He grunted, got to his feet carefully on the slippery path. His entire back and ass were caked with mud. He steadied himself, held the torch aloft.
He'd slid half the distance down the path and now stood at the pool's edge. There were beams and sandbags along the edge of the pool. It seemed the river had been dammed. Kelley held up the torch, looked across the pool, and saw a large passage. Not just dammed. Diverted. The small river rushed into the pool, swirled around, and emptied into the passage across the way. The path continued around the pool, narrow and muddy. Kelley had to put his back against the rough, wet stone to scoot sideways. The construction was more elaborate than it had first appeared. There was a drop of nearly twenty feet on the other side of the pool, and there was a sturdy ladder leading down to the floor of the cavern below.
The dam was large, with wooden beams holding rocks and sandbags in place. A lot of manpower had gone into diverting the river into the other passage. Kelley swung his leg over the edge, making sure to keep careful hold on the torch as he climbed down. The temperature dropped another few degrees. He shivered, wet and cold.
Kelley stepped off the last rung of the ladder and landed with a splash, the cold water coming halfway up his shin.
"Hell."
Kelley's feet were lumps of frozen meat in a matter of seconds.
He looked back up at the dam. The structure was not performing its task perfectly. Trickles of water spurted through here and there, so there was still a minor stream running along the river's old course.
Kelley trudged on.
The cavern was much bigger here. He held the torch as high as he could but still wasn't able to see the ceiling. He wondered why they'd want to dam the river. What was at the end of this passage?
Kelley's foot caught on something underwater, and he pitched forward. His hands flew out to break his fall, and he landed with a cold splash, the torch hissing out and plunging him into total darkness.
Muttering every curse he could think of, he sat up in the middle of the stream and blinked. That's a lot of dark.
He thought about feeling his way back up the stream, finding the ladder. If he was extremely careful, he could probably make his way back without falling in the river and drowning himself.
He was wet. He was cold. He was still hungover. This had been a terrible idea.
Kelley grunted, stood, and rubbed his backside where he'd landed on some rocks. Slowly his eyes adjusted. The darkness was not complete after all. Dimly he perceived the dull yellow flickering of torches at the far end of the cavern. There was light far ahead, around a corner.
He went forward, forcing himself to move slowly. This was no time for a sprained ankle. He stumbled a few times but managed to right himself without going into the water again, and soon he was at the bend in the cavern where it made a right turn. There was more light here, and Kelley picked up the pace. Soon the cavern turned again, and he saw a lot more flickering light.
He stood at the corner, peeked around the edge.
A handful of men milled around a construction site. One stood at a small wooden table, looking at an unrolled parchment. The large chamber was well lit by a number of torches and a large brazier. The echoes of a few men working with various tools mixed with the sound of rushing water coming from behind him. There wasn't much mud here, although the stream still ran through the center of the chamber and left again through a hole on the far side.
A giant waterwheel had been assembled, but they hadn't yet placed it in position. Kelley imagined the dam had been built to hold back the water for the construction and placement of the waterwheels. Presumably the water-or at least some of it-would be let loose again when the wheels were in place. But why? It was a hell of a place to grind flour.
The man standing over the parchment looked familiar. Yes, Kelley remembered him from the audience with Rudolph. Hans Vredeman de Vries. Rudolph had said something about the man's working with drainage.
Kelley couldn't stand it now. He had to find out what was going on. The curiosity burned a hole in his imagination. He waited until most of the workers were in another part of the chamber and the rest had their backs turned. He scooted fast around the edge of the cave, clinging to the shadows, and hunkered down behind a barrel and a pile of thick, coiled rope. He noticed a few narrow openings behind him, more natural tunnels.
There wasn't much to see from this vantage point, so Kelley moved stealthily toward a pile of lumber. He never made it.
Strong hands grabbed him from behind, one thick hand clapping over his mouth. He was dragged into a tunnel, backward into the long dark beneath the earth.
