The barabbas connection, p.13
The Barabbas Connection, page 13
part #21 of Vatican Knights Series
Shari Cohen, who was now on the run, checked her watch.
The time was 12:11 p.m.
Perfect!
PART THREE
A RETURN TO PRESENT DAY
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Staging Venue
Washington, D.C.
Everything moved with the slowness of a nightmare as Kimball Hayden scoped his surroundings with his face freckled with the blood of Pope Pius XIV. Jeremiah and Isaiah were trying their best to keep pressure on the pontiff’s wound, which was a dollar-sized hole directly at the joint between the left shoulder and chest. In the distance and less than a mile away, two pillars of black smoke spiraled skyward.
Taking a few steps forward on the stage with the crowd dispersing under chaotic conditions, seventeen people would die in the aftermath from being trampled with more than a hundred injured, some critically.
On stage, the president of the United States and the Speaker of the House lay dead. The pope was edging in that direction as blood fanned out from underneath him.
Three shots, three hits. From the distance of the burning building, Kimball knew that the shooter was a high-end sniper. To make such angled shots from that particular location took the keenest of eye and a supreme knowledge of the Coriolis Effect. As skilled as the Vatican Knights were in all facets of warfare, perhaps one—maybe two—shared the same ability of marksmanship.
As medical teams immediately occupied the stage, Kimball remained as a human shield before the pope the same way the president’s security detail had gathered around the commander in chief. Burroughs, however, was gone, his life having been smashed from his body on the bullet’s impact. The Speaker of the House had fared no different as she bled out, as well. Pope Pius XIV, whose mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water and in obvious mute protest, made nonsensical noises and guttural clicks.
As the pontiff was being stabilized and rushed to the ambulance, Jeremiah and Isaiah joined Kimball’s side. Black columns of smoke continued to rise in the distance, the dark haze rising and expanding its clouded wings, the shape a wraith. Then the points and curls of horns appeared from a smoldering bulbous head, only for the image to dissipate into smoky commas of vapor.
Sirens sounded both near and far.
Chaos reigned.
And no matter how prepared everyone thought they were, Kimball told himself that no one can ever prepare for the fight-or-flight syndrome that all creatures are embedded with. Self-preservation would always rule over control.
In his heart, Kimball was sickened because he believed that he had failed in his duties.
Isaiah raised his chin towards the flaming building. “The sniper’s perch?”
Kimball nodded. “Most likely.”
“It would be one Hell of a shooting if it was,” Jeremiah commented, lending an air of marginal doubt. For someone to hit high-end targets from so far away would have taken a remarkable skillset, with few on the planet who could achieve such expertise. Jeremiah was an elite sniper who could take out the center of a coined dollar from a hundred yards away, so he understood the level of difficulty involved.
Kimball never took his eyes off the smoke that continued to make odd shapes, before they broke up. “I will find who did this,” he stated evenly. And then to himself: And I will hunt them down like the animal they are.
“They’re taking the pontiff to Medstar Georgetown University Hospital,” said Isaiah. “It’s not looking good, however. He lost a lot of blood.” Isaiah looked at his own hands, which were coated with the pope’s blood from compressing the wound. “EMT thinks that an artery may have been nicked.”
Kimball clenched his teeth as he fought for calm. Then: “I want every bit of information and intel on this,” he said. “I want Vatican Intelligence to intercept any informational data that crisscrosses between the networks of the CIA, FBI and Homeland Security. Somebody has to know something, or they’ll eventually find it.”
“And then what?” Jeremiah asked him.
After a brief moment, Kimball said, “Then we go on the hunt and find out who did this.”
“And when we do?”
Kimball refused to respond.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Washington, D.C.
The keen whistle of a passing train went through Shari Cohen’s head like a nail after she awoke and discovered herself lying against a concrete column beneath a train trestle. Above her, she could hear the clacking of the train’s wheels as they went over the rails.
Tossing her head back and forth as if to shake off the cobwebs, she soon learned that this was the wrong action to take since her head pounded with relentless fury. Her lips were dry, and her eyes burned and itched. When she realized that she was lying beneath a train trestle, she realized that she had no recollection as to how she got there.
Her clothes, which she did not recognize and appeared a size or two too large, were soiled as if she had slept in fresh dirt for a week. Behind her, as she rested against a cement pillar, she could feel something nudging her back. It was hard and uncomfortable. When she reached around behind to the small of her back, she was shocked by the feel of a handgun’s grip. As soon as she produced it and held it before her, her jaw started to drop. It was a suppressed Glock. After she ejected the magazine and counted the remaining ammo, she reseated the magazine and sniffed the point of the barrel. It had been recently discharged. The smell of gunpowder was still evident.
Holding the weapon before her eyes, she mentally tried to recall her last steps. Last night, at the restaurant, she had been wearing her navy-blue dress suit, not the corduroy shirt, jeans, and the cheap pair of sneakers she had on now.
