Crosses to Bear (Vatican Knights Book 6)

by Rick Jones

  Inside his suit he sighed.

  “Melbourne.” Kendrick said, placing a gloved hand on Melbourne’s shoulder. “We need to get going.”

  Melbourne nodded and gestured with his hand in a language that said: lead the way.

  And that’s exactly what Kendrick did, taking lead as he left the porch with Melbourne in his wake.

  #

  The interior of the bar must have been bleak-looking even before the fallout of the contagion, thought Seymour, as he stepped into the main area. The ambiance of lighting was poor, dark, but not enough to mask layers of gray dust that settled on the floor, bar and tabletops. Sitting at a table were three bodies. Two had their seemingly boneless hands wrapped around their mugs. The third simply wilted in his chair, his arms by his side and his head leaning to one side. Their flesh hung in folds, as if melted, with eyes that were asymmetrical from one another. And their clothes were wet from the fluids that leaked from their bodies.

  A fourth body was found behind the bar, Jimmy Ray, who lay face down in the pool of his own liquids, dark and thick, like molasses. His clothes took on the contours of someone who was disfigured, the bone structure not quite right. And because Jimmy Ray appeared flat, it looked as if he was seeping into the floorboards.

  After checking the entirety of the location and deeming it clear, Seymour and Child joined each other in close counsel.

  “These people,” said Child, pointing to the bodies at the table, “still have their hands around their beer mugs. That tells me they were dead before they knew it.”

  “It’s that quick?”

  “It’s that quick,” she confirmed.

  A blessing, thought Seymour, to die before the first burning itch of pain hits.

  As examination of the area continued with the military teams searching for survivors, Child and Seymour looked for the less obvious. As lead for the Department of Counter Terrorism, Jerald Seymour headed a branch whose objective was to incorporate and orchestrate the capabilities of the US Government to defeat international terrorism and reduce the threat to US interests at home and abroad. Child’s objective was to be incorporated and to aid the DCT to protect those interests. The scenario of possible biological warfare is nothing unique to the protocols of the DCT. Systems were in place and pre-plans were created to help protect the masses on a wide scale. But despite the proposed solutions, execution against such a strain would be futile. And both Seymour and Child knew this.

  While Child collected tissue and fluid samples from the bodies, Seymour was behind the bar. Sweeping the tips of his gloved fingers over the bar top and leaving streaks within the ash, he then brought his gloved hand up and studied the accumulation at the tips of his fingers, thinking it was more off-white and closer to the color of whey.

  Sidestepping the body—with Seymour doubly thankful that he was wearing his helmet to hamper the stench—he noticed a trash bucket not completely under the bar. So he grabbed the edges and slid it out from underneath. Sitting on top of the trash heap was a single vial that had been opened, the glass cylinder black. He lifted it from the trash. “Dr. Child.”

  She turned.

  He raised the vial for her to see. “I think we have what we came here for.”

  Child went to the bar and stood on the other side with the bar top dividing them. “Let me see that,” she said, holding out her hand.

  He gently placed the vial in the palm of her gloved hand. This particular tube was unlike most vials. Whereas glass tubes were cylindrical, this one was hexagon in shape with six sides, the bottom flat instead of rounded. Such vials, Child realized, were used to mark the most significant strains. Any vial of this shape was never to leave a specified level, let alone a lab. What she was holding in her hand was positive proof that the vial contained the Omega Strain.

  “This is it,” she said, her voice hollow behind her mask. “She pinched the vial between her thumb and forefinger and held it up. “These vials are earmarked for certain strains, deadly strains, and are never to be removed from certain laboratory environments under any conditions. If a vial like this is to be destroyed, then it’s to be vaporized under watchful protocols.”

  “Yet here it is.”

  “This proves, Mr. Seymour, without a doubt that we’re dealing with the Omega Strain.” She turned the vial so that its flat bottom was showing in his direction. On the bottom was the symbol Ω, the symbol for Omega.

