Of course, that view is only available from the ceiling. From Dick’s-Eye View, it’s chaotic as hell. All I can see are the dead men and the nuns with the machine guns, who have just disappeared around the corner.
I went to the body of the second terrorist. If he had another box of bullets in the nun’s outfit, I couldn’t find them, so I grabbed his weapon instead. I looked up and saw another nun running toward me. As I leveled the Beretta to fire I realized she had rosary beads on her belt. Why that told me she was legit I have no idea—call it holy inspiration if you want—but I didn’t shoot. I waved my arms at her to get down; when she did I saw two tangos in nun drag behind her. I didn’t have to look for rosary beads, or the lack thereof—they had their submachine guns up and ready to fire. Two kisses of the trigger brought tears to their eyes—along with 9mm bullet holes, which rapidly filled with blood. They folded to the floor in a heap, already on their way to hell.
I went over and grabbed the real nun, telling her in Italian that she was safe but had better take off her headgear.
She looked at me as if I’d asked her to have sex with a donkey.
“Perché?” she stuttered. “Why?”
“Because the terrorists are dressed like you are. The more different you can make yourself, the better.”
She blinked, mumbled a prayer, and then pulled off her hat. That was as far as she was going, and I wasn’t going to ask her to go any further. I pulled her along with me as I ran toward the entrance to the catacombs where I had last seen Karen. The gated entrance had been closed. Before I could debate whether to try shooting through the locks, a chorus of submachine guns started singing a heavenly hosanna on the other side of the church.
We ducked around the thick pillars, watching as tracer rounds flashed on the other side of the basilica. The guns were firing toward the doors at the front of the church.
Two men dressed in workmen’s clothes ran out from the side, then began firing from behind the Papal Altar, which was behind me in the middle of the church. I’d have to deal with them before trying to go after Karen; otherwise they’d be in a perfect position to shoot me in the back.
“I want you to stay here and don’t move,” I told the nun in Italian. “Stay down and be quiet.”
“Can I pray?”
“Praying’s good,” I told her.
She put her hands together and began. “Oh Lord, my Rogue Warrior smote the shit out of the blasphemous bastards, showing no mercy as he reams their unholy asses and sends the sons of bitches to their fiery reward…”*
I’d picked up two more submachine guns along the way, so that I now had four weapons. Rather than taking them all with me, I pulled out the mags—basic thirty-shot boxes of 9mm Parabellum—on two of the four guns and stuffed them into my belt for spares. I held one gun in each hand as I moved out. The Beretta measures about sixteen inches from nose to stubby butt end; the metal stock swings up to give you more stability when firing under your arm, but it’s not really meant for one-handed shooting. To remind you of this the designers put a grip at the front. But you can get away with it if you have big-enough hands and your adrenaline is pumping.
I retreated toward the back of the church, circling around in a loop while their attention was focused on the security people who were trying to get in on the far end. When I was behind their position, I launched myself sideways onto the floor like a kid tossing a sled down a hill. I aimed to skid on my shoulder across the floor, firing as soon as they came into my sights. But I had miscalculated how fast I would slide, and after only a brief burst slammed against a slab of marble at the far side of the chapel. Fortunately, I hit the wall with the thickest part of my body—my skull. The crack sounded like an explosion, reverberating through the rotunda like a pound of C4 in a sewer pipe. When I blinked my eyes open, I saw that I was holding four guns in each hand.
Which was handy, because eight terrorists were jumping up in surprise from behind the rear pillar of the Papal Altar a few feet away.
Eight went into eight three times—a brief, solid burst from my guns took them all down. The rattle cleared my head, and when I blinked again, there were only two guns in my hand, and two men on the floor. My eyes had no sooner focused than a fresh swarm of bullets whizzed over my head—two more tangos had climbed up into St. Peter’s Chair behind me and were firing from behind the bronze robes of the first bishop. I rolled to the right just out of their line of fire, protected by the corner and rear pillar of the Papal Altar.