Then she remembered a struggle in the parking lot after tossing her purse inside her Lexus, which contained her legal firearm and the CCD license to carry it—not this suppressed Glock, which she had never seen before.
She let her arm drop by her side as she looked straight ahead with a fixed stare. The unfamiliar clothes, the gun in her possession that she didn’t recognize and had been recently discharged, and then waking up in an odd and alien place she couldn’t identify baffled her.
She lifted the gun once again, hoping that it would somehow jog additional memories.
It did.
She recalled being inside a basement that was dark and musty. But her memory of this remained hazy and somewhat disconnected. But she did remember the starkly beautiful woman with the Russian accent. She remembered little of what she said to her with words that sounded long and drawn out, as well as having a hollow cadence to her clipped inflection.
. . . After reading your dossier and your biographical history, I expected much more . . .
. . . Within the hour, believe me when I say that you will accomplish the means as I have expressed them to you . . .
Shari looked at the suppressed weapon in her hand. What have I done?
. . . You are going to kill the president of the United States. And perhaps after you kill the pope . . .
She cocked her head perplexingly while looking at the firearm: What?
. . . you will become the most hated person on the planet . . .
. . . Trust me when I say that when this is done, your life will never be the same . . .
Again: What have I done?
Finally getting to her feet with her head throbbing, Shari stuffed the gun in the waistband behind the small of her back, and in a pair of cheap sneakers that were not her own, stepped into her new life by taking that first step.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The Safe House
Ellicott City, Maryland
After the car pulled into the driveway of the safe house and shut off, Barabbas stared at her image in the rearview mirror after removing the sunglasses and cap, and then tossing them into the backseat. What came next was a literal unveiling of her second skin as she started to peel off the silicone tissue of her nose, chin, and then her cheeks. The pieces had been meticulously lasered to numerical precision to mimic the exact dimensions of Shari Cohen’s features. Though the 3D printer was a computer that had its advantages, it was not an exact science, either. Though silicone could impersonate flesh, it also had its flaws. The lines, though marginal, could still be seen after the application of spirit gum up close. When the Homeland Security officer compared Shari’s ID with Barabbas’s face and asked if her ID was an ‘old photo,’ she already had her hand gripping the Glock that was wedged in the waistband at the small of her back.
Looking in the mirror as she plucked away the remnants of the spirit gum that adhered the prosthetic strips to her face, Barabbas was pridefully glowing after putting on a clinic. She had taken one of the CIA’s best operatives and succeeded to become her puppeteer by calling the shots, manipulated the strings, and discovered no obstacles in her vision quest to see her mission through.
Picking off the last of the gum, she could see the continuous loop of her actions play in her mind. To her, it was a proud montage of her actions beginning with her takedown of Shari and ending with the final pull of the trigger.
After she immobilized Shari, she then clothed her with different articles of wear, placed her within the trunk of the vehicle where she provided her with another dose of the numbing agent, then commenced with the D.C. operation.
Before she exited the vehicle, she checked herself in the rearview mirror with the glasses on and then off, then checked herself for any blemishes that might have given her away. Though technology was passing her by on most occasions because it was advancing too quickly, she considered that the programming of the 3D printer had done an excellent job. With a heavy application of makeup, she was able to cover the adhering lines over and give her complexion a uniform hue. Though she looked remarkably similar to Shari, she could still see the differences. Anyone who knew Shari personally would have seen the variances immediately. But more importantly, and from a distance, the measurements from the printer was so surgically precise that facial recognition software would have marked a high number of resembling facial landmarks to implicate Shari Cohen as the shooter. The numbers wouldn’t be perfect, but she knew they would be enough.
In the rearview mirror, Barabbas smiled at herself and at the marvel of technology. With a few taps of the finger to engage a program that would superimpose one image over the other, one photo over the other, and then to load a few strips of silicone to be molded, she had been reborn as Shari Cohen. Though they had shared a natural resemblance to one another, the prosthetic pieces had morphed her appearance sufficiently to be one and the same.
Then she recalled the pull of the trigger in detail—could remember the splashes of red that indicated direct hits. The president, the pope, the Speaker of the House all going down like the tin ducks in a shooting gallery. There was no buck fever when pulling back on the trigger, either—just the slow and calculated pull of a professional who bounced from one target to the next.
Leaving the sniper rifle behind, she made her way to the one working camera that was situated inside the main lobby. After she stared into the functioning CCTV camera and set off the thermite charge, she exited through the lobby door because she knew it would take her to the path of least resistance. While moving against the grain as the manpower pushed against her to get at the scene, Barabbas kept her head down until she reached her vehicle. After checking Shari inside the trunk and seeing that her chest was rising and falling in even rhythm, Barabbas transported her to one of D.C.’s seedier sections and dropped her off beneath a train trestle. Once done, she removed her suppressed Glock that she used to kill the two agents and the security officer, then secured it in the waistband behind Shari’s back.
