by Rick Jones
“Go.”
“Two tangos down. Coming to the final corridor.”
“Copy that.”
As they neared the turnoff, they could hear the sobbing of a woman, though it was subdued by the blockade of a steel door. And then she cried out in Italian and pled for the welfare of her children, the woman begging and imploring, which was followed up by slams against the door with the palm of her hand.
“Per favor.” Please.
More banging. More pounding. The woman incessant.
Then there was a volley of pounding against the same door from the opposite side, from the hallway, this time a man ordering her to ‘shut up.’ But that only seemed to aggravate the woman even more, the banging now coming in a quick and repetitive measure.
“Same thing,” Elijah said into his lip mic to Joseph. “I got the left, you got the right.”
“Copy.”
The Vatican Knights moved out of the shadows and into the hallway, their weapons already leveled and aimed.
There were two men, both heavily bearded and wearing nothing but black. Unlike their counterparts who were complacent in their duties, these two held their weapons tightly and reacted accordingly as if they had some form of military sophistication. When the Vatican Knights approached, they turned the weapons against their adversaries. But the Vatican Knights were quick as bursts of gunfire lit up the hallway with strobe-light pulses from muzzle flashes.
Bullets found their marks, all to center mass. But as one of the terrorists fell to his knees and to the floor, his finger jerked against the trigger which set off errant rounds of gunfire against the wall, the bullets smashing and knocking out huge chunks of brick and mortar.
Unlike the weapons of the Vatican Knights that were suppressed, the AK-47 that went off was not.
The terrorist had unwittingly set off an alarm.
* * *
Jeremiah and Eleazar had heard the gunfire from the opposite side of the building.
Jeremiah immediately tapped his lip mic. “Elijah?”
“Right here. Targets are down, but the situation has been compromised.”
“Copy that.”
“It couldn’t have been avoided, Jeremiah. These guys weren’t hired hacks from the streets. They were dressed and appeared to have military training. They were ready. One got off a burst before he expired.”
“And Joseph?”
“He’s fine. We also think we found the package. A woman. We’re going to investigate.”
“Make it quick, Elijah. That burst of gunfire just woke a sleeping giant.”
“Understood.”
Then Jeremiah contacted Levi. “Levi, you copy all that?”
“Affirmative.”
“We’ve been compromised. Move to the lower level. Neutralize any hostile efforts to contact outside sources.”
“Copy that, Jeremiah.”
After Jeremiah said ‘out,’ he lowered his lip mic. At the end of the corridor he and Eleazar were scoping out a single door, which was unguarded. With Jeremiah and Eleazar now moving with a sense of urgency, they positioned themselves on each side of the door and listened.
Nothing.
Stepping in front of the door, Jeremiah ticked down the moments to breach the room by counting down with his fingers from ...
...three ...
...two ...
...one ...
Kicking the door at a point close to the knob, the doorjamb splintered and gave way, the door easily swinging wide on protesting hinges.
Moving in quickly with Jeremiah moving to the left and Eleazar to the right, and with their weapons surveying and scanning the room, they found what they were looking for.
While Jeremiah lowered his weapon, Eleazar, confirming their discovery and knowing there was nothing neither he nor Jeremiah could do about it, quickly returned to the hallway to maintain watch.
Staggering somewhat to the opposite side of the room, and though Jeremiah was a seasoned soldier who had seen war at its worst, there was never a level of acceptability when it came to certain types of atrocities.
From the corner of his eye, a tear had slipped away.
* * *
From above, a burst of gunfire from an AK-47.
The four remaining members of the cell on the warehouse level stood and listened, each obviously trying to assess the moment. Was the woman executed? Did the orders come down from Hassan to kill her even before the transaction took place? So soon when Akmed was told that the woman was to be used as leverage over the cardinal? Or was it something else?
When Akmed contacted Hassan earlier to tell him that Cardinal Vicenza had informed them that the Vatican decided to go through with the transaction, Hassan specifically told him that the woman was to remain alive until the business of moving the money had actually gone forward.
“I received no orders from Hassan to kill the woman,” said Akmed. “Those fools. Seasoned soldiers are supposed to know better.” Akmed then pointed to a pair of freshly recruited acolytes who knew little by way of soldiering, to examine the reason behind the recent burst of gunfire, with their only weapons the knives they carried by their sides.
They quickly headed toward the stairwell. Akmed, now alone with his last recruit, a boy on the cusp of becoming a man who saw adventure in the quest to seek Islamic totality, held his weapon firm, an AK-47, which he believed to be his scepter of rule.
“Relax, Farook,” Akmed told him, waving his hand to the boy-man to lower his rifle. “It’s just some idiot not careful with his weaponry, which is something you shall be, yes?”
The teenager smiled. “I will be careful, of course. Always.”
“I know you will.”
But deep down like an unreachable itch that was maddening, Akmed sensed a shift in his surroundings. It was a sense of heightened danger which caused him to err on the side of caution in the same manner that a dog raises its hackles. He knew something was there that shouldn’t be, but he didn’t know what. And then to Farook, Akmed asked, “Where’s the phone?”