Even if I could have found a firing angle without getting plastered, the bastards were well protected behind the artwork, whose metal was as thick as the walls of a main battle tank. But even an M1A1 is vulnerable to air attack, and so were they. A set of elaborate crystal chandeliers hung on either side of the altar, arranged one atop the other like a ladder of light to heaven.
It took me three tries, but when I finally nailed the chains, the chandeliers rained down on the punks like fire from heaven. One thick piece of glass, about the size of a Ka-Bar knife and twice as sharp, hit one of the tangos at the back of the neck. He dove forward from the altar with his arms outstretched, blood spurting from his neck like a fountain. Tango Two tried to avoid the shower of shrapnel, jumping out and then running in front of the altar.
Bad move. I squeezed off a burst, and his skull exploded like an overripe pumpkin. His blood blended in well with the red marble on the altar behind him.
The tangos had been firing at a pair of plainclothes security men who’d been at the left corner of the basilica, down at the far end behind me. They were crouched near the marble columns about midway down the nave, in front of the Choir Chapel. Both men stood, pistols drawn. I ducked instinctively, but they didn’t fire at me. Instead they tossed them on the ground, apparently because the terrorists over by the Pietà had demanded they do so or their hostages would be killed.
As if they were really going to let them go if they didn’t, right?
I ran back to the entrance to the catacombs. The nun I’d helped earlier was talking to a priest crouched behind the locked gate to the entrance. The priest explained that the tourists, which presumably included Karen, had already escaped to the outside of the church. He’d come up to see if he could help anyone else to safety, only to find the door locked.
Neither the priest nor the nun was familiar enough with the basilica to tell me if there was a passage at the side of the building I could use to get into the chapel behind the terrorists at the Pietà. I suspected there were plenty, but without a map or guide this was no time to play Hansel and Gretel. I came up with a much easier way of sneaking up on the scumbags.
“Sister, take off your robe,” I said.
The nun’s response was immediate—she let fly with a hard slap across the face. Fortunately, I’ve had a lot of experience with that. Explaining what I had in mind headed off a second blow, but the nun wasn’t convinced it was a good idea until the priest offered a plenary indulgence, which is the Catholic equivalent of a good-conduct pass to heaven.
“You will both avert your gaze!” said the nun.
A few minutes later, a hunched-over tango dressed in nun drag came down the center aisle of the church, bent under the weight of the dead comrade on his shoulder. It was yours truly, of course, with one of the Beretta peashooters in my paw, hidden behind the limp leg of the dead tango. I was nearly to the Pietà chapel when two security people stepped out from the portico area and zeroed in on me. My short hairs puckered—I didn’t want to shoot them, but I wasn’t particularly in the mood to get shot myself. Before they could fire, one of the terrorists near the Pietà laced the area with gunfire and they jumped back. Luckily for them, the terrorist wasn’t much of a shot.
I groaned under the dead man’s weight. One of the tangos came out to help, while two others stepped forward to cover us. That made things ridiculously easy: Bang-bang-bang and down went Tango Number One. Bang-bang-bang and down went Tango Two. Bang-bang-bang and down went Tango Three.
&nbs
p; At least, he should’ve gone down. He was the easiest shot, the bastard who’d come up to help me with my burden, so I was three feet away from the son of a bitch.
It’s not easy to miss from three feet, and I didn’t. Unfortunately, whoever had packed the terrorists’ ammo had neglected to follow the rudimentary precaution of packing a few tracers into the very end of the row to tip off the shooter that his well is running dry. Standards are slipping everywhere these days.
I jerked the dead body over my shoulder, walloping the tango in the head. He fell backwards into Leo XII’s tomb. Leo coldcocked the son of a bitch—the tango’s lower extremities were impaled by a piece of marble on the monument.
The forces of Satan were taking a beating, but they hadn’t been vanquished yet. As I reloaded, the last tango in the Pietà chapel grabbed one of his tourist hostages and held a gun near her head. He shouted in very bad Italian that I had better not do anything or he would blow the infidel’s head off.
