In Between God and Devil Page 2

  “Believe in what I just said to you, Kimball, about your mission here on Earth to be an unfinished one.”

  Kimball raised his hands and noted the congealed flesh of his burns. “My legs were shattered to the point of having rods and pins inserted to stabilize them. It’s a long road back to recovery. My days as a Vatican Knight may be over.”

  “It all depends upon the fervor within your heart, Kimball. The wounds you suffer may hold the vestiges of your own personal Hell, but they are neither crippling of body, soul or mind. Your journey may be one that is not yet fulfilled. Perhaps the rigor of your past only sets for a stronger constitution of what is about to come. You must remember, Kimball, the world is leaning closer to the edge and may eventually spill over into a downward spiral. It’s people like you who continue to bring balance to a worldwide constituency that yearns for calmer times.”

  “I’m one man.”

  “Who can lead others by becoming that fulcrum that steadies the divided spectrums between Darkness and Light. One man alone can make a difference, Kimball, and you have proved that time and again. But to lead others into battle to reform Goodness that begins to lose its way by rejuvenating a kindling spark, only bodes well for everyone involved should that rekindled flame once again burn like a pyre.” The monsignor grabbed Kimball’s hand in both of his and gave it a light squeeze. “You have always been the breath that gave life to dimming glows that often flourished into bonfires. You provided hope to others when there was no hope.”

  “For my entire life as a Vatican Knight, Padre, I had hope that someday I’d reach the Light, only to be rejected by it. So ‘hope’ to me is nothing more than a delusional belief that something good will eventually happen to me in time. It hasn’t. Nor will it ever. I still kill people because it’s what I do and it’s what I’m good at. So, let’s face the facts, Padre . . . I was rejected.”

  “One who sees the Light, Kimball, is never rejected. It simply reminds us all that Light is always within our reach and gives us all a glimpse of what’s to be. If you had been rejected, Kimball—I mean, truly rejected—you would not have received a glimmer of the Great Illumination, only Darkness that is absolute and complete. A darkness that is filled with those souls who enter it with hearts filled only with ice and stone. You, Kimball, have bathed within the Glory of the Ethereal Glow, something that’s delegated only to those who have good intentions and good will. You have seen something that not even the pontiff has seen. In your pain you have been blessed with the Sight.”

  Kimball appeared pacified by this, the Vatican Knight once again smiling with a lazy, dreamlike quality. “Speaking of the pontiff, how is Bonasero?”

  The monsignor gave Kimball a quizzical look. “Vessucci?”

  “Is there any other?”

  The monsignor’s brows arched. “Have you forgotten?”

  “Forgotten what?”

  “The state in which the Holiness lies?”

  Kimball looked at the monsignor with a highly alarmed look. “What happened to him? Did something happen during the fourteen weeks I was under?”

  “Do you not remember?”

  “Remember what?”

  “Kimball, the pontiff succumbed to a terrorist attack a few years ago. How could you not remember? You were on a mission elsewhere with the Vatican Knights when a terrorist cell breached the Apostolic Palace. The Swiss Guards were able to neutralize all but one, who made it to the pontifical chamber and detonated his vest. Bonasero was lost.”

  Kimball appeared lost as his breathing quickly mounted to a rigorous pace that set off the alarm to the sensors. Isosceles-shaped valleys and peaks showed on the monitor, with the keen tips of the spikes as sharp as the points of knitting needles. Kimball had entered a danger zone.

  The monsignor rested both hands on Kimball’s chest to calm him but failed as the spikes continued to rise and fall sharply. Nurses rushed in to check his vitals and entered a calming fluid of some kind into his saline line. Within moments, Kimball’s beat slowed until his signs became controlled.

  Lying on the elevated bed with his chest rising and lowering with a natural rhythm, the monsignor reached for Kimball’s burned hand and squeezed it. “If you can hear me, my friend, stay calm and fight hard, for your mission is far from over. We will talk later when you’re in a proper frame of mind.” Then he lowered Kimball’s hand over the Vatican Knight’s heart, which left Kimball in gentle repose, and left the room.

