by Declan Finn
It only took three more bullets from Ryan’s gun to disable the other rifles. The Russian assassins dropped the defunct guns and drew their pistols.
Ryan stopped and smiled. He dropped his pistols on the ground, and slowly drew his tactical baton from the holster at his hip. He raised his free hand and waved them forward. His message was quite clear in any language—come and get me.
All three Russians came closer, guns still on him. They were going to make damn sure that they hit the target this time.
He flicked his wrist, extending the baton to its full length. “Hello,” he said darkly. “My name is Sean Ryan, and you are about to have a very. bad, day.”
His point was proven by Manana—who had the only working rifle in the courtyard—as she dropped two of the gunmen before they had even turned around.
The third whirled towards her, thinking he could get both the new assailant and Ryan. But Ryan burst forward, whipping his tactical baton down on his forearm before he could even bet a bead on Manana. The baton came up again, whipping up for the killer’s collarbone, but he leaned backwards, deliberately falling backwards into a tumble, springing to his feet.
Falling right into the arms of Maureen McGrail, who had exited via the breach in the other stairwell. With one easy sweep, she took both legs from under him, following him down with an elbow to the clavicle, shattering it.
Maureen rolled to her feet, looking at Ryan. “Nice work. But how come you’re still alive?”
He smiled, and patted his black outfit. “Liquid Body Armor…the fabric is soaked with a shear-thickening fluid… silica microparticles in a poly-ethylene glycol solution. Moves like normal clothing, solidifies when hit. Means I get bruised and battered less than with Kevlar.”
McGrail nodded. “So, where’s Giovanni?”
* * *
Wilhelmina Goldberg heard in the background on CNN that the Pope had been kidnapped and sighed. She knew that, she was there. She leaned forward and intently examined the communication devices in front of her as she listened to the news anchor read from a teleprompter.
Both devices were taken from their adversaries – one from the shootout that had dispatched James Ryan from the planet, and the other just taken from their French prisoners. She tried listening in on the most-recently captured device, but the culprits had obviously switched to a secondary channel. Which meant that there was no way for anyone to listen in on the new frequency…
Unless someone had once worked for the National Security Agency.
Goldberg hooked up both devices to her laptop, and she had the computer start scanning the possible frequencies of both devices before she heard—
“Avignon One to Base, cargo obtained. On the way to Avignon Central.”
She almost leapt up out of her chair, but instead did a little dance in her seat. “NSA rules! Woo-who! Eat it!” Goldberg thought for a moment. Would Avignon Central be the staging area or the extraction point? Won’t matter when I get the signal locked.
On the computer screen, a map of the planet appeared, with a bright red line being drawn from Rome as the signals kept moving, tracked by GPS.
Goldberg hit the CB function on her cell phone and said, “Gianni, I’ve got the bastard moving North by Northwest, fifty miles out, probably by helicopter. Do you copy?”
* * *
Figlia made a sharp, 180-degree turn with the FAV as a helicopter blasted away at his car, destroying the street all around them. “The problem is,” he told Goldberg, “we’re under attack from two helicopters with chain guns!”
“Don’t you have helicopters to fight back with!”
“They only have on-board weapons! Automatic rifles and NLW.”
“That’s bad.”
Figlia turned a corner down an alley barely wide enough for his car in the hopes that the attack ships couldn’t follow. “No scherzo, eh?”
Giovanni stomped on the gas pedal, and the sides of the FAV scraped along the alley walls as he squeezed through, hoping to buy himself just enough time. All he needed were a few seconds, that was all. Just a few measly seconds, and he would be through, and have enough space to continue pursuing the Pope.
He almost reached the end of the alley when the second helicopter hovered down in front of him at the other end of the street. And both of them fired with their 30mm anti-tank chain guns.
Giovanni Figlia’s world opened into fire.
