Apocalypse Ark

by Don Pendleton

  “Okay. What kind of preparations are they making on the mainland?” Bolan asked.

  “Low-key, but thorough. Nothing’s leaked yet to the mainstream media. Word’s out along the fringe, but there’s a lag in publication for the loopy newsletters. Some rumblings on the web, a few occult and paranormal sites, but nothing that’s created any public agitation. Well, besides the various attacks worldwide, of course.”

  “Still going on?” Bolan asked.

  “Two more, so far,” Kurtzman replied. “Some kind of chemical-biological warfare agent was released at a cathedral in Caracas. Seven dead, the last I heard, with something like a hundred more exposed. The Center for Disease Control has got people flying down to check it out, hoping it’s not ebola or whatever.”

  “And the other?”

  “Lisbon,” Kurtzman said. “A screwball with a bag of automatic weapons crashed the installation ceremony for their new archbishop. The Public Security Police acknowledge thirteen dead, but they’re still counting.”

  “Okay, thanks. If you get any action on that phone—”

  “You’ll be the first to know,” Kurtzman said.

  “Two more attacks,” Bolan told Halloran, when he’d switched off the sat phone. “Lisbon and Caracas.”

  “I’ve been wondering if it will end, after we’ve stopped the Ark from reaching Rome.”

  Still thinking positively, not suggesting they might fail.

  “I couldn’t tell you what they’re thinking,” Bolan said. “It’s more your area than mine.”

  “I understand their hatred of the Church,” Halloran said. “But as for calculating what they may do next—”

  His cell phone hummed again, cut off whatever Halloran had meant to say. He answered, listened briefly, then clicked off, turning to Bolan with a stark expression on his face.

  “There’s been another ambush,” he reported. “Just ahead of us, in a town called Roccalumera.”

  “Says who?”

  “We have our eyes and ears,” Halloran said.

  “All right,” the Executioner replied. “What are we waiting for?”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Roccalumera

  Another scene of carnage, but they nearly beat the cops this time. One car was on the scene—a blue-and-white Alfa Romeo 159 “Panther”—with two dazed-looking highway patrolmen surveying the battleground. They couldn’t keep the rubberneckers back, some of them literally walking through the blood that pooled on concrete and asphalt, already starting to dry in the afternoon’s heat.

  To Bolan’s practiced eye, it seemed the fight had been a brief one, but ferocious. Someone had to have taken out the lead car with a rocket or grenade launcher, since its front end was crumpled with no evidence of a collision, and the rest was a burned-out hulk. Three other cars were shot to hell with automatic fire, the patterns unmistakable, their occupants and drivers either still inside or sprawled where they had gone down fighting in the street. On both sides of the road, stray rounds had shattered windows, scarred the walls of shops and punctured cars that had been parked before the shooting started.

  Bolan counted bodies as they passed, came up with twelve and knew he could have missed a couple with the cars and gawkers in his way. The dead all looked like standard-issue mafiosi, but although he’d never seen the Axum crew—wouldn’t have known them if they crossed the street in front of him right now, in fact—one thing stuck in his mind.

  “No van, and they had to have had one,” he said.

  “They got away somehow,” Halloran agreed. “Despite all this.”

  “Unless you think the Ark could fit inside one of these cars.”

  “No, no. According to the measurements from scripture—”

  “That’s the real ark,” Bolan interrupted. “We don’t know what they might be carrying, in fact.”

  “It still required a van at Axum,” Halloran replied. “I think we must assume that they’ve escaped.”

  “No point in loitering around here, then.”

  “Agreed.”

  Whoever had arranged the ambush, it had failed—at least, to the extent of hijacking the convoy’s cargo. Bolan didn’t know if any Keepers had been killed or wounded in the firefight, and it didn’t seem to matter if the Ark was rolling on toward Rome. Camorra, Mafia, what difference did it make? Whether his quarry’s numbers had been whittled down or not, the team was still in play. Still carrying their so-called mystic weapon toward ground zero at the Vatican.

