The devils protege, p.1
THE DEVIL’S PROTÉGÉ, page 1
The Devil's Protege
The Vatican Knights, Volume 31
Rick Jones
Published by Rick Jones, 2023.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
THE DEVIL'S PROTEGE
First edition. November 18, 2023.
Copyright © 2023 Rick Jones.
Written by Rick Jones.
THE DEVIL’S PROTÉGÉ
by
Rick Jones
© 2023 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: rick@rickjonz.com
Visit Rick Jones on the World Wide Web at: http://www.rickjonz.com/rickjonz.com
Table of Contents
Prologue
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
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
Epilogue
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 (a prequel)
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
The Crimson Dagger
The Goliath Chamber
The Vladorian Keep
The Baal Manifesto
Archangel
The Venetian Code
The Necrology Report
The Herod Conspiracy
The Devil’s Protégé
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)
City at Ocean’s Edge (Pending)
The Hunter Series
Night of the Hunter
The Black Key
Theater of Operation
Stand Alone Novels
The Menagerie
Jurassic Run
Mausoleum 2069
with RICK CHESLER
First Strike
A Big Shout Out to Charles Wallace
--Thank You
Also, and long overdue, a huge ‘thank you’ to Reggie Weems and Ken Casey. If not for them, I wouldn’t have become a writer.
PROLOGUE
Mindanao, Philippines
As the small crests glimmered like tinsel under the full moon, five Kevlar helmets slowly and deliberately breached the water's surface rising from the shallows with their NV monocular lenses pointed forward.
They were silent, nothing but dark shapes under the illumination of the moon’s rays as they took to the beach and hunkered down, the five-man team a collective of one mind, one body, one soul.
Beyond a tree line not far from shore, voices of drunken laughter and banter sounded from a campsite not too deep inside the jungle thicket.
Slowly, the team leader raised a gloved hand and made a few simple gestures for his team to fan out. As the soft lapping of waves sounded against the sand, each member of the Vatican Knights broke formation and divided up.
* * *
From within the thicket where the shadows were their deepest, Isaiah watched a Filipino exit a hut drawing his zipper and cinching his belt. After the Filipino walked away, Isaiah made his way to the opening that was covered by a burlap sheet. Using the point of his suppressed weapon to draw the sheet aside, he could see a small fire burning in a pit that cast a hellfire glow, the room darkly red.
Isaiah poked his head through the opening, drawing the burlap further aside.
Two women, half-clad in robes that clung to them like strips of torn drapery, were tethered by leather straps to a wooden post. Isaiah, moving silently, noticed that their veil headwear had been discarded to the room’s corner as unneedful things. A rosary of Jesus hung from a wooden beam as an obscene ornament, the image rotating slowly from side to side and upside down. Quietly, Isaiah plucked it free from the beam and pocketed the crucifix.
A knot of wood exploded in the firepit, startling Isaiah as he immediately turned his weapon on kindling that burned down to hotly glowing pieces of charred wood.
Quietly, the Vatican Knight advanced on the two women who remained hitched to the post with their exposed flesh carrying the marks of recent lashings. Their heads were cast downward, unmoving, the pair in the repose of defeat and submission.
Isaiah moved across the dirt floor, inching closer, the operative so seasoned that he did not leave a stamped imprint against the dirt floor; no trace evidence that he had been there at all.
Then from behind . . .
. . . Outside the hut and speaking in Tagalog . . .
. . . Voices that approached the lean-to.
Two Filipinos lifted the burlap doorway and entered the hut, both inebriated, both in high spirits. A fire burned inside the pit, its cast of illumination dim, the room getting closer to a Stygian darkness.
After leaning their AK47s against the wall, two men in drunken revelry began to tease the women with malicious amusement. When one of them began to undo his pants, something blacker than black emerged from the shadows, an alpha predator.
The terrorist with his pants lowered tried to reach for his weapon, stumbled, and fell, his movements awkward. The other was able to put a hand around the barrel of his rifle. But the Shadowman was quick and agile and moved with poetic speed and motion.
