Day of Confession Part 45

Then the door banged open and Harry Addison stood there.

"It's all right-," he said quietly and closed the door behind him, locking it.

"Where is Father Daniel?"

"Waiting for you."

"There are men outside."

"We're going out anyway."

Glancing around, Harry saw the bathroom and went in. A moment later he came out carrying a wetted hand towel.

"Put this over your nose and mouth." Harry handed Marsciano a towel, then went quickly to the gla.s.s doors and threw them open. Heavy smoke wafted in. At the same time, an apparition dropped from the sky.

Marsciano started. A tiny man with a huge head and larger chest stood on the balcony, a rope harness slung around him.

"Eminence." Hercules smiled, bowing his head respectfully.

THOMAS KIND'S RADIO picked it up the same time it came over Adrianna's cell phone, her open line patched into the radio communication between her crews.

"I don't know if anybody cares in all this, but the railroad gates are open in the Vatican wall, and a work engine's going toward it."

"Skycam, are you sure?" Adrianna was talking to her helicopter pilot, who was just coming in over Vatican territory from the south.

"Affirmative."

ADRIANNA TURNED QUICKLY from the phone and looked to Eaton. "The Vatican railroad gates are open, a work engine's going in."

Eaton stared. "Christ-it's how they're getting Marsciano out!"

"SKYCAM, STAY ON THE ENGINE. Stay on it!" Thomas Kind heard Adrianna finish and click off.

Suddenly he was turning the key, starting the Mercedes engine. There had been no communication from any of the men inside the tower, and he couldn't wait longer to find out what had happened. Throwing the car in gear, he fishtailed out of the gravel path and onto the narrow road beside the tower wall. Peering through the smoke and ash, he accelerated. Suddenly bushes were flying past. Then there was a loud bang as he sideswiped a tree and slid sideways into the thick of a hedgerow. Where the road had turned he had no idea. Violently, he threw it in reverse. There was a roar of engine and the whine of tires. The car shuddered but didn't move. Flinging open the door, he saw the wheels spinning on the green of the torn shrubbery as if it were ice.

Cursing in his native Spanish, he climbed out, choking against the smoke, and ran off on foot in the direction of the station.

155.

10:48 A.M A.M.

DANNY AND ELENA CAME OUT INTO THE SMOKE through an emergency door on the ground floor of the Apostolic Library.

"Left," Danny commanded through his handkerchief, and Elena turned them that way along the narrow road to the gardens.

"Harry," Danny spoke urgently into the cell phone.

Nothing.

"Harry, can you hear me?"

There was a hiss on the other end, as if the line were still open. Then: CLICK. The line went dead.

"Dammit!" Danny said out loud.

"What's the matter?" Elena pressed, sudden fear for Harry jolting her.

"Don't know..."

HARRY, HERCULES, AND MARSCIANO huddled in silence on Marsciano's platform, peering over the side in the smoke.

"You're sure they're there?" Harry said to Hercules.

"Yes, down there just past the door."

Just as Hercules dropped from the roof to the platform he had seen two of the black suits take position on either side of the door. But now the settling smoke made it impossible to see.

"Send them away." Harry was suddenly pulling Anton Pilger's two-way radio from his belt, giving it to Hercules.

Taking it, Hercules clicked on, winking at Harry as he did. "They've come down the outside of the tower by rope!" he said urgently in Italian. "They're moving toward the helipad!"

"Va bene,"-Okay-a voice came back.

"The helipad! The helipad!" Hercules barked for good measure, then abruptly shut the radio off.

Beneath them was a scurrying, and then they glimpsed one man and then another move off at a dead run away from the tower.

"Now!" Harry said.

"Eminence," Hercules said. The rope suddenly twisted in his hands; he made one loop and brought it over Marsciano's shoulders, then a second around his waist. A moment later Hercules was balanced on the rail and Harry was helping Marsciano onto it. Then, turning it through the steel of the railing, he held on and stepped back, lowering both men to the ground.

