The Iscariot Agenda (6 page)

CHAPTER NINE

The Vatican secured an immediate flight on Alitalia Airlines from Rome to Las Vegas, Nevada, with a stop in Boston for refueling. On his journey Kimball carried clothing and, in a secured panel of his luggage, dual KA-BAR commando knives. On his person he carried a false passport, which was provided to him by Vatican officials in order to protect his identity in the States, since he was an absconder presumed dead by the United States government. If it should be discovered that he was still alive and holding secrets regarding the reprehensible dealings of past presidential administrations—the murders, the in-house assassinations, the monolithic political cover-ups—Kimball would most likely end up at the wrong end of a Company man’s Glock and disappear forever.

Sitting alone in one of the two seats in the first-class row, Kimball sat in the aisle seat. An open manila envelope lay beside him in the other. In his hands were the dossiers of the surviving members of his old team. And Kimball had to wonder how detailed information was gathered so quickly by the SIV.

And then he looked up, his eyes starting with enlightenment:
They have a file on me
, he realized.
All this information was already in my file
.

Giving a sidelong glance for a cursory view outside the window, Kimball saw the choppy waves of the Atlantic below, the frothing mounds churning up specks of white against a plain of ocean blue, as the jumbo jet made its westbound trajectory to the United States at a clip of five hundred sixty miles per hour.

He checked his watch: another four hours to go before landing in Boston, then another six to Las Vegas; more than enough time to glean information from the book-thick dossiers.

Turning back to the folder in hand, he took note of the before-and-after photos of the next target, and then closed his eyes, biting softly on his lower lip.

What Ian McMullen had become from what he was could not be considered anything less than a fall from grace. In a photo taken within the last two years, according to its time stamp, the former commando appeared to be thirty pounds less with an aged and crestfallen face that looked thirty years older than what he really was. Obviously he had given himself totally to drink and had become a man who no longer possessed a soul, ambition or hope.

For years he’d been living from shelter to shelter in the hot, sweltering Las Vegas streets. The climate sapping his body dry the same way his past had sucked his will to press on.

Kimball opened his eyes and saw the earlier photo of a man with a strong jaw line, thick neck, and the red handlebar mustache bracketing Irish lips. What he saw was a man whose face had slimmed to hatchet thinness, now dirty and soiled, with unkempt hair mostly matted, and eyes that had gone from the color of bottle green to drab olive.

What Kimball was looking at was the photo of a vagrant who had no hope of returning to his former self as a top-of-the-line soldier, no matter how hard he fought. The man was too far gone in a battle he could not fight or win. And just like that, Kimball’s team had dwindled from four to three.

Placing the photo aside, Kimball picked up the presumed target after McMullen, a man by the name of Victor Hawk, a Native American Indian of the Mescalero Apache Nation in New Mexico. Apparently he returned to his people after his service to the American government, collecting a retired federal stipend and using his time to raise horses on a ranch just outside the reservation.

As a soldier the man was brutal, specializing in stealth kills by combining the immaculate expertise of his people and training of a soldier, then plying them as part of his skill set as an unseen assassin. With his unit branding him ‘The Ghost,’ it was said in larger-than-life form that Hawk’s target would see nothing but jungle, then a flicker, and then the target would be dead as the Apache drove a knife across his throat or a garrote around his neck.

Now having aged with his face growing heavier and jowls beginning to form, with raven hair beginning to show streaks of silver and a belly beginning to show a paunch, Kimball could only wonder if anybody in his team remained in fighting condition. 

Placing the photos aside he picked up the dossiers of last two members with a little more hope and optimism. Jeff and Stanley Hardwick, both crazy in a reckless sort of way because of their never wavering lust for danger and their constant need for an adrenaline rush, looked well-muscled and cut today, as they did years ago.

Known as the Brothers Grimm, one being a world-class sniper and the other a demolitions expert, they both exceeded in other areas of expertise including martial arts and double-edged weapons play. But they also had a proclivity for being insubordinate, the brothers often teaming up against other members due to their My-Way-Or-The-Highway mentality.