Isaiah grabbed the terrorist’s shoulder and whipped him around, the two face to face as the terrorist’s eyes focused on the stark white band of his attacker’s Roman Catholic collar. His mind roiled with immediate guilt, knowing that God would forsake him due to the sum of his decisions for a lifetime of doing wrong against others.
Divos, patawarin mo ako sa aking— (God, forgive me for my--).
His attacker’s moves were fast and fluid, blow after blow connecting with speed that could not be registered. Bones crunched, the bridge of the nose, the cheek, the area of the jawline where the mandible connected to the skull, his features becoming distorted as internal stars rotated inside the terrorist’s head.
And then merciful darkness.
The second terrorist, now reaching for his weapon with his fingers grazing the barrel, was quickly neutralized when a foot came down on the back of his head and drove his face to the earth’s floor. He saw darkness and smelled blood, then the foot came down for a second time, a third, the man rendered unconscious.
When all was quiet, Isaiah went to the women who were half-clothed and unresponsive.
“Sisters,” he whispered.
One stirred. The other remained unresponsive.
Isaiah looked into the eyes of the nun who appeared distant but not co mpletely detached.
She saw the cleric’s collar and smiled, knowing that salvation had come in the name of the Lord. In the subsequent moment, she looked skyward and mouthed ‘Thank you.’
“I’m from the Vatican,” he whispered.
Checking the other sister, he placed a crooked finger beneath her jaw and lifted her head. The nun’s eyes held a milky sheen of opacity, meaning that she had been dead for several hours.
Lowering her head softly, Isaiah removed his knife and cut the leather twines that bound the surviving nun to the pole. With her wrists red and raw from the bindings, she fell into Isaiah’s arms, the woman deadweight.
“The priests,” Isaiah asked her softly, “do you know where they are?”
“No.”
“What about the sisters? There were six of you. Do you know where they are?”
“I hear them screaming often . . . They’re close.”
Isaiah lowered his lip mic. “Kimball.”
“Go.”
“I have one asset, the other’s neutralized. It appears that the assets are spread throughout the compound.”
“Copy that.”
Isaiah, aiding the nun to her feet, said, “You’re going home.”
* * *
Jeremiah heard the exchange between Isaiah and Kimball over his earbud about the detainees scattered throughout the compound.
Using the sight of his NV monocular, Jeremiah made his way quietly through the brush. Pushing aside a large fan leaf, he found himself before three huts with burlap doors. Four men sat outside the huts as three passed around a bottle. The fourth was asleep against the wall, embracing his assault rifle despite loud laughter and machismo talk motivated by drunken bravado.
When one of the terrorists stood, stretched, and then peeled aside the burlap to enter the hut, Jeremiah caught a glimpse of a cleric who was bound by his wrists to a header beam with his feet a few inches above the floor.
Jeremiah, lifting his monocular over his Kevlar helmet, festooned his weapon across his back and slowly removed his combat knife from its sheath, a long draw. With feline silence, the Vatican Knight set his sights and approached his quarry.
* * *
Rodrigo Ramos had always been a sadistic malcontent who had no real cause outside of creating chaos. He had no ambitions, no goals, and no altruism. His desired passion was to hurt others so that he could witness firsthand that they suffered more than he did, and that their lives were worse off than his.
Less than a week ago, his faction breached the Rectory of St. Agatha’s Cathedral in an early morning raid, abducted three priests and six nuns, and demanded a ransom from the Vatican of five million U.S. dollars. Three days later, Ramos began to believe that the Vatican had forsaken the abductees since he had heard nothing from the Holy See.
So, here they hung, three priests stripped to their undergarments, hanging by their wrists from leather straps tied to an overhead beam. Their bodies swung in lazy half circles from right to left, then from left to right. Blood from raw and chafed skin ran down to their armpits and over the bumps of their ribcages.
After setting his assault rifle by the door, Ramos, going to a water bucket, grabbed a ladle, filled it with dirty water, and then moved before the priests. Each cleric eyed the ladle as dried tongues ran over cracked lips, the pain of doing so causing them to wince.
