Extraordinary Retribution

Epilogue

The shots rang out, one after the other. First, there was the blast: the ringing of metal hurled by gunpowder, the fast rush of air. Then, the slap and thud as the projectile struck its target. Finally, the resounding reverberations off the stones, hard ground, and sides of the encircling cliffs.

The air was crisp and the plant life mostly evergreen at this high altitude. Mosses grew on the rocky terrain, and the thin atmosphere gave a sharpened quality to all objects, to every sound. Sight, sound, and gunplay were all precise.

A male figure stood twenty-five yards in front of a row of targets, silhouetted against a reddening sunset. Black human-like shapes were depicted on the paper before him with the areas around the heart and brain marked with circles. After a number of shots, the figure drew his arm back and removed protective earplugs, looking down at the smoking weapon. A brunette with short-cropped hair walked briskly up to him.

“Damn, Francisco! Eight of ten in the kill zone. You missed your true calling! What the hell were you doing in seminary?”

“Studying, mostly.” He smiled. “So, not bad?”

“Obscene natural talent. Not even Miguel was this good. You’ve barely been training, and you’re a hell of a lot better shot than ninety-nine percent of the agents I know.”

“Who’d have thought?” he said, shaking his head.

“I did. I knew. You’re even better in hand-to-hand.”

“I always could fight.”

“Yes, like a wild boar. But now I’m training you right for the first time. Most men your age couldn’t learn this from scratch. You were born to do this.”

“Natural-born killer?” he said, a sadness in his eyes.

“A natural warrior, Francisco. There is a difference.”

“Not always.”

“Well, there is in your case. I don’t want to hear any more self-doubt. You’ve been trying to be Jesus all your life because you couldn’t accept who you really were!” She looked at him mischievously. “You saw the box?”

He nodded, glancing over his shoulder. In the midst of several handguns, rifles, ammo crates, and target sheets, buried nearly under their two backpacks, there was a large cardboard box.

“I saw you carrying it up earlier. Presents?”

Houston nodded in the affirmative. “Yes. From Russian monks.”

“Russian monks?”

She laughed. It was a free laugh, a kind rarely heard in a world of people who were rarely themselves. Sara Houston was always beautifully, strongly, tenderly, frustratingly, uniquely herself. “I swear, you can find anything online these days. There’s a monastery in northern Russia that has really done quite well for itself with a religious-themed web store. Icons, candles, censers, the like. Also, cassocks.”

“Cassocks?” he asked, a perplexed look on his face.

“Ever since I was a young girl, I loved the look of those mysterious Russian priests. Long, flowing black cassocks. You Papists modernized so much in the Catholic Church — practically a business suit and tie. Not those crazy Eastern Orthodox. Wild beards and flowing robes.” She rubbed her hand on his bare cheek. “Well, you lost the beard.”

“And it’s not coming back.” He shook his head. “Sara, I’m done being a priest.”

She smiled, a playful look in her eyes. “Different kind of Order. Try them on!”

He looked at her skeptically. “All right, here goes.” He opened the box and removed the priestly robes. Then he stripped to his underwear. The air was slightly cool, and he felt the rush of adrenaline from the brisk breeze. It took him a few minutes of shivering to figure out the drapings, but finally he managed to get the robes properly in place. Houston had turned her back and closed her eyes. He called to her.

“How do I look?” She turned around, her hand immediately going to her mouth. “That bad?” he said, frowning. “Seriously, Sara, how do I look?”

“Like Neo in The Matrix. But scarier. Quite a look, Francisco, right down to the stigmata on your forehead.”

Lopez reached up instinctively to touch the scar. While the wound had healed — the blackened skin and blisters, the secondary infection that resulted — it still was unusually sensitive, even for scar tissue. Every now and then, inexplicably, the scar felt like it was burning, even bleeding at times from the cruciform shape left behind from the gun sight perched over the half-circle. A mark from the wraith that would never leave him. A connection seeming to span life and death.

Lopez grunted. “Fitting. Neo means new. New man. Either that, or with this mark of the beast, I’m the Antichrist.”

Houston grabbed his robes and pulled him close to her, kissing him passionately. “To hell with the Antichrist and the Church, Francisco. We have us.”

He looked out from the mountain view over the valley below them, staring toward the horizon. The green sea of the forest seemed infinite.

Lopez sighed. “Now what, Sara?”

She smirked. “We live happily ever after. It’s nice up here.”

Lopez nodded. “But is it enough? I feel lost. I became a priest to serve, Sara, as much as anything else. To do. Now I’m permanently out of a job. I appreciate all the Special Forces training, but really, what are we going to do with that, outside of being our own personal security system? What do I do now? Model cassocks?”

She smiled. “Now that you mention it, I got a call from Fred Simon this morning. I’ve kept him informed of our little training sessions, your ridiculous progress. He might have something for us to do.”

Lopez’s brows furrowed, the stigmata creasing. “Like what?”

“Jobs that legit agents can’t do. Jobs done by complete ciphers who do not exist. Jobs that need doing.”

Lopez shook his head. “No black-ops, Sara. I don’t want to go down that road. I don’t want to become those things we fought against.”

“We won’t,” she said confidently. “You’re incorruptible, Francisco. I knew that the first time I met you. Something I didn’t feel with Miguel, something I’ve never felt from anyone before. Fred knows it, too. That’s why he trusts us to do the jobs no one else can, that no one else will. Because inside, you’re pure.”

Lopez turned away, shaking his head. “Pure? Hiding. Fighting. Likely killing, if I know anything of this business now. How is that pure?”

She grabbed his chin and turned his head toward her. “Don’t the angels bring destruction on the forces of evil, my former priest?”

Lopez grunted, nodded his head. He recited: “Then, I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous: seven angels having the seven last plagues, for in them the wrath of God is complete.” He smiled at her. “The Book of Revelations. But angelology was always a messy field of study, Sara. Mystics and bad movies. But yes, the chief ministering spirits of God have been known to bring death and destruction. More like a cleansing fire to cancerous tissue, if you want my interpretation.”

Houston nestled her head into his neck. “So, you’re the avenging angel.” She sighed and was silent a moment. “Wasn’t Miguel named after an angel?”

Lopez paused. He flipped the gun in his hand back and forth, one side visible, then the other. His words were nearly lost in the wind that suddenly kicked up. “Yes. In the Hebrew, the name means he who is like God.”

“Well, you’re his brother. You’re of the same stuff.”

“There are only two holy angels named in the New Testament.” He dropped the clip out of the handle to the ground and slapped a new one in, careful not to jostle the resting form of Houston on his shoulder. “There is the Archangel Michael. There is also the angel whose name means ‘God’s Strength.’ He is the one who explained visions to Daniel the prophet, and of all the heavenly hosts, and was sent to announce to Mary that she would be the Mother of God. Some have called him the angel of fire, who also will be sent to destroy sin on earth.”

Houston held him tightly, staring forward toward the targets. “What was his name?”

Lopez raised the weapon and aimed across the field. “Gabriel.”

He pulled the trigger, and the gunshot shattered the quiet around them. His sight was true, the impact in the center of the heart of the target scattering dust and shards of fabric. Echoes of the blast reverberated around them like distant thunder.

Houston whispered. “Then you are Gabriel.”