A Pius Legacy

by Declan Finn

  Father Xavier O’Brien, SJ, and Fr. Frank Williams coordinated with the Pope the responses to any political offensive coming from the UN or its constituents. Thanks to the Sudanese ambassador, the world focused not on the barbarity of Sharia law, or the evils of terrorism supported by North Korea, but on the “evils” of the Roman Catholic Church across the ages. The two Jesuits had already lined up their heavy hitters, their experts in theology and philosophy that could counter each argument as though to a layman, and historians a block deep to refute the usual lies and to clarify lesser-known facts.

  However, what everyone overlooked was the simple, and the obvious. Everyone had been prepared to counterattack the political and the propaganda. They did not expect an older, eight hundred years old tactic, coincidentally performed by the very same people who had done it the first time.

  Chapter XIII

  Operation Avignon

  Vatican City. 11:45 PM

  Day 5 (Quick Day, wasn’t it?)

  Ioseph Andrevich Mikhailov stood in the colonnade of the Vatican and he smiled. Life is good.

  He stepped out of the dark between the columns, but was still barely visible. His shirt and pants were dark, and his prey barely had time to notice him. He raised his .22 caliber handgun with laser sight, and fired, putting out both eyes of the two Swiss Guards in front of the Papal offices.

  “The front door has been opened,” he said into the radio on his wrist. “You have three minutes.”

  * * *

  They came at night, and were dropped by airplane in a high altitude, high opening jump, their parachutes released not long after they exited the plane. There were only a dozen of them, and they all landed on the same roof—the point of a HAHO jump was to land on exact points, and they did.

  They all landed on top of the Papal Offices.

  They rappelled down the side of the building, and the first one threw himself feet first through the window, and the others followed quickly thereafter.

  Unfortunately for all of them, the Pope was awake.

  The first one to approach the Pope tried to reach his taser in time, but the Pope swept the weapon with a boxer’s left block, and fired a right hook into his face, dropping him cold.

  He turned to the next one, who attempted an overhead strike with what looked like a wand. Pius XIII grabbed the attacker’s wrist and yanked him off his feet, firing a punch into his kidney. The Pope grabbed the man’s belt and tossed him into a third attacker.

  He spun, and backhanded a fourth without thinking, knocking him into a marble wall.

  He looked at one of the paratroopers aiming a beam-taser at him and he leapt for a metal paperweight from his desk—the paratrooper fired, shocking a comrade-in-arms in the darkness. Pius grabbed the weight and hurled it before the attacker could readjust his aim, dropping him. The Pope grabbed the taser beam, and fired it into a seventh.

  Then he saw five more weapons level at him.

  * * *

  Down the hall, waking from a sound sleep on the couch in his office, Giovanni Figlia’s eyes blinked open; he rolled from his couch, grabbing a flash-bang as well as his gun. He moved to the hallway, spotted the Pope escorted at weapon-point, and instantly threw the flash-bang.

  He looked away from a future flash, and thought, Did I remember to arm the thing?

  A flash seven times as bright as the sun exploded, and unfortunately for the paratroopers, three of them were still wearing their Night Vision Goggles—devices that channeled all available light to see in near-total darkness. Usually, a flash-bang will cause ears and eyes to bleed—with the NVGs on and active, three of them had their retinas burned away.

  And they started screaming in pain…in French.

  Giovanni wheeled around the doorframe and fired twice into the first man he saw that wasn’t the Pope. He then dropped to a crouch and fired two more bullets into a different person, and then a head shot into a third before he whirled back into his office.

  Unfortunately for him, he not only shot the three blind Frenchman, but hit two of their bulletproof vests.

  And then, French paras returned fire with FAMAS rifles—ugly, olive-green weapons with a handle on top that would have looked better on a steamer trunk. The paras shot up his office door, and then moved forward, leaving their wounded behind. Also unfortunately for Giovanni, they had come with a dozen men, and while the Pope had dealt with seven of them, some of those had recovered and were able to move.

  And now there were seven of them roaming the papal offices with the Pope in tow.

