The Goliath Chamber - Vatican Knights 24 (2021) by Rick Jones (good novels to read .TXT) 📗

use the dark just as well as the sinner. He doesn’t have an exclusive franchise to operate within the shadows as he may think he does.”

Shari went back to struggling against her binds. “You people have no idea what you did or what you’ve called forward, have you? No idea at all.”

“He’s one against few,” returned the automaton voice. “And the few are more than capable of taking him down. Kimball Hayden is a man who bleeds like any other. And though he may have his specialized skillset, he’s not a man to be mythologized as he was in the Middle East. One man alone against four elites still has his limitations.”

“Four against one,” she countered. “The way I see it, the odds seem to favor Kimball. You might want to add another four to level the playing field.”

“You trying to be funny?”

“Do I appear to be in a humorous situation here?”

After a quiet moment, her captor stated evenly, “Be assured that when I say that Kimball Hayden will be sharing the space beside you to beg for your lives, he will be heard, judged, and then condemned for his unpardonable sins.”

Shari shook her head disbelievingly. How could soldiers of military value who once served their country to their fullest ability get caught up in the rhetoric of fanaticism? These were men of strong moral values who had somehow slipped into the perspectives and beliefs that lacked tolerance of what they determined to be alien viewpoints. Anything beyond their thinking was considered a threat; and therefore, an enemy to the core values of the Holy Roman Catholic church. Apparently, extremism had the ability to touch all people of all religions all over the planet. The Nocturnal Saints were no different than those who killed in the name of Allah. The link was always the same, which was to deactivate a threat.

Shari continued to look at the figure who stood along the border between the darkness and the light. While his flaring eyes drew a bead on her, he then guided the mouth of the gun’s barrel slowly in her direction, which did not go unnoticed by Shari.

“Perhaps you will not be judged so harshly,” he told her.

“I see,” she said with a hint of sarcasm. “You think I can be saved, is that it?”

“Most souls are redeemable.”

“You sound lost,” she told him. “And that’s unfortunate.”

“Lost?” The figure shook his skeletal head. “Unfortunate? Nothing is clearer to me or to my associates. Kimball Hayden murdered innocent women and children in what he believed to be just causes. So, you tell me, Ms. Cohen, how does that differ from what’s happening in the Middle East or Africa, where innocent women and children are either bludgeoned to death or hacked to pieces by a machete, for so-called just causes?”

“Kimball is not that man. He hasn’t been for a long time. And not a day goes by that he doesn’t regret his actions. In fact, he sees his victims every night in his dreams. They call to him. And every night I’m there to catch him when he wakes screaming in a cold sweat. I’m his safety net.”

The shape silently stood his ground along the fringe. And then he backed away from the light to take refuge once again in the shadows. All that existed was the pair of glowing lights, the spectral lights, lights that haunted Shari as she tried to undo her binds.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Monte Soratte Bunker

30 Miles North of Rome

Kimball Hayden was a master of his domain and darkness was a familiar companion that was more than an associate to him. It was a necessary appendage like an opposable thumb, and without it would render the hand as virtually useless. So, the shadows made him whole.

He was silent, the man invisible as he moved toward the bunker. As he hunkered down close to the stone-built walls of the shelter, he heard nothing—not the chitter of insects or the footfalls of guards. The silence in itself, Kimball knew, could be as loud and as discordant as a klaxon. The hushed insects and the lack of sentinel movement could be signs that conveyed a predacious presence, he considered. Secondly, this was bolstered by Kimball’s sense that danger lurked nearby, a predator that was offered by the night.

Moving with the utmost caution through the high grass and weeds, Kimball’s senses became stronger and more in tune, like radar, that something dangerous was close by.

He stopped.

He listened.

Nothing.

Yet he could feel the presence as though it was hanging close enough to gather his scent.

Kimball pressed on.

* * *

Shonn McKinley had maintained his post as the second line of defense. After several attempts to contact Stallworth and Bienemy only to receive white noise and static, it didn’t take him long to realize that communication had been sacked for a reason. Both men had served together as Navy SEALs, people who were the best of the best at what they did and who they were. They were also top-notch individuals when it came to warfare with few equals. So, when radio contact disappeared and the channel ran silent, McKinley had no other choice but to consider that both individuals had been deactivated, since radio contact was critical and absolute silence went against the protocols.

McKinley, through the lenses of his Kevlar mask, could see the landscape that was well lit due to the mask’s NVG capabilities. Above him, the stars twinkled with spangles of light as they rotated like chips of diamonds. But in front of him, the surrounding terrain was lime green with every bush, leaf and bent limb of a tree clearly in sight.

Then he spotted movement, a glimmer, and then it was gone.

A moment later and elsewhere, the same thing: a glimmer of something moving within the brush . . . and then gone.

McKinley lifted his Kevlar mask and brought his weapon’s scope to his naked eye. Then he tried to home in on the subject’s last known position by