* * *
Ioseph Mikhailov had to personally drop the Pope by smashing a gun over his head in order to get the big man into the back of his car. The Jetta wasn’t overly fast, but it was nicely colorless, and it made good time in the middle of Rome. In the thirty seconds between the time he departed and the papal helicopters showed up, he had already been almost a mile out.
He smiled, marveling how successful he had been. He was half-tempted to believe that it would be an utter failure—and if that had happened, he was fully prepared for the press to start talking about the way the “heartless Catholics mercilessly slaughtered a dozen French paratroopers seeking to bring the outlaw Pontiff to justice.”
Hmm, I wonder if that’s too over the top. He laughed to himself, Then again, the press has gotten away with every lie since the Spanish-American War—who would catch them? Other newspapers? They can lie all they want, and nothing will faze them. Works for me.
He drove on a straight line for the Coliseum, where he had a helicopter wing provided for him by his own government—the French needed Russian equipment, what a country!
“What about the others?” the Para in the passenger side whined as he looked out the window, desperate to avoid the helicopters soon to be searching for them.
Mikhailov stayed silent until the Coliseum was in sight. “Don’t worry about them.” He raised his gun, put the muzzle in the Frenchman’s ear, and fired twice.
A huge dark hand reached out from the back seat and grabbed his arm, yanking back hard on it. The Russian gasped and briefly lost control of the car before he could correct. The Pope then reached around the chair from the back, and wrapped his arm around Ioseph’s throat – the hold was nonlethal, but it was unsafe at the speed Mikhailov was driving.
Mikhailov thrust the gun behind him, putting it in the Pontiff’s ear. “Let me go, or die.”
“You want me alive,” the Pope stated. “And my soul is prepared, how’s yours?”
“Not ready to surrender,” he said, immediately before he swung the car right, bouncing it off a wall. The Pope held firmly, but was jostled further when Ioseph rammed the car into a lamppost. The Russian then sent the car into a fish tail turn that tossed the Pope’s head into a side window. The man in white tried to get up, but fell back and stayed still.
“I’m sure the World Court will add resisting arrest to the charges,” Ioseph muttered.
Mikhailov drove the car to the Coliseum gate and stopped, hefting the Pope out of the car like a fireman, charging for the helicopters. He looked down, and wondered how much gas they needed for them to hover like that for so long. He looked down into the former floor of the Coliseum, down to where they had kept the lions, and smiled.
He loaded the Pope onto the net and hopped on before the helicopter reeled him in, up the twenty-five feet—had the helicopters been any lower, their blades would have destroyed each other. Once he and his cargo were on board, Ioseph climbed into the co-pilot’s seat. “Avignon Two and Three, increase elevation a hundred feet and hold in defense position. Hold off any Swiss cheese heads who come after us.”
* * *
Captain Wayne Williams Sr. had given up his interrogation of one of the French prisoners left behind at Vatican City and jumped onto the nearest helicopter just before it took off. The helicopter was rather pathetic—no chain guns or Hellfire missiles, just a grenade launcher with gas grenades, six M16s, and the funny high-tech ray gun meant for non-lethal anti-personnel stuff. He swore a little, grabbed a gun, and prayed fairly hard he’d get there in time.
What he found on approach to
the Coliseum were two attack ships firing into an alleyway.
“Come in on attack vector!” he called up front. “Get me a clear shot at them.” The helicopter pilot nodded, and made a ninety-degree rotation in the air. Captain Wayne Williams opened the side door, hoping to get their attention.
Instead, the side door to one of the gunships opened, revealing a chain-fed machinegun loaded and ready to pour thousands of rounds into his helicopter.
The older Williams dropped to the floor a moment before the bullets buzzed through the air over his head, chewing through the door on the other side of the helicopter. Unfortunately, the gas grenade gun rolled away from him. He cursed and lashed out, hoping to grab something. He caught a boxy weapon, only to find that it was something that looked like a ray gun out of episodes of Buck Rodgers that he grew up with on Saturday mornings.
