Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [192]
“Hercules.” Harry moved quickly, kneeling down, looking at him. “Jesus God,” he whispered, his hand moving in to feel his neck for a pulse.
Then Hercules opened one eye, and his hand reached up and wiped the blood from the other. Abruptly he sat up, blinking the blood away. A second wipe from his hand took a huge smear of the blood from his face. A clear flesh wound with the sheer white of a powder burn ran, like an arrow, up the side of it.
“Can’t kill me,” he said. “Not like that.”
In the distance came the sound of a train whistle. Finding a crutch, Hercules pulled himself up.
“The engine, Mr. Harry.” Blood or not, Hercules eyes danced. “The engine!”
156
ADRIANNA CAME OUT OF THE BUILDING TO see Eaton running up the road behind St. Peter’s, then he vanished like a wisp in the smoke.
“Skycam, what do you have on the engine?” she spat into the phone as she ran, cutting up the hill and across the grass toward the Palace of the Government, the Vatican’s city hall. She was three minutes, maybe four, from the railroad station.
ELENA PULLED DANNY BACK into the overhang of a tree near the Church of San Stefano and waited for the helicopter to pass over. It did, then abruptly swung back toward the station.
At the same moment, Danny’s cell phone chirped.
“Harry—“
“We have Marsciano with us. What about the engine?”
Elena could feel the pound of her heart at Harry’s voice. He was all right, at least for the moment.
“Harry—,” Danny said, “we’ve got air cover. I don’t know who it is. Go the other way, come down by Vatican Radio and in past the Ethiopian College. By then we’ll be closer, and I can see what the hell’s going on.”
10:50 A.M.
“Stay here!” Roscani yelled at Scala and Castelletti. Then, turning, he ran down the track after the little oily-green engine just as it chugged in through the open gates and vanished in the massive hang of smoke.
For a moment Scala and Castelletti stood open-mouthed, watching him. Little by little Roscani had been walking down the track following the engine, but his move and the quickness of it had caught them by surprise. Suddenly they started to run after him. A dozen yards later they stopped as they saw him reach the opening in the wall and disappear into the gloom. From where they stood, it looked like the entire Vatican was either on fire or fully under siege.
Suddenly an Italian Army helicopter roared in directly overhead. At the same time Farel’s voice crackled loudly over the radio, identifying himself and telling the WNN Skycam helicopter to vacate Vatican airspace immediately.
“DAMMIT,” ADRIANNA SAID at the order. Then she heard the rotors overhead crank up and her Skycam pull away.
“Keep south of the wall,” she shouted into the phone. “When that engine comes out, stay with it!”
FOR SOME REASON THE WORK engine had stopped just outside the open gates, and Roscani crossed the tracks behind it quickly, moving to his right and past the station. Coughing, his eyes tearing with the smoke, he pulled open his jacket and slid a 9mm Beretta automatic from his belt. Straining to see, he went up the road in the direction of the tower. What he was doing was totally illegal, but he didn’t care. The law was fucked and could go to hell. He’d made the decision in an instant as he walked down the tracks after the work engine and saw the huge gates pull back for it. The open portal in the wall was all he needed, and he went for it just like that, all fire and emotion and the knowledge that he had to do something.
And now, as he fought the smoke and tearing eyes and just tried to breathe, he prayed to God he wouldn’t lose his bearings and get lost, that he would somehow find the Addisons before Farel’s gunmen or Thomas Kind did.
* * *
THOMAS KIND RAN FORWARD, Walther mascinen pistole in hand, wiping his eyes, trying not to cough with the acrid smoke. It was already hard enough to see anything, and the physical act of coughing jarred and threw him off even more.
Running across the lawn, jumping a low hedge,