The Vatican Knights

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Team Leader had divided his unit into two groups: Alpha Team, consisting of five of his most seasoned combatants, and Omega Team, left behind in D.C. to monitor the political maneuverings of the White House and its law enforcement constituencies.

To secure the hostages, Alpha Team placed them in a military cargo truck that had been modified with a false floor. Beneath the cargo bed was a compartment capable of carrying up to nine people in tight quarters. To ensure safety throughout the transportation process, the muffler system was customized so the noxious fumes were directed away from the cargo space at all times. And since the hostages were immobilized by a ketamine derivative, it was highly unlikely they would wake and panic and find themselves cloistered in a dark compartment during the drive north.

Team Leader sat on the passenger side of the cab, the radio tuned to an AM news station, just one of many he had listened to during transport. He stared at the passing landscape with eyes that seemed detached, yet fully aware.

Earlier that morning he had a member of Omega Team place an easily-traced call to CNN from a D.C. pay phone. By then, the transport team was already nearly three hundred miles north, the distance covered before a dragnet could be extended from the nation’s capitol.

The timing and location of the call was a red herring. He wanted Washington to believe that the Soldiers of Islam were still in the D.C. area, so that the scope of their search would be concentrated to a smaller radius. But the ruse failed. According to the news, road blocks had been set up on all major highways north, west, and south of the capitol, stretching as far as New York, Florida, and Texas.

Though he had considered his strategy carefully, Team Leader was concerned about the blockades after their military vehicle was stopped by law enforcement on two separate occasions in New York. But when he showed them counterfeit documents claiming their vehicle to be from the 75th Ranger Regiment, a division of the US Army Special Operation Command, the vehicle was waved through without so much as a cursory examination.

Once the truck exited the turnpike and entered Boston central, the driver passed Government Center and negotiated the narrow streets to a pre-established safe house located in Boston’s Historical District.

The isolated building was an old and vacant depository made of aged brick, which had cracked and discolored from time and neglect. The first-floor windows were bricked over. The second- and third-story windows, however, were merely boarded over with weathered plywood. The trees surrounding the building were either dead or dying, their limbs knotted like the arthritic twists of an old man’s hands. The area had simply gone to waste.

A wrought-iron gate bearing a “No Trespassing: All Violators Prosecuted” sign was securely locked with a thick garland of chain wrapped firmly around the bars. Team Leader got out of the vehicle, searched his pocket for the proper key, and undid the lock. Once the vehicle passed through, he closed and relocked the gate.

The vehicle drove slowly down the weed-laden driveway. Wispy branches from the trees above snapped as the top of the vehicle forced its way through the canopy of skeletal limbs. At the end of the driveway the truck turned into a vacant area behind the building.

There stood a dented fire door, the only way in and out of the building. The entry had been reinforced prior to the mission with a state-of-the-art titanium lock. Reaching into his cargo pocket, Team Leader removed a remote unit and aimed it at the entry. When he depressed a button the bolt mechanism drew back in a series of hollow, metallic clicks, and then the red light on the remote’s faceplate turned green, an indication that the door was unlocked.

Moving toward the entry, Team Leader turned the handle, opening the door to a world that was truly blacker than pitch.