Calypso Directive (45 page)

Raimond's expression morphed from smug satisfaction, to dismay, and then to rage, as the realization of what was happening began to register.

He had been set up.

“STEFAN, SHOOT THE PRIEST,” Raimond yelled.

A hollow dissonant moan from the organ echoed throughout the church. The sound reverberated throughout the nave, reflecting off the marble walls and floor, filling the air with a baritone thrum—completely drowning Raimond's voice before Stefan could hear the end of his brother's order. Albane had been listening to the entire exchange from above, hiding in the shadows of the organ balcony. She had waited until the last instant to intervene and bravely played the organ, her back facing the nave. Stefan turned to the organ balcony. He trained the crosshairs of his night vision scope on the middle of her back and pulled the trigger.

The bullet struck her in between her shoulder blades. Her body fell forward onto the organ keys, adding new a new chorus of dissonant notes to the air for several seconds, before she collapsed onto the floor.

The organ fell silent.

Satisfied, Stefan chambered a second round in the sniper rifle and shifted his aim away from the balcony down to the center aisle below—zeroing in on the location where Will and the priest had been standing. He quickly found Will, but the priest was nowhere in sight. He scanned left, sweeping the viewing circle of his night-vision scope over to Raimond's position. To his astonishment, he watched as the priest head butted his brother and then freed the American girl. Stefan adjusted his torso and slid his index finger over the trigger in preparation for his next shot. But the firing geometry did not offer him a clear shot at the priest without risk of hitting his brother. He would have to wait for the scuffle to play itself out; eventually he
would
have a clean shot. Stefan exhaled. Patience.

The organ blast gave Kalen the opportunity he needed. During the few seconds Zurn turned his head to look at the organ balcony behind him, Kalen closed the distance between them. Eyes forward, arms and legs and churning, he sprinted down the center aisle like an Olympic athlete out of the blocks. He decelerated to a stop in front of the bounty hunter.

Kalen saw shock in Zurn's eyes when he returned his gaze to the front and found the priest's face mere inches from his own.

Kalen grunted and smashed his forehead into Zurn's right eye socket.

With his left hand, Kalen pushed Julie's face to the left, away from the gun barrel pressed into her cheek, until her jaw was parallel to the muzzle. He then slid his fingers down her throat and into the small triangular gap between the piano wire and the two outside ligaments on either side of her neck. He pulled the wire away from her throat with both hands. The razor sharp wire sliced into the fleshy pads on the underside of his fingers as he created a triangular opening slightly larger than her head. He wailed in pain—a guttural primal bellow—but it was drowned out by the thunderclap of two successive gunshots.

Stunned by the priest's precision head butt, Raimond wobbled and blinked his eyes. Coming to, he squeezed the trigger of the Sig Sauer, twice.

Julie yelped as the muzzle flares seared her left cheek, but the bullets sailed harmlessly by. The acrid smell of scorched hair and skin wafted through the air. She opened her eyes. The hot steel barrel of Zurn's weapon was resting next to her left ear and cheek. She became acutely aware of her lips, her tongue, and her teeth, all intact and unmolested. She had
not
been shot. Thanks to the foresight of the priest, her face had been clear of the line of fire.

She wasted no time. This was her chance, and she knew it. The priest was holding the wire several inches away from her face, and suffering greatly for it. Julie tucked her chin to her chest and squatted. She felt the wire scrape against her ear, nose and forehead as she ducked her head through the triangular opening, but she was free.

Raimond yanked the wire noose, a split second too late to foil Julie's escape, but before the priest could extricate both his hands. The razor wire cinched tightly around the priest's left hand, compressing and cutting deeper into his fingers. Raimond grinned with sadistic pleasure as the priest dropped to a knee in front of him. With the butt of his gun, he struck a powerful blow across the priest's face.

“Goodbye, Father,” Raimond sneered. Then, pressing the pistol against the priest's forehead, he added, “See you in Hell.”