“Water,” said Ramos. “Yes.”
The priests nodded.
Ramos held the ladle close to the first father’s lips, the priest inching his head towards the dipper, ready to drink. As his lips were about to wrap around the spoon’s edge to sip water, Ramos pulled it away and laughed cruelly, the water spilling to the dirt floor.
Tossing the spoon back into the bucket, he said, “Have God provide you with water.”
Peeling back the burlap door, he noted that his teammates were nowhere in sight. Yet their weapons remained against the hut’s outer wall, a cardinal sin since no one was to leave their weapon alone.
Ramos cocked his head to the side like a baffled dog, sensing danger. A low-level fire continued to burn in the pit which shed light that barely reached the fringe of the tree line. Beyond that, absolute darkness.
“Arturo?”
Nothing.
“Crisanto?”
Silence.
“Bayani?”
There was a crackling of fire in the pit, nothing more.
Slowly, Rodrigo grabbed his assault rifle and leveled it at the tree line. “Arturo . . . Crisanto . . . Bayani.”
Nothing.
“I will shoot.”
Silence.
Rodrigo Ramos started to pull on the trigger when a hand cupped his forehead from behind and drew his head back to expose his throat. A knife’s blade soon followed, the smooth arc slicing Rodrigo Ramos’ throat into a second horrible grin. As Rodrigo took to a knee after dropping his weapon, and with his hands now to his throat, the terrorist was bleeding profusely through the gaps of his fingers. His eyes flared with alarm, knowing that his life was coming to a final chapter. As he turned coughing red mist to face his opponent, he saw his black-faced attacker and the boon of gadgetry that adorned his helmet. But what caught his dying attention was the Roman Catholic collar around his enemy’s neck, a beacon of salvation, though not his, leaving Ramos to wonder if he was damned. With that thought in his mind, Rodrigo Ramos fell hard to the ground with a face-first approach.
* * *
Father Antimone was swinging from leather tethers that bit deep into his wrist. To his left was Father Cuoco. To his right, Father Rosa. They had been hanging for days with their arms turning numb and their hands turning blueish-black. At times, Fathers Cuoco and Rosa would speak nonsensically as though talking to spiritual beings either in prayer or in conversation, something Father Antimone couldn’t quite determine since he was also becoming feverish. But when he saw the burlap door peel back and a man enter wearing a cleric’s collar and battle attire, Father Antimone thought it was Archangel Micheal, the most cherished of God’s warriors, coming to claim him.
Father Antimone, smiling, softly managed, “Thank you, Lord Jesus.”
Fathers Cuoco and Rosa followed in response that was more of a knee-jerk reaction with the two repeating, “Thank you, Lord Jesus,” though both men kept their eyes closed as neither saw who they were thanking.
When Father Antimone saw Archangel Michael hold up a knife, he thought how wonderfully close the Archangel appeared before him as a simple man, and not as an angel with gilded wings.
Reaching up to cut the straps, Archangel Micheal, with a voice that was honey-sweet, said, “You’re safe now, Father. All of you are going home to the Vatican.”
Father Antimone oddly wondered why they were going to the Vatican . . .
. . . Instead of Heaven.
* * *
That left four nuns outstanding somewhere within the compound.
Job, the gentle giant from Germany, was using the brush as cover when he came upon a small clearing with five huts situated in the form of a pentagram. A pit burned in the center as three members of the cell wandered about the area with holstered sidearms.
Job pushed aside the large fan blades of indigenous brush and left the tree line, the man making sure he was not within their eyeshot. Moving quietly behind the huts, he was able to use the point of his combat knife to push aside the palm fronds that made up the walls of the huts. The first hut was empty, as was the second hut, nothing but marked crates filled with goods—food, bottled water, ammunition, weapons.
Inside the third hut, the largest, Job used the point of his knife to cut a hole through the palm leaves. Tied to a pole in the center of the hut were two scantily clad nuns whose coverings were little more than torn rags. Standing over them was a terrorist overseer whose brandished knife had a mirror polish to it, the man taunting the women in Tagalog.
