Apocalypse Ark Read online

  Sooner, perhaps, than anyone had dared to hope.

  There were no open spaces at the curb within three blocks of Saint Ignatius, but Collins didn’t care. A citation for a parking violation was the least of his concerns this day. He stopped beside a hydrant, switched off the Mini Cooper’s engine and reached into his gym bag, slotting a curved double-column magazine into the Sterling’s receiver. A sharp yank on the cocking handle put a live round in the chamber, and Collins left the safety off, ready to fire, as he replaced the weapon in its bag.

  He stepped out of the car, taking the heavy bag, leaving his key in the ignition with the door unlocked. Perhaps some wayward lad—or lass, these days, who knew?—would come along and lift it for a joyride. Collins had no further use for it. His next ride would be in a hearse.

  Classes were under way at Saint Ignatius, midmorning, all the hapless children having blasphemy drilled into them by servants of the Great Deceiver. Some of them were listening to their last lectures even now, unconscious of the fact that Death was moving toward them with determined strides, a broad smile on his face.

  Some sort of monitor was standing watch outside the building, a portly man of early middle age dressed in the school’s colors, maroon and black. He frowned as Collins turned in from the public sidewalk, and, moving toward the front door, raised his hand to halt this stranger with the odd smile on his face.

  “A moment if you please, sir.”

  Collins drew the Webley, cocked and fired it in a single fluid motion, opening a keyhole in the watchman’s forehead, blowing out a mist of gray and crimson at the back. Without missing a stride, he passed the fallen corpse and pushed into the school’s foyer, as brakes squealed in the road behind him, someone grabbing for a cell phone to summon the police.

  So it began.

  Axum, Ethiopia

  THE DRIVE FROM Addis Ababa to Axum took six hours, covering 350 miles and change on roads that ranged in quality from adequate to poor. Ethiopia’s only expressway was the four-lane Addis Ababa Ring Road, a limited-access thoroughfare encircling the capital. Bolan and Halloran traveled over Highway 1, northbound from Addis Ababa through Dessie to Adigrat, where a winding side road branched off to Axum. On the final stretch, a dust plume trailed behind them, as if the Holland Tekeze was laying down a smoke screen.

  They parked a half mile from the Chapel of the Tablet and walked back, Halloran sketching the history for Bolan’s benefit while locals wondered at the sight of white and black together on the street, the black man wearing clerical garb.

  “Saint Frumentius brought Christianity to the Aksumite Kingdom during the fourth century,” Halloran said. “Today, he’s known as Abune Selama Kesatay Birhan, translating into English as Our Father of Peace, the Revealer of Light.”

  “That’s some reputation,” Bolan remarked.

  “He earned it as a prisoner who won his freedom with the gospel and converted his captors, going on to serve as bishop, confessor and apostle to Ethiopia.”

  “So, what went wrong?” Bolan asked.

  “Wrong?”

  “I understand they’re not exactly Catholics today.”

  “Ah. Long story short, Eastern Orthodox churches broke with Rome over doctrinal issues in 1054. Both factions worship Christ, of course, but fell out over other theological disputes. One branch, the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, claimed primacy over Ethiopia until 1959, when the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church asserted independence.”

  “What’s Tewahedo?” Bolan asked.

  “A word from the Geez language common to the Horn of Africa, established as the official tongue of the Aksumite Kingdom and Ethiopia’s imperial court. It translates as ‘being made one,’ a reference to divine and human natures merged in the person of Jesus.”

  “And they claim they got the Ark of the Covenant...how, again?”

  “According to the Kebra Nagast—that’s a book, The Glory of Kings, dating roughly from the fourteenth century—Emperor Menelik I brought the Ark with him to Ethiopia when he married Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, around 950 BC. Menelik presumably got it from his father, King Solomon of the Old Testament.”

  “Guy with the mines that nobody can find.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Cutting babies in two.”

  “He didn’t follow through on that,” Halloran said. “It was an object lesson.”

