Apocalypse Ark Read online

  Bolan read the brief police report, confirming six men dead and an assertion by the Chapel of the Tablet’s rector that an “object of supreme importance” had been stolen by the unknown raiders. Add to that the summaries of statements from informers inside Custodes Foederis, claiming possession of the Ark, and Bolan granted that the case was made, at least for his limited purposes.

  He took for granted that Janus Marcellus and his wife would keep their hands clean when it came to killing—at least until the time came for them to pull the trigger on the great apocalypse. He focused on the sect’s chief of security and its presumed enforcer, one Ugo Troisi, known to the flock as Dextera Dei.

  God’s Right Hand, no less.

  Troisi, like the former Clara Vitti, was Sicilian, born in April 1982 at Montedoro, in the province of Caltanissetta. He’d done time for assault and robbery before finding religion with the Keepers, and while nothing on file linked Troisi to the Mafia per se, it was impossible to grow up in Sicily without awareness of the so-called Honored Society. A candid photo of Troisi with the sect’s patriarch and queen, taken in Rome, had caught him ogling the woman’s ample cleavage while Janus Marcellus was signing copies of some book he’d written.

  Something going on there? Bolan wondered, but he couldn’t think of any way to make it work for him, offhand. At best, a weak spot in the hierarchy. Possibly a fault line where a wedge could be applied, downrange.

  The sect had soldiers of a sort, under Troisi’s leadership, known collectively as Exercitus Dei: the Army of God. Officially, they were bodyguards for Janus Marcellus and Mania Justina, securing the Seat of Enlightenment and other church property against infidel opponents. Little was known of their background or training, but defectors from Custodes Foederis claimed that Troisi favored ex-military personnel, requiring pledges of allegiance to the cult and its royal couple. Estimates of total membership for Exercitus Dei started at one hundred and topped out at double that. Most of the troops were thought to hang their hats in Rome, but if they’d been involved at Axum, who could say?

  When Bolan was done with the DVD, he snapped it into half a dozen pieces, pitched the fragments in a garbage bin behind a busy fast-food restaurant, and went to catch his flight at Dulles International. He traveled light—one carry-on, no weapons—and arrived two hours prior to takeoff, as recommended by Homeland Security. His British Airways flight was leaving from concourse B in the main terminal, a long walk past shops and food courts to the designated gate. Bolan kept an eye out for watchers but saw nothing to concern him.

  Trouble would be waiting for him at the other end—not London, but once he arrived in Ethiopia. He knew enough about the troubled nation’s past and recent history to realize that guns were plentiful and life was cheap, despite creation of a coalition government to wrest control from the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front in 2010, after a decade of autocratic rule. Images of drought and famine from the mid-1980s had returned in 2011, when two consecutive rainy seasons failed to materialize on schedule, and pursuit of long-term strategies for meaningful relief was still in progress, making little headway against spiteful Mother Nature.

  Meanwhile, Bolan knew, cracks had developed in the hopeful coalition government, as eight member parties jockeyed for position, stepping on one another’s toes. Police had jailed the leader of one party, Unity for Democracy and Justice, prompting renewed calls for rebellion that could tip the scales back toward an era of coups and repression seen at the turn of the twenty-first century. Some elements were obviously spoiling for a fight, while others hunkered down to play defense and hold their ground.

  In short, the whole place was a powder keg.

  And Bolan was about to light the fuse.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Addis Ababa, the Present

  The alley had seemed wider going in, not such a narrow shooting gallery. The widely spaced security lights at each end had looked dimmer to Bolan, somehow, on his approach. Now, they seemed to glare like spotlights focused on him as he ran along the cluttered passageway, hearing the church’s back door slam behind him, then crash open once again, spilling a clutch of hunters.

  There was fury in their voices as they shouted after him, their feelings clear, although the words were unknown to him. Another heartbeat, and their weapons started speaking for them, hammering the alley with a hellish racket, the crack of shots and whine of ricochets. The air around him sizzled with a hiss of angry hornets in pursuit.

