Map of Bones: A Sigma Force Novel Read online

  “I understand,” he said, but it didn’t offer much solace. The ache continued inside his rib cage.

  “Did you get that package I sent you last week?”

  Painter glanced up, a half-smile forming. He had gotten a care package from his director. A crate of Tums antacids. He had thought it was a gag gift, but now he wasn’t so sure.

  Sean settled back into his chair. “That’s all the relief you’ll ever get in this business.”

  Painter recognized the truth in his mentor’s words. Here was the true burden of leadership.

  “It was easier in the field,” he finally mumbled.

  “Not always,” Sean reminded him. “Not always by a long shot.”

  12:10 P.M.

  MILAN, ITALY

  LOCKED UP tight,” Monk said. “Just like the monsignor said.”

  Gray could not argue. It all looked good. He itched to get inside, grab the bones, and head out of here.

  They stood on a shaded sidewalk bordering the unassuming façade of the Basilica of Saint Eustorgio, near one of the side doors. The front was humble adorned red brick; behind it rose a single clock-tower steeple, surmounted by a cross. The tiny sun-baked square was empty for the moment.

  A few minutes ago, a municipal patrol car had looped past, going slow, keeping watch. All seemed quiet.

  Following Kat’s recommendation, they had searched the entire church’s periphery from a circumspect distance. Gray had also used a set of telescoping lenses to peer discreetly through several windows. The five side chapels and central nave appeared deserted.

  Sunlight blazed off the pavement. The day had grown hot.

  But Gray still felt cold, unsure.

  Would he be less cautious if it were only himself?

  “Let’s do this,” he said.

  Vigor stepped to the side door and reached for the large iron knocker, a ring containing a simple cross.

  Gray stayed his hand. “No. We’ve kept our approach quiet. Let’s keep it that way.” He turned to Kat and pointed to the lock. “Can you get it open?”

  Kat dropped to a knee. Monk and Gray shielded her work with their bodies. While Kat studied the lock, her fingers fished through a lock-picking kit. With the meticulous skill of a surgeon, she set to work on the door’s lock.

  “Commander,” Vigor said. “To violate a church…”

  “If you were already invited entry by the Vatican, it’s no violation.”

  A snick of a latch ended the matter. The door opened an inch.

  Kat gained her feet and shouldered her pack.

  Gray waved the others back. “Monk and I will go in alone. Scout the terrain.” He reached to his collar and secured an earpiece in place. “Radio up while we have a chance. Kat, stay here with Rachel and Vigor.”

  Gray taped on a throat mike for subvocalization.

  Vigor stepped forward. “Like I said before, priests are more likely to speak to someone wearing a collar. I’ll go with you.”

  Gray hesitated—but the monsignor made sense. “Stay behind us at all times.”

  Kat did not protest being left holding the door, but Rachel’s eyes sparked fire.

  “We need someone to cover our backs if things go south,” he explained, speaking directly to Rachel.

  Her lips tightened, but she nodded.

  Satisfied, he turned and opened the door enough to slip through. The dark foyer was cool. The doors to the nave were closed. He saw nothing amiss. The quiet of the sanctuary felt heavy, like being underwater.

  Monk closed the outer door and flipped his long coat aside to rest a hand on his shotgun. Vigor obeyed his instructions and shadowed Monk.

  Gray moved to the central door of the inner nave. He pushed it open with the palm of his hand. He had his Glock in the other.

  The nave was brighter than the foyer, full of natural light from the basilica’s windows. Its polished marble floor reflected the illumination, appearing almost wet. The basilica was much smaller than the cathedral in Cologne. Rather than cross-shaped, it was just a single long hall, a straight nave that ended at the altar.

  Gray froze and watched for movement. Despite the ample light, there were plenty of places for people to hide. A line of pillars supported the arched roof. Five tiny chapels jetted out from the right wall, sheltering the tombs of martyrs and saints.

  Nothing moved. The only noise was the distant rumble of traffic, sounding as if coming from another world.