In retrospect, it was kind of funny that someone who had shot up a church called someone else an infidel, but at the time I didn’t get the joke.
Three or four hostages, all women, were cowering on the left side of the chapel across from him, in front of the bulletproof barrier that protects the statue. There were two guards lying in pools of blood nearby; the three tangos I had wasted were scattered behind me. Most of the other hostages had managed to scoot up toward the front of the church when the commotion began, or were hiding in the flowers and statuary nearby. Somewhere behind me were three or four members of the Vatican security service, though I didn’t know exactly where.
“Maybe we can negotiate,” I said, first in Italian, then in English.
The tango grinned. Which gave me an easy target. I put three bullets between his mouth and hairline.
“Negotiate that, motherfucker.”*
If you’ve been keeping score at home, you know that I’ve had a modestly successful day: twelve tangos to one splitting headache, an acceptable exchange ratio. But you also know, since you had that dome-eye view of things, that there was one group of terrorists unaccounted for.
I did not know this. And so when the Vatican security people came running up from the portico area where the doors are at the front of the church, I put my weapon down and pulled the head gear off to make it clear I was a good guy. They shouted some shit in Italian that I should stand back, not move, that kind of crap. I yelled that they could fuck themselves: Weren’t they watching what I’d just done?
They had, but apparently they weren’t taking any chances. Now that I’d done their jobs for them, they rewarded me by giving me an up-close look-see at their weapons.
Nine-millimeter Beretta handguns, nothing special. Unless, of course, you’re staring up the barrel at the loaded chamber.
Cooler heads and sarcasm finally prevailed: I held out my hands, told them who I was, and asked if they had expected me to gift wrap the dead tangos instead of leaving them where they fell. One of the men’s English wasn’t quite up to snuff and asked me to translate, which sent his companions into laughing fits. I laughed, they laughed—the only people not laughing were the slimes with the Berettas up in the dome. They were rather pissed off about the bad turn their enterprise had taken, and expressed their opinion with a fresh clatter of gunfire.
Fortunately, when Michelangelo was designing the dome, firing lines for submachine gun–toting dirtbags were not one of his main considerations. The bullets rattled ferociously, but harmlessly, as they splayed against the marble floor at the center of the church a few yards away.
A gnomelike Italian in a blue suit was in charge of the unit. He introduced himself as Lieutenant Luigi Piccolo. The last name translates as “little” or “short,” and the good lieutenant lived fully up to it, his head bobbing to about my chest. Shortstuff had heard all about my exploits at the NATO party the night before, had seen my picture in the paper, and professed to be a big fan, having read every “l’avventura di Demo Dick.”
“What sort of reinforcements do you have outside?” I asked, taking off the nun’s uniform and grabbing back the submachine gun I’d been using.
Shortstuff shook his head sadly, then explained that the Vatican had recently initiated a series of counterterrorist measures that were supposed to keep the basilica safe from attack. These included gates that automatically locked once a “panic button” was pushed. The locks could then be opened only by supplying a twenty-four-digit secure code through a special remote system. Great idea, I guess, if you think that someone is going to attack from the outside and you’ll be able to stop him before he gets inside. Not such a great idea if he’s already inside and inside is where you want to be. It’s the typical “concentric circle” syndrome: Keep the prime target in the center and build layers of defense so lawyers can document trespassing, intent, malice, etc. The plan has nothing to do with stopping—which is good, because it doesn’t. Good for the prosecutors, that is. It sucks for the victims.
A dozen security people had been inside when the attack began. Not surprisingly the tangos had chosen the shift change to strike, knowing that in true Italian style there would be a decent gap between when the force started heading for the showers and the rest came in to take their place. The tangos had killed four of the men and shot up another one pretty badly; that left seven, two of whom had minor wounds but declared themselves fit for battle. All were equipped with radios and 9mm Beretta handguns. The radios could not communicate with the outside; the basilica had recently installed a series of jamming devices to prevent the remote detonation of bombs, and an alternative—like line-of-sight infrared or even a wired landline—had not yet been adopted.
