Targeted Killing (The Vatican Knights Book 11) Read online

  TARGETED KILLING

  by

  Rick Jones

  © 2016 Rick Jones. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and should not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For more information e-mail all inquiries to: [email protected]

  Visit Rick Jones on the World Wide Web at: http://www.rickjonz.com/

  ALSO BY RICK JONES:

  Vatican Knights Series

  Stand Alone Novels

  The Vatican Knights

  Familiar Stranger

  Shepherd One

  The Valley

  The Iscariot Agenda

  Mausoleum 2069

  Pandora's Ark

  The Bridge of Bones

  Hunter Series

  Crosses to Bear

  Night of the Hunter

  The Lost Cathedral

  (COMING) The Black Key

  Dark Advent

  Cabal

  The Golgotha Pursuit

  Targeted Killing

  The Eden Series

  The Crypts of Eden (A John Savage/Alyssa Moore Adventure)

  The Menagerie (A John Savage/Alyssa Moore Adventure)

  The Thrones of Eden (A John Savage/Alyssa Moore Adventure)

  The Atlantis Series

  City Beneath the Sea (A John Savage/Alyssa Moore Adventure)

  (COMING) The Secret Vault (The Quest for the Emerald Tablet) (A John Savage/Alyssa Moore Adventure)

  TARGETED KILLING: The assassination or premeditated killing of an individual by a state organization or institution outside a judicial procedure or a battlefield.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Part One: Old Dog, Old Wounds Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Part Two: Lazarus Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Part Three: Dead Man Running Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Part Four: Running on Empty Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Part Five: The Man in Black Chapter Sixty-Six

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  The Estate of Senator Cartwright

  Washington, D.C.

  Several Years Ago

  Senator Joseph Cartwright was a highly ambitious man whose weighted arrogance was often exhibited on the Senate floor, he knew the day would come when he would die by the hands of the very monsters he begat.

  Inside the study of his residence, the senator closed the blinds against the intermittent flares from the evening’s lightning storm, and moved as quickly as possible to his desk to bundle together some very special dossiers.

  There were eight in all, the biographical records of the creatures he helped assemble into a single, unstoppable mass who were at the beck and call of men holding the highest political seats in the land.

  In haste, the senator bound the manila folders together with arthritically challenged hands that moved with surprising deft, while hoping that his death would serve as the beginning of the end of something that had gone horribly wrong.

  Closing his eyes as he leaned over the files, Senator Cartwright couldn’t help the pang of regret that tormented him for believing that he was untouchable, which allowed his conceit to carry him too far by pushing certain dignitaries too hard and too fast without giving any measurable thought of the terrifying powers they wielded.

  Now with his senatorial tenure about to come to a quick and deadly finish, the man struggled in hindsight and wished he had kept himself from challenging those whose scepters were loftier than his.

  Beyond the louvered windows of his study, a staircase of lightning struck close by. The lights in the room winked and died off, the house succumbing to darkness as deep and vacuous as a celestial hole.

  Feeling his heart misfire to an unsteady beat, the senator realized that the Pieces of Eight were coming for him.

  At best he had a minute, maybe two.

  Hunkering next to his desk with the dossiers held within his twisted hands, the senator pressed a shoulder against the desk’s side panel and gave a nudge. The panel slid inward, then upward, giving approach to a small compartment the size of a breadbox. It was an area where he had kept the untold secrets of others, and often used the information against them as an aid of blackmail to reshape, retool or destroy the political lives of those who affronted his viewpoints.

  Now he would use it one last time, hoping that someone would discover the dossiers and use them to destroy the Pieces of Eight and the men who drove their reins.

  After the files were placed inside, the senator pulled down on the interior panel and secured it, the seams of the wood matching so closely that the divide of the partition was barely perceptible.

  Laboring to his feet with pain beginning to cinch across his chest to the point of crushing breath from his lungs, the senator placed his knuckled hands against the desktop and steadied himself.

  Where are you?

  Beyond the blinds another stroke of lightning ignited: a quick and dazzling flash of pure, unadulterated light that poured in through the edges of the closed blinds and bled hotly across the area, the quick strokes catching movement across the room.

  The senator stood and waited, expecting the punch of a bullet to end his life.

