Apocalypse Ark

by Don Pendleton

  They obeyed, while Branca stayed behind to supervise, as if his glaring helped. At intervals, he turned to eye the northbound traffic moving toward him, worried by a grim sense of impending dread he couldn’t shake.

  When Sansovino said, “It’s done,” and started breaking down the jack, Branca discovered that his shirt was damp with sweat in spite of a refreshing breeze along the motorway.

  Cold sweat. A sign of fear.

  Ercolano, Italy

  LOCATED AT THE western foot of Mount Vesuvius, beside the Bay of Naples and southeast of Napoli itself, Ercolano stood atop volcanic rubble from the great eruption that had destroyed its predecessor, Herculaneum. Aside from serving tourists, its inhabitants make leather goods, some glassware and a wine called Lacryma Christi—“Tears of Christ.”

  Bolan knew all this because his driver-cum-tour guide had briefed him. Advancing to an anecdote of the Vesuvian eruption, Halloran stopped dead and blurted, “There! A van and car together. Aren’t they? Could it be?”

  “We’ll need to pass and take a look,” Bolan replied.

  Italian drivers, like Americans, drove on the right. That placed him on the near side of the Giulietta toward his targets—or potential targets—as the brother pulled out to pass. Six miles or less outside of Naples. Could the Ark be tucked away inside that van? And if so, how well was it guarded? If the four-door sedan riding close behind it was an escort, had they already been spotted and identified as dangerous?

  Only one way to find out.

  They overtook the trailing car, a Volvo S80 sedan jam-packed with six passengers in what looked like an awkward arrangement. All men, Bolan saw, as they pulled abreast, at least three of them turning to meet his gaze. The others might be watching him as well, but with the tinted windows Bolan couldn’t say.

  “A little farther,” he instructed, as they caught up with the van. It was a Fiat Doblò, silver-gray, a standard cargo van, its windows blacked out on the sides to mask whoever or whatever lay within. In the wing mirror its driver saw their Giulietta closing up the distance, and treated Bolan to a scowl as they pulled level.

  A heartbeat to decide, and the soldier said, “It’s them.”

  He reached down for the AKMS resting at his feet, and later thought that movement may have saved his life. A bullet from the Volvo drilled the Giulietta’s hatchback window, cracked through space where Bolan’s head had been an instant earlier, and spiderwebbed the windshield as it exited.

  Halloran hit the brakes and swerved, just as a burst of automatic fire ripped through the Giulietta’s left-rear quarter panel, sending bullets rattling around inside the rear cargo compartment. Bolan heard the gunfire now, echoes of shots coming behind the impact of the slugs striking their car, and lifted his Kalashnikov while elbowing the button that would take his window down.

  The Giulietta’s swerve and sudden slowdown let the Fiat Doblò van roll out of range and brought the Volvo into frame. Firing left-handed, Bolan marched a burst of 7.62 mm rounds across the four-door’s windshield, but the angle was wrong for taking the front-seat gunners. Bolan saw them ducking, shouting, as the safety glass blew inward, mostly landing in their laps, and then the Volvo nosed down, tires squealing as its driver mashed his brake pedal to the floor.

  Antilock brakes kept the vehicle from spinning or rolling, but Bolan lost his chance to finish it as Halloran accelerated, following the van. “We have to stop the Ark!” he said, bent forward in the driver’s seat as if the angle of his body could persuade the Giulietta to produce another six or seven miles per hour from its racing engine.

  He was right. The van was more important—critical, in fact. If they could stop it here, for good, whatever happened next would almost be superfluous.

  Bolan was leaning out his window, angling for a clear shot with the AKMS, when a bullet struck the rifle’s foregrip with explosive force and sent the weapon spinning from his hands.

  * * *

  HALLORAN HEARD COOPER curse, the first time he had used profanity, and saw him reel back through the open window empty-handed.

  “What?” he asked. “You’re wounded?”

  “Lost the AK,” Bolan replied, and came up with his Uzi from the duffel at his feet. “Hold as steady as you can.”

