"Worry about me later. Why hasn"t the bomb exploded?"
Doc pulled out a knife and pried the box open. It clearly wasn"t a detonator-we"d all be dead by now. "It may have started a timer, or locked out some sort of system to stop the bomb. My guess is that it"s somehow rigged so that once the toggles were thrown, it couldn"t be stopped. It also might be a blind."
"There"s definitely a bomb downstairs."
Doc nodded, but I saw his point. Backa.s.s had all but given me the unit. He knew I"d trace the wire down and try to disarm the bomb.
His way, maybe, of guaranteeing I"d be inside when it blew.
With the help of a pair of bolt cutters, the gate was removed and the security people surged downstairs. Doc, Danny, and I joined the flow. Within a few seconds, we all reached another gate. As a carabinieri struggled with the bolt cutter, one of the Digos supervisors suggested bringing a blowtorch down. That would have gotten us past the gate all right-right up to the big pearly one.
Where we might be headed at any moment anyway.
I twisted my fingers into the wire and with the help of one of the security people snapped the gate off its restraints after about two-thirds had been cut away. As we made our way down to the rooms that had been filled with explosives, a second group of security and ROS bomb people broke through the gates on the other side. Within seconds, they began dismantling the major components of the bomb, using a fire-brigade approach to carry out the large bottles of explosives through the winding corridors.
Which, frankly, was probably more dangerous than using a blowtorch on the gates.
"The wire snakes through over there," said one of the bomb people as we examined the bomb from our side of the chamber.
"Then whatever"s going to detonate it is in the other direction," I said, pointing to the right side of the room. "Let"s look."
The others didn"t completely believe me-and all right, yes, it was a guess-but we had enough people to clear components from both sides. Rather than completely clearing the s.p.a.ce on my side, I had just the top layer removed, enough so I could squeeze in.
"The wire-it ends! It"s not connected!" yelled someone in Italian on the other end of the chamber.
The others started murmuring words like "fake" in Italian. I kept crawling. About two-thirds of the way into the large chamber, along a foundation wall dating to the first basilica, I saw a large black suitcase tucked between a trio of bottles.
"Doc!" I yelled. Then I scrunched around so I could lift one of the bottles out.
That was all I said, but Doc knew what I meant. He stopped the rest of the chain gang and reorganized the men, so that when I managed to pull the bottle up over my body and squeeze it over my legs, someone was there to grab it.
And drop it.
Into Trace Dahlgren"s arms, who walked up to the pile of bottles at just that moment. She fell back, tottering under the weight and not quite realizing what she had. But before her lovely b.u.t.t could hit the ground it was caught by two of the luckiest ROS agents in the world.
You can call Trace"s timely arrival a miracle, if you want. Or you can be like her, and b.i.t.c.h and moan that the idiot security people had detained her for the past ten minutes, or she would have been there ten minutes earlier.
I pulled the suitcase out and slid it back to Doc, then scrambled as gingerly as I could to get out. Doc began heading upstairs to the main floor of the church, but the fire brigade of bomb components blocked his way.
"This way," I yelled to him, pointing down the corridor. "Down here."
"There"s no exit," said one of the Vatican people.
"There will be soon if we don"t disable the bomb," I said.
The corridor opened into a large room that had once been part of a mausoleum of a well-to-do second-century Roman family. Constantine had had it filled with rubble when he built the first St. Peter"s. Now the Roman ghosts watched us as Doc examined the bag.
"I think it"s b.o.o.by-trapped," he said. He had managed to pry the side near the latch open just enough to reveal a wire.
"Maybe we can cut open the side."
"Maybe it"ll explode before we do. I"d bet there"s something along the lines of Semtex packed around the exterior."
"Better off taking it outside," said Danny, who with Trace had just caught up to us.
I bent down. Doc wedged the knife into the side a little more, twisting gently. I could see a liquid crystal watch face, but the digits were blocked by the wires and the knife blade.
"Definitely a timer," I told them.
Doc gave the suitcase a pensive stare. Bomb-disposal teams have fancy X-ray machines and robot disablers; I"ve got Doc. He pried the lid up every so slightly, then a little more, then a little more.
"I remember a bomb like this I saw once in Egypt," he said. "They had it wired so that if you snapped open the latch, it would blow. But they had a way of disabling that. Pretty d.a.m.n clever, actually. Too clever, I thought. The only reason you"d want another wire like that, would be if you thought you were going to screw up. And who the h.e.l.l plans to screw up?"
"Would you get to the f.u.c.king point?" blurted Trace.
I put my hand on her shoulder.
"I am getting to the point," said Doc. "But then I realized that it wasn"t just in case you screwed up-it was to confuse someone who was trying to defeat the bomb. Because you would look at two wires, right, and you wouldn"t know which one was which. We need some wires with clips to extend the circuit so we can clip it."
Danny went in search of the bomb squad people to get what Doc needed. Trace took out her flashlight and we went back to examining the suitcase.
There were two wires, just as Doc had predicted. He used Trace"s knife to slip them out, pushing gingerly. They were twisted together, and there was less than two inches of play.
"One of these sides must come off," he said.
"Let"s try to get a look at the timer," I said. "Trace, my eyes are for s.h.i.t."