  Instead he received a comparable blow equal to a bullet’s impact; it was the voice of a preadolescent child crying out to him. “Grandpapa?”

  Oh
, no!

  In the midst of his own fears he had forgotten about his grandson, the only living tie to his bloodline and the only family left. If the child was discovered by the Pieces of Eight, they would kill him without mercy by the same protocols he created.

  The senator got to a bended knee and beckoned his grandson to rush into his outstretched arms. Pulling his grandson close, his gnarled hands caressing the child, the senator kept repeating ‘I’m so sorry,’ and wept into the wild tangle of the boy’s hair.

  “Grandpapa, are you afraid of the lightning, too?”

  The child sounded so innocent that the impending nature of what was going to happen to them crushed the senator’s blighted soul.

  “I’m so sorry,” the senator whispered as he buried his face against the crown of the boy’s head. “I’m . . . so . . . sorry.”

  In that moment he recognized the shared features of his daughter and the boy as he appraised him, the child possessing the eyes and lips of his mother, beautiful and petulantly full. “You look so much like your mama,” he told him. Oh, how I wish she was here to see how much you’ve grown.

  Two years ago his daughter was driving along a causeway when a drunk driver caromed off a barrier and struck her vehicle head on, killing her the moment her body made its trajectory through the windshield. In the tragic aftermath the coroner painstakingly pieced her together. But it was not enough for the aesthetic appeal needed for an open-coffin viewing.

  It was also the first time in the senator’s life where he’d been rendered completely powerless to reshape the outcome of an event. Even with all his command, the senator quickly realized that he was limited in capacity with resurrection not one of his strengths; therefore, this painful lesson drove him back to the status of a mortal, with perceived weaknesses.

  But as a man of steadfast conviction, he tempered the loss of his daughter by burying his remorse deep, then regained momentum with his power going unchecked until he was once again a political demigod, who could rule over others without consequence.

  Until now.

  The old man closed his eyes and rubbed a hand adoringly along his grandson’s back.

  Then taking on a more sobering appearance, the senator pulled the child close to let him know that he expected the boy’s undivided attention. “Markie, I need you to listen to me and I need you to listen hard. Do you understand me?”

  The boy nodded.

  “I want you to find a hiding place,” he told him. “I want you to hide from the lightning, and from the thunder. And no matter what, no matter what you see or hear, you are not to come out from your hiding place. Is that clear?”

  “Grandpa—”

  “Is that clear, Markie?”

  “Yes.” The boy was clearly frightened, which prompted the senator to pull him into a hug.

  “I love you, Markie. Never forget that. I love you more than life itself.” And then he drew back and held his grandson in appraisal for the last time, wondering what kind of man he might have become if granted the time to live.

  From the area of the entryway came a sound, the tiny snicker of the bolt being drawn back, and then the subsequent movement of the study’s doorknob turning slowly in the darkness.

  The senator directed the child with a mild goading toward the darkest area of the room. “Quick, Markie. Hide. And don’t come out.”

  As the child ran towards the darkest shadows of the study, the senator labored to his feet with the stiff joints of his knees popping off in protest, and waited with his chin held brazenly outward in defiance.

  The moment the door swung inward on its own accord, a flash of lightning beyond the windows lit up the entire room, the staccato-like flares revealing an empty doorway.

  The senator swallowed; his throat as dry as old parchment.

  Then, in a warbled tone that sounded unlike the voice of a poised senator, he said, “Show yourselves.”

  Upon the utterance of his final word, a stroke of lightning flashed as if on cue, the room igniting in a white-hot flare that revealed the Pieces of Eight.

  Each master soldier stood as still as a Grecian statue before him.

  In their own unique design, they were eight elite commandos with each one possessing a very particular skill. Collectively, they were a liquidation unit better known to the senators and the Joint Chiefs as the Force Elite.

  They were spread across the room, one soldier a facsimile of the other with waxy faces and stone-cold deadness in their eyes.

  No one moved.

  No one spoke.

  Their military issue was black adornment, their attire consisting of unpolished boots and a black beret that bore the team’s insignia of two crossing tantos serving as crossbones beneath a grinning skull.

  My children . . .

  Once the lightning died off, the Pieces of Eight became one with the darkness.