  There had been moments during the pursuit when Bolan thought the whole thing was ridiculous, a waste of time. Assuming that the Ark was mythical, maybe some pseudorelic fabricated by the church in Axum to increase its own prestige, why shouldn’t he stand back and let the final act play out in Rome? There’d be enough Swiss Guards, caribinieri and police on hand to smother any normal threat, with force to spare.

  Why not?

  Because he couldn’t say it was a fake for sure.

  Forget about the wrath of God erupting from an ancient wooden chest like something on the SyFy Channel. You could find blueprints for the construction of a suitcase nuke online these days, or purchase deadly toxins with a minimum of difficulty if you managed to acquire—or forge—a research license. Others could be cooked up in a simple lab at home, again, using directions from the internet. Weapons of mass destruction had eluded searchers in Iraq, but they might well be lurking in suburbia.

  Or in a van, en route to Rome.

  That was the reason Bolan couldn’t quit, stand back and treat Custodes Foederis as a pack of harmless loons. Their lone-wolf strikes in recent days had proved the cult’s propensity for mayhem against Roman Catholics. He couldn’t take for granted that their final grandstand play would be a flop.

  Unless the Executioner was there to bring the curtain down.

  Messina, Sicily

  “WE COULD GET lost here,” Franco Arieti said, steering the van through traffic along Via Giuseppe La Farina, toward the waterfront.

  “That’s the idea,” Branca said. “As long as we know where we’re going, eh?”

  “The other car’s still with us,” Arieti said.

  One out of two, that was. The other had been damaged in the second ambush. Only slightly, and it was still operable, but they couldn’t risk driving a vehicle with bullet holes around Messina, much less taking it aboard a ferry. Six men occupied the trailing car now, the remainder of their party packed into the van and trying not to touch the Ark, which they’d covered with a mover’s blanket.

  “It’s a miracle that any of us made it,” Enzo Vanvitelli chimed in from the rear.

  Instead of adding an amen, Branca told Arieti, “We must catch the first ferry available. You understand?”

  “I understood the first four times you told me,” Franco answered.

  “Nobody likes backtalk,” Branca warned him.

  “Excuse me.”

  “Forget it. We all have a case of the nerves, eh? And still far to go.”

  Far indeed. Another 450 miles from Villa San Giovanni to Rome, once they had made the ferry crossing from Messina. That included passage through Naples, the heart of Camorra territory, but Branca thought they should be safe enough without a crew of mafiosi in attendance, setting off alarms. In retrospect, he cursed himself for the decision to hire gangland escorts for the Sicilian leg of their journey, but it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

  And nearly ruined them when it went bad. Not once, but twice. Perhaps it was a miracle that they had managed to survive.

  Well, most of them. He still regretted losing Rocco Conte in the first attack, being compelled to personally end his suffering. The other wounded member of their team, Romano Craxi, was more fortunate. The round that pierced his arm hadn’t disabled him to any serious degree, though he would have to fig
ht one-handed if they met more enemies along the way.

  And that was still a possibility, Branca admitted to himself. Aside from any opposition they might face in Rome, the same pursuers who had dogged their tracks from Africa to Greece might still be following them, momentarily forgotten in the midst of the Sicilian madness.

  My mistake, he thought, but not a fatal one.

  Not yet.

  Branca considered that the camorristi might have phoned ahead with a description of their vehicles, posing another threat before they got to Rome, but he would have to deal with that problem when it arose. If it arose. Their mission, at its root, was based on faith: in God, in Janus Marcellus and Mania Justina, in the creed of Custodes Foederis. If that faith meant anything, had any basis in reality, there was a point where Branca had to trust his Lord for help with problems that exceeded his own capacity to cope.

  And then what? Lightning bolts out of a clear sky, striking down his enemies? It seemed preposterous, but so did much of scripture, to the nonbeliever. If the Lord had truly chosen Branca and his men to save the world, why wouldn’t He protect them on the road to Rome? Or would each mile still ahead be yet another test of Branca’s faith and fortitude?

