by Rick Jones
Beneath the cone of fading light as his mother withered, Kimball realized that she was too weak to cry out. Then from Kimball: No. Some of these people were killed . . . The Shape chortled after Kimball allowed his words to fall away. By what? By accident? Was that what you were going to say, Kimball? That you killed some of these people by accident because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time? You do know that I can read your mind, don’t you? But if that’s your argument, if you were killing bad people for the ‘good’ of your government in order to achieve the desired results, then you only killed ‘bad’ people? And bad people, Kimball, can never achieve the Light. Kimball watched those who were close to the Shape, all animated bodies that were riddled with bullet holes, mostly with shots to the forehead and two to center mass; the marks of an assassin. In a dream for which Kimball couldn’t seem to awaken from, he watched as the reaching arms of those he had assassinated absorb the last of his mother’s Light, her dying Hope.
It won’t be long now, said the Shape. Just a matter of time before I reap the final rewards. But don’t you fret none, Kimball Hayden. You were just doing the right thing when you killed these people, weren’t you? With his back to the tarp on the desert sand, Kimball shot upright gasping for air as if he’d been below the surface of water for a lengthy time. His eyes were stark in the darkness, the ogling whites contrasting hugely against the blackness of night. Raking his fingers wildly through his hair, Kimball began to rock back and forth repeating: “It’s only a dream . . . It’s only a dream . . . It’s only a dream.” Then as he eventually managed calm, Kimball released a collective sigh of relief. Come morning, he would forget that he had dreamed at all.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Vatican Intelligence
Vatican City
Father Essex and Auciello were manning the monitors that were able to capture Kimball Hayden’s infrared image inside the Syrian desert. The assassin had negotiated a chain of hills that the Jeep could not manage and began his trek towards Baghdad. So far, the assassin was making great strides under such hostile conditions. “He’s definitely heading to Baghdad,” Father Essex stated with his British accent. Father Auciello never took his eyes off the screen. “He’s forty miles out,” he said. “The temperature is hot. He’ll never make it.” “Then we’ll both see if God is truly watching this man as Cardinal Vessucci claims.” “Only time will tell,” said Father Auciello. “But that time is growing short.” In silence, the co-directors of Vatican Intelligence watched how Kimball’s life was going to play out.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
The Syrian Desert
The sun was blazing, tortuous. It wasn’t until midday that Kimball set up the tarp to camp under until the sun passed. Then he would begin his journey once again by following the GPS monitor instead of the stars. Finding a location that could have been a wash for the rains of a monsoon, Kimball raised the tarp to create an A-shape covering to block the sun and took refuge. By his estimate as he laid there thinking, he was making good time. In two days, while minimalizing his water intake, he would reach the outskirts of Baghdad in good shape and sound mind. Then as night approached, he would make his move. He would run with the shadows by becoming a part of them and bring with it his particular brand of death. While the hours were passing endlessly by for Kimball as he lay underneath the tarp, he heard the crunching of sand from the footfalls of another. They were fast at first, then more tentative when it discovered the cover, the advance now one of caution.
Kimball reached for his suppressed Glock, checked the chamber. The gun was fully loaded. The footsteps, coming closer and closer, until they stopped on the other side of the tarp. Kimball gripped the weapon within his sweaty palm, flexed his fingers to get a better hold, then pushed the tarp aside to confront his opponent. What Kimball Hayden saw, what he had become startled by, was a creature with a horned head and cloven hooves.
* * *
The goat cocked its head oddly to one side as it stared at Kimball Hayden. Around its neck was a cow bell. From behind its triangular beard and its seemingly puzzled look, the goat began to bleat, which caused Kimball to shush the animal with soft whispers. To see such an animal wearing a cow bell often meant that it was part of a shepherd’s herd. And the last thing he wanted to do was to compromise his position with tribesmen who were steeped in thousands of years of tradition. Kimball would be viewed as an enemy . . . or at the very least be considered as one. The goat continued to bleat, as if agitated. That was when Kimball waved the gun frantically at the animal which caused the goat to take flight. But it was too late. Kimball could hear the voice of a young boy calling out to the animal in Arabic. That was when he pushed himself against the sandy wall of the wash’s channel that had a ledge above him. He had planted himself so firmly against wall, sharp pebbles pricked his back like the points of daggers. The boy called out to its goat. And somewhere the goat bleated. That was when Kimball realized that he had left his backpack and tarp in the middle of the wash, things that would certainly draw attention. As soon as Kimball stepped away from the wall to hide the items, a shadow from the ledge’s overhang cast over him. The child’s small body was silhouetted against the pure white sun, as a diffusion of light shined around his body like a halo. And then the boy was gone, shouting, the sun assaulting Kimball’s eyes with a sudden and terrible brightness.