  * * *

  The noise of the flash-bang had reverberated through the building, but the first ones on their feet were in two different rooms: Manana Shushurin and Sean Ryan. They knew only one thing could be worth taking in the building. There was only one exit. They both ran for the first floor at once, two flights ahead of the intruders.

  Maureen McGrail and Wilhelmina Goldberg made it to the stairs as the paras were leaving that floor, about to head to another.

  McGrail reached forward and grabbed the two nearest men by the scruff of the neck and yanked backwards, off their feet. She simply tossed them behind her, leaving them for Goldberg to hold down with the set of combat knives she had picked up during the great Vatican firefight the other day. The universal language of edged weaponry did the talking for Goldberg as she pressed the knives against the French carotids, not breaking the skin

  McGrail quickly padded her way after the next man as he was about to step off the landing. She grabbed both sides of his head and twisted, breaking his neck before leaping back into the darkness with the dead man’s rifle.

  Villie Goldberg slowly raised both knives and slammed them straight down, butt first, into the face of each commando, knocking them out.

  Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the French helmets.

  They had cameras attached to them. She reached down and broke off one camera, confiscating the communications units too.

  Scott Murphy raced down the hall, skidding to a stop. “What’s happened?”

  Goldberg looked up, noting the man dressed in t-shirt and sweatpants, filling them out quite well. “Froggie commandos have arrived, and I think they have the Pope. Maureen’s gone after them.” She raised the components in her hands. “I think I have some work do to.”

  * * *

  Ryan and Manana arrived in two different stairwells at once, and nearly killed each other on first visual contact. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Saving the Pope, I hope.”

  Manana blinked. “That supposed to rhyme?”

  Ryan grinned and ran to the front door, hoping to fire from outside into the building, cutting off the only escape route. He got outside, hoping to check with the guards at the front.

  Two Swiss Guards were dead, bullets firmly in their brains.

  “Damn.” he dropped to one knee and stripped the guards of their MP5s, and crawled back inside. “We have gunmen in the front, too.”

  Manana frowned. “We can’t do anything other than keep them busy until help arrives, and if we get driven outside, we have no fallback position because we’ll be shot in the back.”

  Ryan nodded. “Well then, not one step backward.”

  * * *

  Four men marched around the Pope in an escort pattern, two in front, two behind.

  Until Maureen McGrail put one in the back of the head of each of the rear guard.

  She leapt back into the stairwell above as the two paras in front turned and fired. One grabbed Pius XIII and pulled him down the stairs, sticking a beam taser in his ribs, and the other quickly followed. The front man ran to the first floor, gun ahead of him.

  The Pope went along down the hall, hoping for an opportunity to break free.

  As the first French commando turned for the exit, there was a blur. The rifle barrel was grabbed before it could fully corner into the new direction. The broad, flat side of a pistol shot up, slapping the Para in the face. The Frenchman was then promptly pist
ol-whipped as another gun came up, ready to drill a neat hole in the last Para’s head.

  Pius, however, had another idea as he spun to his right, his right arm already up and deflecting the rifle. As he spun, his left fist was up in a roundhouse. The rifle was locked under the Pope’s arm as the blow landed, and the arm snapped back, wrapping around the man’s neck, as though to break it. Instead, the pontiff merely kept the Para’s neck locked in place as he delivered one, then two, and then a third knee up into him. Each knee strike literally lifted him off the ground. Pius ripped the rifle away and slammed down into the man’s lower back, careful to avoid the spine.

  “Funny, you don’t look Jewish.”

  Pius XIII blinked and turned around. There were the smiling eyes of Sean Ryan, and standing next to him, gun at the ready, Manana Shushurin.

  “True,” the Pope murmured, gently lowering the rifle. “I am not Ethiopian…why do you say that?”

  “You were using Krav Maga…a form of Israeli martial art.”

  The Pope grinned broadly and shrugged. “As I have heard Frank’s father say, I grew up in a rough neighborhood.”

