“You’ll be fine, my child. You were lucky that a missionary found you,” said one of the angels. Her face was aged and tanned, her eyes sparkled with alertness. “You came from such a long way, so God must have something very special in store for you.”
“Where are my parents?” he asked, the pitch of his tone that of pubescent.
“I’m afraid you were alone.”
Christian shook his head vehemently. “I saw them. They showed me the way.”
But when his mind sobered, he came to realize that his parents were truly gone, and that God had used them as vessels to save his life.
As he grew to manhood during his tenure at the mission, the boy’s body took on an athletic tone. His hunger for knowledge became as urgent as his need for sustenance. This caught the eye of a stranger who came from a faraway land called the Vatican. After holding counsel with the heads of the mission, he recruited the boy.
The stranger’s name was Cardinal Bonasero Vessucci.
Christian, upon learning his fate, cried and refused to leave the only true slice of heaven he had ever known. “To do this is a great honor,” said Father Hernandez, who held the boy in the clutches of a strong embrace. Even the Father was choking back tears. “On the day you came to us we always said that God had a purpose for you. And now that time has come, my son. You must go with the cardinal who is a messenger of God and fulfill your destiny. You are special.”
Christian left the mission behind, never to see or hear from the angels and orphans again.
Now, at such an early hour, Christian — Isaiah — was on the front lines of the most important and noble battle of his life. He was a Vatican Knight.
And Kimball watched him, wanting desperately to know how Christian found faith in such hardship, when Kimball held little after growing up in privilege. Reason would indicate that it should have been the other way around — that those of good standing would have faith and be thankful for their bounties, whereas the disadvantaged would hold none.
But Isaiah was lost in his own world, listening through his headphones and hearing what sounded like the slight passing of air through a seashell.
Leviticus was in the vault of the Sacred Hearts Church working at the computer terminal. Highly adept at his craft, he also had the unethical dexterity to tap and hack into programs and networks to obtain information without leaving a trail.
After loading the Keystroke Logger, he expertly moved his fingers across the keyboard and began to draw data from Shari Cohen’s PC. By logging the sequence of keystrokes that enabled her access to certain sites, Leviticus was able to obtain her password, which afforded him entry into restricted areas of information.
Numbers and symbols relating to computer vernacular came and went as the PC spoke to other networks along the information highway, pulled data from files established in ISP address records, then left a bogus trail in its wake. By the time the hacked parties learned of the breach, the trail would lead the tracking experts to a desktop computer located in a library at a prestigious California college. It was a wonderful red herring on the part of Leviticus, which was also a part of the game he enjoyed too much, almost impishly so.
After establishing the link to Shari’s PC, he realized she was live with booted information regarding the Soldiers of Islam. And with all the ingenuity of a practiced hacker, he downloaded the data.
But it the information was coming in much too slowly.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Along with Omega Team, Judas stood in the shadows provided by the copse of trees in the park across from Cohen’s brownstone. Each man was dressed in tactical gear except Judas, who wore his wide-brimmed fedora and long coat. The tails of his jacket moved slightly in a course of faint breeze.
Judas turned to Dark Lord, the lead for the three-man unit of Omega Team. The commando appeared without emotion, a killing machine waiting to act without question or reservation.
“You know your duties,” said Judas. “And I don’t want you going in there like a bunch of ball-swinging commandos, either. Get the CD, take out Cohen, and get the hell out of there. It’s that simple — one-two-three. Now go.”
Kimball saw movement, a mere motion from the outermost range of his peripheral vision. At first it was brief, then nothing, then movement once again as living shadows stayed close to the darkness and made their way to the brownstone. From his point of view he saw only two, but his mindset knew there were more. After telling Isaiah to stay behind and maintain watch for other insurgents, Kimball was out of the van and sliding toward the brownstone as quietly as the shifting shapes around him.
It had taken Dark Lord a moment to work his way into the Cohen residence. Moving silently across the room, he withdrew his knife and used the point of the blade to push the door open. Shari was asleep at the desk with the pages of encrypted code on the monitor.
It can’t be this simple, he considered. It just can’t be. Dark Lord seemed contrite in his thinking because of the lack of opposition, especially from someone like Cohen who was held in such high regard from the political elders. It’s like stealing candy from a baby.
Slowly and prudently, he entered the den, knife in hand, with the stealth of a learned assassin, and moved in for the quick kill.
He was about to grab her hair and force her head back to expose her open throat when Shari’s husband ran into the den and slammed himself against the intruder’s back, causing the knife to fall from Dark Lord’s hand, driving him to the floor. The surprised assassin immediately maneuvered to gain advantage and grabbed Gary’s wrist. With a deft and sudden move, a simple flick of his hand, he snapped the twin bones in Gary’s arm, causing white-hot agony to race along its length and to his shoulder.
Having yet to register the magnitude of danger, Shari snapped her eyes wide. But it wasn’t until Gary’s cry of absolute pain that she propelled herself into action. While both men battled for position in a drunken tango, Shari reached out and hit the assassin on the back of his head, only to receive a savage backhanded blow that sent her across the table and knocking the PC to the floor, smashing its outer casing.
In the heat of panic she tried to get to her feet, failed, her sight dizzy from the blow. Dark Lord thrust a left fist into Gary’s abdomen, a stinging blow, and then a right cross to his chin. For a moment Gary seemed detached, his conscious mind suspended between darkness and light, and then his eyes rolled up into his head as he hit the floor as a boneless heap.
In an quick move, Dark Lord swept up the knife and exhibited the chrome polish of the blade and sharpness of its tip. “It’ll be painless,” he told her, then began his approach. “And just so you know, there are worse ways of dying than bleeding out.”
Through the haze of her sight, she noted that the assassin was not alone. Two shadows joined alongside him, each brandishing a knife.
Shari crawled to her husband and held him close, tears coursing her cheeks as she thought of her children. “Please, don’t hurt my babies,” she pleaded.
Dark Lord placed the blade of the knife within inches of her throat and smiled maliciously through the opening of his mask, as if to indicate he was doing this for simple gratification. “First I’ll take you, then the hubby, and then the kiddies. How’s that?”