Kimball immediately engaged his weapon, took position above the ledge, drew a bead, and pulled the trigger, the bullet’s momentum quickly driving the boy hard to the ground. An older boy who herded the goats with a gnarled staff stood unmoving with his mouth open in mute protest. First his eyes moved to the body of his brother, then to Kimball, then back to his brother. When he started to take flight, Kimball took a single shot with the bullet killing the boy before he stuck the surface with the face-first approach. On the landing the goats did little to disperse. After checking his surroundings for tribesmen but sighting no one, Kimball realized that the boys were most likely marshalling escaped goats back to the tribe’s fold. As he stood over his victims with his Glock smoking from the barrel, Kimball watched as their blood spilled onto the sand and became absorbed by it. The oldest couldn’t have been more than twelve, he considered. The younger less than ten. Raising his weapon and staring at it for a long moment, he was struck by a palpable pain in his gut which turned his stomach into a slick fist. Going to a knee, Kimball could not stop the regurgitation of vomit, the spasms forcing his flow up through his gullet and to the desert floor. After running a sleeve across his mouth, he examined the gun once again. Two shots, two dead, the pinpoint accuracy of the rounds striking the children dead suddenly weighed heavily on him. Getting to his feet, Kimball wound his arm and tossed the weapon as far as he could, the man screaming with savage rage. Once the Glock landed, he fell to his knees and embraced himself against the shuddering cold that suddenly racked his body beneath a white-hot sun, and began to sob, the emotional wall he had hid behind for so long crumbling. For hours he wept as a way of catharsis, a purging of sins. It was such a time-consuming process that he had become unaware of nightfall. During the day as the sun beat down on him, blisters had formed on his lips and his skin began to peel along his face, the translucent threads of dead flesh curling back from his cheeks like cowlicks. As a night wind blew across his skin, Kimball looked skyward to see the flickering lights against the dark canopy. He didn’t believe that they sparkled any more than they did the night before, but they did appear to have something different about them. It wasn’t the glitter of the pinprick lights but something more conscionable. It was like sensing an adjudication from the Great Illumination regarding his original sins, that of being a calloused killer who had suddenly found himself standing at a crossroad. In his mind’s eye he could see himself standing in the center of this intersection with every road reaching into Darkness. And then he heard his mother’s voice once again, that sweet and distance echo of her tenor sounding hollowly as if she was speaking from the bottom of a well. In order t
o get to Heaven, he heard her say, you’ll have to go through Hell. And then she was gone. The Shape was gone. The Light that sustained his mother was gone. And here stood Kimball with four roads to choose from within this intersection of the crossroads, all which led into Darkness.
How better to serve the Light, he thought, than by working in the Dark? Then his mind’s eyes had been shuttered to him, the assassin now looking down at the two bodies of children who had died by his kneejerk reaction of killing to keep the mission from being compromised. There was no thought or consideration of anything beyond his action. He simply raised his weapon and treated life as if it had no value. And in doing so, he had robbed a mother and father of two sons. He had robbed siblings of two brothers. He had robbed the boys the chance to fall in love and have families of their own. And he had robbed the two boys not only with their lives, but of their future lines as well. I am a thief in the worst way, he considered. As the desert cooled, Kimball dug two shallow graves until his hands bled, placed the bodies inside the narrow spaces, and covered them over, the assassin silently pleading for forgiveness by asking the boys to look down upon him with compassion, if not clemency. But all he received in earnest was the whistling of the wind, which at times became a keening wail in the night.