  “Is the tube black for a reason?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I can only assume, since the vial is seemingly empty when it’s not, that it was painted black to obscure any view of what may be inside. A natural response to this would be to open the cap and make sure. And when the cap was removed—” She cut herself off and gestured by sweeping her hand across the air to showcase the room, at the powdery accumulation of death, which included anything airborne and infinitesimally minute in size.

  Seymour raised his left arm. Attached to the sleeve of the hazmat suit was a communication pad. He flip the lid and began typing on the keyboard, which enabled him to open a comm channel to communicate through a lip mic inside his helmet, which meant direct contact with Melbourne.

  Melbourne’s voice sounded hollow inside the helmet of his hazmat suit when he responded. “Go.”

  Seymour took the vial and stared at the symbol at the bottom. It was almost glaring at him, the Ω. “We have it,” he told him. Then in a tone that was one of defeat, he stated softly, “We have the crucible.”

  “Do we have confirmation on this?”

  He stared at the Ω. “We do.”

  There was a moment of silence, then: “I’ll notify the principals,” he finally returned. “Initialize protocols and report to base camp. The president will want to be directly linked to the Comm Center.”

  “Copy that.” Seymour hit a button on the keypad and closed communication.

  For a long moment Seymour and Child looked at each other knowing that they were probably turning over the same questions in their minds: There are still eleven vials out there, how do we even begin to find them? Is this just a taste of something far worse to come? Can we stop them? Would we be able to find a corrective remedy within days, when top virologists couldn’t find one for months? Is there a solution for a seemingly hopeless situation?

  The soldiers stood idly by watching this silent standoff. But it was Child who turned and walked away with no answers in sight.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Chamber of the Servizio Informazione del Vaticano (The SIV)

  The Vatican’s Intelligence Agency

  Vatican City

  In the early 19th century when there were efforts to subvert the power of the Vatican, the SIV was created because at that time the Church saw the need to create an “unofficial” security agency to solve problems by conceiving a system of confidential communication and information gathering. Forever evolving over time, the SIV has become one of the most renowned intelligence agencies in the world, which included the likes of Mossad, the CIA and MI6.

  The agency leads were Fathers Gino Auciello and John Essex, Jesuits who were tasked to gather and analyze pertinent data in regards to Vatican interests. Often they would appropriate the data of others by tapping into networks such as NSA’s ThinThread, an informational data base with a massive electronic warehouse and state-of-the-art facial recognition software. If there was a security camera posted anywhere in the world, then the NSA could access that particular system and find anyone’s location. ThinThread would then identify and confirm the identity of the target once facial recognition kicked in. And since the SIV had the tools necessary to access the NSA’s warehouse, their analysts would appropriate necessary data by applying keywords such as ‘pope’ or ‘church’ or ‘Vatican’ into ThinThread’s programming, and get hits on possible threat measures concerning the Vatican.

  On the last pass through NSA’s database, the NSA was on one of its highest alert levels in years. Normally this would not factor into the concerns of the chur
ch; however, the involvements of a theft regarding a lethal toxin from a Galveston laboratory had tenuous ties to the Church. So Fathers Essex and Auciello immediately called for a personal audience with the pope.

  Bonasero Vessucci sat behind the papal desk as Pope Pius XIV. Today he appeared more aged than normal with dark circles around his eyes and a face that was leaner, thinner, and somewhat weary in countenance. Yet his smile was never feigned or false, but always warm and cordial. “This is a matter of quite some urgency, I understand. The question is: why would something involving the National Security Agency in the United States concern the Vatican?”

  Father Auciello leaned forward. He was a man of olive-skin and white hair, the contrast between the two giving him somewhat of a noble, almost patrician look about him. “Your Holiness, it has come to our attention that a toxin was stolen from a lab in Texas several days ago by a terrorist faction. Three of these men involved were killed by the Fourth Man in the group. At this time the NSA is trying to determine why he did it. But at this moment there are no answers.”

  The pope looked at him with a questioning look. “And how does this involve the Vatican?”

  “Not directly,” stated Father Essex, a Londoner. “But” –Father Essex opened a manila file, grabbed a few photos, all black and whites, and handed them to the pontiff—“you may want to take a look at these photos taken from the NSA. They’re the photos of the Fourth Man.”

