set off a chain reaction that would leave them all reduced to smoking piles of ash. He wasted precious time convincing Nino Riccobono that his men should move away and keep their eyes averted while the Ark was being moved, demands that virtually guaranteed they would attempt to peek at it when Branca’s back was turned.

  At last the job was done and they were ready to depart in fresh, undamaged vehicles. The drivers who’d delivered them would take the other van and cars somewhere, to have them fixed or just dispose of. It made no difference to Branca, but he wondered whether any residue of the divine remained inside the old van to surprise the mafiosi who’d be moving it.

  It was no longer Branca’s problem. When the wrath of God was finally unleashed, all infidels and sinners would be punished in His own good time. What difference did one pathetic gangster, more or less, make in the cosmic scheme of things?

  Half of their Sicilian journey was behind them now. Another thirty-five kilometers remained before they reached the next toll barrier south of Messina, and their escorts would be leaving them there, making certain that they weren’t followed or harassed while waiting for the ferry to Villa San Giovanni on the mainland. Whatever happened after that was in God’s hands—and Branca’s, too. He wouldn’t trust in faith alone, if fighting was required to bring on the Apocalypse and Second Coming.

  It pleased him in a strange way, knowing that the vast majority of people inhabiting the world might think he was insane, but Branca reckoned he would have the last laugh when they realized their fatal, irrevocable mistake. How stunned and terrified they would be on that day, summoned for battle unprepared, against a righteous host whose victory was guaranteed by scripture.

  Branca knew he might not live to see that day in mortal form, knew that his flesh and bone might be consumed at the unveiling of the Ark, and he was ready for that sacrifice. Although some might believe he was offending God by using the Ark as a weapon, revelations granted to Janus Marcellus assured Branca of his just reward. He silently pronounced the verse from 1 Corinthians 15: O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

  This time tomorrow, maybe sooner, Branca would be a hero—or a martyr—for the ages. One way or another, he would be remembered and rewarded on the Day of Reckoning.

  And any sinners who opposed him would go down like weeds before a scythe, their broken bodies trampled underfoot.

  Branca wondered if the other Keepers were prepared, if those selected from the temples overseas had done their part. He hoped so, but if they had failed for any reason, it didn’t affect his mission or its outcome. He and his men had overcome all obstacles so far and were proceeding toward their final goal. The world would ultimately know their names and marvel at their bravery.

  Before it all burned down.

  Furci Siculo, Sicily

  TWO WEEKS IN HIDING, now this. Cosimo Di Lauro hated rude surprises, but the thing he hated worst of all was being called out on a rush job without knowing all the necessary details. Like the great emergency he’d been asked to handle, scrambling to gather weapons, load them in the car and tear away from Pagliara, their safe haven, on a moment’s notice.

  For two weeks, going on a third, they’d been staked out in the commune southwest of Messina, waiting for their target—Don Adolfo di Mazzanti of the Corleonesi clan—to show himself. Invulnerable on his home ground, as the last four teams of camorristi had discovered to their sorrow, di Mazzanti had a weakness by the name of Gloria Kanakis, an aspiring model whose career the mafioso was “assisting.” Even so, she wouldn’t live with him in Corleone, insisting that they stay out of the public eye and enjoy their monthly visits in her modest hometown.

  It may have rankled Don Adolfo or amused him. Who could say? With time and patience, it would certainly have killed him, but the chance was lost now, thanks to the great emergency that had flushed Di Lauro’s team from hiding.

  And for what?

  A group of fellow camorristi had been slaughtered in a firefight with some mafiosi at Giardini Naxos. Now Di Lauro and his four men had been ordered to pursue and punish the offenders. Five men, chasing unknown numbers, who had killed six of his fellow napoletani already.

  Madness? Possibly. But when an order was received...

  At least, Di Lauro thought, they were well armed, including an RPG-7 antitank weapon for stopping Don Adolfo’s armored limousine. Once they had cracked it open like a sardine can, their backup weapons would have proved effective: three 5.56 mm Beretta ARX 160 assault rifles, two Uzi submachine guns and various personal sidearms. More than enough for one old mafioso and three or four bodyguards.

  But for a larger force? Who knew?

  “How many of them did you say there are?” Patricio Zaza asked.

  “I didn’t say,” Di Lauro replied.

  “Well then?”

  “You know what I know. A shooting. Six of our brothers dead. It calls fo
r a response.”