He took a quick look at the dials before he cursed and pointed it at the enemy helicopter, and pulled the trigger. The gunfire stopped immediately.
Wayne blinked and looked at the controls again, realizing what he had grabbed. He had briefly served in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite his age, and he had seen things like this, only larger and mounted on a truck. They had been used as “crowd dispersal” units. It was a directed energy weapon—essentially firing microwaves at the enemy. The microwaves only really reached the epidermal tissue, evaporating moisture from the top layer. No matter how little damage they caused, the target always felt something far different.
They felt like they had been set on fire.
The French helicopter pilot tried to hold onto the controls, but failed. The helicopter tipped forward, which pushed the helicopter blades into the building. That impact sent the helicopter backwards, still firing with its chain guns—only into the other helicopter, killing the other crew.
Both helicopters fell to the earth like flying pianos.
Wayne Williams raised his eyebrows, and his blue-green eyes flickered with amusement at the flames below. “Well, maybe this non-lethal stuff really can be useful.” He looked to his pilot. “Can we raise these folks on radio? See who’s down there?”
* * *
Mikhailov smiled. He waited until they were about a hundred miles out before pressing a button on his watch—a simple transmitter, which sent out to the C8 composite charges left in both of the helicopters, blowing up his French comrades and anyone around them.
* * *
Villie Goldberg tried to raise Figlia once more. There was nothing except the Italian equivalent of “We’re sorry, the caller you are trying to reach is no longer connected to the service, please hang up and try again later.”
She looked to the computer. It automatically tracked the bastards with the Pope, so she turned her attention to the problem at hand—hailing to Giovanni. She cracked open her cell phone and started playing with the frequencies.
In the background, CNN reported, “Just in. French officials have announced a covert operation underway to bring Catholic prelate Joshua Kutjok, alias Pius XIII, to the World Court to stand trial for crimes against humanity.”
Goldberg paused a moment, blinked, and looked at the screen in disbelief. Images of night vision-enhanced camera reels flickered across the screen, from descending on the Pope’s offices, to the Pope himself beating half of them senseless.
“However, over the course of the assault, all but one of the arresting French Special Forces team had been killed, barely making it out alive with the renegade Pontiff.”
She turned her attention to the phone again, hoping to get Figlia eventually.
“Some of those who tried to interfere with the Pope’s arrest have been identified, and almost none of them were part of the papal security force.”
Goldberg stopped. If they had mini-cams attached to their equipment, they must have been broadcasting to a remote location, or a satellite hookup. Which means their masters would have seen everything they did, which means—aww, schiesse!
She looked up to see herself holding two knives and coming down at two of the French operatives—as seen from their point of view. The image froze there, implying that she had slit their throats.
“In special footage released exclusively to CNN just moments ago, we see Special Agent Wilhelmina Goldberg of the United States Secret Service. When last we checked, Special Agent Goldberg was not in Vatican City to take action on behalf of the Pope, but to augment the Pope’s defenses, although that was before the stunning revelations of the Human Rights Commission. Since then, Special Agent Goldberg may or may not have been given further instructions on the matter of the Pope, but questions will certainly be asked about her continued presence in Vatican City after the UN resolution against the Pope.”
Goldberg blinked, and fell into her chair with a thud. They’re making me out to be on the Pope’s payroll or something.
With the next image, she knew exactly what the game was. Image: French soldiers going down the stairs, Pope in the middle. The sound of two shots, and the cameras visibly fell. They switched to the next view of Maureen McGrail with an automatic rifle.
They’re trying to discredit us! They couldn’t kill the investigators, and now they’re trying to make us look bad. Scott and Mani can’t testify without being shot, they can paint Sean as a nutcase—which is pretty much true to start with—and no one will believe Vatican insiders.
Who does that leave? Our wounded Hashim, still in the hospital…an Arab in a European court? After twenty years of denying Arabs citizenship, you think you can get them to put aside their racism and listen for five minutes? You’d have better luck having them outgrow 500 years of French antisemitism.