  More firing then, with Cooper swiveled in his seat to rake the Volvo as it bore down on them, weapons blasting from its open windows. Halloran yearned to engage the enemy, swallowed an urge to crane around and grab his submachine gun from the floor behind the driver’s seat. He had to keep the Giulietta on the road and running close behind the Fiat Doblò van until they stopped it, disregarding any danger from the escort vehicle.

  Or else die trying.

  He was looking for police cars when a bullet clipped his rearview mirror and kept going through the Alfa’s windshield, one more near-miss that could either be the hand of providence at work or pure dumb luck. Focused on driving to the exclusion of all else, he didn’t have the wherewithal to offer up even the shortest prayer, but keenly felt the lack of one as bullets struck their speeding car like hammer blows on sheet metal.

  Hot brass from Cooper’s Uzi sprayed across the Giulietta’s backseat, whipped around by wind from windows opened voluntarily or shattered by incoming fire. Halloran felt one graze his nape, and managed to ignore the sudden wasp sting of it as it fell away behind him. He would be fortunate indeed if that was all the pain he felt, with bullets ripping through the hatchback, in one side and out the other, some deflecting through the roof.

  They were gaining on the van, but Cooper was still distracted, dueling with the gunmen in the chase car who were peppering their vehicle with automatic fire. Determined not to let the Ark escape this time, Halloran reached inside his jacket for his SIG-Sauer P-226. The perforated windshield granted him a field of fire, albeit limited. If he could hit the driver, or at least one of the Fiat Doblò’s tires—

  A bullet creased his right biceps as Halloran was tugging at his holstered pistol. Just a superficial wound, he knew immediately, but it burned like fury all the same. He lurched away from it, as if he could escape the pain that way, and tugged the steering wheel involuntarily. The Giulietta followed orders, swinging sharply left before he caught it, corrected and overcorrected, veering back into the chase car’s path.

  Their bumpers kissed at something close to eighty miles per hour, Cooper still firing at their enemies from what had narrowed down to point-blank range. Halloran’s right-front tire exploded, either from the impact or a stray round shredding rubber, and he lost track of their adversaries while he fought the Giulietta’s skid.

  “They’re going over!” Bolan called out, and in his left wing mirror, like a short clip from an action film, Halloran saw the chase car rolling, bits and pieces of it flying free, the arms of scarecrows flailing from its open windows. Seconds later, they were on the highway’s shoulder, dust clouds settling around them, northbound traffic either stopped or racing past them to get out of range.

  The Fiat Doblò van was gone.

  “We need to get away from here,” Bolan told him. “And it’s time to call that guy.”

  Casoria, Italy

  FIVE MILES NORTH of Naples, when he’d satisfied himself that the pursuit was over, Branca ordered Franco Arieti to park the van at a rest stop while he checked it for visible damage. His men were still on edge, keeping their weapons close at hand, frustrated by their inability to join the recent fight, and angered by the loss of friends.

  Branca supposed his six men in the Volvo had to be dead, or critically injured and under police guard by now. Eight of the original fifteen remained, enough to pack the van and make it challenging to give the Ark its designated space, but that was barely half the number he’d expected to be leading into Rome.

  It’s still enough, he thought. And would be if he had to drive the van alone, with no one to support him when he reached the
Holy See. He could unveil the Ark before his enemies—had planned to do it personally all along, in fact—but hoped there would be others to prevent the police from killing him before he managed it.

  The van was marked by two small bullet holes, not terribly conspicuous, but Branca had his soldiers patch and cover them with roadside mud as camouflage. It might not stand a close inspection, but he doubted that highway patrolmen passing on the motorway would notice. Most of them from the immediate vicinity were likely on their way to Ercolano, anyway, rushing with lights and sirens to become a tiny part of local history.

  They couldn’t know that Branca would be making epic history in Rome, sometime within the next two hours, three at most.

  His long, grim trek was nearly done.