FIFTEEN
This isn't where I die.
I don't want to mislead you, so I thought it best to assure you now isn't when I meet my untimely demise. I mean, I'm a ghost, right? So something bad must have happened to put me in this circumstance. Yeah.
But not yet.
In the meantime, you're probably wondering what happened to Allen.
THE JESUIT SQUAD
SIXTEEN
After ten minutes, Father Paul began to wonder if Allen was coming back. When twenty minutes had passed, he knew something was wrong.
Father Paul touched the throat microphone hidden under his priest's collar. "Are you monitoring, Finnegan?"
"Right here, Boss," came the voice in his earpiece.
"I think I've lost Cabbot."
"Did he rabbit?"
"I don't think so. I think something happened."
The priest twiddled his thumbs a moment, smoked the remainder of his cigarette down to the butt. "Finnegan, how many can you round up without jeopardizing our surveillance?"
"Let me see." Ten seconds crawled by. "Five."
Father Paul thought about it quickly. Five was enough. "Where's the van?"
"Two blocks north of you."
"I'll see you in five minutes."
The priest pushed away from the table, made his way through the Globe's crowd and checked the restrooms. He circled the caf¨¦ once on the off chance that Allen had been caught in a conversation with some girl, but as suspected, Allen was nowhere to be found.
Father Paul went outside and turned north.
He stuck another cigarette in his mouth and considered. Somebody had gotten their hooks into the Cabbot boy. Father Paul thought he'd arrived early enough to preempt any sort of action by the opposition, and it irked him that he'd figured wrong. He'd planned to make Allen Cabbot his link to Evergreen. Father Paul could deal with Evergreen without the boy, but he didn't want to have to try. A lot of careful thought had gone into the plan.
The black van came into view, and Father Paul broke into a trot. It was a large, nondescript van, parked in an alley. The priest reached it and knocked on the back door. It opened, and he entered, pulling the door closed behind him.
The interior of the van hummed with electronic equipment. Father Flynn Finnegan was a giant pale Irish block of meat with a headset perched on his fat noggin. It looked like some children's toy headset. His black frock bulged with thick muscles. His red hair was growing gray at the temples. He nodded at Father Paul as he entered the van.
"Blake and Santana are on the way," Finnegan said. "What's the target?"
"Give me a quick rundown."
The big Irishman swiveled in his chair and tapped at a laptop. Pictures of buildings and houses flickered on various monitors. "Target zones alpha and beta are quiet," Finnegan reported. "But our people watching the house in Zizkov say a sedan pulled into the driveway six minutes ago. The lights are on, and there's activity."
"That's the one," Father Paul said. "Start the van."
"Right." Finnegan took off the headset, went to the front of the van, and squeezed into the driver's seat, cranking the engine.
Father Paul opened the weapons locker under one of the bench seats and withdrew a flak jacket. All the Battle Jesuit flak jackets had a small emblem over the heart-a golden cross, the bottom of the cross in the shape of a sword blade. He shrugged into it, looked at the other two young priests in the back of the van. They looked of the same mold: young, athletic, a steely-eyed appearance that seemed to indicate a cool, calculated readiness for action. He'd seen their files but had yet to speak with them in person.
He nodded at the tall black man sitting across from him. "Father Starkes?"
William Starkes shrugged into his own flak jacket. "Yes, sir."
"Good to meet you." According to Starkes's file, the man had served a hitch as an Army Ranger before earning a degree in religion from Princeton and then joining the seminary. Father Paul's outfit had only recruited and trained him three months ago. He was a good man on paper, but he looked nervous.
The priests strapped on nylon shoulder holsters, checked the magazines of their 9 mm Glocks. Finnegan punched in the security code on the gun locker's keypad and handed each priest a fully automatic H &K 9 mm submachine gun with laser sight and collapsible stock.