  Bolan ducked and rolled to his left, coming to rest behind a garbage bin that reeked of rotting food, at best. A rat squeaked out from under him, and Bolan hoped it was alone. There’d be no time for rabies shots if he was nipped by vermin at the outset of his mission. No damn time for anything, in fact, if he stayed cornered where he was.

  The garbage bin started taking hits, reverberating like a big, malodorous bass drum. Bolan reached out to fire a short burst from his Uzi back the way he’d come from. The muffled sounds of his shots were lost in the cacophony, but someone yelped a warning and the charging gunmen slowed, diving for cover of their own.

  Stalemate.

  A standoff had to work against the Executioner. Remaining where he was, pinned down, he couldn’t stop his enemies from doubling back around the block to seal the alley’s mouth and cut off all escape. That done, they had only to risk a cross fire to eliminate him—or hold fast until police arrived, then scatter, leaving uniforms to deal with the invader of their chapel.

  All for nothing, Bolan thought, since he’d obtained precisely nothing from the man he’d come to grill. Bishop Astatke might be dead, or only wounded. In either case, the pistol-packing clergyman was lost to Bolan now.

  Which wouldn’t matter if he died within the next few moments, where he was.

  Grenade time.

  Bolan palmed the second RGD-5 that he’d carried on his house call to the church, released its pin and used blind guesswork on the placement of his targets. He figured they were spread across the alley, hiding where they could, using any cover readily available, from garbage cans to recessed doorways. He knew that he couldn’t get them all—and might wound none of them—but he could raise the ante and disorient them long enough to sprint along the alley’s final fifty feet, duck clear and try to reach his waiting car.

  Maybe.

  It was a gamble, sure. Like every other move that Bolan made.

  But if he didn’t roll the dice...

  Another Uzi burst to keep their heads down, then he twisted in his crouch and lofted the grenade over the stinking bin, giving it some altitude and distance, hoping that he didn’t overshoot, in fact, and drive his adversaries closer to him by mistake. Grenades were always iffy, the direction of their blasts determined by the nearest solid surface, shrapnel flying everywhere and maiming without any care for whose flesh it was shredding.

  One...two...

  Counting down the second until detonation, Bolan braced himself to run like hell the minute the blast gave him an opportunity. No hesitation, if he planned to make it through the night alive.

  Three...four...

  The explosion came half a second late, by Bolan’s count, but who could really say? He bolted, running through the smoke and dust and screams, sprinting to save his life.

  * * *

  INSIDE THE TEMPLE of the Holy Covenant, Tamrat Gessesse crouched beside the prostrate form of Bishop Berhanu Astatke, doing what he could to stop the bleeding from Astatke’s legs. One of the attacker’s shots had drilled the bishop’s right thigh, and it seemed that two had torn his left leg, one piercing his kneecap, though Astatke’s blood-soaked pants made an assessment of the damage difficult. Gessesse’s full weight on the thigh wound hadn’t stanched the bleeding yet, and he had no hands free to deal with any other hemorrhages at the moment.

  “Eyasu! Benjamin! Come help me, will you!”

 
The two armed congregants, who’d been standing back and whispering, as if afraid to touch the bishop in his worst extremity, stepped reluctantly into the spreading pool of blood, seeming dazed by what they saw before them.

  “On your knees, for God’s sake!” Gessesse commanded. “Never mind your pants. Put pressure on those wounds. We’ll lose him if the bleeding doesn’t stop.”

  They knelt together, did as they were told, both grimacing in their distaste—or was it sympathetic pain for what their clergyman was suffering? Gessesse didn’t know and didn’t care. He looked around and saw a fourth man standing well back from the action, wincing as the bishop groaned and shivered.

  “Tafari, call an ambulance!”

  The young man blinked at him. “But the police—”

  “Are coming anyway, with all this shooting. Do it now!”