  Bonasero accepted the pictures. When he saw the first photo a pained look overtook him, his face becoming pinched. “Oh, dear,” he whispered. And then he began to leaf through the others, all of the same man. These pictures were crisp, not like the ones that are too grainy or fuzzy to make identification. The recognition of the man was quite clear. Bonasero looked up and scanned the faces of the Jesuits before him, going from one face to another. Then, after placing the photos down, he stated in confirmation, “It’s Ezekiel.”

  Ezekiel was an elite Vatican Knight who had been trained by Kimball and ended up going rogue, killing a few knights while leading a personal crusade to kill Kimball Hayden, the man who assassinated Ezekiel’s grandfather when Ezekiel was just a boy. In his wage to take out Kimball, Kimball fought back, and hard, having every intention to kill Ezekiel before Ezekiel had a chance to run a blade across Kimball’s throat and snuff out his life. But in the end as one Knight tried to best the other, Ezekiel escaped and was never heard from again.

  Until now.

  “Why would he do such a thing?” the pope said somewhat rhetorically.

  But Essex response was to hand him additional photos. “Maybe these will help you understand,” he said.

  Bonasero Vessucci was looking at the pictures of a small town. And by the looks of it, it was somewhere in the desert. The landscape appeared to be covered in ash. And by the time the aerial view of the photos were taken, several body bags were lining the streets waiting to be loaded onto canvas-covered trucks. “What exactly am I looking at?”

  “These photos, Your Holiness, is of a small town called Bensenville. It’s in New Mexico, a secluded little outpost But the NSA believes it to be a testing ground for the toxin that was stolen a few days prior.”

  “Testing ground?”

  Father Auciello nodded. “The toxin that was stolen by Ezekiel was called the Omega Strain. It is highly potent with no known remedy and has a mortality rate of one hundred percent. The effects to the human body are devastating. But this particular toxin is so lethal, it apparently kills everything. And I’m talking about other microorganisms, bacteria, viruses, plants, trees, animals—anything that’s organic in nature. Nothing in Bensenville was left alive.”

  “How many perished?” asked the pontiff.

  “Eighty confirmed dead. Two brothers appear fine. And two more were away visiting relatives in another state.”

  Bonasero shook his head disbelievingly, looking through the photos. Most were close-ups of body bags. Some were of people wearing hazmat suits, most heavily armed. And others were of white tents set up as sterilization stations beyond the outskirts of the town. He laid the photos down. “Does the NSA know it’s Ezekiel?”

  Father Essex shook his head. “They have no idea who he is,” he said. “Ezekiel was a Vatican Knight; therefore, he has no past or present. He does not exist because there are no files or records of his life beyond the walls of the Vatican.”

  Then: “Why would Ezekiel do such a thing?” the pontiff asked. There was heightened pain in the measure of his tone, his voice beginning to crack. “Why would he do such a terrible, terrible thing?”

  “We could only put forward a few guesses, Your Pontiff. But the NSA believes him to be part of a terrorist organization who has ties to the Michigan area where a high number of Muslims reside, some with fundamentalist beliefs.”

  “Ezekiel would never surrender his faith in Catholicism.”

  “And therein lies the mystery,” returned Father Essex. “Why engage yourself with a terrorist faction, steal a deadly virus, then kill your entire team and walk away?”

  “To set up a red herring,” the pontiff quickly answered. It wasn’t so much as a consideration as it was enlightenment. “He wanted those bodies to be found and traced back to the supporting cell.”

  “We considered this as well,” said Father Auciello. “But the question remains: why? Why would Ezekiel throw suspicion upon a terrorist cell and walk away?”

  “And why would Ezekiel get involved with a terrorist group to begin with?” Bonasero fell back into his seat, searching for answers that never came.

  Then Father Auciello proposed another theory, one the pontiff would not appreciate. “We may not know why Ezekiel did what he did, but we are concerned about a possible motive behind his action.”

  “And that would be?”

  “Bear in mind, Your Holiness, that this is nothing more than conjecture at this point.”