  Gray entered and moved down the center of the nave, pistol ready.

  Monk stepped wide, positioning himself to keep the entire nave covered. They crossed the hall in silence. There was no sign of the church’s staff.

  “Perhaps they all went out for a late lunch,” Monk subvocalized into his radio.

  “Kat, can you hear me?” Gray asked.

  “Loud and clear, Commander.”

  They reached the end of the nave.

  Vigor pointed to the right, to the chapel closest to the altar.

  Tucked into the chapel’s corner, a gigantic sarcophagus lay half in shadow. Like the reliquary in Cologne, the Shrine of the Magi here was shaped like a church, but rather than gold and jewels, the sarcophagus had been carved out of a single block of Proconnesio marble.

  Gray led the way toward it.

  The shrine stood over twelve feet tall from its base to pitched roof and stretched seven feet wide by twelve long. The only access to the interior was through a small barred window low in the front face.

  “Finestra confessionis,” Vigor whispered, pointing to the window. “So one can observe the relics while kneeling.”

  Gray approached. Monk stood guard. He still didn’t like this situation. He bent and peered through the small window. Behind glass, a white silk-lined chamber opened.

  The bones had been removed, just as the monsignor had described. The Vatican was taking no chances. And neither would he.

  “The rectory is located off the church’s left side,” Vigor said, a bit too loudly. “That’s where the offices and apartments are. It’s connected through the sacristy.” He pointed across the church.

  As if responding to his signal, a door smacked open across the nave. Gray dropped to a knee. Monk yanked the monsignor behind a pillar, swinging up his shotgun.

  A single figure strode out, oblivious of the intruders.

  It was a young man dressed in black with a clerical collar.

  A priest.

  He was alone. He crossed and began lighting a set of candles on the far side of the altar.

  Gray waited until the man was only two yards away. Still, no others appeared. Slowly he gained his feet, coming into view.

  The priest froze when he spotted Gray, his arm half-raised in lighting another candle. His expression turned to shock when he spotted the pistol in Gray’s hand. “Chi sei?”

  Still, Gray hesitated.

  Vigor stepped out of hiding. “Padre…”

  The priest jumped, and his eyes flicked to the monsignor. He immediately noted the matching collar; confusion surpassed fear.

  “I am Monsignor Verona,” Vigor introduced, stepping forward. “Do not be afraid.”

  “Monsignor Verona?” Worry etched the man’s features. He backed a step.

  “What’s wrong?” Gray asked in Italian.

  The priest shook his head. “You can’t be Monsignor Verona.”

  Vigor stepped forward and showed him his Vatican ID.

  The man glanced from it back to Vigor.

  “But a…a man came here early this morning, just after dawn. A tall man. Very tall. With identification as Monsignor Verona. He bore papers with proper seals from the Vatican. To take the bones.”

  Gray exchanged a look with the monsignor. They had already been outmaneuvered. Instead of brute force, the Dragon Court had slipped in more slyly this time. By necessity. Because of the increased security. With the real Monsignor Verona believed dead, the Court had assumed his role. Like everything else, they must have known about Vigor’s side mission
here to collect the relics. They had used the intelligence to slip the last bones through the intensified security here.

  Gray shook his head. They continued to be a step behind.

  “Damn it,” Monk said.

  The priest frowned at him. Clearly he understood enough English to find affront at the man’s language in a house of God.

  “Scusi,” Monk responded.

  Gray understood Monk’s frustration, doubly so as mission leader. He bit back his own curse. They had moved too slowly, played too cautiously.

  His radio buzzed.

  Kat came on the line. She must have overheard enough of the conversation. “Is it all clear, Commander?”

  “Clear…and too late,” he answered back sourly.

  Kat and Rachel joined them. Vigor introduced the others.

  “So the bones are gone,” Rachel said.

  The priest nodded. “Monsignor Verona, if you’d like to see the paperwork, we have it in the safe in the sacristy. Maybe that would help.”

