The Fellowship (49 page)

The Villa

Carver and Seven carried Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifles that they had taken from Callahan’s stash of trunk treasure. Seven had used one while training with the Special Air Service, and spoke highly of the weapon’s reflex sight, which used adjustable
battery-powered illumination in low-level light situations. But for now, Lang’s men would do the fighting. If all went according to plan, Carver wouldn’t need to fire a shot until it was time to collect on his end of the deal with Lang.

Father Callahan carried all the explosives in his pack. He whistled at
one of the Black Order mercenaries and tossed him a standard grenade. The priest pointed a finger up at the fourth floor.

The mercenary smiled, gave Callahan
thumbs up, and hurled it to the top of the stairs with the expert accuracy of a center fielder.

“You idiot!” Callahan screamed. “You have to pull the pin first!”

The priest’s words were gravely prophetic. Within seconds, the grenade flew back over the fourth floor balcony toward Callahan and the 10 surviving warriors.

Carver grabbed Seven and Lang
and pushed them into an open coat closet. “Everyone down!”

The frag grenade exploded five feet above the surface of the
chestnut marble floor. A burst of shrapnel hit the solid wood door protecting Carver, Seven and Lang. All was quiet for several seconds, during which Carver wondered whether they were the only remaining survivors.

Then t
wo guns started up again, and he could tell by proximity – and by the sound of their weapons – that they were Black Order. The relief he felt at knowing there were survivors was an odd and unnerving sensation.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend
, he thought. No, that was bullshit. He and Lang were not friends. They were merely using each other.

He
opened the closet and spotted Callahan unfurling himself from a cramped shelter position underneath a magnificently carved wooden chaise. All gunfire stopped, followed by a sickening thud. A body had fallen from the fourth floor landing, having been picked off by one of Lang’s men.

Lang staggered out of the
closet and surveyed the bodies of the 10 who had fallen in the span of just a few minutes.

“Well?” Carver
asked.

Lang looked up, knowing exactly what Carver
was asking. He shook his head. Senator Preston’s killers were not among the dead. He nodded toward two survivors.

Carver
regarded the two monsters that had travelled to Washington D.C. to kill the senator. Both were reloading. The elder of the two was in his mid-40s and had a crescent-shaped birthmark covering his left cheek. The other was in his 20s, with loose skin around his earlobes that Carver guessed were the effects of wearing gauge plug earrings.

Apprehending these thugs would solve nothing, for no trial was possible. Any criminal proceeding in the U.S. would expose the story the administration had released about
Preston’s death, and possibly, the shadow war over the ossuary.

He wished he could eliminate both of these scumbags right now. But that would solve little except avenging
a single death. We would have to exercise patience. For the next hour, they were in this fight together.

*

Sebastian Wolf
sat cross-legged on the mattress, willing himself out of the meditative trance he had dwelled in for the past three days. He was unable to tell whether the explosions were coming from inside or outside, from above or below. The expansive maze of rooms and tunnels swallowed sound. The excavations down underneath the villa, into the lost catacombs and temples of Rome, had been ongoing for years preceding his arrival. So many entrances and exits. He had needed a chaperone to keep from getting lost.

A boom came from outside.
From the hallway. He was sure of it. The sound of the nightingale floors was drowned out by Magi’s incessant barking.

They were under attack
now. And yet Wolf was calm. There was no reason to be anxious. It had been foretold.

The destiny of the Great Mission
now rested with Adrian Zhu and the girl. They had just been here. Or had it been days since he had seen them? He did not know. He had lost track of time and space.

By his own insistence, he and
Magi had remained undisturbed for some time. Such was his destiny. To be a pure conduit of light for the reincarnation of their savior.

But the time for prayer was over
now. The nightingale floors sang like a flock of a hundred birds all at once. Intruders were in the house. He tried to raise Lars, but all communications were down. Where were the guards?

He struggled
to get to his feet, pulling at the black monogrammed pajamas as they slipped down his lean buttocks. As Lars had taught him during the drills, he went to his desk and punched a star pattern on the touchscreen monitor on his desk. The bookcase behind him hinged open, revealing a staircase.

He called for
Magi. The dog was highly agitated, foaming at the mouth as the heavy bedroom doors bumped and flexed. The enemy was at the gates.

Wolf
gripped the dog’s lead and pulled him through the hidden doorway. Motion-triggered lanterns illuminated a coiling spiral staircase. Built within a hidden shaft in the villa’s rear, it descended the home’s four floors and continued underground to the laboratory.

He paused as he descended
the first few steps. Had there been some way for him to seal the passageway? Surely there was, but he could not remember. Maybe he had never even known.

But now he recalled where the
guards had gone. They were with Adrian Zhu and the girl. He had ordered it, despite Lars’ protests. So be it, he had told Lars. We come into this world alone, and we leave it alone, he thought. And then we will finally feel the unconditional love of God.

But it would not happen yet. No. He wanted to be
in the presence of the ossuary one last time. The lifegiver of the second coming.

And finally, on the first landing, he saw the two large black butt
ons that Lars had shown him. They were recessed in a steel casing and protected by a transparent cover so they could not be pushed accidentally. Yes, he remembered now. He was supposed to press them in sequential order, left to right. The first one would seal the stairway behind him. The second would release the swarm.