“On the crate where you left it.”
“Get it.”
Farook, without hesitation, did as a good soldier was supposed to do. He complied with Akmed’s demand without hesitation.
* * *
Levi moved down the corridor toward the stairwell panning the point of the weapon from left to right, then right to left, the Vatican Knight searching for targets while making his way to the lower level.
When he reached the top of the staircase that led down to the warehouse, he took the steps carefully while searching and looking for hostile elements, his world through the scope of his weapon turning the pooling shadows the color of lime- green.
Stacked crates littered the warehouse floor, with some stacks reaching close to twenty feet above the floor. But most of the crates were refrigerator-sized and configured in such a way along the warehouse floor, the area appeared like a maze, with junctures and turns that led to one of two places: either to thin and endless corridors, or into obstructed lanes where crate walls barred progress. If there were insurgents on this level, Levi realized that the advantage would belong to them since they knew the layout, all the twist and turns.
Levi moved between the crates and came to an old forklift that appeared mechanically dead. Then he advanced with his assault weapon sweeping and searching for targets to pin within the crosshairs, the Vatican Knight aware of his surroundings, his world, using the shadows as his friend and ally, the man beginning to sense that he was not alone.
Then the approach of footfalls, people running and closing in on his position, at least two by Levi’s estimate, maybe more.
The Vatican Knight pressed forward in a move to intercept, but the crates impeded his view, his progress.
They were close, very close, within a few meters of Levi’s position, but lost within the maze.
And then a dreadful silence.
Levi listened.
Nothing.
Levi looked to his
left, to his right.
And then a sound, a movement from above.
When Levi directed his weapon, a winged shadow came down at him with arms spread, like wings, the body descending with something sharp and tapered in his hand, a knife, and then it eclipsed Levi before the Vatican Knight could get off a shot, the bodies hitting the concrete floor, then rolling to opposite sides as both men rebounded to their feet.
Levi’s weapon had been knocked from his grip upon impact, the suppressed MP-7 now laying to his left, the weapon unreachable.
The assailant measured Levi with a keen eye while holding his knife, the man twisting it back and forth. And then Levi’s attacker took a position like a fencer brandishing a foil, the man jabbing the air between them in malicious display while parting his lips into a wicked grin. A second man took position on top of a crate with a knife of his own, the man looking down, watching. His shadow, which inched its way across the floor from the feeble glow of light from a distant ceiling bulb, reached Levi as if it was the Shade of Death.
With his lips slowly paring back to skin his teeth and before settling into a rictus grin, Levi knew that he had become the subject of a game with his head to be the trophy.
Levi looked at his weapon lying to his left with a side-long glance. Too far. And then he positioned his feet by grinding them against the concrete surface and raised his hands. The Vatican Knight was ready.
The ISIS attacker came forward with his knife against Levi’s hands, a sure advantage for him to take. He brought the knife across in sweeps and arcs, driving Levi back.
With every swing of his blade Levi was losing ground.
And with every swing of his knife the attacker was gaining.
The knife sliced the air with soft whistles, the attacker’s motions quick and effortless as the stamina of youth drove Levi against a crate, the Vatican Knight now out of territory.
As the attacker lunged crying out ‘Allahu Akbar,’ and with eyes the size of saucers and maddened with rage, Levi moved with sensational quickness. His arm became a blur in space, coming up and deflecting the downward blow, the attacker’s momentum knocking him off balance enough for Levi to step to his right and then behind the man, who then cupped his hand around the attacker’s forehead from behind to hold it steady, and drove a forward strike to the back of the man’s neck with a knuckle thrust. The force behind the blow was so great, two bones within the man’s throat became separated from his spinal column and pushed for- ward, the bones threatening to punch through the front of the attacker’s neck. Going limp in a kill that was instant, Levi released the man, ran and rolled to- wards his weapon, grabbed his MP-7, raised it, took aim, and just as the attacker’s associate was about to jump from the crate to the other side of the boxes, and with escape just a leap away, Levi set off two shots in quick succession.
Game over.
* * *
After Farook grabbed the cellphone and raced back to Akmed, he rounded the crates and saw a body lying in the center of the aisle. There were two puncture wounds to the backside, bullet holes. Feeling his heart about to skip a beat the moment he saw his first body outside of the videos he watched as a means to desensitize him, real death had a way of impacting the senses that was far greater when it was right in front of you. And be- cause of this his mind began to race in all directions, as if it was trying to find a reasonable explanation. But it was in those moments of confusion that Farook was finally put in a place to make a decision as a man.
Levi rounded the corner with his weapon held at eye level and directed it on the young Arab boy in front of him. In one hand the boy held a cellphone. In the other was an AK-47.
“Drop the weapon,” said Levi, first in Arabic and then in Italian. “I said ...drop the weapon.”
The boy simply stared at Levi with the typical deer-in-the-headlights look, a dumbfounded gaze which made Levi wonder as to what the boy was thinking, if anything at all. “Drop the weapon,” the Vatican Knight demanded.