Currently the brothers ran an Army and Navy surplus store in Baltimore, and possessed a lengthy record of misdemeanor convictions for Drunk and Disorderly, Disorderly Conduct, and Obstruction of a Public Officer.

Kimball nodded.
Some things never change
.

Placing the materials aside, and then rubbing the fatigue from his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, Kimball attempted to formulate a plan. But how do you do that with a vagrant, an aging Indian, and two out-of-control maniacs who never really grew up?

More so, how do find someone who doesn’t have a face or name?

That’s easy: You let them find you
.

After taking in a deep breath and then letting it out with an equally long sigh, Kimball picked up the photo of McMullen and considered this:
When this assassin comes looking for you, I’ll be there.

The plane continued on its westward flight.

CHAPTER TEN

Las Vegas
, Nevada

The Entertainment Capital of the World always lived up to its billing. Lights and glitter, hotels built as facsimiles to Paris, Monte Carlo, Hollywood and Egypt, others to Mandalay, New York City, and to the Greatest Show on Earth, the carnival setting of Circus Circus.

However, where there is light there is darkness. Just beyond the downtown section of The Experience on Freemont, and less than a mile away, were homeless shelters and soup kitchens.

Sidewalks were cluttered with makeshift shelters, the homeless, and individuals in need of psychotropic medications. Gutters were filled with trash and refuse, the surrounding buildings old and empty, like the people who surrounded them. In the background the skyline of downtown Las Vegas can be seen, such as the towers of Lady Luck, the Golden Nugget and Union Plaza.

On Owens Street a man exits from a soup kitchen whose walls are covered with gangland graffiti and heads east towards the Boulevard. He is wearing a moth-eaten overcoat, and though it’s unbearably hot, he wears it because it’s his prized possession. He wears fingerless gloves and grease-stained pants. His hair is long, matted, and in a wild tangle. And his face hangs with the looseness of a rubber mask that has yellowed with the sickness of a dying liver. To look at him no one would have guessed that he was once one of the deadliest warriors to have walked the planet.

Instead, Ian McMullen was now a vagrant in the twilight of his life.

After reaching the Boulevard, he turned toward the downtown area to secure a spot to panhandle enough change to buy a bottle of cheap wine.

After passing the streets of Washington and Bonanza with downtown in sight, McMullen could feel something that had long been latent, that feeling an animal gets when sensing great danger.

Stopping, and then turning, his body having arched to the shape of a question mark over time, McMullen took in the non-descript faces of tourists and locals, probing micro-expressions that may give them away as somebody on a potential hunt.     

Scanning and appraising for that give-away tic, he cited nothing but people laughing and smiling, people lumped together in this city where sin reigns and morality nothing more than an afterthought.

McMullen chortled in self-chastisement. Not only was he aging exponentially, but he was becoming paranoid.

Standing in the crossway where Freemont and the Boulevard meet, with the sun having settled and the Vegas lights as dazzling as Paris along the Seine, McMullen began his nightly ritual by holding his hand out imploringly. “Please, can anyone spare change for a veteran . . . Change for a vet . . . Any amount will help.”  And then he would recite it all over again, word per word, same pitch and tempo.

But for the most part, Ian McMullen was hardly noticed.

“Please, can anyone spare change for a veteran . . . Change for a vet . . . Any amount will help.”

While halfway through his chant a man slapped a bill into McMullen’s gloved hand. “For a few moments of your time,” he told him. And then the man curled McMullen’s fingers over the money, hiding the amount of its denomination. “All I ask—if you’ll grant me the privilege—is a few moments of your time.”

McMullen withdrew his hand and opened his fingers. Inside was a crumpled fifty dollar bill.

McMullen quickly evaluated the man who was rugged in appearance with strong features that were rawboned and angular. Around the neckline of the man’s shirt was the pristine white collar worn by the clergy.

“And what can I do you?” He placed the fifty into the side pocket of his overcoat.

“Please,” said the clergy, “I have a parish on Fourth Street. Can we talk there?”

“I’m no trick, man.”

