End of Days (Pike Logan #16)(14)

Sitting on a larger motorcycle around a curve of a switchback, Donatello’s voice reflected the adrenaline he was feeling, “Roger that. We’re set. What’s the traffic status?”

“You’re clear. He’s a singleton. Light traffic, and they’re running slow.”

Donatello turned to Michelangelo sitting behind him on the motorcycle and said, “You ready? We got about a minute.”

Michelangelo rummaged in a backpack, pulled out what looked like a section of metal pipe with two magnets attached, and flicked a rocker switch on the side, saying, “Yeah. I’m ready. Just get me close to the rear axle.”

Donatello nodded, then returned to scanning the road. Stationed on a small cutout off of Via Esterna Chiunzi, the two-lane blacktop snaking through the mountains to the Amalfi coast, they’d picked a specific bit of terrain for the hit.

For the most part, the road from Rome to the Amalfi coast was a straight shot, but once it began to wind out of the mountains, it was a spaghetti mess of switchbacks, the lane a sheer cliff on one side and a wall of granite on the other, the turns causing all traffic to slow down to safely navigate the terrain. And also giving his hit team the ability to kill the target before another car appeared.

This would be the first attack executed by the Turtles, but it needed to be blamed on others. Namely, Keta’ib Hezbollah. To that end, they’d decided to use the same method that the Mossad employed in Iran, where they’d hunted the nuclear scientists one by one.

Over the last decade, Iran had endured a spate of their scientists being assassinated, the last killing happening in 2020 against the head of the entire nuclear program. Most were done with a magnetic mine slapped on the scientist’s vehicle on the way to work. In the congested traffic of Tehran or other cities, it was a way to attack that allowed an instant getaway. Slap on the bomb, and immediately ride away.

The Turtles had decided to do the same for this hit. Not because they had no other way to get the man, but precisely to send a signal. A magnetic mine attached to the vehicle to disable it, then a couple of well-placed rounds to seal the deal. Once that was accomplished, they’d throw a note into the car, letting the world know that Keta’ib Hezbollah was on the hunt even here.

Their target was Geoffrey Combine, the United States ambassador to the Holy See.

A political appointee, he posed no real threat to anyone, but his position was a valuable signal that the Turtles wanted to send out to the world: Keta’ib Hezbollah’s reach was global, and they were on a killing spree as revenge against Christiandom’s sanctions and targeted attacks. Obviously controlled and funded by Iran, the West needed to harshly confront the theocratic state. In so doing, confront Islam writ large.

When Garrett had come up with the idea nearly a year ago it was much grander in scope, involving not only Iran but actors from the Sunni states in the Persian Gulf. Since that time, Israel had signed peace deals with multiple Sunni states, to include Bahrain, the UAE, and Sudan. Saudi Arabia was probably not too far behind, restricting his plan to Iran itself, but he still thought it would work.

The United States was constantly rattling sabers against the mullahs, and Israel certainly had no love for the state. All he had to do was get a big enough spark going that they would retaliate. Garrett hoped to show that the attacks were in retaliation for the killing of the Qods Force commander General Qasem Soleimani, and the murders would continue unabated unless action was taken. Only by confronting Iran—with Islam in the crosshairs—would the killings stop. And in so doing fulfill the prophecy of the Bible for the second coming of Christ.

In his heart, Michelangelo wondered if Garrett understood the levers he was pulling, but fully believed in the mission he was executing. In his own country, he had seen the cleavage of religion unleash a spasm of violence unseen since World War II. In Syria, he had seen the cleavage turn medieval, and because of it, he’d become convinced—like the other Turtles—that the only way to achieve true peace on earth was to eradicate Muslim influence on the world stage. And that would only come by fulfilling the prophecies of the Bible.

In his mind, Christianity alone had shown a level tolerance that facilitated goodwill the world over, unlike Islam. They had done nothing but slaughter, even against their own people. Their false god had brought only pain and misery to the world, and the way to combat it was the return of the one true God’s son.

After what he’d seen in Syria, he believed that to the core of his being. If he’d been forced to face the truth of Catholic Croats and Orthodox Christian Serbs who had horrifically massacred the Muslims in his homeland, he would have come up with a reason why that was just. The facts no longer mattered. Only his faith did.

He didn’t hate Muslims per se, but he fully believed they were bringing about the collapse of civilized society. One only had to look at the atrocities in Syria to see that. Burning a Jordanian pilot alive? Who does that? In his mind, not a Christian, that’s for sure. He was too young to have lived through the atrocities of the battery factory in Srebrenica, where upwards of eight thousand Muslims were slaughtered solely because of their religion, running through the woods like rabbits as the Christians hunted them down one by one, burying them in mass graves. Even if he had known, he would have found a way to justify it. There was only one right way, and it was to be found in the Bible.

He, and the rest of the Turtles, believed wholeheartedly in the end-of-days prophecy that the Bible dictated. In order to end the suffering around the world, the second coming of Christ needed to happen, and he believed the only way that would occur was by building the third temple on the Dome of the Rock in the heart of Jerusalem. But that couldn’t happen because the Islamic Waqf of Jordan controlled the territory. After Israel seized Jerusalem in the Six-Day War, many in Christendom thought the final Bible prophecies were coming true, but the government of Israel allowed the Islamic Waqf to maintain control of the most sacred sites, refusing to allow the building of the temple on what was now a religious icon for the Muslim faith.