But Farook seemed to act with a glacial slowness to his actions, working his arm and bringing the weapon up because he had been wired to do so, not because he wanted to. All the romancing of changing the world to an all-Islamic State seemed to have disappeared, the man-child merely responding by the gravity of his teachings and nothing else.
“You don’t have to do this,” Levi told him. “Drop the weapon.”
Farook slowly craned the point of the weapon towards Levi, his face still a semblance of a boy caught between confusion and instinct, the weapon a simple appendage now rising and coming across for a direct aim.
“Don’t,” said Levi.
As Farook apparently made his adult decision, he dropped the cellphone so that he could grab the weapon with both hands and take down his quarry, a Vatican Knight, which would have been a proud moment for him before the Akmeds of the world.
Without second guessing his action and placed in a situation where he no longer had a choice, Levi pulled the trigger. As rounds punched through Farook’s chest, the boy cried out the name of his supreme leader, his god, yelling the chant of ‘Allahu Ak—,’ a shortened cry that reached the far end of the warehouse ...
...and to the ears of Akmed.
* * *
Akmed heard the chant that sounded pained, the cry one of finality that was cut short. Akmed grabbed his AK-47 and began his trek between the crates—being careful as he moved silently along, listening.
Nothing.
Then, in a loud whisper from Akmed: “Farook?”
Silence.
Akmed continued his search first looking to his left, then to his right, before surveying the top of the crates and seeing nothing.
“Farook?”
Still nothing.
As he rounded the bend, that’s when he saw the young Arab lying on the floor next to another, with Farook having a surprised look on his face while staring at a fixed and distant point.
Akmed swung the mouth of his weapon once again to his left, then to his right, then upward to the tops of the surrounding crates.
Nothing.
Then he began to backpedal towards the exit door. The mission was obviously over. And deep down, despite his allegiance to the ISIS tenets, Akmed was a coward who wanted to live.
He continued to move backward with his eyes forward, sometimes tripping over something but was able to keep to his feet without falling. The doorway was about twenty meters away, his means of escape.
Then he felt the point of a barrel at the back of his neck. “Drop the weapon,” the voice said in Arabic.
Akmed did, tossing the weapon to his right. Raising one hand slowly over his head in surrender, his other hand reached into the dirty folds of his clothing and grabbed a knife. With a swift movement driven by fear and self-preservation, Akmed came around in a swift circle. The edge of the knife struck Levi’s weapon, the impact coughing up sparks that quickly died off.
Levi continued to use his MP-7 as a means to deflect the blows, which were coming at a maddening pace from all angles, all sides, diagonally and sideways, the man simply acting without any measureable skills at double-edged combat. Levi then lashed his leg out, a quick blow that landed squarely against Akmed’s solar plexus that sent the man back, drawing a divide between them as the man stumbled back with a hand to the chest and sucking air, the wind having been knocked free from his lungs.
Levi raised his weapon and advised Akmed to drop the knife.
He didn’t.
Instead, Akmed ran for the doorway.
Knowing that Akmed was not allowed to reach the streets to alert his associates, Levi took direct aim and committed to a head shot. The round struck the back of Akmed’s head and continued on through with the exit wound the size of a baseball, with blood and gore taking flight along with Akmed’s body, until every- thing finally came to a bloody stop against the floor.
In his subsequent sweep of the warehouse, Levi discovered no one else.
The building had been cleared.
&
nbsp; CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
––––––––
With sentries lying dead at the feet of Elijah and Joseph, they went to the door made of steel paneling and a sliding viewport that was located at eye level. Elijah, sliding back the panel, saw Carmela Conti cringing in the shadows of the room after the gunfire.
In a voice that was meant to soothe and calm, Elijah spoke to the woman in Italian, telling her that they had been sent by the Vatican to acquire her safe release. When she neared the opening and saw the cleric band inside their collars, she knew that her brother had, in some way, aided them in her release.
“My daughters?” she asked with urgency. “They took my daughters.”
After Elijah removed the bolt from its socket and opened the door, Carmela Conti exited the room quickly and fell into Elijah’s arms, the woman sobbing and praising god, thanking Him for his intervention as she first hugged Elijah, and then Joseph.
“My babies?” she asked them in Italian.
“We have a team looking for them right now,” he told her. “Everything’s going to be just fine, ma’am.”
But everything wasn’t going to be fine at all.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
––––––––
Jeremiah felt as if he had been splashed with a bucket of ice-cold water, the sensation brisk and sharp. Stepping inside the room with Eleazar covering the hallway, Jeremiah felt as if his legs were going boneless and weak, the effect being his rubbery strides.
In the corner of the room lumped on top of one another like sacks of rice were the two girls, their skin gray and slick-looking. Jeremiah, getting to a bended knee, grabbed the wrist of one child, then ran the back of his fingers across the forehead of the other to set aside her stringy locks. Their flesh was cold and clammy to the touch. And with careful examination by Jeremiah, neither child appeared to have been physically abused.
He tapped the lip mic to his Kevlar helmet. “You getting this SIV?” he asked.