The Bridge of Bones (Vatican Knights)

by Rick Jones

  Suddenly the panels began to shift and move, propelled by hidden weights and balances within the walls and ceiling.

  In response, Kimball ran down the corridors, the constant reconfigurations of the walls forcing him down pathways until he was eventually guided into one that had dead-end walls at both ends.

  There was no way out, no avenue of escape.

  He was trapped.

  And then the walls began to close in on him.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  It took Leviticus less than three minutes to join up with Jeremiah. Although Gary looked lucid, he also appeared less than completely sound.

  “This boat,” Leviticus told Jeremiah, “was one of Božanović’s launch vehicles. We found sixty-four children down below in a holding cell.”

  Jeremiah was shocked. They weren’t prepared for this. To secure the safety of four targets was one thing. But to provide a safe passageway for an evacuation, in an enclosed and hostile space without the proper strategy, was something else all together.

  Leviticus read into Jeremiah’s expression. “We clear a path,” he told him. “We protect the citizenry of the Church. And we do this at all costs.”

  Jeremiah knew exactly what he was saying: they were to make a safe passageway at the cost of their lives or the lives of their captors. The parents of sixty-four children, after all, were out there waiting, and none of them cared how they got their children back, as long as they did.

  The Knights knew that the numbers of the enemy had been reduced. But the ship was big. And neither knew how many more opponents were left.

  Leviticus addressed Jeremiah: “You take portside. And I’ll take starboard. Gary, you follow me.”

  The three moved forward with great caution.

  When they reached the stairway that led to the first and final tier, they halted and listened.

  From their position, they could hear only the revving of engines running at maximum thrust in the ship’s stern, which was loud enough to mask the sound of any movement above.

  Leviticus shook his head. This is not good.

  He took the lead, scaling the steps with his weapon at eye level and using the scope as his visual guide.

  Jeremiah followed, with Gary not too far behind.

  Reaching the top and final step, Leviticus removed the stemmed mirror from the pocket of his vest, bent and angled the stalk, then raised the mirror like a periscope, so he could survey the room without proffering his head as a target.

  He turned the stalk in his hand so that the mirror would rotate and provide him with a 360° view of the salon. To the west and east of the room stood seven Croats, the teams guarding the glass doors leading to the deck.

  He lowered the mirror. “Seven,” he said, “all heavily armed.”

  “And the only way out is between us and them.”

  “Bingo.”

  “Now what?”

  Leviticus smiled. “As a brave soldier once said, we will fight in the shade.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  The walls were closing in, the power behind their movements promising to make Kimball the pasty mortar between them.

  He raised his weapon and fired off a volley of shots, the bullets pinging and denting the metal, but doing little else. “Božanoviiiiiiiiiiiiiić!”

  There was no answer, no response, as the shots continued to echo throughout the chamber with hollow cadence.

  Kimball searched high and scanned the ceiling. Nothing. But against the wall’s northeast corner was a series of junction boxes of brushed nickel, the three units standing side by side. They were connected by heavy-gauge cables.

  As the walls picked up momentum and pressed closer, Kimball raised his weapon, took aim, and pulled the trigger.

  Bullets strafed across the wall until the they ripped into the boxes, the impacts crippling and destroying the power boards and wiring underneath, casting off a shower of sparks.

  The walls began to slow, and then they stopped all together, confining Kimball to a space that was no larger than a closet.

  The panels were about ten-feet tall, which was about two feet higher than he could jump.

  So he needed a lift.

  He looked at his weapon and at its length. Properly fitted and properly used, it could provide him an additional two feet of height. He then removed the magazine and the chambered bullet, and wedged the submachine gun in the corner, so the mouth of the barrel was placed securely against the floor with the stock two feet above the ground. It would act as a makeshift stepladder. He tested the weapon’s stability, which was not very stable at all. Under his weight, it would probably wobble and give. But he had no other choice, no other option.

  It took seven attempts, until it finally held his weight without sliding to the floor.

  He reached upward toward the upper rim of the wall, his fingers falling short by nearly two feet. The weapon wobbled beneath his weight, but he managed to balance himself until he chose his moment, and jumped.

  The fingers of his right hand folded over the edge. His left arm, however, was proving useless, the strength almost gone, the pain going hot along his left side.

  Beneath him the gun fell flat to the floor, leaving him to hang by one arm.

  With all the strength he could muster, and using the toe-end of his boots to provide him with scaling support, he was able to mount the wall, and he sat upon its top the same way a rider would sit on a bronco. He viewed his surroundings from his new vantage point. The room was not that large. But the numerous walls and panels made it appear so.

  Wincing against the pain and realizing that his weapon was lost to him, he checked for his KA-BAR, patted it, and then shimmied along the wall tops until he came to the opposite side of the room, where he dismounted. In front of him was a door. So he opened it.

  It was another corridor—one that was designed to run along the length of the starboard side for Božanović’s exclusive use.