  Tafari dug into a pocket for his cell phone and turned away to place the call. His voice, a murmur in the background, barely registered over the sounds the bishop made. And was he only moaning now, or was he trying to speak?

  “Please save your strength,” Gessesse said, half whispering. “You’ve been badly injured.”

  Astatke’s face contorted with the pain he felt, the effort to talk. “Dextera Dei...warn him...enemy...the Ark...beware....”

  Gessesse felt a sudden chill. “Hush, now,” he said, and turned in wrath to face Tafari. “What news of the ambulance?”

  “It’s coming,” the man said, looking as if he might be going into shock.

  “Wake up!” Gessesse snapped at him. “Remove the weapons from those bodies and conceal them. Quickly! When police arrive, say only that a crazy white man came into the church and started shooting. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.” Tafari turned and started lifting pistols from the bodies of their brothers who had fallen in the brief attack.

  Gessesse knew his hasty plan was likely futile, but it was the only thing that he could think of. Blame the nameless gunman for disrupting worship services, and hope the law wouldn’t look closely at the Temple of the Holy Covenant. Perhaps, if they were very lucky and the Lord obliged them—

  Gunfire and the crump of a grenade explosion from the alleyway behind the church cut off that line of wishful thinking. With a silent curse, Gessesse focused on the task of trying to preserve the bishop’s life until the ambulance arrived. What happened after that was unpredictable, beyond his power to control. Perhaps he could escape in the confusion and—do what?

  Obey the bishop’s halting command. Warn someone higher in authority of the attack and the potential danger that it posed to Custodes Foederis. As far as personally reaching Dextera Dei in Rome, Gessesse had no clue to how he should proceed. There had to be contact numbers, maybe even email access through the church’s website, but the message he’d been tasked to pass was not for open lines.

  In fact, if he was careless, it could doom them all.

  * * *

  SOMEONE WAS FIRING through the cloud of smoke and dust raised by Bolan’s frag grenade as he broke from cover, running toward the alley’s mouth. Wild shots, unaimed, but stray bullets could kill as well as shots precisely targeted. He ducked and dodged, hearing the slugs strike bricks on either side of him and ricochet into the night beyond. The impulse to return fire would have slowed him. Bolan ignored it, concentrated on his goal of getting to the cross street, ducking out of range, reaching his rented car.

  Then, suddenly, a muzzle-flash winked at him from the alley’s opening onto that street, bullets flying at Bolan from a new direction, reaching out to swat him down. Blocking his way and cutting off escape. He dropped facedown, felt gravel digging into elbows, chest and knees as grazing automatic fire swept overhead.

  A quick glance left and right revealed his choices when it came to cover. On his left, two battered garbage cans with dented lids askew; to Bolan’s right, a doorway recessed far enough to let him stand upright, concealed, but still a death trap if his enemies advanced from either side.

  Choices. But staying where he lay was no option at all.

  Rolling, returning fire, he made it to the alcove, slammed his back against the metal door and tried the knob. Locked tight, of course, and while he might have picked the lock in other circumstances, trying now would only leave him fatally exposed to shooters flanking him on either side. Gunfire from both ends of the alley rattled past him, missing him by inches. For a second, Bolan hoped his would-be killers might take each other out, but someone shouted from the street side, the words incomprehensible, and suddenly the firing stopped.

  Okay. They’d recognized each other and the risk of firing blindly back and forth. They knew that he was trapped somewhere between the side street and the back door to their temple, maybe had a fix on his position and were working up the nerve to rush him. In the sudden silence, he could picture gunmen creeping forward, pressed against the nearest wall, and he tried to listen for their footsteps in the alleyway.

  Nothing so far.

  Instead of being grateful for the respite, Bolan knew that every second spent in hiding, wasting time, increased the likelihood that cops would soon arrive. That spelled the end for him, whether the cultic shooters fled or not. Police would either gun him down on sight, or mob him when they realized that he wasn’t about to fire on them.

  And either way, it meant his death, as sure as if he pressed his own Beretta to his head.