  Manana nearly laughed. “I can relate. I grew up in East Germa—”

  The explosions rocked the entire building—an amazing feat since the walls, floors, and ceiling were made of solid marble. Even more amazing was that, at both ends of the hallway, smoke billowed out into the hallway—meaning that they had blown through the walls.

  Ryan grabbed Pius by the front of his clerical robes and yanked him into the brief hallway before the exit. “I have the feeling that was their secondary extraction point,” he muttered as he quickly grabbed the pants leg of the French commando at his feet, dragging him out of the potential line of fire. Manana had hooked the other one and dragged him along as well.

  “Charitable of you,” Pius rumbled.

  Ryan crouched by the unconscious form. “Not really. He has a flak jacket and other useful items.” He grabbed the man’s ammo pouch and a rifle. “Like extra magazines for these.”

  “Sean,” Manana said in a whisper, “we have no back door.”

  Ryan glanced behind to note the two dead Swiss Guards on the ground, their eyes shot out. He grimaced, then grabbed a long taser beam off of the prone Para. “At the moment, they don’t know we’re here—but once people other than French troopers start coming down the stairs, we need to hit them before they decide to start a body count.” He grabbed two canisters off of the two commandos. “CS gas, cool.”

  The Pope blinked. “C…S…?”

  “Chlorobenzalmalononitrile,” Manana answered. “Even if they have gas masks, they will be blinded by the smoke…if they have thermal imaging, however…”

  Ryan glanced at one prone Para and then looked at the Pope. “Your Holiness, get into this man’s clothing, now. You’ve just been drafted.”

  “Wait a—”

  Ryan ignored him, wheeled around the left bend and hurled the beam stun weapon, flicking it on at the last moment. He wheeled back instantly as the electrifying light source went around in circles, stunning everyone in its path.

  Ryan immediately flipped open both CS canisters and hurled them away from him, at an angle, into the hall.

  The left stairwell was in the most chaos, so Ryan, in a crouching position, decided to fire into the right one, pouring in the automatic fire to increase the chaos factor over there as well. Manana, from a standing position, did the same.

  After a brief moment, both of them switched hands for the rifles, firing into the other stairwell.

  The Pope struggled to get into the Kevlar vest. While Ryan had indulged in his blitz, Pius had spent the time following his orders. “Why the change?”

  Ryan frowned as he ejected a clip and reloaded. “The guys on the right are either dead or out of the line of fire—the guys on the left are probably going to recover in a moment.” He loaded the chamber, then flattened himself against one wall, Manana doing the same against the other. “We don’t know what their numbers are, or how fast reinforcements are coming—”

  More explosions rocked the building, only not as badly as before. “—and I think that was our backup, tripping over some parting gifts Frenchie here left to cover their trail. Your best bet is—blast it!”

  Ryan didn’t even think about his next action when he saw the cylinder clatter at their feet. He shoved the Pope outside, hoping the Pontiff could bluff his way past the guards while wearing French body armor, instead of taking the full force of the flash-bang at their feet.

  Ryan and Manana, on the other hand, each wheeled around the bends in the hall, firing into each stairwell, aiming low into the smoke as the Pope made it out the door. They dove and rolled, and came up firing, just as the flash-bang exploded, filling the hall with enough noise to shatter eardrums.

  The Pope stumbled out of the building just ahead of the flash-bang, heading straight to the colonnade of St. Peter’s Square—the most direct path out of Vatican City... Until he tripped, falling over like a tree, a boot stomping down on the gun.

  “So nice to make your acquaintance, Holiness,” purred a Russian accent. “Sergei, keep your men here. Give us five minutes. Everyone else, pull out.”

  * * *

  Ryan and Manana retreated back to their original positions, and swapped out their magazines. Strangely, there was no return fire. He frowned, wondering what had happened…they would stop firing only if they had their objective.

  Ryan growled. “They have the Pope. Damnit.”

  He turned and was about to sweep out the front door, when Manana grabbed him.

  He looked over his shoulder at her, about ready to bite her hand, when he followed her gaze to the bullet holes in the wall behind him. They were too large.