*

Lang’s
men blew open the doors to the home’s master suite, releasing a wave of stale, putrid air. They held their weapons with one hand, using the other to cover their faces. The walls of the enormous room were adorned with crosses of every shape and size imaginable. Enormous books were strewn about the floor, many of them open and with pages ripped out, as if they too had been under attack.

“
Nobody here,” someone said.

The
Vatican Intelligence chief slumped into an empty chair. Despite his rigorous regimen of long daily walks, the tunnels and four flights of stairs had taken their toll. He was running on pure adrenalin now.

“What died?” Callahan
shouted as he entered the room.

Carver spotted the source of the
rancid stench. It was not, as the priest suggested, rotting flesh. It was animal waste, evident by several heaping dog piles placed about the room and the yellow-stained baseboards.

The walls were painted with scripture.
He also recognized several passages from Drucker’s manuscript. 

And when he has gathered all that is necessary to know to bring all that is dark into the light,
the One from the East will use her to make me anew, just as I have made you anew.

And in turn, you will return my heart from stone to flesh, so that all men may share in the wisdom of the LORD.

And when I am raised, the knowledge hoarders shall be exposed as bearers of false idols.

“Over here,” Father Callahan shouted. He
pointed to an opening in the bookshelf. A secret passageway. He went out the door, and then popped back in.

“It leads to a coiling staircase. Emergency escape route, I’d guess.”

“Or the entrance to the lab,” Carver said hopefully.

A high-frequency hum entered Carver’s consciousness
. Like insect wings, but modulating evenly. He turned, scanning the dog piles for flies. He saw none.

He looked at
Seven, who was keeping an eye on Lang. “You hear that?”

She nodded. “What is it?”

It was getting louder, and was soon joined by the sound of grinding gears. A thick steel door rolled down over the doorway they had come in through. Another slab of steel threatened to seal the secret passageway leading to the staircase.

Callahan acted quickly,
pushing a trio of heavy, oversized books into the opening. It momentarily stalled the door’s progress. Carver raced to help, grabbing a small bronze bust from one of the shelves. He shoved it in, risking his limbs as he got onto his back and kicked it into place.

He
heard the gears within the walls slipping. Then came the smell of heat – like a hairdryer that had been on far too long. Next was the unmistakable burn of mechanical failure. The crushing steel halted with a loud metallic knock from within the wall.

He looked around the room
at the others. With the entrance now sealed off, there was no way to go but down the passageway. Fortunately, the entire crew was slim enough to slide underneath the 16-inch gap. Except Callahan, he realized. He glanced at the priest’s midsection and had his doubts.

“That sound,” Seven said. She had her hands
over both ears. Carver had been so preoccupied with securing their freedom that he hadn’t noticed the incessant buzzing. It had grown louder.

Carver
pointed up at the 20-foot ceiling and saw what he had failed to notice earlier – a shiny black orb, consisting of perhaps hundreds of tiny holes.

What he saw next truly terrified him. Emerging from the holes
was a swarm of flies. Hundreds of them. Only they weren’t flies, Carver knew. They were flying nanobots. Just like the one that killed Drucker.

*

Seven was the first to slide under the 16-inch gap to the relative safety of the passageway. Carver was right behind her, wriggling his muscular but lean build through the opening. He took Lang next, the old man’s thin, long frame coming feet first as he scooted
through on his back. His two henchmen were next.

And then there was Father Callahan. He pushed his backpack through first, and then his weapon. This was going to be tight.

Carver peered through the gap from the other side. The swarm had descended now perhaps five feet from the orb, and they were dispersing horizontally, a squadron of drones preparing for attack. “Hurry!” he implored Callahan.

L
ike Lang, the stocky priest came feet-first, perhaps anticipating that his midsection would prove to be the most challenging piece. His knees and thighs cleared, but sure enough, 16 vertical inches wasn’t quite enough to get his potbelly through the space.

“Suck it in!” Carver yelled.

“I’m trying!”

The priest
tried to make himself thin as Carver pulled from the other side. Within seconds Callahan was bleeding from broken skin at his waistline. He screamed for Carver to stop.

“It’s no use!” he
cried.

The American stuck his head under the space. The swarm had spread wide, and was now sweeping the room from above, as if
they were a single collective.

“Lie still!” he
commanded. “Those bots can’t be individually controlled. Maybe they’re motion-activated.”

Callahan tried to quiet his body and
minimize his breathing. No small task given that he was half inside, half outside the room, wedged underneath a steel door, with a threat of death hovering overhead.

Carver reached into Callahan’
s pack and pulled out two stun grenades. They were eight inches long with openings in the black matte metal casing designed to prevent defragmentation during the explosion. When Carver had pulled them from the priest’s trunk, he had imagined using them on human beings. He wasn’t sure whether they would effectively disrupt the nanobots, but he was out of both ideas and time.

“Everyone close your eyes
and ears,” he said, then tapped one of the priest’s boots, “Except you. Just close your eyes, there Padre. Be very still.”

Carver pulled both pins simultaneously and rolled the stun grenades into the center of the room.
Carver used his index fingers to plug his ears. He felt a twinge of pity for the additional pain Callahan was about to endure. That was assuming he didn’t die. Stun grenades weren’t designed to be lethal, but they occasionally killed people all the same.

The blast came hard and fast. The shockwave belched a blast of hot air out the gap and into the staircase. Even
kneeling just outside the room, Carver felt the fluid in his ears in flux, putting him slightly off balance.