"Mr. Harry!" Hercules voice floated up. Harry saw the rope tighten from the ground and knew Hercules was guiding it. Taking hold, he swung up on the railing, then went over himself. An instant later, a shot rang out and the rope half severed. For a moment Harry just hung there, and then the rope broke and he dropped like a stone to the ground.

The wind knocked out of him, he looked up at the sound of a scream. Hercules had a black suit at the edge of the bushes, his steellike arms around the man's neck.

"Look out!" Harry yelled.

The black suit still had his gun, and Hercules didn't see it. It was coming up against the side of Hercules' head.

"GUN!" Harry yelled again, pus.h.i.+ng himself up, rus.h.i.+ng up toward them.

There was a tremendous report as the pistol went off just as Hercules wrenched. There was a hideous scream and both men fell back.

Harry and Marsciano arrived at the same moment. The black suit lay still, his head twisted at a terrible angle. Hercules was on his back, blood covering half his face.

"Hercules." Harry moved quickly, kneeling down, looking at him. "Jesus G.o.d," he whispered, his hand moving in to feel his neck for a pulse.

Then Hercules opened one eye, and his hand reached up and wiped the blood from the other. Abruptly he sat up, blinking the blood away. A second wipe from his hand took a huge smear of the blood from his face. A clear flesh wound with the sheer white of a powder burn ran, like an arrow, up the side of it.

"Can't kill me," he said. "Not like that."

In the distance came the sound of a train whistle. Finding a crutch, Hercules pulled himself up.

"The engine, Mr. Harry." Blood or not, Hercules eyes danced. "The engine!"

156.

ADRIANNA CAME OUT OF THE BUILDING TO see Eaton running up the road behind St. Peter's, then he vanished like a wisp in the smoke.

"Skycam, what do you have on the engine?" she spat into the phone as she ran, cutting up the hill and across the gra.s.s toward the Palace of the Government, the Vatican's city hall. She was three minutes, maybe four, from the railroad station.

ELENA PULLED DANNY BACK into the overhang of a tree near the Church of San Stefano and waited for the helicopter to pa.s.s over. It did, then abruptly swung back toward the station.

At the same moment, Danny's cell phone chirped.

"Harry-"

"We have Marsciano with us. What about the engine?"

Elena could feel the pound of her heart at Harry's voice. He was all right, at least for the moment.

"Harry-," Danny said, "we've got air cover. I don't know who it is. Go the other way, come down by Vatican Radio and in past the Ethiopian College. By then we'll be closer, and I can see what the h.e.l.l's going on."

10:50 A.M A.M.

"Stay here!" Roscani yelled at Scala and Castelletti. Then, turning, he ran down the track after the little oily-green engine just as it chugged in through the open gates and vanished in the ma.s.sive hang of smoke.

For a moment Scala and Castelletti stood open-mouthed, watching him. Little by little Roscani had been walking down the track following the engine, but his move and the quickness of it had caught them by surprise. Suddenly they started to run after him. A dozen yards later they stopped as they saw him reach the opening in the wall and disappear into the gloom. From where they stood, it looked like the entire Vatican was either on fire or fully under siege.

Suddenly an Italian Army helicopter roared in directly overhead. At the same time Farel's voice crackled loudly over the radio, identifying himself and telling the WNN Skycam helicopter to vacate Vatican airs.p.a.ce immediately.

"DAMMIT," ADRIANNA SAID at the order. Then she heard the rotors overhead crank up and her Skycam pull away.

"Keep south of the wall," she shouted into the phone. "When that engine comes out, stay with it!"

FOR SOME REASON THE WORK engine had stopped just outside the open gates, and Roscani crossed the tracks behind it quickly, moving to his right and past the station. Coughing, his eyes tearing with the smoke, he pulled open his jacket and slid a 9mm Beretta automatic from his belt. Straining to see, he went up the road in the direction of the tower. What he was doing was totally illegal, but he didn't care. The law was f.u.c.ked and could go to h.e.l.l. He'd made the decision in an instant as he walked down the tracks after the work engine and saw the huge gates pull back for it. The open portal in the wall was all he needed, and he went for it just like that, all fire and emotion and the knowledge that he had had to do to do something something.