  “Go on.”

  “That town in New Mexico—Bensenville.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s exactly the same size as Vatican City.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Mountain Lake Inn

  Escondida, New Mexico

  Ezekiel’s true name was Mark Cartwright, the grandson of former Senator Joseph Cartwright, now deceased, the man assassinated by Kimball Hayden, who at the time served as ring leader of Senator Cartwright’s kill team. In the end, however, this became a case where Frankenstein’s monster came home to kill its master.

  When Cartwright was a leading senator on Capitol Hill, he ruled with a lofty scepter, threatening Republicans and Democrats alike to rule in the favor he thought best for the movement of the country by the way of his thinking, rather than by debate. Rooting deep into many closets and discovering many skeletons, especially against those who sat upon the highest political seats in the land, he always found leverage against his opponents. But when his coercions became too obtrusive to those whose scepters were even loftier than his own, Cartwright’s team turned against him when higher powers ordered the neutralization of any future threats by taking out the senator, which also happened to be the first and last time that a reigning politician was terminated by the government he served.

  On the night that Senator Cartwright was assassinated, Mark Cartwright, then five years old, was hiding in a small cabinet beneath the book shelves in the senator’s library. From inside the tiny recess where the door was marginally open, he could see his grandfather’s body lying against his desk with his throat slashed and Kimball standing over him with a knife in his hand.

  But as Kimball canvassed the premise to sterilize the area of eyewitnesses, he found Mark sobbing uncontrollably in the darkness of his cubbyhole, the boy having drawn his knees up into acute angles and then wrapping his arms around them. Instead of killing the boy as required by protocol, Kimball grazed his fingers softly across the boy’s cheek, the act telling Mark that he would be all right, that he would be allowed to live and grow and become a man. And since Mark Cartwright ha
d no living relatives, he eventually became a ward of the state.

  Later, as Mark (Ezekiel) grew to the point of becoming a man, and having been chosen by Kimball—who now served the Vatican instead of the United States government—to be raised by the Vatican and trained in the ways of a Vatican Knight. Kimball had felt a conscionable need to embrace the boy and give him the opportunity that was denied his grandfather so long ago: that of life. He also felt it important that the boy understand the Vatican Knight's motto--loyalty above all else, except honor. But the credo that loyalty was above all else except honor always rang hollow to Mark as the images of his grandfather and the man who killed him never quite escaped his memory, the images so vivid, so clear. And since the night of the senator’s death, Mark Cartwright had been nursing a private sorrow.

  As he grew and learned the ways of the Vatican Knights, Mark was building his personal arsenal to eventually wage a war against the man who killed his grandfather by developing his own set of combat skills, by learning the ways of Kenpo and Tae Kwon Do, by gaining the insights to the philosophies to develop the mind, and to study the ways of the Bible in order to enrich his soul. But as the boy grew into a man, he became a paragon of an elite soldier whose only true rival was Kimball Hayden. However, whereas Kimball succeeded in killing the senator, Ezekiel failed in his endeavor, his skills not as superior as the master who taught him well. But as long as Ezekiel drew breath, he knew he would never surrender his quest to someday destroy Kimball Hayden just as Kimball destroyed his creator, the senator. History was once again repeating itself, but this time it was doing so with a different cast of characters. Should the opportunity ever present itself, he would kill his mentor the same way that Kimball Hayden had killed his grandfather.

  Sitting inside a small motel room that had the rustic look and feel of a log cabin, Ezekiel was watching a monitor that had intercepted a live feed from NSA’s makeshift camp on the outskirts of Bensenville. The face of the monitor was broken into a grid of nine separate pictures with nine separate locations, the pattern similar to a tic-tac-toe game. In the top row were live shots of the town, a dead wasteland, with armed guards in hazmat suits working beneath the hot glare of high-intensity of sodium vapor lamps. The middle row showed men in hazmat suits inside sterilization tents pouring over data, presumably trying to identify the strain. And the third row showed the interiors of barrack-shaped shelters that housed the bodies, which were lying on tables and looking less than human.