Father Paul shifted his attention to the short man sitting next to Starkes. Emile DeGaul had joined the French Foreign Legion at age seventeen and had already served eight years when his older brother-a priest-had been killed in an automobile accident. DeGaul had made some private deal with God that Father Paul didn't completely understand, and DeGaul had answered the calling a month later.
"Are you ready for this, DeGaul?"
"Absolutely!" His French accent was thick, but his English was good.
Father Paul saw that Finnegan was strapping on a flak jacket also. "Where do you think you're going, Monsignor?"
"You don't think you're going to keep an old warhorse like me out of this, do you, Father?"
"Didn't you just celebrate your fiftieth birthday, Finnegan?"
Finnegan flexed, and muscles rippled beneath his frock. A grin spread across his ruddy face. "Would you like to arm wrestle?"
A smile tugged at the corner of Father Paul's mouth. "No, I don't think I would. Call off Blake and Santana. I don't want to wait for them. Finnegan, take us to Zizkov."
"Right." The Irishman crammed himself into the driver's seat and drove toward the target house.
The three priests in the back of the van checked one another's equipment and made sure their gear was properly secured. They checked and rechecked their weapons. Father Paul handed out headsets. They put them on, plugged them into the compact radios on the shoulders of their flak jackets.
"Remember, this is an extraction," Father Paul said. "I want Cabbot secured and out of there as fast as possible. Let's try to keep casualties down. But never forget these are dangerous people. You see a threat, shoot to kill."
Grim faces nodded back at him.
"Shall we say a quick prayer?" DeGaul asked.
"Lord, aid us in Your work and help us to triumph over evil in Your name. Amen."
They all crossed themselves.
"How about grenades?" suggested DeGaul.
"Definitely not." Father Paul wanted to keep the number of things exploded to a minimum.
"There's a shoulder-based antitank missile in the storage compartment on top of the van," Starkes said.
"No!"
"We're a block away," Finnegan shouted from the front of the van.
"Put us someplace dark," Father Paul said.
"There's an alley up here. Give me two seconds."
Finnegan pulled in, the big van blocking the narrow alley. At this time of night, it probably wouldn't matter, and Father Paul didn't want to spend the time looking for a better parking spot. It would have to do.
"Stick to the shadows. Get into position. Wait for me to give the word. Go."
They spilled out of the back of the van, scattered, then ran in the shadows toward the target house. Finnegan and DeGaul broke off for a back alley to take them behind the house. Starkes trailed behind Father Paul. It was late at night in a quiet, residential section. So far nobody had seen them, but they couldn't count on luck for long. Best to get under cover as soon as possible.
Father Paul scooted under the low branches of a small tree in the front yard and signaled for Starkes to head down the narrow driveway to the side of the house. Father Paul then waited for everyone to get into position. The light was on in the front window. In a moment he'd need to creep forward and have a look.
"Where is everyone?" he asked in a low voice.
The earpiece crackled, and the priests reported in one at a time. Finnegan and DeGaul were in the rear, and Starkes was along the side. Father Paul covered the front. Nobody covered the other side because the target house was almost slap up against its neighbor.
"I want a quick scan. Tell me what you got."
"One window downstairs. Two up," Starkes reported. "All dark."
"The lights are on back here," Finnegan said. "Lots of movement. I see three people, no, make that four. Maybe they can-gun! I just spotted a weapon. They're definitely armed, boyo!"
"That decides it for me," Father Paul said. "We're going in hot, safeties off. Just watch out for Cabbot. Pick your entry points, and wait for my word. Finnegan, is that one with the weapon upstairs or downstairs?"
"Upstairs. There's a drainpipe. I can shinny up there, pop in, and handle the situation no problem."
"It's an old house, Finnegan, and you weigh ten tons. Send DeGaul up the drainpipe."
A slight pause. "Understood."
"Get into position and stand by."