  “And the Ark’s been sitting here for better than a thousand years.”

  “Supposedly.”

  “No point in asking anybody here, I guess.”

  “I shouldn’t think so,” Halloran agreed. “Believers are invested in the legend, true or false, and nonbelievers won’t have any useful information.”

  “So, plan B,” Bolan replied.

  “I think so. Yes.”

  “You think they staged the hit out of Eritrea.”

  “I can’t be positive, of course,” Halloran said. “But Custodes Foederis has a congregation at Massawa, some ninety miles due north. They call themselves the Temple of the Guiding Light. If they weren’t involved...”

  “Somebody there may know who was,” Bolan suggested.

  “That’s what I surmise.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “We may experience some difficulties at the border,” Halloran observed. “You may know that Eritrea and Ethiopia were at war from 1998 through 2000. Despite the eventual peace treaty, tensions remain. United Nations peacekeepers were stationed on the border until 2008, then withdrew, citing Eritrea’s failure to cooperate. Both sides patrol the border heavily, one might say seeking an excuse for the renewal of hostilities. As for tourist visas, well...”

  “In other words, we’ll have to sneak across,” Bolan said.

  “It saves a world of time and explanation, not to mention lying.”

  “Which would be a sin.”

  “Albeit venial,” Halloran added, half smiling.

  “You’ve been here awhile,” Bolan remarked. “What did you have in mind?”

  “There is a man who may be useful,” Halloran replied, already reaching for his phone.

  North Montreal, Quebec, Canada

  BRIGITTE LECLAIR NOSED her Opel Astra G into the parking garage of Hôpital Saint-Rémi on Boulevard Lacordaire. She took a ticket from the meter, let it drop beside her car as she drove underneath the rising barrier, and circled upward through the floors reserved for doctors, staff and patients visiting the hospital for tests or therapy. On level five she found a space, pulled in and killed the Astra’s engine.

  On the seat beside her, in a cloth Loblaws shopping bag, were twenty hand grenades, the green C13 model which, she understood, was simply a relabeled version of the American M67. Each grenade weighed fourteen ounces, roughly half of which was Composition B, an explosive mixture of RDX and TNT.

  Leclair knew that because she had been forced to study for her mission, and to toss one of the blue training grenades in practice sessions, in a secluded corner of Cap-Saint-Jacques Nature Park on the West Island. Her aim wasn’t precise, but she supposed that with a killing radius of five meters, and a wounding radius of triple that, it didn’t have to be.

  She left the car and slung the cloth bag over her left shoulder. At close to eighteen pounds, it was uncomfortable, chafing through her blouse and lightweight sweater, but the weight was unimportant. And it would get lighter as she went along.

  She’d been initially put off by the idea of terrorizing patients in a hospital, but the situation had been explained to her. The individuals she would be facing had elected to have treatment in a warren of corruption run for profit by the Scarlet Whore of Babylon. Most were diseased because of their licentious lifestyles, having brought it on themselves. The innocents—if there were any to be found inside the walls of Hôpital Saint-Rémi—would look down from heaven afterward
and bless her for releasing them from hell on earth. The more Leclair considered it, the more it all made sense.

  She passed a constable on entering the hospital, but he hardly glanced at her. Another visitor with gifts for some unfortunate, no doubt. She passed the information kiosk and headed for the elevators, silently repeating the instructions she’d been given: Ride it to the top, Intensive Care, then work your way back down.

  Where the authorities, by then, would certainly be waiting for her. And she planned to save one last grenade for them. Or for herself.

  The topmost floor of the hospital was a nearly silent place. Although Leclair had never visited Intensive Care before, she recognized it more or less from television programs. All the rooms were private, glass-walled, with signs warning of oxygen in use, forbidding all unnecessary noise. A small space set aside for visitors was nearly empty at the moment, except for one man lying on a sofa, seemingly asleep.

  But not for long.

  Two nurses at their station watched Brigitte Leclair approach the nearest room, where a young woman lay unconscious in a bed festooned with tubes and wires. One of them called to her as she approached the door, her right hand dipping into the cloth bag.

