Apocalypse Ark

by Don Pendleton

  The shuttle bus turned off to Branca’s right, following a line of arrows painted on the pavement to the hotel’s entrance. Arieti kept on going straight, as ordered, toward a line of concrete barriers beyond Via Paolo VI, where they would have to stop or crash. At last, he tapped the van’s brake and they decelerated to a stop, front tires against the curb, crosswise to southbound traffic on Via Paolo VI.

  “End of the line,” Branca announced. “God’s blessing to you all!”

  * * *

  BROTHER HALLORAN STOOD in the hotel’s shadow, with his back against its stucco wall, watching workmen unload groceries and linens onto rolling carts and trundle them inside. He kept his right hand in the pocket of his knee-length raincoat, where he’d slit the lining, fingers wrapped around the pistol grip of his Beretta M12S. The little SMG was cocked, its safety set to “Fire,” Halloran’s grasp keeping the grip safety depressed and ready for action. He had two magazines taped end-to-end for swift reloading, and if that wasn’t enough, he still had the SIG-Sauer P-226 tucked underneath his belt, for backup.

  If he couldn’t do his part with eighty rounds, Halloran thought that he deserved to fail.

  Vans came and went while he stood waiting, including a couple of Fiat Doblòs, but none was the van he expected. It took a moment for his agitated mind to realize that all the service vehicles collected in the hotel’s parking lot were white, devoid of anything resembling commercial logos. Now that he thought of it, all of the church’s cars and vans were white.

  Just like the airport limousine.

  He waited, shifting nervously from foot to foot, then caught himself and realized that he had to look suspicious—or like someone with a fierce need to relieve himself. Taking a deep breath and holding it until he heard his own pulse echo in his ears, Halloran finally exhaled when he felt calm enough to stand at ease. He had to be a fixture of the landscape now, until his enemies arrived.

  If they arrived. If Matt Cooper was correct about the angle of attack they would choose.

  But Halloran agreed with him. It had to be Saint Peter’s Square and the basilica. There was no other point where vehicles could penetrate the Holy See without encountering immediate resistance. Terrorism’s constant threat had altered life around the Vatican, as everywhere, compelling an already insular community to double-lock its doors and guard its walls. The trick, of course, was keeping up free access for the visitors and pilgrims who arrived each day, bearing their cameras, their prayers, their cash.

  This day, Halloran guessed, would tighten the security still further. Would it mean more barricades? Armed guards patrolling the piazza? Metal detectors on every exterior doorway? A kennel of bomb-sniffing dogs?

  Devoted as he was to his religion, Halloran despised and mourned the countless ways that clashing faiths had stained the course of human history with blood. Sometimes he wondered if the murdered songwriter from Liverpool was right, about a world free of religion being happier, more peaceful. Then he thought about the other motives for atrocity, ranging from gender, race and politics to simple greed, and he despaired of ever seeing peace on earth.

  But he could strike a blow this day, if not for peace exactly, then at least in the defense of freedom to believe, to worship, without fear of being murdered or assaulted. There would always be more enemies, Halloran realized, but if he did his job correctly this time, there would be a few less when the sun went down.

  A van loaded with flowers parked a few yards to his right, its driver stepping out and rolling back its side door to unleash a heady wave of fragrance. For a second, Halloran imagined that he’d wandered into Eden by mistake, but the chattering of workmen and the steady stream of tourists passing by dissolved that beatific image.

  A Fiat Doblò rolled into view, its silver-gray paint as peculiar among the white ranks as if it had been sprayed shocking pink.

  Halloran watched the van roll forward to the barricades across Via Paolo VII, before he stepped out of the shade.

  * * *

  MACK BOLAN SAW the van approaching, could have nailed its driver with a clean shot through the windshield, but held his fire and waited. He had weighed the risks between his two alternatives—to watch or to fire at once—and knew that if the Ark turned out to be a dirty bomb instead, it made no difference.

