Apocalypse Ark Read online

  He mouthed a silent prayer of thanks that Branca and the rest had left already, with the Ark. Whatever happened here, from this point onward, it wouldn’t affect their mission. If Markopoulos could stall the enemy and hold them here, increasing Branca’s lead toward Rome, it would be beneficial. And if he could stop them, kill them here, so much the better.

  End it, and God’s lieutenant could proceed without another worry on his mind until he reached the Vatican. Whatever might await him there, it was beyond Markopoulos to sway the final outcome. Each man was responsible for his own part of God’s great master plan, no more, no less.

  The force of an explosion seemed to rock the floor beneath his feet, but still the bishop kept moving forward. If the only thing he could accomplish now was dying for the cause, so be it. He would give that much to serve his Lord.

  Clutching his submachine gun, he began to run, anxious to join the fight.

  * * *

  BOLAN APPROACHED THE north-facing entry to the Temple of Immaculate Conception with his AKMS slung, holding the Uzi with its sound suppressor attached, its fire selector set for semiauto. He was gambling with his life, doing his best to get in close and personal without alerting anyone inside the church, but risk was something that he faced every day.

  It was a handicap, not having any kind of solid fix on numbers in the church as they approached, but the uncertainty was also commonplace in Bolan’s world. Prolonged surveillance of intended targets wasn’t possible, nor could he always manage to approximate the numbers that he faced from markers at a given scene. Most times—like now—he had to forge ahead using the tools at his hand, preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.

  When he had almost reached the door, it opened and a pair of smiling, suntanned men emerged. They took one look at Bolan and the Uzi in his grasp, then sealed their fate by groping underneath their long, loose shirts for hidden weapons. Bolan shot the closer of them first, a muffled chug of sound that punched the gun backward into a collision with his comrade. Round two drilled the second Keeper through his forehead and they both went down together on the threshold, their bodies holding the door open.

  Bolan stepped over them, scanning the darker space inside the temple’s entryway. A third man was approaching with his head down, fanning money in his hands and counting it, speaking in rapid Greek as if explaining something to his fallen comrades. By the time he noticed what was going on and dropped the bills in favor of a fumbling attempt at a fast draw, his time was up.

  A third round from the Uzi caught him in the chest, staggered the guy and dropped him to his knees. Bolan was on the verge of giving him another when the Keeper’s eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed, hitting the concrete floor facedown with force enough to break his nose.

  Precision work so far, but how long could it last?

  The answer to that question came about ten seconds later, when another pair of men dressed almost identically—a sort of uniform, it seemed—rounded the corner fifteen feet in front of Bolan. One let out a yelp and bolted, gone before the Executioner had time to tag him, while the other went the hopeless hero route and took a Parabellum mangler through the left eye socket for his trouble, splashing gray and crimson on the wall behind him.

  Bolan reached the spot where number two had disappeared, but the guy was gone, the echoes of retreating footsteps clearly audible. He hadn’t started shouting yet, which was a wonder in itself, but how long could it be before he found his voice?

  Not long enough.

  Letting the Uzi dangle from its shoulder sling, Bolan unhitched his AKMS, flicked the safety switch to the middle position, for full-auto fire. He could control the weapon, milking short bursts from its magazine, but Bolan also wanted the capacity to let it rip if he ran into a mob.

  He moved on, hoping Halloran had reached the temple and could make his way inside, then focused on the task ahead—hunting a bishop in a bloody game of chess.

  * * *

  THE BISHOP HAD met a number of his people gathered in a hallway near his study, ten or twelve armed men, four women, all abuzz with nervous conversation. They were spoiling for a fight, he thought, though none of them was taking the initiative. At sight of him, they flocked around, still shooting anxious glances back in the direction of the temple’s major entrance, to the north.

  “Quiet!” he snapped at them, demanding full attention. “Raise your hand if you have seen the enemy.”

  A single hand went up—Stratos Sedaris, pale and trembling.