  * * *

  Upon the rediscovery of Bonasero Vessucci’s death, Kimball Hayden thought his heart was about to misfire inside his chest. With spreading agony that felt as if his heart was clenching itself into a tight fist, Kimball had known no other greater anguish or suffering. Bonasero Vessucci, even though they did not share a single DNA molecule, could not have been closer if they had been father and son. And for a second time in Kimball’s life there was a vacuum in his heart where Bonasero once stood.

  . . . the pontiff succumbed to a terrorist attack a few years ago . . .

  . . . How could you not remember? . . .

  . . . a terrorist cell breached the Apostolic Palace . . .

  . . . The Swiss Guards were able to neutralize all but one . . .

  . . . Bonasero was lost . . .

  Every word spoken by the monsignor was more than profane, they were life altering with each syllable carrying a weight too great for Kimball to bear.

  And then came the grab and squeeze of his hand in the monsignor’s, a gentle grip to let Kimball know that he was not alone.

  “If you can hear me, my friend, stay calm and fight hard, for your mission is far from over. We will talk later when you’re in a proper frame of mind.” Giammacio’s voice sounded as if he was speaking from the bottom of a well, distant and hollow, the words, however, having a soothing effect as the monsignor placed Kimball’s hand over his heart.

  A moment later, Kimball slid into a darkness where he remained comfortably numb.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Northern Syria

  The Kurdish-led coalition of troops in northeastern Syria, also known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, had been responsible for guarding twenty prisons that held more than 10,000 people who were accused of being members of the Islamic State. Now that the United States had pulled its forces and stated that they would no longer intervene in further military affairs, the Kurds were then forced to pull guards from these facilities to fight off the Turkish troops that had crossed the border. With the Kurdish forces now caught between protecting the prisons and combating Turkish soldiers at the border, these makeshift penitentiaries, which were now severely unmanned or completely unguarded, suddenly became the targets of the Islamic State. Jailbreaks and riots turned into mass escapes as hundreds of hardcore supporters of ISIS once again took up arms to establish a revival of the militant movement.

  With more than 10,000 ISIS militants representing forty different countries globally, not only were they trying to reestablish a front, they were also trying to foster a new caliphate that would be led by their new prophet, Junaid Hassad.

  Hassad was in his thirties, his exact age unknown, even to him, and he was born in a small village whose shelters were made of desert stone. Life had been hard for Junaid as a young boy who believed that fate had more to offer than simply herding goats under a blistering hot sun with a wooden staff. What he truly wanted was to trade in his gnarled staff that prompted goats through mountain passes for a scepter of rule that would command armies. When he turned sixteen, he discarded his wooden rod beneath the desert sun, leaving the goats he once directed to run wild and free and without direction, and headed north.

  There he learned the words of his prophet, a man by the name of Mohammad Ahmad who spoke with a golden tongue and often rallied against the infidels and the transgressors. What the world needed was a cleansing, an eradication of the disease that had spread to the four corners with nonbelievers who were repelled by the Koran rather than drawn to it. It was up to the new regime, these sold
iers of Allah, to take control and move forward to spread the teachings of their religion, the only true religion, on behalf of the Supreme Being who would guide them to victory.

  In time, Hassad found himself so engrossed by the moving of Ahmad’s words, he found himself pumping a fist skyward with jubilation and devotion. He had finally found his calling, and in doing so he had picked up arms to pillage antiquities from museums to sell on the black market. He became involved with the kidnappings of high-end assets, those who yielded windfall ransoms. Then he graduated to showcasing his executions by livestreaming his actions as he sawed off the head of his victim, then holding it up in display as a garish trophy with the gleam in his eye bright and the soul of his heart blackened.

  Over the months, Junaid Hassad spearheaded raids and killed his adversaries—mostly Christians—who were made sport of with their executions causing a spirited zeal amongst those within the cabal. The spilling of blood was an exercise of their inhumanity and a flexing of Allah’s muscles to create fear through acts of terrorism, to one day rule the land.