  Back on the motorway, he watched for blue-and-white police cars and motorcycles, just in case. There was a chance, despite the bloody chaos back in Ercolano, that a passing witness may have linked his van to the firefight and reported it. The odds against a frightened driver jotting down his license number were extreme, but anything was possible.

  Salvation lay in speed now, putting distance between Ercolano and the Ark before authorities had time to gather witnesses and question them. Their exit to Rome lay 180 kilometers north of Casoria, then it would be crushing city traffic, unavoidable, no opportunity for breaking out, and vastly greater odds of being stopped by the police if they behaved in any way abnormally.

  And what would happen, in that case?

  A last stand in the street. If given any chance at all, Branca would bare the Ark and set God’s power free. Whether it worked, whether he was deemed worthy in the end to be Christ’s warrior, was a secret that would be resolved only in mortal combat.

  He took a break from staring at the mirror to his right, leaned back and closed his eyes. Not sleeping—he was too keyed-up for that—but gathering his strength for what might be the final act of his unique, extraordinary life. The humming of the van’s engine, the steady hiss of tires on asphalt, lulled his nerves after the latest battle he’d survived.

  Branca was good to go: straight through the gates of hell, to meet the Scarlet Whore of Babylon.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Naples

  Halloran’s guy in Naples turned out to be Brother Gianni Borelli, another member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, whose skills included flying helicopters. He’d been standing by since Halloran’s first call, prepared to offer aid in an emergency, and Bolan thought their present situation qualified.

  No ride. Their last one shot to hell and traceable, albeit to a fictional identity, through rental records. Their primary target was running free and on its way to Rome, within a couple hours of touchdown at the Vatican.

  An airlift seemed to be the only answer, and Borelli fit the bill.

  His bird was an AgustaWestland AW119 Koala, an eight-seat utility chopper. Its wide-body fuselage sat three abreast in the passenger cabin, with one pilot up front, cruising at a top speed of 166 miles per hour, powered by a Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6B-37A turboshaft engine.

  The world looked different from fifteen thousand feet.

  It had been touch-and-go there, for a little while, until Borelli swooped in to retrieve them. Running on the open motorway was pointless, so they’d gone off-road to miss the first police arriving at the battle site, and kept moving north on foot while Halloran directed their impending rescue via cell phone. They had been two miles and change north of the Ercolano killing ground before the chopper swooped in to retrieve them for a hasty hop to Rome.

  Borelli estimated 117 miles to their destination, say, seventy minutes by air. They should be touching down about an hour prior to the fleeing van’s arrival, but the downside was locating it. Rome, with its famous seven hills and 2.8 million year-round inhabitants, covered some five hundred square miles. The only place they could predict the van would go was to the Vatican itself.

  Ground zero, right, which Bolan had been hoping to avoid.

  But it was too late for finessing any action now. Halloran had already called ahead, reporting late events to his superiors, and had the go-ahead to act on their behalf if he saw any last-ditch opportunity to stop the Keepers and their cargo. Running interference with police was problematic, given recent rifts between the Vatican and Italy’s secular state. Prime Minister Romano Prodi had blamed a Vatican “plot” for the collapse of his coalition government in 2008, and the Holy See had “divorced” itself from Italian law a year later. Even more recently, investigators had renewed inquiries into the Vatican Bank—formally known as the Institute for Works of Religion—in 2012.

  All in all, it was a bad time for the church to be asking the police for a favor.

  Halloran keyed the microphone built into matching headphones both men wore to spare their ears the droning noise of the Koala’s engine. “We’ll be landing soon,” he said. “I want to tell you that it’s been...well, not a pleasure, but...”

  “A new experience?” Bolan suggested.

  “Yes, indeed. A new experience to work with you.”

  “We aren’t done yet, you know.”

  “Of course. I just wanted to thank you,” Halloran replied. “For everything.”

  Another new experience, Bolan thought, as he set his eyes toward Rome.