"About time you realized you need gla.s.ses," she said, squatting down.
"f.u.c.k you, too."
"Thirty seconds."
Doc and I looked at each other. Before either one of us could say anything, Trace added, "Twenty-eight seconds."
"We have to take a chance that one of these wires will turn off the latch wiring," said Doc. "And then we have to disable the timer."
"Which one?"
"Fifty-fifty."
"You don"t know?"
Doc put his knife blade between the wires and took a breath. His fingers twitched, but he didn"t cut either one. He turned his head toward me and opened his mouth to say something. But he couldn"t force anything out.
"Which one?" I said.
Doc shook his head.
"Doc?"
"I-I don"t know if I can guess."
"I"ll make the call," I said, grabbing his hand. "See you two in heaven. Or the other place."
*Digos is an acronym for Divisione Investigazioni Generali e Operazioni Speciali, but Italians don"t capitalize the letters.
16.
Sure is hot down here where I"m writing this.
But not that hot. Virginia gets its heat spells every now and again.
I got the right wire. Once the suitcase was open, Doc"s trembling fingers had an easy time disabling the guts of the bomb. We figured out later that the timer must have been set when the bomb was originally planted. It had been set to go off before the ma.s.s, at about the time His Holiness the pope was originally scheduled to enter the basilica.
As a matter of fact, the pope had chosen that moment to enter the church and was upstairs almost directly above me when I chose which wire to cut. Informed of the situation, the pontiff had insisted on going to the church over the strongest possible objections of his aides and the security people. G.o.d, he said, called him there.
So maybe it wasn"t luck at all that I picked the right wire. Ma.s.s began even as the security people continued hauling the bomb materials away. The faithful flooded into the square and then the church, overwhelming the security forces. Miraculously, no one was hurt. Afterward, people spoke of the ma.s.s as a once-in-a-lifetime and even once-in-a-century event. The media called it the most wondrous service since the basilica had been opened.
I missed it myself. I"d been spending so much time in church lately I figured G.o.d wouldn"t mind if I took the day off.
They found five charred bodies in the wrecked helicopter. One of them is believed to be Backa.s.s"s-but since they didn"t have dental or DNA records for him, no one is one hundred percent sure. I like to think of him as a crispy critter right now, though knowing Backa.s.s, this may be another one of his convoluted plots. In any event, I haven"t gotten any faxes signed "Saladin" since the helicopter went down.
As we"d figured out earlier, BetaGo was a legitimate company that had been infiltrated by Backa.s.s and his a.s.sociates. He had already spent considerable time cleaning up his tracks before I was "hired," but investigators believe they have a few more promising leads on terrorist groups and fronts that they hadn"t know about. The terror network in Thailand was broken up following the raids and the attack on the airport and airplane; how long before a new one forms is anyone"s guess.
My guess is thirty seconds.
As for the second coming of the blackshirts-for the moment, it remained too far-fetched for me to put much stock in. The Grand European Conspiracy-"Power Broker" and the continuing machinations of P2-well, I won"t say I didn"t believe them exactly, but after my fun and games in the pope"s backyard I wasn"t in much of a mood to go probing around in search of more problems in the shadows. Bishop Marcinkus, the plot to repurify Europe-it seemed too far-fetched to be anything but the paranoid ramblings of an ex-CIA informer down on his luck. The fact that Backa.s.s had endorsed the story didn"t exactly lend it any credibility.
I later found out that P2 wasn"t a figment of Backa.s.s"s imagination, nor was it a diversion. But I"m not telling that story right now. Maybe I never will...
My face may have looked like s.h.i.t, but the cuts that had caused all the blood to pour out weren"t life-threatening. I have so many scars on my body already that three or four more weren"t even noticeable. I"d broken one of my ribs somewhere-maybe even back in Thailand-and twisted the h.e.l.l out of my right knee, but none of my injuries were serious enough to require more than the attention of Dr. Bombay.
The Vatican kindly offered one of its aircraft to take me and the rest of my people home. I accepted, and just to show my grat.i.tude, replaced the gear we"d removed from the airplanes.
Eighteen and a half hours after defusing the bomb in the dank catacombs beneath St. Peter"s, I arrived back at Rogue Manor. I headed straight to bed. Thirty-six hours later, I woke to find Karen hovering over me. Either I was already in heaven or I ought to send my well-earned pa.s.s to the pearly gates back to St. Peter and earn it again some other time.
Karen had come to take personal charge of the next stage of my convalescence. Which duly began with a light kiss and a prescription that even a Rogue blushes to mention....
Other books in the Rogue Warrior series:.
Rogue Warrior.
Rogue Warrior: Red Cell.
Rogue Warrior: Green Team Rogue Warrior: Task Force Blue.
Rogue Warrior: Designation Gold Rogue Warrior: SEAL Force Alpha.
Rogue Warrior: Option Delta.
Rogue Warrior: Echo Platoon Rogue Warrior: Detachment Bravo.
Rogue Warrior: Violence of Action Rogue Warrior: Vengeance.
Also by Richard Marcinko:.
Leadership Secrets of the Rogue Warrior.
The Rogue Warrior"s Strategy for Success.
The Real Team.