  “We could check it for fingerprints,” Rachel said tiredly, the exhaustion finally hitting her. “They may have been careless. Not expecting we’d be on their heels. It might flush out whoever betrayed us in the Vatican. It could be our only new lead.”

  Gray nodded. “Bag it up. We’ll see what we can find here.”

  Rachel and Monsignor Verona headed across the nave.

  Gray turned away and strode over to the sarcophagus.

  “Any ideas?” Monk asked.

  “We still have the gray powder we collected from the golden reliquary,” he said. “We’ll regroup in the Vatican, alert everyone of what’s happened, and test the powder more thoroughly.”

  As the sacristy door closed, Gray knelt down by the tiny window again, wondering if praying would help. “We should vacuum out the interior,” he said, struggling to remain clinical. “See if we can confirm the presence of the amalgam powder here, too.”

  He leaned closely, cocking his head, not sure what he was looking for. But he found it anyway. A mark on the silk-lined roof of the reliquary chamber. A red seal pressed into the white silk. A tiny curled dragon. The ink looked fresh…too fresh.

  But it was not ink….

  Blood.

  A warning left behind by the Dragon Lady.

  Gray straightened, suddenly knowing the truth.

  7

  ROLLING THE BONES

  JULY 25, 12:38 P.M.

  MILAN, ITALY

  ONCE INSIDE, the priest closed the door to the sacristy. It was the chamber where the clergy and altar boys robed themselves prior to Mass.

  Rachel heard the lock click behind her.

  She half turned and found a pistol leveled at her chest. Held in the hand of the priest. His eyes had gone as cold and hard as polished marble.

  “Don’t move,” he said firmly.

  Rachel backed a step. Vigor slowly raised his hands.

  To either side were closets hung with clerical garments and vestments, used daily by the priests to say Mass. A table held a row of silver chalices, haphazardly arranged for the same. A large gilded silver crucifix, mounted on a wrought-iron pole, leaned against one corner, meant to lead a processional.

  The door on the opposite end of the sacristy opened.

  A familiar bull of a man entered, filling the doorway. It was the man who attacked her in Cologne. He carried a long knife in one hand, the blade wet and bloody. He stepped into the room and used a blessed stole hanging in a closet to wipe it clean.

  Rachel felt Vigor wince next to her.

  The blood. The missing priests. Oh God…

  The tall man no longer wore a monk’s garb, but ordinary street clothes, charcoal khakis and a black T-shirt, over which he wore a dark suit jacket. He carried a pistol in a shoulder holster beneath it and wore a radio headset over one ear, the mike at his throat.

  “So you both survived Cologne,” he said, his eyes traveling up and down Rachel’s form, as if sizing up a prized calf at a country fair. “How very fortunate. Now we can become better acquainted.”

  He tipped his throat mike up and spoke into it. “Clear the church.”

  Behind her, Rachel heard doors slam open in the nave. Gray and the others would be caught off guard. She waited for a spate of gunfire or the blast of a grenade. But all she heard was the patter of boots on marble. The church remained silent.

  The same must have been noted by their captor.

  “Report,” he ordered into his mike.

  Rachel did not hear the reply, but she knew from the darkening of his face that the news was not good.

  He shoved forward, passing between Vigor and Rachel.

  “Watch them,” he growled to the fake priest. A second gunman had taken up post by the back exit to the sacristy.

  Their captor yanked open the door to the nave. An armed figure strode over to him, accompanied by the Eurasian woman, holding her Sig Sauer pistol at her side.

  “No one’s here,” the man reported.

  Rachel spotted other gunmen searching the main nave and side chapels.

  “All exits have been guarded.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “At all times.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The giant’s eyes settled on the Asian woman.

  She shrugged. “They might have found an open window.”

  With a grumble, he cast a final search around the basilica, then swung around with a sweep of his suit jacket. “Keep searching. Send three men to canvass the outside. They can’t have gotten far.”

  As the giant turned, Rachel made her move.