  “Tell me,” Markopoulos commanded.

  “We were going into Chora,” Sedaris said. “Myself, Minas, Georgios—”

  “Yes, yes. Get on with it!”

  “Minas and I were running late, Your Grace. We hurried to catch up and met a stranger. With a gun. Bodies behind him.”

  “Only one man?”

  “That I saw, Your Grace. There may be more.”

  “And then?”

  “I ran to warn the rest of you,” Sedaris said, nearly sobbing, suddenly uncertain whether he should be ashamed for fleeing or feel proud that he’d been clever.

  “What of Minas?”

  “I don’t know, Your Grace. He didn’t follow me.”

  “You heard no shots?”

  Sedaris lowered his eyes, shaking his head.

  “All right. You women, get into the pantry and conceal yourselves as best you can. The rest of you—”

  Before Markopoulos could finish giving his instructions, gunfire hammered through the temple, an assault upon his eardrums as it echoed down the brick and concrete corridors. One of the women gasped, then they were moving to obey him, while his men stood facing toward the sounds of battle, their weapons ready.

  “Go, then!” he commanded. “Find the infidel intruder and destroy him!”

  Several of them looked back at Markoupolos, frowning. He raised his MP-7, telling them, “I’m with you! Lead the way!”

  Reluctantly, it seemed to him, his men moved out and toward the sounds of gunfire, which were drawing nearer at the same time. Markopoulos stayed at the rear of the pack, saw no reason to push ahead when they were all headed in the same direction, anyway. Surely the lot of them could overcome one man, no matter who he was or where he’d come from. If they did—

  He had a sudden mental image of himself exalted for achieving what the bishops of three other temples hadn’t. Where they had fallen to the infidels, Markopoulos could triumph and be venerated as a hero. Not a huge thing, in these final days before the Ark was used to slay the Scarlet Whore of Babylon, perhaps, but it would still rank as a major contribution to the effort. Possibly, he’d be promoted.

  Or did such things even matter in the new world that was coming?

  And then it struck Markopoulos, a sudden inspiration, that he ought to warn the Sedem Illustratio that he was under siege. Rome couldn’t help him, obviously, but headquarters could alert Claudio Branca’s team to exercise more caution on the last lap of their journey. Since he didn’t have a contact number for Dei Legatus programmed on his own sat phone—a matter of security, completely understood—Markoupolos would do the next best thing, which meant returning to his study for the phone.

  An act of cowardice, or a fulfillment of his duty? Hesitating for only an instant more, the bishop turned and scuttled in the direction he had come from, frightened to look back and see if anyone had noted his departure from the ranks.

  Apparently, one of them did. He heard someone call out behind him, “Wait, Your Grace! Don’t go! We need—”

  And then more gunfire, closer than before, its hellish racket following Markopoulos along the corridor.

  * * *

  BOLAN WAS FOLLOWING the runner who’d eluded him, when gunshots from a hallway on his left told him that Halloran had joined the fight. No sound suppressor on his Beretta SMG, or on the
handguns popping back in answer as the brother made his appearance on the scene. Three shooters, by the sound of it, or maybe four.

  Instead of keeping up the chase, Bolan veered off to see if he could help. It was another calculated risk, but he was stronger with a backup than alone, against uncertain odds. As for the one who got away, he likely wasn’t going far. Just down the hall to round up reinforcements and return to finish what the Executioner had started.

  Or to try that, anyhow.

  Bolan came up behind the shooters who’d met Halloran and blocked his access to the inner temple. He’d dropped one of them before they pinned him down, but now it wasn’t going well at three on one. The soldier took stock in nothing flat and raised his AKMS, putting two rounds in the nearest gunman, scarlet geysers bursting from between his shoulder blades as he went down, stone dead before he hit the concrete floor.

  Startled, the other two were turning to confront the latest threat, but Bolan had them covered, triggering a 3-round burst that ripped across the second shooter’s chest and bounced him off a nearby wall, smearing the bricks with blood as he went down.