  “Vous ne pouvez pas aller là-bas, madame.” She was forbidden to enter there.

  “Don’t worry,” she replied. “It’s fine.” With a grenade already primed, she rolled it toward a tall oxygen tank near the bed, then retreated as its four-second fuse burned down.

  She was halfway to the service stairs—the elevator was far too slow to help her now—when the explosion came, a double wham from the grenade and the tank of oxygen. The nurses started to scream, but Brigitte heard them for only a second. Then the heavy door swung shut behind her, cutting off the sound.

  Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

  CHRIST THE REDEEMER stood overlooking the city, arms spread as if still crucified—or perhaps in a gesture of welcome to all who approached him. He was hard to ignore, at 125 feet tall with a thirty-one-foot arm span, perched atop Corcovado mountain 2,300 feet above sea level, with a panoramic view of Rio de Janeiro below and the blue Atlantic beyond.

  Each year, more than three hundred thousand pilgrims and tourists boarded the Corcovado Rack Railway for a twenty-minute ride to meet Christ on the mountaintop. How many lives were altered by that trip would be impossible to say.

  Duarte carried a camera bag, but planned to take no photographs. Inside the bag he’d packed a short Patria Mod 2 machine pistol, made in Argentina during the mid-1980s, chambered in 9 mm Parabellum. The remaining space was filled with 30-round box magazines—enough to kill a hundred people, maybe more, if he was able to control the little stuttergun he’d barely practiced with. Its folding foregrip, similar to that on the Beretta 93-R, ought to help.

  Arriving at the mountaintop, Duarte was among the first riders to disembark. Above the railroad platform at least a hundred gawkers were already clustered at the statue’s feet, some of them slowly descending to meet the train, ready to leave, while others showed no inclination to depart. Of course, it didn’t matter what they wanted now, or what they’d planned to do for the remainder of their day in Rio.

  Time stopped here, as Duarte drew the Patria Mod 2, cocked it and shouted in a high-pitched voice that made his cheeks flame with embarrassment, “Death to the Scarlet Whore of Babylon!”

  Before his words had time to register, Duarte opened fire. His weapon’s cyclic rate of fire matched that of an Uzi at six hundred rounds per minute. He fought to control it, blasting short bursts toward his running, screaming targets, all the while imagining the havoc his brothers and sisters of Custodes Foederis were wreaking worldwide, a tide of blood, rising before the final stroke of Armageddon fell and purged an ancient cancer from the world. Duarte knew he wouldn’t live to see the day of glory in his present form, but planned to watch it all unfolding from his place in Paradise.

  Loading his second magazine, the first one gone in seconds, Duarte heard the tourist train reversing gears, its engineer bent on escape, saving himself and anyone on board. Running as if to catch the train himself, Duarte fired in through the windscreen of the driver’s cab, rewarded with glass imploding and a splash of blood. The train began accelerating in reverse, the few tourists aboard it clinging to their seats and crying out in panic. Duarte pictured carnage at the station two and a half miles below, when the train arrived with no hand on the brake.

  An unexpected bonus, and its crash would stall police heading for the peak of Corcovado with their guns, to take him down. By the time they cleared the track and launched another of the four tourist trains up the mountain, Duarte’s work would be completed. They could kill him then, with nothing lost. His name would be enshrined forever in the pantheon of martyrs blessed by God.

  But still, he had no time to waste. Terrified pilgrims were still on the run, some scrambling for safety above the railroad platform, slogging up the 220-step staircase or clinging to the escalators installed for weaker tourists. Duarte followed them, chased them with automatic fire, and laughed to see them tumbling down again, splashing the steps with blood. The survivors scurried like rats, squealing in panic, while their killer reloaded on the move.

  Perfect.