Father Paul checked his weapons, then slowly approached the front window, crouched over. The first-floor window was big and low, very easy access. He looked inside, saw the back of a man's head, his chair back against the window. Beyond the man sat Allen Cabbot, looking tired and anxious. The priest wished he could get a better look at the other man. It was difficult to tell the exact situation. Father Paul had assumed that Allen had been abducted, but that wasn't necessarily the case. Maybe there was a more subtle way to handle this.
Father Paul saw Allen's eyes get big. Allen sat up in his chair, pointed at the window. The other man turned. There was a pistol in his hand.
Hell.
"Go!" Father Paul yelled into the headset's microphone. He took three steps back, then leaped through the big front window.
Glass shattered and rained, sparkling fragments spraying the man with the pistol. The priest tucked and rolled, came up in a shooter's stance.
The man with the pistol took a panicked step back and shouted, "Vatican thugs! Run!"
And then he pointed the pistol at Father Paul.
The submachine gun bucked in the priest's hands, sprayed the man with lead. Red blotches sprouting across his chest and belly. The man jerked and fell, a pile of dead meat. Father Paul was simultaneously aware of more gunplay elsewhere in the house. His team was in.
Allen was up and running out of the room. The priest couldn't blame him. People tended to flee from gunfire.
"Allen, wait!" Father Paul cried as he ran after him.
He ran into the kitchen, saw a young blond girl standing before Allen, her hand flung up in a Halt! gesture. Father Paul didn't halt; he charged at her, machine gun raised.
He stepped on something, his foot sliding along the linoleum floor and out from under him. He went into the air, drifting backward, the kitchen a spinning blur in front of his eyes. He landed on his back. Hard. The air went out of him with a whuff, and his mouth worked silently, trying to find breath.
He glimpsed Allen and the girl dashing out a side door into the night.
There was a long three seconds before Father Paul could catch his breath again. He groaned into a sitting position, then scanned the kitchen floor and saw a small, delicate teacup turned upside down. He'd stepped square on top of it, and instead of crushing the thing into dust, he'd slid across the floor on it, as if it had been an ice skate. His back ached in several places.
A bearded man in denim rushed into the kitchen, screaming, "Damn Papist!" He leveled a shotgun at the priest. The shotgun blast shook the room as Father Paul rolled to the side. Buckshot scored the cabinets behind him.
Father Paul flattened to his belly, swung the H &K, one-handed, out in front of him and squeezed off two quick bursts. A slug smacked into the attacker's shin, sprayed blood. He screamed, high-pitched and ragged, then collapsed on top of himself, the shotgun sliding out of reach.
"Oh, fucking shit. You shot my leg off. My fucking leg!" He writhed, tried to reach down and staunch the blood flow.
The priest lurched to his feet, went to the door, and looked outside. No sign of Cabbot or the girl.
"Damn."
He heard somebody come in behind him. He spun quickly, bringing the machine gun to bear.
"It's me." Finnegan held up his hands. "The rest of the house is secure. Three more Society fanatics. They've been terminated."
"Vatican scum!" said the bleeding man on the floor.
"Put a sock in it, boyo. We'll get to you in a minute."
"Fuck you!"
"Did you get Cabbot?" Finnegan asked.
Father Paul sighed. "I missed him."
"He's out of your reach now," said the bearded man. "Kill me and ten more will rise to take my place."
"Then I suppose we'd better patch you up and keep you alive," Father Paul said. "I'd hate to have ten of you cluttering up the place. Plus it's damn difficult to interrogate you if you're dead."
"Tough shit, priest. You won't get anything out of me." He dipped a thumb and forefinger into his shirt pocket, came out with a pill, prepared to put it in his mouth.
"Suicide pill!" shouted Finnegan.
Father Paul and the big Irishman dove on the wounded man, grabbed his wrist as he strained to get the pill into his mouth.
"You can't stop me, you bastards!"
"No, you don't." Finnegan engulfed the man's fist with his own hammy hand and squeezed. The fingers popped open, and Finnegan grabbed the pill. "Got it."