  The last surviving Keeper gave a little squeal then, but couldn’t very well surrender in the circumstances. Rising from his crouch, holding his pistol in a two-handed grip, he rapid-fired toward Bolan, hasty jerking on the trigger causing him to miss initially, still driving his adversary to the deck with bullets snapping overhead. To fire the AKMS, Bolan had to turn it to one side, since its magazine was too long for aiming from a prone position, while—

  The pop-pop-pop of lighter automatic fire issued from behind the standing gunman, Parabellum shockers ripping into him as Halloran cut loose from his position in the open doorway. Bolan saw the Keeper topple, drop and shiver once before the life fled from his prostrate form. Halloran hustled past the corpses, reaching Bolan just as he vaulted to his feet.

  “So much for quiet, eh?” the brother remarked.

  “Don’t sweat it,” Bolan answered. “I already missed a runner. This way.”

  He doubled back with Halloran beside him, heard the brother snapping a fully loaded mag into his SMG, and quickly reached the point where he’d diverted to engage the Keepers at their temple’s eastern door. The voices he’d heard earlier were definitely closer now, advancing toward the battlefront. Bolan tried to gauge the distance, signaled Halloran to stop at the next corner, then unclipped and primed a frag grenade.

  Say, thirty feet between himself and his approaching adversaries now. He ducked and stretched an arm around the corner, set the grenade rolling on its wobbly way along the corridor, and drew back out of range before the enemy had time to fire. With recognition of the danger came a chorus of alarm, stampeding feet and then a blast that stung his ears, pushing a cloud of smoke and dust toward Bolan from ground zero.

  “Ready?”

  Halloran responded with a silent nod, raising his SMG.

  The Executioner stepped out into another smoky scene from hell.

  * * *

  TRAILING THE BISHOP was easy, once his fighting men were down and out. The frag grenade had killed some, wounded more, and muffled shots from Bolan’s Uzi finished those, while Halloran moved on ahead. Bolan caught up with him to find the brother outside an open door, and four women cringing in a crowded pantry while he covered them.

  “They don’t seem to be armed,” Halloran said.

  “A lot of guns out here,” Bolan observed, “and no lock on that door. You want to hold them here while I go on, or...”

  Lowering his voice to whisper level, Halloran replied, “I can’t just shoot them.”

  Bolan nodded. “Keep them covered, then.”

  He left Halloran to it, moving on in the direction that his quarry had to have taken, clearing rooms along the way until he reached the far end of the corridor. That door was locked from the inside, and Bolan took the knob off with a 3-round Uzi burst, then went in low and rolling to his left.

  Markoupolos was waiting for him, more or less. He had a telephone in one hand, pressed against his ear, not speaking. It wasn’t clear if he was listening or waiting for his call to connect, and Bolan didn’t have much time to think about it as the submachine gun in the bishop’s other hand sprayed bullets through the doorway he’d just cleared.

  Another burst from Bolan’s Uzi silenced it and left the cleric draped across his desk, gasping his life away through sucking chest wounds. Rising, Bolan shouted through the open door to Halloran, “All clear! Stay where you are!”

  The bishop was still gargling blood when Bolan reached him, but he obviously didn’t have much time. The soldier reached past him for the sat phone lying by the cleric’s outstretched hand, raised it and listened to a male voice on the other end.

  “Ciao? Salue? Hello?” A fleeting silence, then the voice inquired, “Who is this?”

  “Someone who’d love to meet you,” Bolan said.

  Another hesitation. Then, “Perhaps you shall.”

  “Just tell me where and when,” the Executioner replied.

  Soft laughter now. “Piazza San Pietro, eh? As to the when...”

  The line went dead, a hiss of static mocking him. Bolan took the sat phone with him, guessing that the numbers it had logged in its memory would match those lifted from the first phone they had captured, at Massawa’s Temple of the Guiding Light. In any case, Bolan assumed Aaron Kurtzman could point him toward the stranger he’d just spoken to.