  In fact, that might be preferable to arrest, but Bolan drew the line at suicide. Self-sacrifice in battle was an option always on the table, but to simply waste himself...

  No way in hell.

  Better to go down fighting against hopeless odds before the law arrived, if that turned out to be his only choice. Hope someone else would be dispatched from Stony Man to finish off the mission, where he’d failed.

  But fatalism wasn’t part of Bolan’s makeup. Long experience had taught him there was always hope, as long as life remained. In situations that seemed hopeless, sheer audacity could sometimes shift the balance, catch an enemy off guard and shift a slim advantage back to Bolan.

  Maybe.

  Switching out the Uzi’s magazine to keep a full load in the weapon, Bolan braced himself to meet his adversaries. Rout them if he could, or go down trying.

  * * *

  KITAW MEHRETU’S PALMS were sweating, slipping on the wooden stock and foregrip of his old Beretta Model 38 submachine gun as he fumbled to reload it with a fresh 30-round magazine. The gun was an antique, manufactured forty years before Mehretu’s birth, but still in use by soldiers of the Ethiopian National Defense Force. Mehretu didn’t know if his had been stolen or bought off the street, only that it functioned well enough for a weapon of its advanced age.

  And he hoped that it would save his life.

  The enemy they’d cornered in the alley had already killed no less than half a dozen of Mehretu’s friends and fellow members of the Temple of the Holy Covenant. The white man had come out of nowhere, had left Bishop Astatke lying in a pool of blood, perhaps already dead by now. Honor demanded vengeance for that insult and the other lives that he had stolen in his unprovoked assault.

  But could they manage it?

  The white man had an automatic weapon, hand grenades, and he was clearly desperate. Concealed within the alley, he might hold them off until police arrived, forcing Mehretu and the rest to flee before they finished him. For all Mehretu knew, the killer was in league with the police, an agent sent to punish Custodes Foederis for the recent, brilliant move in Axum. Lacking evidence, it wouldn’t be the first time Ethiopian authorities resorted to their version of rough justice.

  But a white man? That confused Mehretu and disturbed him. He could make no sense of it, and they were running out of time.

  Already, in the distance, he could hear the bing-bong echo of the first siren approaching. They had only minutes left, at mo
st, to root the killer out and execute him, or the opportunity would slip away. Once he was jailed—if he was even placed in custody—the church might lose him to the courts.

  Better to end it here, but that required more courage than Kitaw Mehretu possessed. Rushing the gunman where he was, braving his gun and his grenades, was tantamount to suicide. Mehretu reckoned they had men enough to take him, but who would volunteer to lead the charge and sacrifice himself?

  Not me, Mehretu thought, and felt an instant stab of shame.

  His fear challenged Mehretu’s faith, his very manhood. He was thankful for the mask of darkness that obscured his face.

  Beside him, Ephraim Desta said, “We need to hurry.”

  “I know that!” Mehretu whispered in answer.

  “Someone has to lead.”

  Mehretu nodded. “You go,” he suggested.

  “I’m already injured, Kitaw.”

  “What?” Mehretu turned to peer at his companion, looking for a wound.

  “My ankle,” Desta said. “I hurt it, running out here from the temple.”

  Faker, Mehretu thought, but he didn’t speak the word aloud. His own fear kept him from reviling Desta as a coward.

  “You should lead us,” Desta whispered. “You have the machine gun.”

  “Not the only one. Mohammed and Genzebe—”

  “Were both in the alley,” Desta said.

  Meaning that both were likely dead, Mehretu understood, since neither one was firing. They had nearly shot him down by accident, before the last grenade went off. How many of his comrades still remained there, in the shadows, waiting to attack if only someone led the way?

  Mehretu looked past Desta, back toward Congo Street, and saw that only Ale Hanna still remained to help them if they charged the white man’s hiding place. Eyes alight with fear, he held a short-barreled revolver, even less effective than the Browning semiautomatic Desta carried.

  It comes down to me, Mehretu realized. I have to prove myself.