As the images played across the screen, she smiled. She had an idea. All of the signals relayed from the cameras went to one remote location.
The signals from all of Manana Shushurin’s equipment—bugs, transmitters, and the like—that had been provided to her by her blackmailers all sent out a signal to the same place to monitor all the data she had gathered. You’re ex-NSA, you putz! Follow the signals!
Goldberg turned and charged, ready to throw herself into the forensics lab, pick up all of the equipment Manana had been stripped of, and begin the search.
“While reports are sketchy at best, it seems as though the head of the Vatican’s Central Office of Vigilance, Giovanni Figlia, has been killed while resisting arrest.”
Chapter XV
In Defense of the Faith
CNN broadcast the carnage as certain segments of the world watched in horror as the head of Vatican protection was eaten alive by anti-tank rounds that shredded his car, then him and his three men.
A .50-caliber bullet fired from a handgun could take off a man’s head, or any other limb. A 10mm bullet was roughly a .50-caliber. A 30mm bullet fired from a chain gun could penetrate tank armor.
Imagine the effect it would have on the human body.
The same people who could not stand to broadcast the beheading of reporter Daniel Perle coldly broadcast the bullets destroying Giovanni Figlia’s body. He was obviously dead, and everyone in the car with him, but the helicopters continued to fire as long as the car continued to move, failing to realize it only moved because of the bullet strikes.
The camera feed cut away before the helicopters could be destroyed by Wayne Williams Sr., but it didn’t matter, the audience was either hooked or disgusted. Or royally enraged.
* * *
In Ireland, Deaglan Lynch of the Provisional Irish Republican Army stormed into his offices, white hair around his head in a halo as he whipped his head around. He swung his cane like a man possessed, and his employees had to duck in order to keep their heads from being knocked off.
“All of you fockers are going to get off your arses right now!” he boomed. “The fockers we’ve been looking for have just kidnapped the Pope, and you’re all going to find their man.”
He eyed all of them with a malevolent eye, sighting down his cane like it was a rifle. “Last week, a priest was murdered in Dublin. Now
I’m told it was one of our boys. At this moment, I want every, single, man, woman and child who has ever held a gun for us, and was in this city on that day, in my office within the next six hours, or I swear on me mother’s grave that I will skin every last one of you!”
Lynch pressed a button and the cane’s shaft slid from the handle, revealing a long, sharp sword. “Am I perfectly, crystal, clear!”
* * *
Day 6. 2:00 AM
“Eight hundred years ago, the French absconded with the Pope to Avignon,” Fr. Williams began as he looked over Sean Ryan. “Although there is some discussion about whether or not he went willingly, considering that the riots in Rome were rather hard to take after a violent and exceptionally long conclave. It took St. Catherine of Siena some seventy years later to stand up to the Pope’s successor. She told him, ‘You’re the Bishop of Rome, get back there.’ Still, there’s a tradition that says the pope had been kidnapped by the French.”
“It seems that the French wanted to continue the tradition,” Petraro said.
Ryan waved the priest away. The last thing he wanted was to have his shirt off in a forensics lab/medical bay with a priest checking him out. Fine, he’d been shot at a few dozen times, so what?
“Sean,” Frank Williams began, “you will be examined, by me or by Giovanni’s wife, and she’s in forensics.”
He rolled his eyes. “And where did you get your PA degree?”
“St. John’s University, NYC.”
Ryan had his shirt taken off and tried to ignore everyone else in the room—and it happened to be nearly everyone. Maureen wore Kelly green flannel pajamas, pants and top still present. Manana had a black flannel set of clothing that looked like McGrail’s, only she had her top off while Ronnie Fisher examined her, her back to the rest of the room, and her bra still firmly hooked in place.
Scott Murphy had taken one look at her outfit and said, “You had those pajamas all the time? Why didn’t you wear them when we were sleeping in the same room?”