  Custodes Foederis Headquarters

  MARCO GIANOTTI EASED back the slide of his Beretta Px4 Storm Compact semiautomatic pistol, confirming that a .40 S&W round was chambered and ready to fire. Twelve more were loaded in the magazine, but if he had to fire the gun at all, Gianotti supposed he should call it a failure. The plan, after all, was to make an arrest, not carry out an execution.

  That, if Claudio Branca’s suspicions proved out, would come later.

  Gianotti still hadn’t consulted Janus Marcellus concerning Branca’s call about Ugo Troisi. With the Ark so close to Rome and tension running high at headquarters, he had decided that the very worst thing he could do was introduce another problem to the mix. Better by far, for all concerned, if he could simply take Troisi into custody and hold him while the main event played out at Vatican City. If all went according to plan there, perhaps Troisi would confess his sins against the church—or even die spontaneously, when the power of God’s wrath had been released against all infidels.

  And if the Ark didn’t perform as prophesied...well, then, it might not matter what he did with Ugo. All of them would have worse problems than Troisi’s wounded pride. In that event, if they had failed, Gianotti could release him or dispose of the man as he pleased, share Branca’s warning with the Pontifex and blame Troisi for the scuttling of their dream.

  All hypothetical, of course.

  His faith compelled Gianotti to believe the Ark would function as predicted and deliver victory into their hands. How could he think that scripture could be wrong, or God denied His triumph?

  Standing outside Troisi’s office, Gianotti took a moment to compose himself, then knocked and entered without waiting to be summoned. He wasn’t a supplicant today, but rather an avenger.

  Troisi seemed distracted as he looked up from the ledger he was reading. Numbers ranked in columns, adding up to...what? It made no difference.

  “What is it, Marco?” he inquired.

  “I have a question,” Gianotti said, dispensing with the normal courtesy.

  “And that is...?”

  “When you recommended use of mafiosi to escort the Ark through Sicily, did you expect it to be captured or destroyed?”

  It seemed to Gianotti that Troisi’s face went pale, then flushed with angry color from the neck up.

  “How dare you! What are you suggesting?” Troisi challenged.

  “It’s a question,” Gianotti said. “Not a suggestion.”

  “It’s an insult! You’ll regret it, I assure you.”

 
“Possibly,” Gianotti said. The Beretta filled his hand. “But not, I think, just yet.”

  Troisi saw the gun, gaped at it. “Have you lost your mind? Are you insane?”

  “We’ll let the Pontifex decide that,” Gianotti said. “Later this afternoon.”

  Troisi frowned, his features caught somewhere between defiance and uneasiness. “And until then?”

  “You’ll come with me,” Gianotti said. “Quietly. Or I’ll be forced to use this.”

  “Now I see you have gone mad,” Troisi said. “All right. We’ll play this foolish game your way, for now.”

  Troisi rose and walked around his desk, then hesitated in the center of the room until a waggle of the gun that Gianotti held encouraged him to leave the office.

  “Turn right as you go,” Gianotti said, “and continue on until we reach the elevator.”

  “Going down, are we?”

  “The basement cells.”

  “Enjoy this while you can,” Troisi said. “You’ve made a grave mistake.”

  It wouldn’t be the first, Gianotti thought. But he held his tongue and hid the pistol, trailing Troisi toward the elevator that would take them underground.

  Vatican City

  “YOU WANT ME to disturb the Holy Father with this news?” Cardinal Bishop Jerome Saldana asked.

  Cardinal Luis Bouchet considered that and answered, “No, Your Eminence. I’m simply keeping you informed.”

  “Of failure on your agent’s part,” Saldana said.

  “Not failure. It’s a problem that I hope may be resolved, if time allows.”

  “If time allows,” Saldana echoed, not quite mocking him. “And therein lies the difficulty, does it not? A normal drive from Rome to Naples should require...how long? Two hours? Three at most?”

  “That is correct, Your Eminence.”

  “And how long is it since your man lost track of those who wish us harm?”

  Bouchet wore no watch, and he didn’t need one. “Forty minutes now.”