King's Crusade (Seventeen) (20 page)

Confusion still reigned outside the Basilica. Hundreds of harried visitors were pouring out through the entrances to the church and spilling down the wide stairs toward the piazza’s ellipse. Sirens rose in the distance beyond the borders of Vatican City.

They broke into a run and were rapidly engulfed in the sea of people. As they entered the shadow cast by the statue of St. Paul, five uniformed Vigilanza officers closed in on them. The men had their weapons drawn.

‘Stop!’ the lead officer shouted. He stopped a dozen feet away and pointed his gun in their direction, his outstretched arms locked in a shooter’s stance.

Alexa skidded to a halt. Jackson stumbled to a standstill beside her.

‘Hands behind your head! Get down on your knees!’ the officer continued harshly in Italian. He took a careful step toward them.

Alexa caught a flash of blue out of the corner of her eye. She turned her head and froze.

Twenty-five feet beyond the circle of officers that surrounded them, a figure in the duty uniform of the Swiss Guard was strolling down the steps of the Basilica. As he hefted the bag on his back, a dark mark that looked like the top of a
Rose Croix
tattoo peeked above the white collar at his nape. The man glanced at them over his shoulder before continuing in the direction of the piazza.

It was the sniper from the rooftop.

Her hands fisted at her side. Alexa headed resolutely toward Lorenzio’s killer.

Four of the Vigilanza officers wavered and glanced at each other uneasily.

The lead policeman showed no such hesitation. He scowled and moved directly in her path. ‘I said stop—’

She spun and side-kicked the gun out of his hand. The man staggered back, his eyes wide with shock and anger. This time, the other officers did not hesitate.

Alexa blocked a blow aimed at her head, jabbed a man in the solar plexus, hook-kicked a third officer in the stomach, and back-fisted the fourth man in the nose. A cross-punch sailed toward her head. She slipped out of the way, grabbed the policeman’s head, and drove her knee into his face as she yanked him down. A shot flashed past her cheek. She looked over her shoulder.

Jackson held the lead Vigilanza officer in a chokehold and slowly forced the man’s arm down. The policeman pulled the trigger of his gun once more. A second bullet left the barrel and struck the cobblestone by her feet. Jackson swore and thrust his knee in the Italian’s lower back. The officer crumpled to the ground, face pale and mouth open in a silent scream of agony.

Alexa turned and swiftly scanned the crowd. The blue uniform of the assassin was barely visible in the crush of people fleeing past the Obelisk. She ignored the groaning men struggling to their knees around her and started to run. Jackson followed.

Lorenzio’s killer looked around at the sound of their footfall. Alarm flashed on his face. He darted rapidly through the sea of bodies.

‘Who is he?’ gasped Jackson as they raced across the packed piazza.

‘The man who killed Lorenzio,’ she replied, her breathing slow and steady despite the anger thrumming through her. ‘He has a
Rose Croix
tattoo on his neck.’ She saw Jackson frown out of the corner of her eye.

The blare of the sirens grew louder. Several blue and white squad cars of the Italian State Police screeched down the Via della Conciliazione and braked to a stop just outside the piazza. The flashing lights of ambulances followed behind them.

Alexa glanced around the square. A dozen Vigilanza officers and as many Swiss Guards had materialized from the cover of the colonnades and were moving purposefully in their direction. A single warning shot boomed above their heads.

Fresh screams rose to the skies as terror gripped the crowd once more. They were jostled by the people fleeing past. Seconds later, a score of uniformed officers surrounded them.

She jumped into a reverse roundhouse kick without breaking her stride and took out three men. She hook-kicked another two officers in the chest, pivoted, and back-kicked a pair of Swiss Guards in the gut, her movements lightning fast.

Jackson jabbed at a Vigilanza officer, took a straight punch in the stomach from another man, delivered an elbow thrust to his attacker’s face, and narrowly avoided a half-hook a Swiss Guard aimed at his head.

As she kicked, punched, kneed, and elbowed the officers and guards in their path, Alexa spotted a dozen Italian policemen approaching from the east end of the piazza. Her gaze shifted to where she had last seen the killer. The man in the blue uniform had disappeared.

She scowled, dropped in a low reverse sweep-kick that toppled four officers, and rose to deliver a flurry of side-kicks to another three. Two blows glanced off Jackson’s head and he retreated a step toward her. Alexa straightened and positioned her back against his.

The Harvard professor’s breaths came in shallow pants and rigid tension coursed through his body. Unease suddenly flickered through her. Although she could keep fighting for the rest of the day, she sensed Jackson would not last much longer. Her knuckles whitened as she faced the next wave of officers. She heard Jackson grit his teeth.