  Reaching behind her, she snatched the ceremonial pole with the silver crucifix and rammed its butt end square into the man’s solar plexus. He grunted and fell back into the priest. She yanked the pole back, under her elbow, and slammed the cross end into the gunman’s face behind her.

  His pistol blasted, but the shot went wild as he fell back out the door.

  Rachel followed him, tumbling out the back exit into a narrow hallway, her uncle on her heels. She slammed the door and propped the pole against it, jamming it against the hallway’s far wall.

  Beside her, Uncle Vigor smashed a heel on the fallen gunman’s hand. Bones cracked. He then kicked the man square in the face. His head bounced against the stone floor with a thud, then his form went slack.

  Rachel bent down and grabbed his pistol.

  Crouched, she searched both ways down the windowless hall. No other men were about. The additional forces must have been placed to ambush Gray and his team. A large crash rattled the door in its frame. The Bull was trying to break through.

  She dropped flat to the floor and searched beneath the jam. She watched the play of light and shadow. She aimed for darkness and fired.

  The bullet sparked off the marble floor, but she heard a satisfying bellow of surprise. A little hotfoot should slow the Bull.

  She rolled to her feet. Uncle Vigor had crossed down the hall a few steps.

  “I hear someone groaning,” he whispered. “Back here.”

  “We don’t have time.”

  Ignoring her, Uncle Vigor continued deeper. Rachel followed. Without a frame of reference, one way was no worse than the other. They reached a door cracked open. Rachel heard a moan from inside.

  She shouldered in, gun ready.

  The room had once been a small dining hall. But now it was a slaughterhouse. One priest lay facedown in a pool of blood on the floor, the back of his head a pulp of brain, bone, and hair. Another black-robed figure lay sprawled on one of the tables, spread-eagled, tied to the bench legs. An older priest. His robes had been stripped to the waist. His chest was a pool of blood. His head was missing both ears. There was also the smell of burned flesh.

  Tortured.

  To death.

  A sobbing moan sounded to the left. On the floor, tied hand and foot, was a young man, stripped to boxer shorts, gagged. He had a black eye and blood dribbled from both nostrils. From his half-naked form, it was p
lain where the clerical garb for the fake priest had come from.

  Vigor came around the table. When the man spotted him, he struggled, eyes wild, frothing around his gag.

  Rachel held back.

  “It’s all right,” Vigor soothed.

  The man’s eyes fixed on Vigor’s collar. He stopped struggling, but he was still wracked with sobs. Vigor reached out to free the gag. The man shook and spat it out. Tears flowed down his cheeks.

  “Molti…grazie,” he said, his voice weak with shock.

  Vigor cut the plastic ties with a knife.

  As he worked, Rachel locked the door to the dining room and jammed a chair under the knob for good measure. There were no windows, only a door leading deeper into the rectory. She kept her gun pointed that way and crossed to a phone on the wall. No dial tone. The phone lines had been cut.

  She fished out Gray’s cell phone and dialed 112, the universal EU emergency number. Once connected, she identified herself as a Carabinieri lieutenant, though she didn’t give her name, and called for an immediate medical, police, and military response.

  With the alarm raised, she pocketed her phone.

  Outgunned, it was all she could do.

  For herself…and for the others.

  12:45 P.M.

  FOOTSTEPS APPROACHED Gray’s hiding place. He held perfectly still, not breathing. The steps stopped nearby. He strained to listen.

  A man spoke. A familiar voice, angry. It was the leader of the monks. “The Milan authorities have been alerted.”

  There was no reply, but Gray was certain two people had approached.

  “Seichan?” the man asked. “Did you hear me?”

  A bored voice answered. It was equally recognizable. The Dragon Lady. But now she had a name. Seichan.

  “They must have gone out a window, Raoul,” she said, returning the favor and naming the leader. “Sigma is slippery. I warned you as much. We’ve secured the remaining bones. We should be gone before Sigma returns with reinforcements. The police may already be on the way.”

  “But that bitch…”

  “You can settle matters with her later.”