AJ and VanCleave crouched side-by-side, peering around the corner of the main entrance into the nave. VanCleave had his laptop open, balanced precariously on his thighs, while he wirelessly piloted the spiders toward the scaffold. Each spider was equipped with an internal self-destruct charge, designed to erase any trace of the device after the completion of a data-reconnaissance mission. VanCleave's plan was to use this self-destruct charge as the detonator for the payload of plastic explosive each spider carried on its back. In theory, his tactical improvisation should work, but it had never been tested.

A baritone organ blast caused him to bobble his computer, and he nearly dropped it onto the marble floor. AJ ducked by his side. Recovering their wits, both men turned and looked up at the organ balcony in time to see a female shape—bathed in moonlight—fall onto the organ keyboard and then collapse to the balcony floor.

A. Archer—
RS:Bio
: “Oh, God. Social must have used the organ to distract the sniper, but I think he just shot her!”

R. Parish—
Coordinator
: “Social, this is the Coordinator, over … Social, this is the Coordinator, do you copy?”

E. VanCleave—
RS:Technical
: “She's not responding. Bio, go help Social. But don't be stupid. Stay below the balcony railing, or the sniper will take a shot at you too.”

A. Archer—
RS:Bio
: “What about the spiders?”

E. VanCleave—
RS:Technical
: “They're almost in position. I can handle this. GO.”

VanCleave glanced to the center aisle, where a scuffle had just broken out. A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead and plopped onto the keypad. Every passing second could be Kalen's last. Were he a religious man, VanCleave thought to himself, he would be praying.

VanCleave's computer screen flashed a message.

POSITION GEOMETRY OBTAINED

PRESS “ENTER” TO INITIATE SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE

COUNTDOWN TIMER: 0 SECONDS

Prayer answered.

He pressed the ENTER key.

The explosion roared through the cavernous main hall of the Karlskirche like a twelve gun salute from a battleship. The power of VanCleave's shaped-charge blew out a two-meter section of steel in the southwest corner of the scaffold frame, causing the platform tiers at each level above to tip abruptly downward in the direction of the break. Stefan Zurn was jolted out of his prone shooting position into a sideways slide; his body skidded uncontrollably toward the dipping corner of the platform. Reflexively, he let go of his sniper rifle with both hands and flailed desperately for a handhold. The sniper rifle sailed off the platform edge and bounced on the marble floor below with a triple
clack
. Like a thousand burning needles, splinters from the plywood decking raked the pads of his fingertips and palms of his hands as he clawed wildly for his life. His right forearm contacted a metal strut. He tried desperately to grab the strut as he slid by, but the side of his head slammed into the corner post, knocking him senseless. His limp body rolled over the edge and started to fall, before abruptly jerking to a halt. Nearly five stories above the unforgiving marble floor of the Karlskirche, Stefan Zurn swung, upside down and unconscious. He was saved by the calf strap of his ankle holster, which snagged a protruding bolt on a scaffold clamp affixed to the corner post. Seven detonations of plastic explosive, erupting simultaneously, provided Kalen a stay of execution. Raimond, who was facing the scaffold when the charges blew, stumbled backward in shock.

“Stefan!” he cried, as he watched his younger brother fall off the scaffold platform into shadow.

Taking a page from Kalen's playbook, Will seized the moment.

He picked up Kalen's walking cane, closed the gap to where the others stood, and swung it at Zurn's head.

The blow connected squarely with Raimond's mouth; blood exploded from his lower lip like a bursting piñata. His head snapped back and then forward. Howling in pain, Raimond pulled the trigger on the Sig Sauer, but Kalen had already moved clear of the line of fire. Kalen performed a scissor kick, sweeping the bounty hunter's legs out from underneath him. Raimond landed flat on his back; the impact jarred the handgun loose from his grip, and sent it spinning across the marble floor, until it came to rest at Julie's feet. She bent and picked it up.

Julie looked at the pistol in her hand with a glassy, distant stare.

All three men fixated on her. She was standing in the middle of the center aisle, six feet from where they were clustered.

Her face flushed, and her eyes erupted with fire. Her neck and chest glistened with her own blood, and her disheveled hair glowed like a golden halo in the moonlight.

She pointed the gun at Raimond.

Will shivered.

“And behold, the angel of death came to pass judgment upon him,” Kalen mumbled under his breath.