  Even the smallest “briefcase” nuke, one kiloton, would kill half the people exposed to its blast within 350 meters, rupturing eardrums at double that distance, and producing penetrating wounds out to almost three kilometers from ground zero. Flash-blindness might be suffered at about six kilometers. As for radiation from a dirty bomb, he hadn’t memorized the tables but knew tens of thousands would die as the breeze wafted poison aloft.

  Bolan had the van scoped as it rolled along Via della Cinciliazione and entered the bottleneck for Saint Peter’s Square. He tracked it across Via Rusticucci and past the hotel’s parking lot, across Piazza Pio XII and Via Paolo VI, until it nosed into the barricades and halted, blocking traffic. While he couldn’t hear the engine switching off, there came a moment when the van felt still.

  Would it explode now? Was a weapon being primed inside it? Should he fire into the roof, the tinted windows, or sit back and wait?

  He waited, watching through the scope, until the doors all at once sprang open. Armed men were spilling from the van through both front doors, the rear access and the left-side cargo door. Bolan counted nine in all, a full load for the Fiat Doblò’s size. Their sudden appearance caused a ripple in the flow of foot traffic toward Saint Peter’s Square, from pedestrians spotting the weapons and instantly changing their minds about staying to shop, gawk or pray. A woman’s scream rose up to Bolan’s ears, then people down below were bolting off in all directions, rushing to find cover in a zone where none existed.

  One of the Keepers raised his weapon to his shoulder, aiming generally toward the frightened crowd, and Bolan shot him in the face. The 150-grain FMJ round struck his target traveling at 2,800 feet per second, delivering 2,500 foot-pounds of destructive energy on impact. It drilled a neat hole through the shooter’s cheek, but vaporized the right-rear quadrant of his skull, causing a puff of blood and mangled tissue to burst outward like a ruddy halo as the dead man fell.

  One down, and as his gunshot echoed from the beige hotel facade across Saint Peter’s Square, the other raiders started firing. None knew who or where their adversary was, as yet, but firing back at something, someone, was an automatic reflex. At the same time, one of them ducked inside the van, leaving the others to it while he scrambled to do—what?

  Unleash a taste of hell, perhaps.

  * * *

  CLAUDIO BRANCA HADN’T seen the sniper, only knew his first shot had beheaded Franco Arieti, spraying blood and brains across the nearby traffic barricades. Seven survivors from his team had opened fire instinctively, responding in the knowledge that they might not tag the enemy, but they could still protect Branca in the final moments of their lives, while wreaking havoc on adherents of the Scarlet Whore.

  Deafened by gunfire and the pounding of his own heart, bass-drum loud inside the echo chamber of his skull, Branca lunged back inside the van, expecting to be shot at any instant, grateful when he gained the meager sanctuary and was crouched beside the Ark.

  He had imagined this climactic moment differently, saw himself in daydreams facing down a phalanx of Swiss Guards as he unveiled the Ark in daylight, visible to every person in Saint Peter’s Square. What happened next varied from one fantasy to the next. In some, he was incinerated with the infidels and welcomed it; in others, God’s unearthly fire swept past him, seeking out the nonbelievers who had given up their souls, and any claim on paradise, to serve the Antichrist. Sometimes the flames he pictured were a blinding white; at other times, they stung his optic nerves with rippling, ever-changing shades of gold.

  Impatient for it to be finished now, he shoved at a cardboa
rd carton filled with hand grenades he’d brought along as a precaution, but had found no opportunity to use. They rattled in their box as Branca pushed them to one side, then set his Spectre SMG beside the carton, reaching out with both hands for the tarp that masked the Ark. His hands were trembling as he clutched it and started tugging it aside, his lips moving as he mouthed a silent prayer.

  Our Father who art in heaven...

  The tarp snagged on something, resisting, then yielded as Branca redoubled his effort.

  A corner of the Ark was now revealed, a wooden chest with brass bindings. Atop its lid—perhaps the object that had snagged the tarp—was an angel, one of several sculpted in a kneeling posture, facing one another with their wings outstretched and touching at the very tips.