As they prepared to do battle once more, a yellow blur sailed past them and landed on the cobblestones a couple of feet ahead. The men encircling them stumbled back and gaped at the strange figure. Alexa’s breath caught in her throat.

It was the short, saffron-robed monk with the bald head.

Chapter Sixteen

T
he Asian man held a
plain, red oak jō staff expertly in his hands. White teeth glinted in the sunlight when he flashed a grin at her over his shoulder. He took something from within the folds of his robe and threw it in her direction.

Alexa caught the jangling object in one hand. It was a three-sectional bō, a martial arts staff weapon slightly longer than the monk’s own jō when in full extension.

‘Who the hell is he?’ hissed Jackson.

She hesitated. ‘A friend.’

Alexa stared into the monk’s limpid eyes, nodded a brief acknowledgement, and snapped the staff open. Her fingers closed firmly on the familiar weapon. She spun it through a full revolution before whipping it into position under her right arm.

The monk turned to face the line of dumbfounded Vigilanza officers, Swiss Guards, and Italian State policemen. ‘My most sincere apologies,’ he said brightly and gave them a quick formal bow. The men glanced at each other uneasily.

The smile slipped from the young man’s face. He assumed a basic aikido fight stance, his face composed in solemn concentration.

The next seconds blurred in an explosion of movement as Alexa and the saffron-robed figure whirled around each other, their staffs gliding, spinning, and twisting in a flurry of strikes and thrusts that sent six men sprawling to the ground.

Jackson punched another two in the face. A grim smile crossed Alexa’s lips. His uppercut had definitely improved.

Angry cries erupted from the officers at the rear when they saw their colleagues fall. Several men drew their weapons.

Alexa stepped up against a startled guard’s chest, jumped into a forward flip over his head, touched off the ground, and sailed into a reverse roundhouse kick that took out three gunmen. She landed lightly on her feet before wheeling the bō smoothly in an expanding swirl of figure-eight strikes and stabs. Firearms clattered to the ground around her, and the remaining men staggered back, faces contorted in grimaces of pain.

Another four officers rushed forward.

Alexa slammed the staff in a gap between two cobblestones, leapt, and thrust her feet in a circle of flying side-kicks. She dropped to the ground and twisted the bō under her right arm while the men dropped around her.

A high-pitched squeal drew her gaze to the edge of the piazza, where a dark van had braked to a stop. Half a dozen men spilled out from the rear of the vehicle and raced toward them, weapons in hand.

She frowned as she recognized the uniforms and Socimi submachine guns of the NOCS, the tactical assault team of the Italian Police. A second van skidded to a halt inches behind the first one.

Alexa looked to where the monk and Jackson fought back to back against the growing tide of officers and guards. Though there was no doubt in her mind that she could defeat the men surrounding them, she knew it would cost many of them their lives. Despite her irritation at having lost the trail of Lorenzio’s killer, she saw no point in the senseless shedding of innocent blood.

Her eyes scoured the square for an exit. She snapped the bō staff closed and shouted, ‘Let’s go!’ at Jackson and the monk.

The staccato shots from several automatics raised sparks at her heels as she took off toward Bernini’s fountain. Alexa pulled a Sig out and returned fire at the NOCS team.

Wide-eyed onlookers scattered when she stormed through the narrow breach in the crowd to the south of the piazza. As she entered the cool shadows of the colonnade, a pair of Vigilanza officers appeared on her left and stepped in her path. She blocked a hook-punch from the first man, palm-heeled him in the face, and snapped a front kick that sent the second officer sprawling against a Tuscan column. Jackson and the monk followed in her steps as she vaulted over a barrier and bolted down a road.

Three hundred feet later, they reached an intersection next to an old stone tower.

Alexa stepped out in the middle of the busy thoroughfare and raised the Sig at the cars coming toward her.

The first vehicle swerved out of the way and narrowly avoided crashing into a bus in the opposite lane. The bus driver honked his horn while the owner of the car desperately maneuvered his vehicle back on track.

The next car screeched to a halt scant inches from her knees.

The middle-aged man behind the wheel of the powder blue Fiat 500 stared at her open-mouthed. Terror blanched the face of the woman beside him. Traffic slowed and juddered to a stop in a squeal of tires and brakes behind the little car. A van smashed into the back of a sedan. A cacophony of horns and colorful cursing followed.

Alexa strode to the driver’s side of the Fiat and yanked the door open. ‘Get out,’ she snapped.

The man scrambled from his seat and landed heavily in the middle of the road. The woman exited through the passenger door and dashed for the safety of the sidewalk. Jackson took her place. Alexa turned and looked impatiently at the monk.