“You're a monster,” she seethed, her eyes fixed on Raimond.

“And you're a traitorous bitch.” He laughed and raised himself into a sitting position, his legs extended in “V” in front of him. “Should I tell your boyfriend how you betrayed him? That you've been working with Meredith Morley all along.”

“That's a lie.”

“We're on the same side, you and me. We're both working for the same goal—to put this lab rat back in his cage.” Raimond turned to Will. “Don't look so surprised, Yankee. Never trust a beautiful woman. Just an hour before we came here, she was begging me to fuck her like a whore.”

Will looked at Julie. Her lip was quivering; her hand was trembling. “Julie, don't do it. He's not worth it. This guy is a psychopath. His words are poison …”

The muzzle flashed, illuminating the church like a strobe. Raimond jerked and reflexively clutched his crotch as the bullet ricocheted off the marble tile in between his legs, inches from his groin.

Will walked to where she stood and peeled the pistol from her grip before she could fire another round. She turned and faced him, tears streaming down her cheeks. He put his arm around her and pulled her into his chest.

“It's over now,” Will said softly.

AJ knelt beside Albane's fallen body at the base of the organ. She faced away from him, sprawled on her right side. He stroked her left cheek with his hand.

She stirred. “Oaagghh.”

“Albane? Albane, can you hear me?” he whispered.

“It feels like someone ripped my spine out of my body,” she moaned. “I think the round hit my upper back. How long have I been out?”

“I don't know. Not long. Do you have your vest on?”

“Yes. Kalen made me wear one with ceramic armor inserts.”

“Good. Can you feel this?” AJ asked, squeezing her right hand.

“Yes.”

“Can you feel this?”

“Yes, that's my foot.”

“Very good. Next, we need to check if the bullet penetrated through your vest. To see if you're bleeding. Also, we need to determine if you have any broken vertebrae; if you do, moving you could damage your spinal cord.”

“That would be bad. How do you know this stuff, AJ?”

“Before grad school, I was an EMT-in-training for two years.”

“You're full of surprises today.”

He smiled. “Here's what we're going to do. I want you to stay very still; I'm going to slide my hand underneath the vest to check for blood.”

“You just want an excuse to get your hands up my shirt, don't you Bio?” Albane said feebly.

“You're right, I should probably check your chest first to see if the bullet passed clear through.”

“Don't you dare!” Albane chuckled and then moaned in pain.

AJ slid his hand along the small of her back and felt for wetness under her vest. He gently pulled his hand out and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. Dry, nothing slippery. He then held his fingers up into a beam of moonlight, to double check himself.

“No blood. I think the vest did its job. But that doesn't guarantee against a broken back. The force of a round at that velocity is like getting hit with a crowbar. We need to get you out of here.”

“What about the shooter?”

“He's been neutralized. You have VanCleave to thank for that. And Abbey's spiders.”

“Do you hear that?” Albane asked in a hush.

“Sirens.”

“The police, no doubt.”

“It sounds like they've brought a chopper too.”

“Time to go.”

“The authorities are coming. We should go.
Now
,” VanCleave yelled to Kalen.

“What about Zurn?” Will said, keeping Raimond on the ground and at bay with the Sig. “We can't just let him go.”

Kalen glared at Raimond as he freed his bloody left hand from the piano wire noose. “Tie him up. Leave him for the police.”

“And him?” Will asked, glancing up at Stefan Zurn, who was still hanging upside down precariously from the scaffold platform.

“Leave him. He's not going any—”

Before Kalen could finish his sentence, the calf strap on Stefan Zurn's ankle holster gave way, and the unconscious sniper plummeted head first to the ground.

“STEFAN!” Raimond screamed. He looked at the broken body of his fallen brother, splayed unnaturally across the marble tiles, surrounded by an expanding pool of dark red blood. Hatred welled up in his eyes. He had nothing left to lose. Nothing left to live for, nothing except for revenge. Zurn slipped his right hand inside the flap of his button down shirt. His fingers found the grip of a Glock 26 9mm pocket pistol concealed snugly in an underarm holster. He looked away from his fallen brother to Will, the man who had ruined his life.