  They had nowhere to go, no one to save them now. Would those who stammered hasty prayers before the statue find forgiveness for their sins? Duarte didn’t know and didn’t care. He had a job to do, and it was far from done.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Massawa, Eritrea

  Halloran’s useful man turned out to be a smuggler who supported himself and a large family by running contraband across the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea. The latter country, prized for its coastline along the Red Sea, had been invaded and conquered in turn by Arabs, Ottoman Turks, Portuguese, Egyptians, Sudanese, Brits and Italians, until it was federated with Ethiopia by United Nations mandate in 1951. Ethiopian disregard for Eritrea’s culture and language sparked a thirty-year war for independence in 1961. International recognition of Eritrean sovereignty failed to end the bitter fighting, however, and hostility continued to the present day, albeit it formally defused by treaty in 2008.

  Passage of goods and travelers across the still-disputed border was, therefore, a matter of contention—and a bounty for smugglers who greased the wheels of commerce with bribes. Halloran’s contact, a thirty-something Ethiopian named Alemayehu Teka, had agreed to transport Halloran and Bolan with a truckload of coffee that concealed a stash of khat, and Bolan paid the tab out of the war chest he’d collected in D.C. Teka concealed their weapons with his cache of drugs, while Bolan donned priest’s garb that Halloran produced out of his meager luggage.

  Bolan was an expert in “role camouflage,” assuming guises that allowed observers to see what they expected in a given situation, but it was the first time he had dressed up as a member of the clergy. Father Executioner. When lightning didn’t strike him on the spot, he took it as a sign of sorts and climbed aboard the aged SNVI truck, a model manufactured in Algeria on some date long forgotten.

  The border crossing was easier than Bolan expected, once money changed hands with guards on both sides of the line. They might hate each other’s guts, but the Eritreans and Ethiopians alike were willing to be greased with cash. From there, Bolan’s party drove fifty miles to the capital city, Asmar. Halloran rented a car there—a two-year-old Toyota Corolla—then picked up one of Eritrea’s principal highways, P-1, to Massawa by way of Ghinda. It was asphalt all the way, the smoothest ride Bolan had enjoyed since leaving Addis Ababa.

  But leading him to what?

  More bloodshed, absolutely. As to whose blood would be spilled...well, only time would tell.

  As they pulled into town, Halloran said, “The Temple of the Guiding Light is run by a member of Custodes Foederis who calls himself Bishop Yegizaw Sultan. That may or may not be his name, in fact. It hardly matters for o
ur purposes.”

  “You think he’ll spill?” Bolan asked. “Those were tough nuts back in Addis Ababa.”

  “Even the toughest nut will crack, with pressure properly applied.”

  Here comes the Inquisition, Bolan thought, but kept it to himself. Inflicting pain on others never pleased him, though there had been several occasions when he’d felt a rush of satisfaction, when sadists fell into his hands and got a dose of their own medicine. More often, when he had to squeeze someone for information in the middle of a life-or-death campaign, Bolan accomplished what he could with threats and promises, reserving brute force as a last-ditch option.

  Presently, he reckoned that no matter what this Bishop Sultan said or didn’t say, allowing him to live and blow the whistle to his masters was a bad idea. But Bolan would play the cards as they were dealt, see how they fell.

  And leave the moment to decide who lost it all.

  Temple of the Guiding Light, Massawa

  BISHOP YEGIZAW SULTAN was troubled by reports from Addis Ababa. The death of Bishop Berhanu Astatke was a bitter loss, since they’d been friends as well as brethren in the faith. Astatke had facilitated the capture of the Ark, as Bishop Sultan had secured safe passage for its liberators and their cargo through his own parish. In truth, he’d hoped to catch a glimpse of it in passing, but his plea had been denied by Janus Marcellus.

  Bishop Sultan knew his scripture, specifically the books of Samuel, wherein God killed seventy men of Beth Shemesh for peering inside the Ark, and later struck down faithful Uzzah when he touched the Ark, to steady it from falling when the oxen drawing it had stumbled. Compromise was sin, and Sultan had chastised himself for his passing weakness in seeking a special privilege.