  “FAMAS fires a standard NATO round,” she told him.

  “Some of these are more like 7.62. Standard AK-47 round.”

  His eyes met hers. “Your father’s people are here.” Ryan frowned. “What’s SOP on retreating? A five-man holding team?”

  She nodded. “For about five minutes.”

  Ryan frowned, gun raised, about to charge. “I can deal with that.”

  He was about to charge when the sound of racing footsteps caused him and Manana to both turn back to the hallway, weapons raised.

  Maureen McGrail and Giovanni Figlia also had their weapons raised as they approached.

  Ryan sighed and turned around. “What took you?”

  “They had the landings wired with explosives,” the Interpol agent replied. “They got away?”

  “Not for long,” he answered. “Listen, there are probably about five guys in a stationary position in the colonnade. I’ll run interference. Giovanni, go through the breach in the left stairwell, that should come out behind these guys. I’ll keep them busy. Collect your guys, and get the Pope back.”

  * * *

  Giovanni Figlia didn’t have time for the Vatican helicopter, especially when there were still gunmen inside the grounds. Instead, he opted for one of the Swiss Guard cars outside. It was one of the Fully Armored Vehicles—commercially available armored cars, but it looked like an SUV. A squad was already waiting inside the FAV, and Giovanni leapt in, grabbed the steering wheel and took off after the bastards who took his Pope.

  Figlia had sworn an oath several years back, when Pius XIII first accepted his new role, that no harm would come to the Pope as long as Figlia lived. He would not let anything get in the way of that, not some super-assassins, super-spooks, leftover Communists, not the international community, and least of all, not the French.

  Above all, not the French.

  He hit the gas and took off into the streets, following the only car in sight speeding into the Roman evening. As he pressed the gas pedal harder and harder, he came to the realization that was why the Pope had chosen him for the job. After having his father blown away by the Socialist freaks, Giovanni had dedicated his life to protect and serve, on the police force, the SWAT team, the office of Central Vigilance
.

  He smiled. Best not disappoint the Pontiff now, should we?

  There would be no way on Earth, in Heaven, or Hell that Figlia would let the Pope get away.

  He’d die first.

  Chapter XIV

  Dense Macabre

  Sean A.P. Ryan stepped out of the Vatican offices, weapons raised. He wore his black commando clothes, and a Kevlar helmet taken from one of the French commandos—he had even lowered the faceplate.

  Five flashing tongues of fire shot out from the darkness, each lighting up for only a moment as each gunner left his mark on Ryan. Each of the rounds fired by the gunmen impacted center mass on the target, meaning that Ryan should have been quite, quite dead.

  Ryan only returned fire, deliberately shooting one bullet from each handgun he held—the bullets caught one of the gunmen directly in the throat.

  The remaining four immediately opened fire, taking no prisoners, aiming solidly for Sean Ryan’s head.

  Ryan leapt to the side the moment the first gunman fell, and started shooting the moment the other four had returned fire. Going for a head shot at a range of a dozen meters wasn’t that hard with a rifle, especially with the training Mikhailov’s people had. However, Ryan not only had the Kevlar helmet, he had the advantage of his own, personal training—and he kept moving through the barrage, falling, rolling, jumping, leaping, making his flowing movements look like an insane dance routine. In fact, Ryan was copying a dance from one of his stunt jobs in a John Woo film, making it even more difficult to get a proper head shot on him.

  Still, the bullets slammed into Ryan’s body, knocking him this way and that, but each time he continued to get up.

  He returned fire again, aiming for not the gunmen, but the stock of their rifle—a more vulnerable target then trying to find cracks in body armor.

  While he had been pouring fire into the killers in front of him, another gun stopped. While Giovanni Figlia had exited the breach in the left stairwell, he also had a companion—Manana Shushurin.

  And while all the gunmen had so desperately attacked Ryan, Manana had circled around the other side of the colonnade and came up behind the nearest one. The man had barely even felt his combat knife slip free of its sheath before Manana introduced the point directly into his brain stem.