It’d be easy to blame these shortcomings on the fact that we were in Italy. But half-assed planning, insufficient training, and equipment issues are par for the course around the world, and the Eye-talians were no better or worse at any of it. As individuals, the men on the security team were all personally brave, and every one of the dead men had died with his gun drawn, trying to return fire. The fact that they didn’t have to die just makes the screw-ups in planning and management suck that much more.
Shortstuff explained that by now alarms would have alerted the carabinieri or military police, which would be sending the Italian equivalent of a SWAT team to the basilica. He suggested that we stay put until they arrived.
I told him it made far more sense to get upstairs now. If the tangos could smuggle guns inside the church, bringing in a few blocks of Semtex would be child’s play.
I had no doubt the Italian carabinieri would show up, and having seen them in one or two NATO exercises I even thought they would be rather efficient. But I also realized that the Italian “gli SWATi” operated on Italian time. Mamma mia. In American English, pronto means “do it yesterday.” In Italian, pronto means “sometime this century.” Or next.
“All right. There’s a stairway through there,” said Shortstuff, pointing to an archway across the nave.
We’d have to run through the terrorists’ line of fire to get there. But that was the easy part. The bends in the stairway inside would provide a number of ambush points, and even if the terrorists didn’t want to waste manpower on the steps themselves, they could post someone up at the top or along the walkway above. I hate fighting stairwells; I lack the patience, and grenades bounce down with a sickening series of thuds before the big boom.
There was another entrance on our side up closer to the altar, but it was in full view of the terrorists. Shortstuff knew of at least one other way to get up there, through a hallway on the right-hand side of the transept, which is the arm that forms the cross in the basic church layout. The easiest way to get to that hallway was to walk under the dome—clearly not an option here. Alternatively, you could work your way up and around from our side, exposing yourself only briefly to being seen as you crossed near St. Peter’s Chair. Even there you might be able to crawl behind the statues and avoid being seen. That, too, would take quite a bit of
time; you’d have to watch for an ambush from the side as you went.
My own observation provided a fourth route, somewhat more direct than the others, though it involved thinking outside of the box—or rather, the church. Many of the altars were built with columns, which I could use to climb up to a balcony level filled with floodlights used to light the interior during mass and ceremonies. Above that level were windows, which I could escape through to the roof; from there, I could climb up onto the dome above the balcony where the tangos were.
Shortstuff was impressed by the plan—or at least that’s how I chose to translate the string of adjectives that spewed from his mouth when I explained it.
“Impossibile,” he repeated over and over, interspersing the word with some choicer terms.
You can’t buy encouragement like that.
I had him divide up his men into three groups, with each unit taking a different route through the church. I would provide a temporary diversion for all three to help them get into position, then go up to the windows.
Shortstuff’s version of a pep talk ringing in my ears, I gathered some extra ammo from the tangos I’d wasted and stuffed the mags into my pants. The Beretta submachine gun I had didn’t come with a strap; I don’t mind carrying a cannon in my pants, but I draw the line at a submachine gun. I took off my belt and rigged a bandolier, strapping the submachine gun to my pecks.
Like the ones I’d stumbled on earlier, the group of tangos tasked with hitting the Pietà area had used a large fake speaker to help them get into position. The framework of the speakers was sturdy, but the top was flimsy plywood that wouldn’t do much to stop a spitball, let alone 9mm bullets. But you work with what you have.
I pushed the speaker to the edge of the chapel, positioning it while the group charged with dashing across to the staircase opening got ready. I had an inspiration while I was waiting, and pulled off my shirt, latching it at the side with the help of two large staples from the kneeler on the side altar. From a distance, it would look like I was cowering behind it—or at least I hoped it would.
RW13 - Holy Terror Page 4