  “Not like this.”

  “Oh, no?” Di Lauro said. “Why don’t you call up Don Cesare, then, and tell him that. Tell him that you’re unhappy with his orders, eh?”

  That silenced Zaza, but it didn’t make the others happy, nor did it relieve Di Lauro’s own anxiety. It was a half-assed order, any way you looked at it, but they were still required to follow through and carry out the task.

  Or die in the attempt.

  “Do you at least know what we’re looking for?”

  “Something in a cargo van, with escort vehicles,” Di Lauro said. “Don’t ask how many. I have no idea.”

  “Should we just take out the first van that we see?” Pupetta Mallardo interjected.

  “The first with mafiosi guarding it,” Di Lauro answered. “Can you tell the difference?”

  “I hope so.”

  “So do I,” Di Lauro said. “You’ve staked your life on it.”

  And that was true for all of them. They were on hostile ground, diverted from the job they’d come to do, and sent into the field to find—and then annihilate—a killer team of unknown size. It was ridiculous, but Cosimo Di Lauro didn’t call the shots. He simply pulled the trigger.

  And this day he would be hoping that he got it right the first time, for there’d be no second chance.

  Taormina

  AARON KURTZMAN’S GPS coordinates led Bolan to a farmhouse south of town. Halloran drove past once, then doubled back, with no waiting vehicles in evidence. Preferring not to waste more time on parking, hiking overland and trying to surprise their quarry in broad daylight, Bolan told the brother they ought to drive straight in, ready to fight, and see what happened.

  The answer: nothing. They had come too late.

  Cars had been here, and recently, according to the many overlapping tire tracks. Bolan guessed the Keepers and whatever escorts they’d acquired had stopped to swap out damaged cars for others that wouldn’t attract undue attention on the highway. In support of his hypothesis, he noted scattered pills of safety glass that might have dropped from window frames as doors were opened and reclosed.

  Not proof, but close enough.

  “We’ve missed them,” Halloran said, stating the obvious.

  “Probably with new wheels,” Bolan said. “It isn’t likely they’d have prearranged for backup cars, so they’d have lost time calling out and waiting for delivery.”

  “There’s still a chance, then.”

  “As long as we get moving in a hurry.”

  And they did. Halloran still wanted to drive, and Bolan didn’t argue. He’d been doing fine so far and showed no signs of perilous fatigue. With less than twenty miles to go before they reached Messina, and their targets still somewhere ahead, Bolan couldn’t see his driver dozing off behind the wheel.

  It was a true race now, to overtake their quarry without carrying the fight into Messina, Sicily’s third-largest city and home to a quarter-million year-round residents. Toss in five million tourists visiting Messina each year, en route to the offshore Aeolian Islands, and you’d have a recipe for disaster if a firefight erupted in the streets.

  But would they have a choice?

  “My phone,” Halloran said, in explanation of a muffled humming from one of his pockets. He answered with his surname, listened for the best part of a minute, then said “Grazie” as he cut the link. To Bolan he stated, “The dead men back at Giardini Naxos were camorristi.”

  “Feuding with the Mafia as usual,” Bolan suggested.

  “And forewarned somehow about the convoy,” Halloran replied.

  It wasn’t hard to figure that one out. Crime families, by definition, were conspiratorial, simmering hotbeds of intrigue. Supplying information to an adversary would mean execution for a member of a Mafia Family, but that wouldn’t stop some greedy mobster from cashing in when opportunities arose, if he could hide his tracks effectively. Somebody heard about a shipment passing through and dropped a dime—or maybe let it slip in pillow talk to an unreliable mistress. Whatever, the leak led to scheming, and later to killing. The story was almost routine.

  And if one group of camorristi knew about the convoy, if they’d died trying to hijack what it carried, would a backup team be standing by? That might be helpful, slowing the targets Bolan sought, but on the flips side of that coin was a potential second massacre. How many times could mobsters clash in public places without claiming innocent lives?

  And would an intervention by the Executioner make matters worse?

  On top of that, there was the ferry schedule Halloran had checked on his cell phone. Two separate companies—the government-run Ferrovie dello Stato, and the privately owned Caronte & Tourist line—made a total of forty-three crossings per day from Messina to Villa San Giovanni. If their timing was right, and Bolan got snarled up in town, the Keepers could be seaborne again before he ever caught a glimpse of them.

  “Does this rig go any faster?” he asked.