  “How can you do this to me?” The senator took a step back in an act of self-preservation. “I created you! I created all of you!”

  Outside, a loud report of thunder sounded off, which quickly died off to an awkward silence that seemed to last countless moments.

  And then with the bravado of an all-powerful senator, Cartwright said, “I demand you answer me!”

  The louvered blinds did little to block out the bright illumination as lightning once again lit up the study with a spectacular burst. In that brief moment the senator saw his assassin’s face inches from his own—could feel the shallowness of the man’s breath graze against his flesh and instantly noted the profound hollowness within his eyes.

  He never heard the assassin approach, nor did he hear the others leave the room.

  He was alone with his killer.

  “Where have the others gone?” he mustered, his head searching his surroundings. Was it possible for the Pieces of Eight to move so quickly and quietly without leaving so much as a trace that they had been there at all?

  “You know protocol,” the assassin told him. “They’re searching the estate. No one is to be left behind.”

  “Then they’ll be disappointed,” the senator responded, “because nobody else is here.”

  “There’s the boy. Five years of age.” The assassin proffered this so coldly and without feeling or remorse, the senator knew they would complete their mission with unbiased obligation and kill anyone under an executive order, even a child.

  “My grandson is not here,” he stated too quickly.

  Another stroke of lightning, the starburst moment providing a glimpse of the face of the man that held nothing more than indifference. His features were young and seamless, his skin tight over angular cheek bones and an even firmer jaw line; he was tall, standing six four with a physique engineered in the weight room with arms, chest and shoulders defined by long hours in the gym. He was also a prodigy in a line of killers, and the most junior of his team.

  “Please,” the senator whispered. “I created you. I created the entire team. Without me the Force Elite would be nothing.”

  In the darkness the senator could hear the slow draw of a combat knife being pulled from its scabbard.

  “You overstepped your boundaries, Senator.”

  “So now you see it fit to be my assassin?”

  “I’m simply following orders from a higher command. You know that . . . And you know why.”

  The senator backpedaled with his hands held up in front of him in appeal. “Please don’t hurt my grandson,” he said in earnest. “All I ask of you is to let him be.”

  “If I did that, then I’d be remiss in my duties.”

  “He’s a five-year-old boy, dammit!”

  “He’s also a threat that needs to be neutralized.”

  The room flared up once again. In the assassin’s hand was a KA-BAR knife, a keen edge on one side of the blade, a serrated sharpness on the other.

  “I found you. I made you what you are today,” the senator said. “Will you destroy the one who made you the very heart of the Pieces of Eight, and the lead comman
der of the Force Elite?”

  The assassin said nothing. He merely edged closer, the blade poised to strike, to slash, to kill. Then, “As a courtesy to you, Senator, I’ll make this a quick kill.” With that he swept the KA-BAR in a horizontal arc and cut the senator’s throat, a deep gash that parted like a second horrible grin, the blood a pronounced color of red in the subsequent flashes of lightning as the senator brought a gnarled hand to his neck in eagle-clawed fashion. The senator’s other hand swept the darkness for the purchase of the desk’s edge, his world spiraling in a maelstrom of pooling shadows with a greater gloom meeting him from the depths.

  Just as he found the edge, the senator fell to his knees and drew his bloodied hand across the hidden panel. It was his last act before dying, the mark against the panel a final score as a tenured politician.

  The moment the senator’s life bled out at the feet of his assassin, the killer began his search of the study.

  Those biographical records, he knew, had to be here somewhere.

  The child had heard the exchange from his seated position within the cabinet space beneath the library bookshelves—had heard his grandfather plead for his life. Then he heard the horrible sound of a man trying to breathe through the ruin of his throat.

  Soon thereafter, the silence became terrifying to the young boy. The idea of not knowing what was going on beyond the cabinet door brought a need for the child to cry out to his grandfather, despite the old man’s warning.

  And then the footsteps: soft and light and weightless across the carpeted floor, the footfalls coming closer to the bookshelves, toward the cabinet door.

  Grandpapa?

  Surrounding doors opened and closed, encouraging the child to bring his knees up into acute angles and tight to his chest. The act, however, was not just an exercise of self-preservation; it was also a futile measure as the door to the cabinet opened.