  A man Bishop Markopoulos had died trying to reach.

  That had to count for something, right?

  Bolan retraced his steps along the corridor, found Halloran still standing watch over the women in the pantry. “The bishop’s out,” he said, then raised the liberated phone. “I had a word with someone else, though.”

  “Traceable?” Halloran asked.

  “Should be. But just in case, he told me where to find him,” Bolan said. “Saint Peter’s Square.”

  “We need to get a fix on him as soon as possible,” Halloran said.

  “Agreed. You think of any way to keep these four from arming up and coming after us?”

  “Perhaps deadweight,” the brother replied, eyeing the bodies of their recent victims.

  Bolan nodded, moved to drag the first corpse over to the pantry door while Halloran was closing it. They used four bodies altogether, better than six hundred pounds, stacked up against the door like sandbags, calculating it would stall the women long enough for the two of them to reach the Peugeot and escape.

  While they were hiking back, Bolan raised Stony Man and patched through to Kurtzman.

  “Same number,” Kurtzman said, two minutes later. “And it’s on the move.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.

  Once upon a time, Americans could stroll or march in protest on the White House lawn. President Rutherford Hayes had ordered the property fenced in 1877, following his hotly disputed electoral victory over rival Samuel Tilden. In 1995, after the Oklahoma City bombing, Secret Service agents barred all vehicular traffic from passing near the White House, a “temporary” policy made permanent in the wake of 9/11. These days, cars and trucks detoured onto Constitution Avenue or H Street, while pedestrians and bicycles were still permitted access.

  This day, they’d come in thousands to protest the mayhem that had ravaged sacred sites across the nation and worldwide. Chants and placards called for action to prevent further attacks and punish those responsible. Some demonstrators knelt to pray, while others massed along the traffic barriers lined with Capitol Police and Metro officers in riot gear. Two fellows from Saint Louis dragged a twelve-foot cross complete with a papier-mâché Jesus down the middle of the avenue, trailed by pallbearers with a casket labeled with a sign reading Religious Liberty.

  Tyrone Dubois loved all of it.
/>   When he’d been chosen for the mission—what an honor!—he had worried that security might foil whatever plan he hatched before he had a chance to prove himself and earn his wings. That fear had vanished when the demonstration was announced, including blanket invitations for concerned Americans of all denominations to participate. Delighted, he had grinned and told the smiling blonde on Channel 9 to count him in.

  It didn’t take much preparation after that. Despite some fairly strict controls on guns within the District of Columbia, Virginia, just across the river, welcomed anyone with cash in hand. Gun dealers were required to file reports of pistol sales to out-of-staters with the police, but that was no encumbrance for a buyer heading back to D.C., New York City or wherever else there was some heavy shooting to be done.

  Tyrone Dubois had plunked his money down for two secondhand TEC-9s, together with a dozen 32-round magazines. Chambered in 9 mm Parabellum, the semiautomatic pistols hadn’t been converted to full-auto fire, like those favored by street gangs in D.C. and elsewhere, but it hardly mattered to Dubois. As for the fifty-yard effective range, who cared? Roaming a crowd of demonstrators pressed together on the avenue, he wouldn’t have to aim at all. Just point and blaze away.

  Good times.

  It pleased him in particular that he could teach adherents of the Scarlet Whore a lesson while they clamored for attention in the nation’s capital. They wanted airtime, right? Now they would have it, only not the way they’d planned. He wondered if the Antichrist himself would watch some of the footage, maybe even sitting on his golden throne at the Basilica of Saint John Lateran in Rome.

  Dubois hoped so. It would be fitting, as a foretaste of the fire to come.

  Moving among his enemies, Dubois sang softly to himself. Not one of their songs, but “Onward Christian Soldiers.” He felt strong, invigorated, even knowing that he’d never walk away from Pennsylvania Avenue alive. The cops or Secret Service watchers on the fringes of the mob would see to that.

  All part of the design. A movement needed martyrs to inspire the masses, right?