  “I think it might,” Halloran replied, and pressed the pedal to the floor.

  Roccalumera, Sicily

  CLAUDIO BRANCA, RIDING shotgun in the new van, with a guidebook open on his lap, knew they were roughly seventeen miles southwest of Messina. Rolling into town along the A18, they passed a white rectangular sign informing them that Roccalumera’s population stood at 4,145. A beach slid past, to Branca’s right, and cruise ships that resembled great hotels set afloat. The town’s main street had shops and homes, mostly two-story, painted in a wide range of contrasting colors, the commercial windows topped by metal screens that could be drawn down overnight. On hills behind the downtown district, larger, mostly older buildings looked down on the peasant class with fine disdain.

  All typical of towns whose history had been submerged and lost while its inhabitants toadied to foreigners on holiday. Branca regarded all the frenzied chasing after euros with contempt, the worship of Mammon elevated almost to an art form, making him more glad than ever for his part in bringing on the Final Days. The people passing in their cars, on bicycles, afoot, would likely never know his name, much less his role in speeding up their march to hell, and that was fine. Branca served his Lord and Savior, not the masses of a world mired in corruption.

  His escorts, minions of that reeking cesspit world, had served him well enough so far, but he would soon be parting company with them, once they were safely in Messina. From there on—

  “Son of a bitch!” Branca’s driver blurted out the curse as something roared across the open ground in front of them to strike the point car filled with mafiosi. A fireball, detonating as it struck the vehicle and peeled its hood back, drove the engine back into the laps of the startled front-seat occupants, then set the fuel tank off in roiling waves of flame.

  “A rocket!” Branca snapped. “Drive on around the wreckage, quickly!”

  As the van accelerated, lurching, Branca snatched his cell phone from its holster on his belt and keyed a single speed-dial number that would reach phones in his two remaining cars. In each, one of his soldiers answered, Branca speaking over them, issuing orders.

  “Leave the escorts! Let them do the fighting! Hurry and catch up with us!”

  “Affirmative,” Elio Fontana answered, from the nearer of the cars.

  “Right!” Michele Sansovino said from the other.

  Passing the point car, all in flames, Branca spared a quick glance for its passengers, trapped in their seats, already blackened by the fire. Behind them, as his other soldiers broke formation to pursue the van, Branca saw gunmen on both shoulders of the highway, no great number of them, but with automatic weapons blazing. Whether the surviving escorts understood what Branca had in mind or not, their vehicles were slowing, swerving and returning fire.

  Buying the time that Branca needed to escape.

  “Hurry!” he commanded.
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  “This thing isn’t built for racing,” Arieti, his driver, answered through clenched teeth. “We’ve hit its top speed now.”

  “Do better, for the love of God!”

  “You think He’ll give us more horsepower?”

  “Drive! Don’t blaspheme!”

  “Mea culpa,” Arieti said, cutting a quick glance toward his mirror. “Do you see? They’re catching hell back there.”

  “A little early, then,” Branca replied. “See to it that we don’t wind up along with them.”

  Santa Teresa di Riva, Sicily

  THE VILLAGE CAME and went almost before it had a chance to register in Bolan’s mind, another place where they wouldn’t be stopping to admire the scenery. Nine miles past Taormina, they were burning up the highway, racing on ahead toward—what? Another disappointment? Or the culmination of their long pursuit?

  It would depend on how long Bolan’s targets had been stalled in picking up replacement vehicles for those shot up in Giardini Naxos, and perhaps on whether they had suffered any casualties. They couldn’t stop to bury any corpses, obviously, but they wouldn’t want to drag their dead aboard a ferry to the mainland, either. Any small delay would play in Bolan’s favor now, against his enemies.

  Halloran’s lips were moving silently, praying perhaps, which couldn’t hurt as long as he kept both eyes on the road ahead. Bolan watched out behind them, with his mirror, constantly alert for flashing lights or any other indicators of pursuit. Aside from cops, there was a possibility of mafiosi on patrol, after their clash with the Camorra, looking out for other trespassers and seeking payback. Bolan didn’t want to get caught up in that game, but he was prepared for anything the highway threw at them from this point on.

  To play it safe, he placed another sat phone call to Stony Man and got through to Kurtzman. “Too late on those coordinates,” he said. “Looks like they traded cars and kept on going.”

  “Figures,” Kurtzman said. “Unfortunately, there’s been no more action on the phone since we got our last fix.”