  But the Great Satan and its minion, Syrian Democratic Forces, fought back with a pounding fist of their own. The Islamic State withdrew under the authority of Mohammad Ahmad, who was eventually killed by a bombing sortie that left the prophet in pieces. Though Hassad mourned Ahmad’s loss, it also gave rise to a new prophet, which Hassad became, after he raided the Kurdish camps to release, regather and rebuild his forces, once the American forces vacated the territory.

  Now it was his turn to speak with a golden tongue—to recruit with a tone of fervor that instilled enthusiasm. Become a soldier of Islam! Move forward in the name of Allah to clench your thirst by killing the infidels! Take back what is rightfully ours in the name of our God! Allahu Akbar!

  Crowds cheered. An army was once again rising from the ashes. And Junaid Hassad was becoming a demigod amongst those who had found wisdom in his words.

  Allahu Akbar! became the rallying cry and a spirited mantra, forceful and brave. Lives would have to be sacrificed, the cost high, but it was also the price of admission into Paradise.

  More chants.

  More Allahu Akbars!

  More fist pumping.

  At the head of it all, and with a beaming smile of confidence as he stood amongst the growing masses, Junaid Hassad had become the newly seated prophet who finally held that scepter of rule he dreamed about for so long.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Coalition Central Command Center

  Baghdad, Iraq

  In the fortified area of the Green Zone located in Baghdad, Shari Cohen was watching satellite imagery of activity in northern Syria from the U.S. Command Center as a leading member of the CIA. Since the United States pulled its troops out of Kurdish territory, the area had become a hotbed of terrorist activity. The makeshift jails and camps were overrun by ISIS militants, freeing those in captivity. And because this army was on the rise with Junaid Hassad leading the charge and thereby making himself public enemy number one in the eyes of the Company, Shari was the hawk who monitored her prey.

  Four months ago, while on a mission for the FBI to dismantle a terrorist cell that was wreaking havoc in major cities along the eastern seaboard, she was working in tandem with Kimball Hayden, the most elite of the Vatican Knights. They had shared their intimacies with glancing touches and sparkling eye contact, the gestures speaking volumes of their passion for one another. But Kimball had been badly wounded, his body a twisted configuration of broken bones that were clean snaps. Parts of his body were badly damaged as well, with some of his limbs taking on two- and three-degree burns.

  With crystal clarity she recalled the moment of running towards Kimball as he tried to draw distance from a van packed with Semtex. Everything appeared to move with the slowness of a bad dream as she ran to him with her hand extended, even though he was forty or fifty yards away. Kimball was so badly injured that he moved away from the vehicle like something from a zombie apocalypse, his steps choppy and unsteady, until the moment the van exploded with the concussion lifting Kimball off his feet and through the air, the blast smashing his body as if his bones were nothing less than dry kindling, nothing less than twigs.

  As she cradled him, she caught herself sobbing as Kimball ebbed and flowed from consciousness. To most who listened to him just before he slid into the cradle of death, his words sounded nonsensical. He spoke of having a small house with a white-picket fence, and a yard for the dog and the children to play in. What others didn’t know, what she had always known, was that Kimball was vocalizing his lifelong dream of having a family to call his own, and a sanctuary to create memories with the woman he loved.

  On the drive to the hospital as Shari held his hand as Kimball was being administered to, he began to flatline. The sound of his last breath came as a keening wail from the monitor, a shrill that was to accompany Kimball into his next life. She remembered calling him back from the grave, to fight so that they could share his dream, together, and as a force of one.

  Though the paramedics were able to resurrect a heartbeat, Kimball, by this time, was buried too deep. He had descended into an unknown place where the Light could not shine or penetrate. The doctors confirmed that trauma to the head was the most likely culprit, which, like the rest of his body, was heavily damaged. Whether or not he would come to was not known since the CT scan showed some bloodletting within the cranium. At best, if he did rise from his coma, it would be nothing short of a miracle. Even then, and depending on the extent of his injury, Kimball Hayden may be little more than a vegetable. And nothing had broken Shari Cohen’s heart any greater than hearing this prognosis.

