The Rome Prophecy

104

Carabinieri snipers with Mauser SP66s crawl into position on rooftops in and around the courtyard of Santa Cecilia.

Soldiers speedily bundle visiting tourists and rubbernecking locals out of the church grounds and beyond the piazza.

Overhead, an Augusta-Bell helicopter hovers menacingly.

The 412 CRESCO is fitted with high-powered video cameras, infrared lenses, ground and surveillance radar and advanced heat-seeking thermal devices. Its eagle-eyed ops team is all primed and ready to track any sudden runners.

The crew watch paramedics stretcher an injured man into the back of an ambulance and then disappear with their sirens blazing.

Across the Trastevere back streets, troops spill from soft-topped Land Rover Defenders and start to stake out a dragnet.

No one is going to escape.

Public stabbings and gunfire in churches don’t go down well in Rome, as some jokers are about to find out.

From his command vehicle, Major Lorenzo Silvestri, the head of GIS – the Gruppo di Intervento Speciale – processes in information from his men, then calmly gives word for the operation to begin.

His team is the cream of the Carabinieri. Special-ops troops, specifically trained in hostage release, hijack situations and counter-terrorism.

Right now, they’re moving faster than the blink of an eye.

They enter in a cloud of tear gas, bursting through three main windows above the church and along two specific ground-floor routes.

Lorenzo’s soldiers move with startling synchronism. They sweep the sacred aisles with a deadly mix of Heckler and Koch MP5s and Berettas.

In less than two minutes they establish that the vast church floor and its side rooms and upper galleries are clear.

Lorenzo scratches his stubbly silver-grey hair and watches feeds from helmet cameras as his team enters the crypt. If anyone is still hiding, this is the place they’ll be.

The church lights are cut.

Soldiers slip on night-sight goggles and slide unseen into what they call the black zone.

Lorenzo knows the crypt well; it’s a riot of rich colours from ceiling to floor, with spectacular statues and innumerable marble pillars that create an amazing array of painted arches.

But none of this shows on his infra-red camera feeds.

Just the odd glowing movement of soldiers and blurred backgrounds.

He crosses himself and prays that a gun battle doesn’t break out down there. The crossfire would be horrendous.

The ROS veteran glances at his watch. Three more minutes have passed.

His radio feed crackles. ‘Clear!’ shouts one of his men.

‘Clear!’ confirms another.

‘Clear!’ The final confirmation rolls into Lorenzo’s earpiece.

They’ve all drawn blanks.

Every nook, niche, corner and confessional has been searched and they’ve found no one.

Lorenzo sits back from the monitors and stretches his long legs.

Where the hell did the bad guys go?

He has to see for himself.

He steps from the warmth of his ops vehicle and walks through the wind and rain of the piazza.

He enters the church courtyard, questioning whether the operation was necessary.

Maybe it was a bad case of crowd hysteria.

Perhaps the congregation heard a nearby delivery truck backfire and panicked.

Then he dismisses the notion.

It wouldn’t explain the stabbing, nor the eye-witness accounts of hearing shooting in the church and a woman identifying herself as a police officer.

But he’s still not satisfied.

Neither the Carabinieri nor the Polizia have been able to confirm that they had any officers in the church or even on duty anywhere near the building.

Was the woman one of the criminals?

Lorenzo doesn’t rule it out.

Crooks have long known that pretending to be a police officer is a good way of emptying a building. The public see a gun and they’re relieved to learn it’s being held by an officer of the law so they do whatever they’re told.

The major makes the sign of the cross as he enters the centre aisle and bows his head.

He has worshipped in this church.

He’s sat and knelt in here with his wife and children and he’s furious that he’s been forced to return in full combat gear with a gun dangling from his hip.

On the left-hand side of the church, a third of the way from the main entrance, he notices the pews have been disturbed.

Two of them are splayed open into a big V.

Between them is a pool of blood.

The furthermost pew is stained red.

He’s seen people faint in church – it isn’t that uncommon – but light-headed fallers get away with a bruise and a bump. They don’t bleed like a haemophiliac in a razor-blade factory.

Lorenzo’s radio crackles again.

He answers it, looking apologetically towards the altar. ‘Silvestri.’

His lieutenant comes online and has to shout over loud crowd noise and honking car horns behind him. ‘Major, we have a man outside who seems to have an explanation for all the trouble.’

Lorenzo looks to the giant crucifix over the altar. ‘Thank you, Lord, I was beginning to believe you had deserted me.’