  Could he raise the lid? Was it sealed or fastened down somehow? There was a toolbox in the van, but in his panic he’d forgotten to retrieve it.

  He would try the lid bare-handed, see what happened if he wasn’t stricken dead immediately. If it simply jammed, then he could find the toolbox, use its pry bar.

  The lid shifted, began to rise, but it was heavy. Branca put his back into it, hissing through clenched teeth. He almost had it, when a voice cried out behind him, “Stop!”

  * * *

  HALLORAN RAN INTO the killing zone, heedless of danger to himself. Tourists and workmen jostled past him, running for their lives, veering away in panic when they saw that he, too, was armed. The vision of a priest wielding a submachine gun may have shocked them more than anything they’d seen or heard since the arrival of the death van in their midst.

  Halloran moved among them, heedless of their fear, marking his targets as he closed in on them, firing from the hip. Spitting bullets at 550 rounds per minute, his Beretta SMG could empty its magazine in less than four seconds of steady firing. One man could take all thirty-two rounds before falling if Halloran let himself fire without restraint, and there were so many to kill yet, before he secured the van.

  Matt Cooper had dropped the first one from his rooftop sniper’s nest, but it was each man for himself after that. Halloran jogged toward the van through the fleeing tourists, dodging them like a broken-field runner in football, milking short bursts from his M12S when a target was clear. One fell, and then another, two of the survivors on the left side of the van turning with their automatic weapons to confront him, covering the open cargo bay.

  Halloran felt a bullet crease his left thigh, throwing him off stride and balancing the pain he still felt from the graze he’d suffered to his right arm, back in Ercolano. Fearing that he might fall, he dropped to his knees instead, returning fire, stitching the Keeper who had wounded him with half a dozen Parabellum rounds.

  The other made a critical mistake by pausing long enough to aim. Halloran gutted him and left him writhing on the pavement, then lurched upright and pressed on toward the van. As he approached, a scuttling movement in the shadowed cargo space warned Halloran that someone was inside. Not watching him, but doing something with the Ark.

  Pain lanced into his stomach as another bullet found him. Whirling, Halloran brought down the shooter with the last rounds from his SMG’s first magazine. Time to reload, but he discarded the weapon instead, used every ounce of his remaining strength to reach the van and leap inside.

  One of the Keepers was crouched beside the Ark, struggling to raise its lid. Halloran shouted, “Stop!” and lunged to grab the man as he was turning, something close to madness in his eyes. They grappled, fell, sharp objects gouging Halloran’s back while waves of pain spread from his wounds, leaving him weak. He lashed out with a fist, connected with his adversary’s jaw and somehow found himself atop the other man, hands groping for his throat.

  The next pain that he felt was different, a gliding bolt of agony. Halloran glanced down toward his stomach, saw the knife protruding from his body, ripping upward. As he bellowed, coughing blood, the next thing he beheld confused him for an instant. Then he recognized an open carton of grenades. Collapsing forward, he released his adversary’s throat, fumbling for one of the metallic eggs. Found it.

  And pulled the pin.

  * * *

  BOLAN SAW HALLORAN advancing toward the van and taking hits along the way, dropping the gunmen who were in his path, leaving the rest. The BM59 reached out to nail them, one by one, in semiauto rapid-fire, thinning the pack before the last of them finally spotted Bolan’s rooftop nest and turned his piece in that direction, emptying his magazine.

  Too late.

  A final NATO round tore through the panicked shooter’s throat and nearly took his head off when it clipped his spine. The dead man toppled backward, instantly forgotten, Bolan tracking toward the van with his scope.

  He was in time to see his comrade crawl inside, and then the van was rocking from a struggle going on in its interior. He couldn’t help by firing through the roof, couldn’t descend from where he was in time to be of any use. A rising wail of sirens told him that police were on the way, and Swiss Guards in their garish costumes—plumed medieval helmets, blue-and-orange striped uniforms with puffy sleeves and pantaloons—were running through Saint Peter’s Square to join the fight with halberds, while their reinforcements scrambled to the armory.