  Kimball removed his knife, entered the hallway, and continued his chase.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  The engines began to work to the point of overheating, as steam began to rise from the turbine thrusters, the heat causing the copper leads to the connectors to become red-hot. Below the propulsion room, two fuel tanks containing 9200 gallons of fuel were beginning to feel the effects of the heat, the insulated area growing to unimaginable temperatures as the twin screws rotated at top speed for much too long without any reprieve.

  Pressures were building and gasses were beginning to escape between the seams of the gaskets and permeated the air.

  Momentum for the perfect explosion was gathering.

  And no one on board had a clue.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Leviticus reached into his bulletproof vest and removed a flash bang. He motioned to Jeremiah to do the same.

  “There’s a power panel beside the door,” he whispered. “The network is behind a glass panel with red and green lights to monitor and pinpoint problem areas. I’m assuming it’s an easy-access board that serves the entire ship. So this is what we’re going to do. In unison, we’ll toss our flash bangs into the salon, to confuse the opposition long enough to take out the power supply. Once we do, then the advantage is ours to take, the moments the lights go out. We lower our face shields, turn the units to night-vision mode, and take new ground.”

  “So we fight in the shade?”

  Leviticus nodded. “We fight in the shade.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Isaiah and Shari waited down below. The children remained unmoving, afraid that a motion—any motion—would trigger a noise that would invite calamity.

  But Shari moved about consoling them with soft whispers, telling them that everything was going to be all right. She examined the range of faces, and noted that their flesh was covered with grime and filth, as if they had just walked out of a war-torn region.

  They looked back at her with saucer-like eyes, all big and wide and full of hope.

  It’l
l be all right.

  But there was such a long way to go.

  And hope, like anything else, could only carry you so far.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  By climbing the wall, Kimball had reopened his wound, the shirt underneath his bulletproof vest becoming wet and sticky with blood.

  The corridor was built with a low ceiling, about five feet from the floor, with walls so close that he nearly had to walk sideways to make any advancement down the corridor. It was obvious that this particular hallway was fitted to Božanović’s specifics, a hidden pathway designed for his escape when things became heated. But in the end, wherever this corridor led to, Kimball would find Jadran Božanović and he would kill the man.

  Kimball maneuvered down the corridor with the point of his KA-BAR held forward. The slightly curved passageway, which rounded alongside the hull of the ship from bow to stern, was lit with a string of overhead lights.

  Then he heard it, the closing of a metallic hatchway somewhere toward the stern, an area not too far away.

  Kimball now moved with a sense of great urgency and planned to make a statement of his own out of Jadran Božanović. Piece by piece and bone by bone, as promised, he would make his own masterpiece with this man’s carcass.

  If nothing else, Kimball’s dark faith was completely unshakable. So with venom coursing through his veins and with an inner darkness with which he’d become all too familiar, Kimball was once again the beast of his past. He was a man with no conscience, no remorse, and he carried himself with the cold fortitude of a machine.

  And in his mind—somewhere—he knew he was condemning himself to damnation, from which there would be no return and no salvation. Once he killed Jadran Božanović, there would be no light great enough to cleanse his soul.

  But Kimball had conceded to his fate.

  And he was good with it.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Leviticus and Jeremiah were ready.

  In concert with one another, they pulled the pins of their flash bangs and tossed them to opposite ends of the salon.

  Explosions quickly erupted, with a pop of brilliant white light and a concussive wave, the effects numbing the guards in the room, the men staggering around with arms and hands in front of their faces, each trying to get a fix on their surroundings, which had suddenly become upended.

  Jeremiah and Leviticus lowered their shields and entered the room from the stairway. With horizontal sweeps of his rifle, Leviticus strafed the control panel with a hail of bullets, smashing the control boards underneath.

  Suddenly the lights in the salon went out and the backup system kicked on, the room now steeped with red lighting that was reminiscent of a satanic landscape, dark and gloomy with the surrounding furniture little more than darkened shapes.

  Jeremiah crossed quickly to the opposite side of the salon where three of Božanović’s foot soldiers were starting to come back to reality, the effects of the blasts beginning to minimize as they turned and directed their weapons at the approaching Knight.

  With running momentum, Jeremiah leapt through the air and came downward with the hardest punch he could muster, knocking his opponent out. He then turned on the other two, their weapons on the rise, and came across with his leg, knocking away the mouth of the weapon’s barrel in one direction, while with his backhand he deflected the aim of the second man, by hitting the point of his weapon into another—a one-two strike in a single move.

  Both weapons went off in a rapid succession, the salon lighting up in a strobe-light effect from the muzzle flashes. Bullets struck neighboring walls and the ceiling. And Jeremiah went into a series of punches and kicks, the blows alternating from one soldier to the next, each man falling back as Jeremiah dispensed his brand of special techniques by showcasing his skill set.