  If so, he was determined not to fail.

  Custodes Foederis Headquarters, Rome

  JANUS MARCELLUS WATCHED grim images unfolding on Rai News, updating the reports of bloodshed from the killing grounds of Sicily. He normally wouldn’t have spent ten seconds studying the mayhem between rival gangsters, but this violence was a result of his advice—his order, if the truth be told—to Claudio Branca.

  Granted, he had been advised in turn, by Mania and Ugo Troisi, both Sicilians, that the Mafia could be of service in their time of need. Now, that had nearly blown up in his face, complete disaster foiled only by Branca’s quick wits under fire. And Janus Marcellus wondered if the bad advice he’d taken might have been deliberate, a means of undercutting him and his authority, for reasons that he didn’t fully understand.

  His first report from Marco Gianotti had revealed no solid evidence of treason within the Concilium. But what did that prove? Was he growing paranoid as they approached the Final Days, or was he right to think that something evil and corrupt had taken root beneath his very nose? It wasn’t something that he wanted to believe of Mania, or Ugo Troisi, or his other close advisers, but Marcellus knew from history that every prophet had a Judas waiting to betray him.

  Sometimes more than one.

  From Sicily, the news broadcast jumped to Caracas, then to Prague, where Marcellus had unleashed God’s wrath against the Scarlet Whore of Babylon. He wasn’t claiming credit for the raids—not yet, at least—but a contact with the Guardia di Finanza had warned him of questions raised and scrutiny directed toward his church. Why not, when he’d been so outspoken in condemning every aspect of the papacy?

  In this case, as it happened, the suspicions were correct. But proving it would still take time, and that was a commodity his foes didn’t possess. It commonly took weeks, or months, to build a case that might succeed in court, but only hours now remained before his soldiers brought the enemy’s corrupt house tumbling down in ruins. When the smoke cleared, nothing would remain of his opponents but an ugly, fading memory.

  A rapping on his office door distracted Marcellus from his train of thought. “Enter!” he called out, relieved to see that it was Marco Gianotti on his threshold, carrying a briefcase.

  “Pontifex,” Gianotti said with a quick dip of his head.

  “What news from your investigation?”

  “Nothing yet, Your Grace.”

  “Nothing?”

  “It’s early yet, Your Grace. Traitors don’t expose themselves on any certain schedule. Duplicity demands a certain level of discretion, and—”

  “You have transcripts for me?”

  “Yes, Your Grace.” Setting the briefcase on an ornamental table, Gianotti opened it, removed a sheaf of documents and handed them to Janus. “Conversations between Ugo and his aides on the Concilium. Nothing I deemed to be incriminating.”

  “I shall be the judge of that.”

  “Of course, Your Grace.”

  “And you’re prepared to act at once, if I find something that you’ve missed?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Riffling quickly through the transcripts, barely skimming, Marcellus said, “I don’t see anything pertaining to my wife.”

  “No, sir. I didn’t understand your order for surveillance to include the Queen Mother.”

  “Quite so. But I thought...” Marcellus caught himself, paused, then said, “Never mind. We’re close now, Marco. I can feel it.”

  “As do I, Your Grace.”

  Their eyes met for a moment. There was nothing there except devotion and obedience, as far as Marcellus could discover. Could he be mistaken, even now?

  No, surely not.

  “We’ll speak again when you have something more for me,” he said. “Leave these with me for now.”

  A final bow from Gianotti as he left, and Marcellus sat at his desk, the transcripts stacked before him. He would read each one in turn, dissecting them until he found his Judas hiding there, perhaps between the printed lines.

  And when he knew the traitor’s name, his vengeance would be merciless.

  Messina Toll Barrier, Autostrada A18

  BOLAN WAS READY for trouble as they rolled up to Toll Gate 1 on the southern outskirts of Messina. Any soldier—or dedicated filmgoer, for that matter—could tell you that highway toll gates and construction sites made ideal ambush points, with traffic bottlenecked and slowed down to a crawl. And if police had laid the trap, it made things even worse, since Bolan’s vow prevented him from fighting back.