For many hours he laid between the two graves with a hand on each mound. The sand was cold within his clenched hands, the grains sifting through the gaps of his fingers as he lay their feeling unemotional. But when the memories and moments of his sins struck his conscience that had not quite been stripped away, Kimball Hayden once again began to sob. And through these vacillation of emotions between pain and composure, he eventually found himself trapped within the Gray area that divided inner peace from inner war. But by the time the sky to the east had turned from absolute black to royal azure, Kimball had bled himself out emotionally as he stood up between the graves, wiped a sleeve across his face to sweep away the tears, discarded the rifle in his backpack, kept the jerky and water, and began a westbound trajectory to the Jeep. The act of becoming the catalyst that could possibly turn the tides of war meant little to him. Becoming the savior to those who could not protect themselves sounded like a risk worth taking. But the cost of taking the lives of two innocent children to achieve these means seemed hypocritical to him. How do you save the lives of innocent people when you have to take innocent lives in order to attain the desired results? Nothing made sense to him anymore. As the blisters on his lips bubbled and his face continued to peel away like the skin of a molting lizard, Kimball worked tirelessly towards the foothills. Once he reached the Jeep, Kimball Hayden had every intention of disappearing from the face of the Earth.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C.
Five Weeks Later
Senator Rhames was seated in his office with Senator Shore sitting opposite him on the other side of the desk with a leg crossed over the other. In each of their hands was a burning cigar and a crystal glass filled with a finger of the finest whisky. Since Kimball Hayden did not complete the mission in Iraq by taking out his assigned target, the United States and the Coalition Forces invaded Iraq to initiate the supposed ‘Mother of all wars,’ which came directly from the target’s mouth. “Well,” said Rhames, “it appears that our boy failed in his endeavors. Seems to me that if the Iraqis didn’t get him, then the elements did. Our problems are over, Stan. The man whose conscience appeared to wax and wane with time is no longer a threat.”
The senators raised their glasses simultaneously in toast, then drank. After taking a puff of his Cuban cigar, Senator Shore added, “Like you said, we’ll give him a posthumous burial, plant a few medals on his empty casket in Arlington, say a few kind words, then start the day all over again without having to worry about what might happen.” “No more looking over our shoulders,” Rhames added. “The Handler will be vetting his recruits with the due diligence necessary to assure that his operatives from here on in will maneuver without the weight of a conscience. We cannot assume the top position on the global stage otherwise. It’s unfortunate that Kimball Hayden had all the tools necessary to be the best of the best. If it wasn’t for that one flaw that weakened him to the point of becoming expendable, he might have been better than the Handler.” After taking another sip of his whisky, he added, “What we need, Stan, are machines. People who feel nothing outside of obligation and follow orders without question. That’s how we stay as top dogs.” Rhames got no argument from Senator Shore who, after admiring his Cuban cigar by rolling it along his fingertips, took a toke and allowed a plume of scented smoke to go ceilingward. With a fine whisky and a Cuban cigar in their hands, and with Kimball Hayden dead and their worries free, life could not have been any better.
EPILOGUE
Venice, Italy
After Kimball buried the two shepherd boys, he made the decisive action to abscond from the service of the United States government and made his way north through the deserts of the Middle East, only to wind up inside a small bar in Venice with several shot glasses of whisky lined up in front of him. Two days after Coalition Forces invaded Iraq, the war was playing out on the TV behind the bar as Baghdad came under the constant barrage of missile strikes. Kimball was as stiff as rebar while overlooking the glasses. It was as if he was debating to test his first hardcore drink outside of the occasional beer. That was when a shadow loomed beside him. Giving the intruder a sidelong glance, Kimball noted the cleric’s collar and the kind face, which was slightly seamed, especially the wizened crow’s feet around his eyes. When the man smiled, Kimball considered it warm and becoming. It was the grin of a gentle soul. “Something I can do for you, Father?” Kimball asked him.