The saffron-robed figure had placed his palms together and was bowing to the dumbstruck man sitting on the asphalt. ‘We are very sorry,’ he said cheerfully.

The Fiat’s driver nodded shakily.

The monk turned and grinned blithely at her dark expression before squeezing in the back seat of the car. She climbed behind the wheel and slammed the door shut. As she engaged the transmission, two Subaru squad cars appeared ahead and hurtled down the road toward them.

She slammed on the gas pedal, flicked the steering wheel to the left, and sent the Fiat careening through a controlled skid across the intersection. Jackson gripped the door and the dashboard, a tiny groan slipping past his lips when the car fishtailed. The tires screamed in protest and the Fiat clipped the side mirror of a sedan in the adjacent lane as it completed a one-eighty revolution. Alexa shifted gears, stepped on the accelerator, and charged down a dark underpass.

A giggle rose from the back seat. Jackson stared over his shoulder at the laughing monk. ‘You’re kidding me, right?’ he said dully.

The monk chortled. ‘Relax, Mr. Harvard. Lady is a fast driver!’

‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ muttered Jackson. He yanked his seatbelt across his chest and snapped it into place.

Alexa glanced in the rearview mirror. The blue and white squad cars were close on their tail. Another pair of patrol vehicles appeared from the direction of the Basilica.

Her gaze switched to the road ahead. She weaved expertly in and out of the dual lane traffic in the tunnel until they emerged into bright sunlight, and drove up to a bridge spanning the Tiber River. A chorus of angry klaxons and sirens rose around them as they crossed the dark green waters. Seconds later, they came to a bustling crossroad.

Alexa veered around a bus and shot onto the wide pavement to the right. Startled pedestrians scattered in their path. Jackson’s knuckles whitened on the dashboard. She twitched the steering wheel. The Fiat hurtled back onto the two-lane road.

‘This is fun!’ the monk declared behind them.

Jackson rolled his eyes.

A blue and white Alfa Romeo squad car with flashing lights and blaring sirens appeared on the other side of the road. As it tore down the opposite lane, the policeman behind the steering wheel turned and stared open mouthed when they shot past him.

Alexa saw the vehicle spin around sharply in the side mirror of the Fiat.

‘Watch out for the coach!’ Jackson shouted in warning.

Her eyes shifted to the road ahead. They were two hundred feet behind and closing rapidly on a white tourist motor coach cruising in their lane.

‘Big coach! Big coach!’ the monk chanted from the back seat.

‘Oh shit,’ Jackson said quietly.

‘Big bus! Big bus!’ added the monk.

A shuttle bus was crawling in the lane next to the coach, effectively blocking their route.

Alexa twisted the steering wheel and sent the Fiat across double white lines into the oncoming traffic on the other side of the road. The Alfa Romeo followed close behind.

Vehicles veered out of their way as they tore through the contraflow at a crowded junction. Jackson swore. The monk laughed.

As she guided the little car back into the dual lanes to the right, movement in the mirrors caught her gaze.

The Alfa Romeo was right on their bumper. She saw the policeman gesticulate wildly a second before the squad car rear-ended the Fiat. Jackson’s breath left his lips in a harsh gasp as he jerked against the seat belt.

Alexa scanned the avenue ahead, slammed her hand on the horn, and drove the car across another intersection. They shot into a contraflow lane and darted down a one-way road.

The Alfa Romeo stayed on their tail.

A shuttle bus materialized in front of them. The driver’s eyes widened in horror behind the cabin windshield when he spotted the Fiat hurtling toward him.

Jackson blanched. He braced himself against the dashboard, murmured something that sounded like a prayer, and closed his eyes.

Alexa flicked the steering wheel. The little car mounted the sidewalk inches from the front grille of the braking bus and stormed along the wall next to it.

The monk giggled. Jackson opened his eyes slowly and stared over his shoulder.

The Alfa Romeo had come to an abrupt stop a foot from the bus. It reversed sharply, turned, and climbed the pavement after them. Alexa glanced at the rearview mirror. The Italian policeman was reaching for his radio.

The Fiat hurtled through another junction, careened around a motorbike, and clipped a stone planter outside a police station on the left side of the road. The two uniformed officers standing guard at the entrance gaped at them. Moments later, a blue squad car pulled out from the precinct and joined the Alfa Romeo.

Alexa ignored the flashing lights and sirens behind her as she navigated the Fiat through the traffic clogging a busy piazza before charging up a large avenue beyond it. As they whizzed around a curve at the top of the shallow incline, a blue and white BMW Stradale police sports bike appeared out of a side road and drew level with the little car.