  It hadn’t come to that, so far, but he’d wondered more than once how it would feel. Facing a wall of guns intent on killing him, with no intention of resisting. Would he act in self-defense, reflexively, before he even recognized his killers as police? If they were plainclothes officers who didn’t bother to announce themselves, how would he even know?

  The question wasn’t tested this time, as the jowly, middle-aged attendant in the toll booth palmed Halloran’s money and muttered, “Buongiorno” with something less than conviction. They passed through the gate, mounted cameras tracking their progress, but no one attempted to stop them.

  The A18 split off at that point, becoming the A20, looping westward toward Palermo. They continued on a new branch of the E45/E90, locally named Via Giuseppe La Farina, passing through Messina’s southern suburbs, making their way toward downtown and the waterfront beyond. To their right lay railroad tracks and industrial wasteland, beyond that the sparkling blue Strait of Messina. To their left and dead ahead, the city was unfolding for them, welcoming two unexpected visitors as it had welcomed countless others in times past.

  Messina, Bolan knew from high school history, had seen its share of battles, from the Punic Wars of Rome and Carthage through Spanish invasion, civil war that liberated and united Italy, on through the Second World War. It had been shelled and bombed, demolished by successive earthquakes and ravaged by plagues. Always, it survived and rose again, celebrating its endurance through construction of elaborate cathedrals, fountains, botanical gardens and other landmarks that drew tourists from around the globe.

  Bolan wasn’t a tourist, but he recognized both the beauty of his surroundings and the irony of his circumstances. Traveling incessantly, he’d seen the world and then some, but he had to stop and think about it to recall a time when he’d gone anywhere for pleasure, to relax, simply take in the local sights. How many years ago had that been? During some high school vacation? On a fleeting hitch of R & R between campaigns? Messina had his full attention now, but as a warrior, not an idle traveler on vacation.

  Halloran broke the silence as they were crossing Via Santa Cecilia, n
orthbound, swept along by humming traffic. “The ferries we want dock along Piazzale Don Blasco,” he said. “From there, they sail to Villa San Giovanni in Reggio Calabria.”

  “We may still be in time,” Bolan said, but he wasn’t hopeful. Thousands of passengers and hundreds of vehicles rode those ferries each day, back and forth. So far, he knew only that they were looking for a van, and perhaps one or more escort cars, occupied by men they’d never seen or even heard described. All armed, of course, and ready for a fight if they were challenged on the crowded docks, or even on the ship at sea.

  Piazzale Don Blasco, Messina

  FERRIES DEPARTED FROM Messina to Villa San Giovanni every twenty minutes, on average, between 12:30 a.m. and 10:30 p.m. Overnight, the gap between sailings extended to forty minutes. Those schedules precluded any serious screening of passengers or vehicles as they boarded the large ships, and since Sicily was an autonomous region of Italy, no customs searches were conducted without warrants or probable cause to suspect contraband in transit.

  Waiting to board was the hardest part for Claudio Branca. He had brought the Ark this far, all the way from East Africa, and now only a twenty-minute ferry ride stood between him and the Italian mainland. Granted, a long drive still remained from Villa San Giovanni northward, to Rome and Branca’s final destiny, but the Strait of Messina was fixed in mind as his personal Rubicon.

  The point of no return.

  Sitting in line, boxed in by other vehicles around him that would block escape if anything went wrong, made Branca nervous. An ambush here, by the police or camorristi, would be fatal, since he couldn’t leave the Ark or carry it away by hand. It would mean fighting to the death, unless...

  He wondered what would happen if he crawled back to the van’s cargo compartment, stripped the gray tarpaulin from the Ark and battered through the wooden case surrounding it. Would he be stricken dead for blasphemy, or would the blinding light of God’s pure wrath surround him, reaching out to smite his enemies before they had a chance to harm him?

  And if so...what then?