The Barabbas Connection Read online

  The Barabbas Connection

  By

  Rick Jones

  © 2020 Rick Jones. All rights reserved.

  This is a property of EmpirePRESS & EmpireENTERTAINMENT, LLC

  The Vatican Knights is a TRADEMARK property

  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:

  Visit Rick Jones on the World Wide Web at:

  Also, by Rick Jones:

  Vatican Knights Series

  The Vatican Knights

  Shepherd One

  The Iscariot Agenda

  Pandora's Ark

  The Bridge of Bones

  Crosses to Bear

  The Lost Cathedral

  Dark Advent

  Cabal

  The Golgotha Pursuit

  Targeted Killing

  Sinners and Saints

  The Barbed Crown

  The Vatican Knights series continued:

  The Devil’s Magician

  The Nocturnal Saints

  The Brimstone Diaries

  Juggernaut

  Original Sins (a prequel)

  In Between God and Devil

  The Sinai Directive

  The Barabbas Connection

  The Eye of Moses (coming)

  The Vladorian Keep (maybe)

  The Eden Series

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

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

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

  The Sacred Vault (A John Savage/Alyssa Moore Adventure)

  City Within the Clouds (A John Savage/Alyssa Moore Adventure)

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

  With RICK CHESLER

  First Strike

  Standalone ADVENTURE:

  The Menagerie (A John Savage/Alyssa Moore Adventure)

  The Man Who Cast Two Shadows

  The Valley (Severed Press)

  Mausoleum 2069 (Severed Press and Luzifer-Verlag)

  The Hunter Series:

  Night of the Hunter

  The Black Key

  Theater of Operation

  Contents

  Part One Present Day

  Prologue

  Part Two In The Beginning. Three Weeks Ago.

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  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

  Part Three A Return To Present Day

  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

  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

  Epilogue

  PART ONE

  PRESENT DAY

  PROLOGUE

  Washington, D.C.

  Present Day

  At the foot of the stairway that led into the U.S. Capitol Building, Pope Pius XIV spoke to thousands who had congregated at the western front of the venue which faced the National Mall. Used primarily as the inaugural site for incoming presidents since Ronald Reagan, the pontiff stood at the pulpit as a man that kings and queens and presidents bowed before. He was wearing his white cassock, a long-sleeved, ankle-length robe with an attached pellegrina, and a white zucchetto.

  Sitting behind the pope in a row filled with dignitaries was President Burroughs. Alongside him sat the Speaker of the House, and other political and religious leaders that were spread out among the four tiers. The protective detail of the Secret Service stood on or near the stage surveying the crowd.

  Kimball Hayden stood close to the pontiff with his eyes looking over the masses. Isaiah and Jeremiah remained nearby with Isaiah standing to the left of the stage, and Jeremiah taking position on the right. The Vatican Knights were dressed accordingly to their station as they wore their black cleric’s shirt, Roman Catholic collar, and signature beret. From the waist down they wore pocketed cargo pants and military boots.

  As the pontiff held the people rapt, a killer was lining up a shot from a building approximately a half mile away.

  * * *

  The assassin was sheltered inside a building that had an angled view of the stage. Securing a vantage point had been easy since the killer was considered to be ‘one of the CIA’s own.’ With the proper credentials, the assassin was able to clear the site under the backing of the White House as a CIA operator who was assisting as a measure against possible fanaticism. As soon as the credentials were deemed proper by the two agents of Homeland Security, the assassin fluidly removed a suppressed Glock and put a bullet in each of their heads, the pair falling immediately to the floor as boneless heaps. After tucking the weapon in the waistband, the assassin set up a McMillan TAC-50 sniper rifle, which is recognized for being the rifle used to achieve the longest sniper kills in the world with confirmed shots at over two miles, before a window that offered an oblique view of the podium.

  After lowering its tripod, the sniper put an eye to the scope and dialed in the target until the pontiff was within the crosshairs. Then the assassin moved the line of sight from the pontiff to the president, then from the president to the Speaker of the House, then back to Pope Pius XIV, bouncing from person to person as though trying to get a lock. The president was partially blocked by members of his detail. And the shot to the Speaker was a ridiculously small window since only a fraction of her showed from this angle.

  Then back to the pontiff, an open target, the man directly within the crosshairs.