  For days she would visit Kimball at the hospital, hoping and praying that he would simply wake up and smile, telling her that everything would be all right. But he laid there with his chest rising and falling, an involuntary act that was the result of basic programming.

  As days became weeks and weeks became months, Shari could no longer deal with the idea that Kimball was lost to her. So, she resigned her post with the FBI and joined the Company as a member of their counterterrorism unit. She packed little because she wanted to leave D.C. and its dark memories far behind. She left behind her fully furnished apartment, traded in her vehicle for pennies on the dollar, then she went to Langley to start fresh with a new mindset. It didn’t take long for the principals to anoint her as the agency’s new wunderkind, then conscripted her to join the ranks in the Middle East where she could watch the brewing of extremist activity from the sidelines in Iraq.

  She engulfed herself with her work by working around the clock to create dossiers and logs of current cell movement, as well as prognosticating terrorist crusades and potential targets based on their actions.

  Now, a month into her campaign and a month after she left Kimball’s side, the Company had erased all measures of Shari Cohen from their computers, their records, making her a ghost. Shari Cohen no longer existed, making her impossible to find outside of the few black-op principals who sat at the very top of the intelligence gathering food chain.

  For hours on end and with little sleep she drove herself, wanting deeply to forget her past by immersing herself into her work. But no matter how long she created log entries or determined the next move of her opponent, snippets of images flashed through her mind’s eye, mental stills of her past. She saw her husband, Gary, and her two daughters, all killed by a car bomb in front of her D.C. home, by a domestic terrorist. And then she saw Kimball smiling to her with a glimmer of his ruler-straight teeth that was followed up with a wink of his eye.

  It was always here that she would close her eyes and grab the edge of the table to brace herself with both hands, knowing what was about to come next. She could hear Kimball’s gut-wrenching words, his dreams and wants after a demanding and difficult life.

  . . . All I want is a small house with a white-picket fence . . .

  . . . and a yard for the dog and the children to play in . . .

  . . . an
d a barbecue . . .

  They were simple words outlining a simple dream, one that always seemed to be beyond Kimball’s reach. And when he spoke his eyes were growing distant, deeper, the man falling into his own realm not by his choosing, until he stared detachedly skyward, with Shari not even an afterthought as he went to the land of ‘Elsewhere.’

  Gripping the table with the daggerlike points of her fingertips, she always did her best to fight off the sting of tears at this point, only to fail repeatedly. After she had bled away her saddest emotions, Shari Cohen would once again find a personal sanctuary with her work. But sometimes, even when she was pouring heavily through the psychological and biographical records of insurgents, she had never felt so alone or hollow or empty. Her life was a new one and a departure from the old, even though she continued to carry the vestige ghosts of past and horrible memories.

  While she worked as a faceless enemy to combat ISIS in a faraway land, another she believed was lost would rise from his own personal darkness to cross her path; the Two becoming One as they once again served on the battlefield together.

  In the Command Center, Shari employed herself with documents never realizing how the coming future was about to impact her with suffering.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington

  Hyattsville, Maryland

  Monsignor Dom Giammacio was on a conference call to the Vatican. He was calling from the Pastoral Center in Hyattsville, Maryland, which is the home to the offices of the ministries and services of the Archdiocese of Washington. On the other end of the call was the pontiff and Isaiah, who had taken command of the Vatican Knights after Kimball’s tragic misfortune.

  “He’s well,” stated the monsignor, “to a degree. He’s lost weight, still weak, but expected to recover fully with months of rehabilitation. The downside of his condition, however, is his loss of memory. Apparently, there are missing gaps of recall that go back months and perhaps years. He thought Bonasero was still alive. But when he was told that Bonasero was no longer with us, he had a negative reaction. I haven’t the heart to inform him of the loss of Leviticus. Perhaps in time, when the doctor says he is able to endure such a shock.”