  Again, too late.

  The Executioner was scoped in on the van when it exploded, one blast followed swiftly by a string of echoing explosions from the cargo bay, and then a rising fireball as the fuel tank detonated. A portion of the vehicle’s roof spun off, whirling like a twisted flying disk, falling back at last to grate across the plaza’s cobblestones and lines of travertine that radiated from the central obelisk.

  Bolan stood waiting for another moment, half expecting more. But from the smoke and flames there rose no mushroom cloud; no lightning bolts descended from the cloudless sky; no wave of blinding brilliance swept across Saint Peter’s Square toward the basilica. Below him, there was just the Fiat Doblò’s burning hulk—and somewhere in the heart of that inferno, Brother Joseph Halloran.

  The soldier set down his rifle, not bothering to wipe it for fingerprints since his had been erased from law-enforcement files. He retraced his steps to the hotel’s ground-floor exit at a steady, almost plodding pace, since running was the quickest way to draw attention at a crime scene. He was simply one more priest among the hundreds passing through the Holy See on any given day, appropriately stunned and saddened by the scene of carnage laid before him. No one seemed to notice him as he retreated in the flow of massacre survivors surging from the battleground. Police cars passed him, headed in the opposite direction, none of those inside the cruisers sparing him a second glance.

  Halloran had parked their borrowed car behind a restaurant on Via Scossacavalli, two long blocks east of Saint Peter’s Square and one block to the south. He’d risked leaving the car unlocked, its key behind the driver’s sun visor, and Bolan found it still in place, ready to roll when he arrived on foot.

  High time to leave the Holy See behind.

  But he was still not done in Rome.

  EPILOGUE

  Custodes Foederis Headquarters

  “What do you mean, we’ve failed?” Mania Justina asked, a tremor in her voice.

  “I think it’s self-explanatory,” Janus Marcellus answered. “Failure. The antithesis of triumph.”

  “And we’re leaving, now?”

  “It seems the better part of valor, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Where will we go? Won’t they be watching for us everywhere?”

  “Not quite,” Marcellus replied. “You may not be aware of our investments in Bhutan.”

  “Bhutan? What’s that?”

  “Not what, my simple darling. Where.”

  “All right, where is it?” she demanded.

  “At the east end of the Himalayas, bordered on the west by India, and on the east by China.”
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  “Are you mad? You want to hide out in a frozen wasteland?”

  “We don’t have time to talk about the climate now,” Marcellus said. “Suffice it to say that Bhutan has cell phone networks, internet access and daily flights to Bangkok and New Delhi. We’ll live like royalty on what I’ve banked there, until we can start again.”

  “But what about...the others?”

  Marcellus lost his smile as he replied, “Your close friend Ugo won’t be coming with us, I’m afraid. Marco arrested him for treason and was forced to kill him during an escape attempt.”

  “And Marco?”

  “Sadly, it appears that he was so grief-stricken that he took his own life afterward. It’s just the two of us again, my dear.”

  He loved the stricken look that crossed her face, but had no time to savor it. Taking Mania by one arm, he steered her toward the exit.

  “But...my things!”

  “No time to pack, love. If we don’t make haste, I fear that we may never leave this blighted city.”

  On the street outside, their limousine stood waiting for the drive to Naples. Rather than attempt a flight from one of Rome’s airports, where they might be expected and detained, Marcellus had a charter jet on standby at Naples International, fueled up and ready to go. They could be in the air within two hours, if their luck held and they weren’t stopped on the southbound motorway.

  He heard his wife weeping softly as they got into the car. For which of her late lovers? Marcellus neither knew nor cared. When they were safely settled in Bhutan, he reckoned she might have a mountain-climbing accident, or might simply disappear. It was a time for new beginnings, and he didn’t need the bitch who had betrayed him getting in his way.