  The assassin took controlled breaths and locked on.

  The slow pull on the trigger.

  The pope within the crosshairs.

  And then a full squeeze.

  The Mk 15 jumped, the silencer dampening but not completely eliminating the sound of a loud spit. A moment later, a direct hit as a red splash erupted against the pontiff’s white cassock. The
impact had driven the man back from the podium, the masses stunned as the president’s detail quickly galvanized themselves into action.

  The assassin redirected the weapon. The president was no longer obscured as he scrambled into the line of sight. In a mere flash of time, the killer was presented with a window of opportunity. Easing back on the trigger as the president was being swept away by his security team, the assassin had a bullseye target.

  Another pull of the trigger and a jump of the weapon. The shot was true as President Burrough’s head snapped viciously from the impact. Then he fell as a contorted mass, the man dead before he hit the stage.

  People ran in panic, a perfect diversion as the assassin turned the weapon on the Speaker of the House. Another shot. Another hit. The Speaker flying off the tier with her arms extended in mock crucifixion to the floor, the hole in her chest fist sized.

  Stepping back from the weapon and leaving it in position by the window, the assassin produced a small remote from a vest pocket that normally carried ammo magazines. Now that the objective of the targeted killing had been achieved, it was now time to sanitize the area of trace evidence.

  Having preplanned the demolition of the site by placing a thermite incendiary device inside the Electrical Room, the assassin hastened from the area after setting the timer. Since the explosive had thermite capacity, the room would burn at 3,600-degrees Fahrenheit with the flames racing to consume the entire building.

  The killer moved down the corridors knowing the structure’s full layout, went to the staircase, and began to descend. When the assassin reached the lobby and saw the guard sitting at the entry station, the killer swiftly removed the suppressed Glock from the waistband at the small of the back, directed it at the sentry, and pulled the trigger in quick succession.

  . . . Phffft . . .

  . . . Phffft . . .

  . . . Phffft . . .

  Three shots. Two to center mass and one to the forehead.

  The assassin kept moving through the lobby with the remote in one hand and the Glock in the other. When the assassin reached the exit door, the killer looked up at the CCTV mounted above the door, raised the remote in full display of the camera’s lens, and depressed the button. In a room underneath the main level, there was a muffled explosion. With the concussion of the blast so marginal as it swept through the building, the floor barely shook beneath the assassin’s feet.

  Then in a smile that could have been considered one of malicious amusement, the killer exited the building and disappeared within the crowd. But in that moment before the camera’s lens, it would not take long for facial recognition to put a match to the face.

  With a certainty of more than ninety percent, the match had proved to be Shari Cohen.

  * * *

  Everything happened with the slowness of a bad dream as the pontiff spun in an odd pirouette, as he was lifted off his feet and thrown behind the podium with his white cassock dyed with a Rorschach stain of blood.

  Kimball’s face was freckled with the pontiff’s splatter as he maneuvered to shield the man’s body. Draped over Pope Pius the XIV, Kimball could hear the cries in the background as the crowd scattered to all points of the compass, mayhem ruling. The pontiff was alive, though breathing heavily. And Kimball could see shock beginning to take hold as the aged man’s eyes began to drift.

  “Stay with me,” Kimball told him.

  When the Vatican Knight examined the wound, he noted that the bullet had struck the pope in the area between the left shoulder and chest. The exit wound was as large as a peach and the scapula completely destroyed.

  Behind him, Kimball could see the president’s detail converge on the terrible sight of the deceased leader. A good portion of the man’s head had been sheered away, almost half, with blood and brain matter scattered across the staging area. The Speaker had fared no better, as she looked skyward with the surprise of her own mortality.

  As Isaiah and Jeremiah joined Kimball’s side to help put the pope at ease, as sirens sounded upon their approach while the audience screamed in the subsequent chaos, Kimball saw columns of black smoke rising from a building less than a mile away.

  That’s where the shooter was, he considered. And now the building burns to cover evidence. That method of cleansing by fire was neither novel nor unique, except when it came to purifying the soul, he considered. For him, it was just a slow burn of agony that merely consumed it, not heal it.

  Standing, Kimball continued to stare in the direction of the burning building as Isaiah and Jeremiah cared for the pontiff.