The cleric smiled. “It’s not like that.”

“It better not be.”

The cleric gestured his hand in the direction for McMullen to take. “Please.”

Both men began to walk.

“So, what is this about since it’s worth fifty dollars of your hard-earned money, Father?”

“Insight,” he said.

“Insight? That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Well, Father, you’re in luck. Today I have a special. Fifty dollars for all the insight you want.”

The cleric smiled. “Then let’s begin with why you have chosen to live like you do.”

The Irishman hesitated, as if searching for the proper words. Then, “It’s not as much as a way of choice as it is fate,” he finally said.

“So you’re a fatalist?”

“I believe a man creates his own fate by the actions of his past. And sometimes a man has entrenched himself so deeply that no matter what, he can never dig himself out.”

“I see. So what you’re saying is that you’re so deeply entrenched, that hope and salvation is well beyond your reach.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

They walked slowly towards Fourth Street, a quiet moment passing between them.

“May I then ask why you gave up the right to seek redemption—to better yourself?”

McMullen shrugged. “I’m not a good person.”

The cleric stopped. “Why do you say that?”

The one-time assassin stared him directly in the eyes. “If somebody says that they wished they could turn the clock back and do it all over again, then they haven’t lived life the right way. A day doesn’t go by without me wishing I could do it all over again.”

“But isn’t life full of struggles?”

“True. But my life, Father, jumped the shark years ago.”

“Jumped the shark?”

“It’s a term that means that something has lost its way and no matter how hard you try, there’s no real way back.”

“So you’re lost?”

“For some time now—yes.”

“You do know that confession is good for the soul, don’t you? It opens the doorway to redemption.”

“Yeah, well, even God turns away those who don’t care or give a damn.” He faced the clergyman. “I’ve done horrible things, Father. So horrible that God Himself would send me to Hell on a first-class ticket without so much as to look at me.”

“Nobody is that far gone.”

“Really.” The vagrant stepped closer to the priest, the stench of his body rising off him like a battery of heat lifting off the pavement on a hot summer day. “I killed people, Father. I killed innocent people because they were in the way. And I did so without impunity. And you want to know something else?”

The clergyman stood idle.

“I liked it,” he said. “I liked it a lot.”

The priest raised his hand slowly, gesturing to McMullen to continue the walk.

“What? No comment.”

The priest sighed. “Even people who kill do not choose to live like this.”

“I told you, it’s not so much of a choice as it is fate.”

“So you have no remorse? None at all?”

McMullen faltered with a hitch in his step. “I did in time,” he finally said. “And I found my salvation in a bottle. I still do.”

“Alcohol is no substitute for God.”

“It is for me.” He stopped once again, looking at the priest. “It got to the point when I saw the faces of those I killed, the terror in their eyes, the sobs of their pleading; it ate away at me like cancer. Mind you now that I always liked my booze, but it came to a point when becoming addled with alcohol washed away the images, made it OK for me to get buy.” He began walking. “And that’s why nobody wants to give a lush like me a job or an opportunity. Nobody wants to hire somebody who can’t make it through the day without imbibing. I’m simply trading the demon of alcohol for the demon of my conscience.”

The parish sat on the corner of Bridger and Fourth. Yards away an alley separated the church from a defunct wedding chapel.

“The alleyway will take us to the back door,” said the priest.

“How much insight do you want?”

The clergyman remained silent as they made their way to the rear of the parish, which was gated.

“I’m afraid I don’t have a key,” said the priest.

“Then I guess we’re done.”

“Actually, we’re not,” he said. From a back pocket the clergyman pulled out a silver cylinder and held it up in display. “A man who truly feels repentance for the things he’s done gives him the right for redemption.”

The pick shot upward and outward.

“What are you doing?”

The priest moved closer. “I’m going to give you the opportunity to meet God and to ask Him for salvation.”

“Are you nuts? You’re a priest!”

“Actually, I’m not.”

And as promised, he gave McMullen the opportunity to ask God for the chance to enter His Kingdom of Light and Loving Spirits.