The priest pointed to the bench across the table from Kimball. “May I?” “Not to be rude, Father, but I’d really like to be alone. There’s nothing you can do for me anyway.” “I beg to differ.” Without waiting for Kimball’s invitation, Bonasero Vessucci took the seat. His smile was still there, still warm. And then: “We’ve been watching you.” Kimball raised an inquisitive brow. “You’ve been what?” “We’ve been watching you.” Kimball looked at the man’s collar, and then it came together. “The priest at the bar,” he said. “And at the airport. Dressed as soldiers and priests.” “That’s right,” Bonasero answered. “Except they’re not priests. They’re Vatican Knights.” Kimball’s questioning brow arched higher. “They’re what?” “Vatican Knights. Soldiers of the highest level and quality. A Delta force, if you will, established solely to protect those who cannot protect themselves.” “Why are you following me?” That was when Kimball grabbed the first shot glass and downed it, the fluid burning like acid down his throat, something he was obviously unaccustomed to by the biting twist of his features. Then after placing the empty glass upside down and setting it aside, he added, “And who—exactly—are you?” The elderly man’s smile never faded. “My name is Bonasero Vessucci,” he said. “Cardinal Bonasero Vessucci.” “A cardinal. Should I be honored by your presence, then?” Kimball took his second drink, a quick downer. “Kimball—may I call you Kimball?” “How do you know my name?” “I know a lot about you. In fact, what I know about you would probably make your head spin. The Vatican is not without its corps of data gathers and intelligence.” “Really?” Kimball scoffed at this since the CIA had always buried their people too deep to be excavated or mined. Intuiting this, however, the cardinal said, “Kimball Anthony Hayden: a black-ops performer who happens to be attached to a deep-state arm of the Central Intelligence Agency. You manage a wetwork team of—shall we say— neutralizers who right the political ships that begin to list. You deal with protecting certain subjects within the political arena, no matter the cost to others as long as you achieve the means. Am I correct so far?” Kimball appeared stunned. “Recently,” the cardinal continued, “you were, in some way, responsible for the death of Senator Joseph Cartwright. Whether you were the one who committed the action against him is unknown. What we
do know is that you commanded the wetwork team that performed the operation.” Kimball looked around the bar. He saw the down and outs, people who appeared frail and sickly from too much drink, and people who hardly offered any level of threat. Turning to the cardinal and leaning forward over the table towards the cleric, Kimball whispered, “Who are you really? And what do you want from me?” The cardinal leaned back and patted the air, telling Kimball to relax. “I’m not here as your enemy, Kimball. I’m here as your friend. Believe me.” Kimball leaned back into his seat. Before him were five shot glasses, all full. The man waited for the cardinal to continue, which he did. “I’m here to offer you a communion with God,” he told him. Another arching of Kimball’s brow. “Excuse me?” “Your life, Kimball, and what you do is not unique. People kill in the name of their government, in the name of their God, or in the name of something else that justifies their actions in the end. It’s been going on since man raised a hand against another.” The cardinal leaned forward with the white of his collar appearing out of place inside of a low-end tavern like this. After a silent beat, he said, “What I’m offering you is a communion with God, as I stated before. The Swiss Guards are the Vatican’s private army that never steps beyond the borders of Vatican City. For the Guards, it’s more of a calling, a personal mission in need of spiritual fulfillment. But since the Church has diplomacy with ninety percent of the countries worldwide, there’s a need for the Vatican Knights when the interests of the Church are in jeopardy beyond the city’s borders. What my team does, Kimball, what they were created for, is to mobilize to the hotspots across the globe when the interests of the Church are jeopardized. We’ll send in teams to protect our citizenry when their lives are in danger. We save lives, Kimball, not take them away. Our job is to protect those who cannot protect themselves.” Kimball nodded skeptically. “So now you want me to kill in the name of the Church instead of in the name of my government, is that it? Kill in the name of God and justify it in the end. In this business when there are two opposing forces, somebody always gets killed. It can’t be helped.” He took his third drink. This time his face didn’t twist, the man getting used to the sting of alcohol. “Our mission goal, Kimball, is to save the innocent. Even God recognizes the fact that people have the right to protect themselves or others against those who have nothing but blackness within their hearts.” Another chortle from Kimball. “And you know what God wants how? You got a direct pipeline to His thoughts, do you?” Cardinal Vessucci sighed inwardly. This wasn’t going as easily as he planned. “Kimball, two weeks ago the Vatican Knights went into Rwanda and spared the lives of more than sixty children, all orphans, whose parents were slaughtered. We were able to get them out before they could be conscripted into the army as child soldiers.” “And did these Vatican Knights kill to achieve their purpose?” “It could not have been helped.” “My point exactly.” “No, Kimball. It’s not. Those children will now grow up to be loved by those who care for them. And they will grow up to have families of their own. You, if I may be blunt, stole lives to protect those with highly questionable morals. Your team—I believe they were called the Pieces of Eight—were responsible for the deaths of the journalist team that were exposing the immoral activities of Senator Rhames, a man who directed you every step of the way. Those people, Kimball, the journalists and editors responsible of the exposure, are dead. These were good people who were doing their jobs to expose a culture of corruption and immorality.”