  He came in with a series of straight-on blows, pummeling one soldier in the solar plexus with a blinding flurry of powerful jabs that were so fast that the thrusts could barely be seen with the naked eye. Then with elbow strikes, he came across with his left, and then his right, and hit the man squarely in both temples, sending him unconscious to the floor.

  Without skipping a beat and before the second man hit the ground, Jeremiah turned on the third man and drove a flat-footed kick into his stomach. The man doubled over and fell to a knee. As he tried to swing his weapon up and around, the Knight came across with the toe-end of his boot and hit the man firmly at the hinge of his jawbone. The bone broke, the man’s face becoming disproportionate, as his eyes rolled upwards into his head until they showed nothing but white. Then he fell to the floor.

  One of the men on Leviticus’s side, who had yet to engage, swung his weapon toward Jeremiah, found his mark, and pulled the trigger. Before Jeremiah could unsling his weapon, bullets tore into his thighs, the impacts knocking him off his feet, as if they had been kicked out from under him.

  Leviticus raised his weapon and strafed two men with gunfire—the one who shot Jeremiah and the one standing next to him. A series of bullet holes magically appeared along their chests as blooming rose petals.

  The force of the impacts drove them back, sending one man through a glass pane of decorative etched glass, the window smashing into tiny beads that reflected like embers against the red light.

  The remaining two guards brought their weapons up and fired off a stream of ammunition in Leviticus’s direction, the large Knight diving to the side. A bullet struck his shoulder.

  The pain was immense. It was as if someone had punched him through with a hot knitting needle. With his good arm, he brought his weapon up and pulled the trigger, waving his rifle from left to right, with some of his shots landing true. A bullet had struck the top of one man’s head, sheering it off as gore and pulp, while a second bullet hit the man squarely in the throat and decimated the bony column of his neck.

  That left just one.

  As Leviticus tried to maintain his ground, his weapon was becoming much too heavy to bear. The point of the suppressed barrel fell to the floor, the man exhausted. He tried to raise it again in his defense, but failed.

  The soldier was moving forward with his weapon directed on the Vatican Knight, the man screaming obscenities at the top of his lungs. When he was on top of Leviticus and looking down, when Leviticus could see the black opening of the barrel’s mouth, he closed his eyes and prayed.

  And a shot rang out.

  The man stood over Leviticus for a long moment, teetered in his stance, and then fell backwards, dead. His eyes were staring ceilingward.

  Across the room, a ribbon of smoke was rising from the tip of Jeremiah’s weapon.

  Both men appeared winded.

  And both men were wounded.

  But they were alive.

  When the battle was over, Gary cautiously entered the salon. Bodies were everywhere.

  Jeremiah was moving slowly across the floor in an elbow crawl. And Leviticus was getting to his backside. Of the two, Jeremiah was the more seriously wounded. So Gary went to his aid.

  Letting his back rest against the wall, Leviticus lowered his lip mic. “Isaiah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The path topside has been cleared. I repeat: the path topside has been cleared. But two men are down.”

  “Do we have a green light to proceed?”

  “That’s a Roger. You’re good to go.” He raised his mic and looked over the carnage they’d left behind.

  In the end, he thought, they were lucky to be alive.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  When Kimball heard the volley of gunfire, he stopped in his tracks until the action played itself out. What was most disconcerting, however, was the subsequent silence that always followed. He never knew who was left after an engagement. And this is what gnawed at him.

  Did his team become the victor?

  Or did he now stand alone?

  Feeling a coldness creep over him like a blanket from head to toe, he moved forward until he came to a hatch. Turning the wheel until the clamps pulled b
ack, he opened the door and allowed a strange red light to filter into the corridor.

  Stepping out, he found that he had worked his way to the ship’s stern, where a battery of heat swirled within the gloom of red lighting. His surroundings wavered with a satanic cast to them.

  At the end of this enclosure was a spiral staircase that led up to the upper tiers, to the top levels. Without hesitating, Kimball took the steps two at a time.

  Jadran Božanović heard the gunfire and waited until the last shot was fired. Even then he waited longer; making sure that the boat had been secured by his unit.

  But when he entered the salon on the top tier, he found what was left of his team either dead, dying, or rendered unconscious.

  He did a slow walk-through, stepping over bodies as they continued to bleed out, while others moaned. He looked at his surroundings and noted the bullet holes in the walls, and then the smashed interior of broken glass and destroyed antiquities. This area had become a war zone, with his team on the losing end.

  When he stepped out onto the open deck and felt a cool breeze glancing against his skin, he looked down at the docks to see the woman and her husband, and three other men—two of them obviously wounded as they labored in their movements. They were all escorting his products to safety.

  From his vantage point, he had lost everything.

  “This is just the first step of dismantling your Bridge of Bones,” someone said.

  Božanović wheeled around to see the shadow of a man standing silhouetted against the backdrop of red light.

  The man came forward. “Piece by piece, bone by bone,” the man said. And then the light of the docks showered against his face.