And now, as he fought the smoke and tearing eyes and just tried to breathe, he prayed to G.o.d he wouldn't lose his bearings and get lost, that he would somehow find the Addisons before Farel's gunmen or Thomas Kind did.

THOMAS KIND RAN FORWARD, Walther mascinen pistole mascinen pistole in hand, wiping his eyes, trying not to cough with the acrid smoke. It was already hard enough to see anything, and the physical act of coughing jarred and threw him off even more. in hand, wiping his eyes, trying not to cough with the acrid smoke. It was already hard enough to see anything, and the physical act of coughing jarred and threw him off even more.

Running across the lawn, jumping a low hedge, he suddenly lost his bearings and stopped. It was like being on a mountain on skis in a whiteout. Up, down, or sideways, everything was the same.

He could hear emergency sirens far to his left. Above, and also to the left, was the heavy thud of rotors from what he a.s.sumed was the Italian Army jet helicopter circling to land on the roof of the papal palace. Pulling up his radio, he spoke into it in Italian.

"This is S S. Copy."

Silence.

"This is S S," he said again. "Copy."

HERCULES SWUNG ALONGSIDE Harry and Marsciano as they made their way quickly along the narrow road toward Vatican Radio. The two-way radio in Hercules' belt spat with Thomas Kind's voice.

"Who is that?" Marsciano asked.

"I think someone we want nothing in the world to do with," Harry said, knowing, without knowing, that it was Thomas Kind. Harry coughed, looking at his watch.

10:53 A.M A.M.

"Eminence," he said suddenly. "We have five minutes to get past the Ethiopian College to the tracks and into the railroa-"

"Mr. Harry!" Hercules suddenly cried out.

Harry looked up. A black suit stood directly in front of them, less than five feet away in the smoke. He had a huge pistol in either hand-revolvers. He stepped forward. He was tall and youthful and had wavy hair. He looked for all the world like a young Dirty Harry.

"Put your gun on the ground," he said to Harry in English with a thick French accent. "The waist pack, too."

Slowly Harry eased the Calico out and set it on the ground, then unclasped the waist pack and let that fall, too.

"Harry-" Danny's voice jumped out from the cell phone in his belt.

"Harry!"

At that moment something happened that startled them all. A light breeze wafted across, lifting the smoke ever so slightly. At the same time came the distant sound of the work engine's whistle as it pa.s.sed through the gates. The black suit suddenly smiled. The train was coming, the trio in front of him would never make it.

It wasn't much, just a tiny moment, and what Hercules had been looking for. In a single motion he s.h.i.+fted his weight to his left crutch and flung the right.

The black suit cried out in surprise as the crutch struck his right hand sending one gun flying off. Recovering, he swung the other gun toward Harry, his finger closing on the trigger. At the same instant Hercules threw himself forward. Harry saw the gun buck in the black suit's hand, heard its heavy report just as Hercules crashed into him, knocking them both to the ground.

Harry's fingers found the Calico. What happened next was in flashes. Split seconds. Pieces. Bits. Pa.s.sion. Fury. Harry was across the ground and on the black suit. Arm around his neck. Tearing him off Hercules. Then suddenly the black suit wrenched free.

In an instant he had Harry by the hair with both hands and was jerking him forward, slamming his forehead hard into Harry's with a vicious head b.u.t.t. Harry saw a stabbing bolt of light and then blackness. A split second later, his vision returned to see the Calico in the black suit's hand inches from his face.

"f.u.c.k you!" the black suit screamed, his finger squeezing the trigger.

Immediately there was a thundering gunshot. Followed in lightning succession by three more horrendous blasts. Harry saw the black suit's entire head explode in what seemed like slow motion. Then his body arched and he fell back, the Calico dropping to the gra.s.s beside him.

Harry whirled, looking up.

Roscani was coming down the hill toward them, his Beretta pointed directly at the dead black suit, as if there were some chance the man might actually get up again.

"Harry, the engine!" Danny's voice came out of a fog from the cell phone at Harry's waist.