  Never in Kimball’s wildest imagination would he have believed that someday, after he would learn who the assassin was, that he would be on the hunt to kill the woman he loved.

  Never.

  But life always had a strange way of throwing curves.

  PART TWO

  IN THE BEGINNING.

  THREE WEEKS AGO.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Kremlin

  Moscow, Russia

  Three Weeks Ago

  Since Moscow was built along the banks of a river and was a city that eventually became the highest political seat in the land, past leaders and czars had created subterranean depots. After brick-lined tunnels and canals were installed in the late 1700s, these conduits would later expand and evolve into sewer systems, subways, gas and electric lines, a full network of innovation. Recently—since the Cold War Era—the Soviets had created secret tunnels, subway tracks, and TS-analytical labs that stored the high-end TS-secrets of Russian military data. Most notably was the Golden Shield ICBM, a rocket and missile system that was completely invisible by the existing standards of detection from any satellite or radar, even from the high-tech installations of the United States, Israel, and Germany. The Golden Shield ICBM was a long-range missile that could traverse more than half the globe unseen while carrying a number of nuclear warheads with high yields. They could be dispatched from submarines, launchers, and from the silo bays of large military warships. What made them unique was their jamming and cloaking abilities which had been conceived and produced with the aid of Iran. Once the missile was launched, it could virtually remain undetected until it reached a designated target like Washington, D.C. By the time the political principals realized what was happening, the warheads would ignite, and the District would become a nuclear wasteland. Not only could the armed warheads be considered weapons, but so could the carrier of the ICBM rocket.

  Deep inside a subterranean level where the Russian intel analysts staged their operations, a woman by the name of Natasha Kaminski was sitting at a computer console. Two bodies lay on the floor with their lab coats pitted with gunshots by two armed operatives who maintained a protective watch over Natasha, as she downloaded intel from the databanks. They were wearing the uniforms of the Kremlin Regiment, whereas she was wearing a lab coat.

  As she typed commands into the keyboard, the blueprint and geometric design of the rocket came up on a large Plexiglas screen on the opposite wall, not on the PC monitor. The blueprint images had precise measurements and specific data regarding the utilization of internal hardware, such as the state-of-the-art jamming and stealth systems, the motherboard, and their placement within the ICBM unit. The rotating image, the scrolling of numbers to formulas, the exact measurements down to the centimeter, were all being downloaded by a flash drive.

  As the siren to the subterranean lab sounded off like a klaxon, the two soldiers appeared anxious. They were holding their posts with their weapons raised and directed at the entryways.

  “Let’s go,” the larger of the two operatives stated in perfect English, though it sounded more like a command than a suggestion.

  Natasha responded with an edge. “I can only download with the cooperation of the computer’s help,” she said. “I can’t make it go any faster.”

  More images continued to pop up on the large Plexiglas screen of the rocket, a true marvel of engineering.

  Over Natasha
’s earbud, she heard, “Three groups converging on your position from wings three, six and nine. ETA about three minutes.”

  “Copy that,” she answered. Readjusting her glasses on the bridge of her nose—the pair merely a stage prop to give her a more scholarly look—she began to download real-time screen images on her monitor of the connecting corridors that led to the lab. She had divided the computer screen into a latticework of six grids. Inside three of these grids she could see the approach of the Kremlin Regiment, who were moving on their position from different points.

  She looked at the Plexiglas screen.

  At the bottom of the screen, the downloading bar that represented how much data was on the flash drive read 89%.

  The klaxon continued to blare, the noise an old-school sound from the Cold War Era.

  Her guardians that mimicked the wear of the Kremlin Regiment, were becoming increasingly anxious knowing that time was running exceptionally thin. But Natasha was everything to the mission and the absolute tip of the spear when it came to appropriating data. Not only did she design the overall mission, she also orchestrated the breach of the Kremlin and perfected the intrusion. But in the final moment before basking in glory, they had triggered an unknown security sensor.

  93%.

  She continued to watch the monitors and counted the number of opposing guards in each regiment. Six in one, ten in another, and a dozen in the third—all heavily armed.

  94%.

  Natasha started to type commands into the keyboard with the skill of a pianist, the woman never missing a beat. As the teams converged on their position, she finished entering her instructions and poised a forefinger above the ‘ENTER’ key. Having planned for every possible contingency, she waited for the opportune moment.