Standing back to admire her work as though it was a Picasso, which brought a smile of admiration, Barabbas checked her watch. Though she was a little behind schedule, perhaps the only shortfall of the operation, she knew that Shari would be waking up soon, perhaps within the hour.
“As I said,” she remembered stating softly to Shari that was meant to be more of a dig. “Your life will never be the same. You can run and you can hide, but you will be forever hunted.” Turning and walking towards the running vehicle, she added over her shoulder, “Make sure that you run far and fast, darling. I so much enjoy watching a game when I know the mouse will eventually be caught by the cat.”
Less than forty minutes after making that statement, she was now staring at her mirror image in the driveway of the safe house. Only this time she was not Shari Cohen.
She was Barabbas.
The assassin smiled with pretty rows of fine teeth.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Washington, D.C.
The news from every possible front from every leading station across the globe had been informed of the slayings in Washington, D.C. The leader of the free world had been assassinated along with the U.S. Speaker of the House, with the vice president having been summarily sworn in to direct the country forward, despite the tragedy. But the most highlighted news was that regarding the condition of Pope Pius XIV, who, after losing his arm to amputation, remained in critical but stable condition.
Kimball Hayden was at the Medstar Georgetown University Hospital alongside Isaiah and Jeremiah, who were standing sentinel at the door of the pontiff’s private room with armed police close by but out of earshot.
Removing his signature powder-blue beret and tucking it underneath his shoulder strap, Kimball continuously raked his fingers through his hair as he paced back and forth through the hallway. He had been sickened by the event; his stomach having turned into a slick fist. Though there were several components in the system to provide ample protection, there had obviously been enough of a breakdown to see two people dead and another critically wounded. And even though Kimball had zero say over the process, he still felt responsible to a degree.
“He’ll make it,” Isaiah said, though it was clear that he did not state this with full conviction.
Kimball, however, wasn’t so sure. The man had his left arm and a good portion of his shoulder removed due to the insurmountable damage—ruined nerves, tendons, bones, and a scored artery all the result of a passing bullet.
Intuiting Kimball’s anger, which the Vatican Knight was trying to keep contained and caged up, but seemed to be losing his battle with every passing moment, Jeremiah said with his Australian accent, “Kimball, what you’re doing, mate, will not make things better or move things along any quicker. Vatican Intelligence can only move so fast.”
Kimball, who continued to rake his fingers feverishly through his hair, was not a patient man. All his life he had been wired to respond quickly and accordingly. Right now, as he stewed, he knew a killer with an agenda was running around with a smile of achievement. What he wanted to do, what he had to do, what he was going to do, was to find out who was responsible for the action and remove that smile with finality. Kimball Hayden would not be denied—not on this.
As the hours slogged on with the world remaining astounded by the American failures to protect its own, an assassin and the network they had worked for remained elusive and in the dark.
Kimball Hayden swore to spearhead a charge to make things right, no matter the protocols of the church.
He would get the final say in the matter, regardless if the Light would call him in the end or not.
* * *
Sergei Ostrovsky was sitting at home watching the news. In his hand was a snifter of brandy which he swirled lightly. At the moment he was maintaining a winning smile, which eventually turned into one of amusement. President Burroughs had been felled by an assassin’s bullet with the minor player of the Speaker of the House succumbing as well, most likely collateral damage, he considered.
Barabbas had performed the impossible much like Cohen had succeeded in appropriating the plans to a TS missile program, a tit-for-tat exchange in espionage tactics. What many had believed Ostrovsky to be was an age-old relic, an operative who should have been sent to the proverbial pasture long ago.
But sometimes, he told himself while raising his glass towards the TV in toast, the old ways of the old dogs are always the best.
Now that his operative had achieved the goals of neutralizing the president of the United States and thereby removing the primary threat to the Iranian state, other factors had to move with a will of their own. He had received word that Israel was pressing ahead with the assassination of the saber rattler, which bode well for the Russian principals who wanted to install their own puppet. Secondly, the vice president of the United States, who was now president, was less critical of the Iranians, meaning that his primary interests lay elsewhere, such as the brewing hotspot of Syria and the burgeoning rise of the Islamic State.
He took another sip of his brandy.
A chuckle escaped him, a guffaw that was brought on by the knowledge that Barabbas had instituted a glorious plan and implemented it with Shari Cohen somehow a part of the equation. What the formula was he did not know. But he knew this: once Barabbas dug her claws deep into her prey, she would never let go until her victim expired its last breath. She was the cat who liked to toy with her food before the kill. How Barabbas had set this up, however, remained a mystery to him, but a good one.
Sergei Ostrovsky chuckled once again, raised his glass to the TV, and festively stated, “Матери России! Можете ли вы вернуться к своей былой славе!” To Mother Russia! May you return to your former glory!
Tipping the glass and drinking the last of the brandy, he then held the empty glass toward the TV screen and added, “Варавве ... Умница. Ты никогда не делал меня гордым.” To Barabbas . . . Good girl. You have never made me prouder.
