The Eye of Moses - Vatican Knights Series 22 (2020) by Rick Jones (best novels to read for students .txt) 📕

military rucksack, he wondered if he had done enough to bring Deep Mountain down, should he be deactivated from service.

In the shadows he waited and listened, then he brought his weapon up.

Silence.

In the art of stealth, he considered, Salt’s men were good, if not elite, at approaching unseen.

Just as he was about to doubt if he’d been seen at all, that perhaps the two-man team had ventured off into deeper shadows in exploration, bullets skipped and ricocheted around the floor beside him.

Falling back against the volley, Mr. Galileo took refuge behind a concrete post. He looked up to see the charge clinging to the column with its detonation wires and timer exposed. Should it be discovered, it would give cause for the Klansman to search for other units and disable them, which would compromise the primary objective of bringing down Deep Mountain and Elias Caspari.

Reaching into his rucksack and grabbing the master remote as rounds continued to zero in on his position with precision, Mr. Galileo set the frequency for activation.

Twenty minutes.

All he had to do now was to activate the switch that would send a frequency to empower the planted Sem charges, which would then count down in unison to the moment of a shared explosion.

Then a round struck the left side of his chest, the collision knocking him backwards. Though his dragon-skin vest stopped the penetration, it had not blunted the powerful blow. Grimacing as he lay on the floor, the impacted area throbbed and ached with red-hot pain.

Sometime during his fall, however, he had lost control of the remote and his assault weapon, with both sliding from his grasp and into an area where Salt’s men would be able to draw a bead on him.

Wincing, Mr. Galileo got to his hands and knees and scrambled for cover.

Since the remote was everything to the operation, his mind began to search for options, which were few and far between.

To expose himself to Salt’s fighters would only heighten the possibility of being gunned downed. To remain idle only invited their eventual approach. That left him with the element of surprise.

Sliding to his left and using the shadows as his ally, Mr. Galileo moved like a feline stalking its prey on padded feet. He was silent and moved with fluid grace, a shape that was blacker than black who moved against his targets.

Then the gunfire stopped.

Silence.

Mr. Galileo sensed that they were on the move, his prey reestablishing themselves as the alpha predators who were now on the hunt, searching.

Slowly, Mr. Galileo withdrew his Ka-Bar combat knife neatly from its sheath, a slow slide from the leather, and held it firm.

He listened.

He waited.

The shadows no longer seemed comforting to him.

And then he heard the soft padding of a footfall to his right, a mistake on the part of his aggressor.

Slowly, and with the edge of his knife readied for the swift slice across his enemy’s throat, Mr. Galileo approached the point of the sound.

Two silhouettes maneuvered side by side of one another, both panning their weapons while using their night-vision sights to pierce the darkness.

Mr. Galileo moved behind them, then beside them, drawing closer with a white-knuckled grip on his knife.

The assassins stopped, a motion Mr. Galileo accepted as them sensing danger, and something that every seasoned soldier was equipped with.

In unison, they pivoted on their feet to redirect their aim. But Mr. Galileo was just as swift as he lunged forward and drove the blade of his knife in a horizontal arc, knocking the points of both weapons off aim.

Then Mr. Galileo, with his free hand and fighting through the pain where he had been struck in the chest from the round, thrusted the palm of his hand upward into the nose of the assassin to his left and drove the blade of the bone into the assassin’s brain, killing him. The assassin to his right, however, was immediate in action and did not allow Mr. Galileo enough time to counter against him. Using the stock of his weapon, the assassin punched it home to the side of Galileo’s exposed ribs, though the blow was somewhat dulled by the vest. Nevertheless, the effect of drawing space between them succeeded. Then in a subsequent action, the assassin was able to draw his weapon up, take aim, and pull the trigger.

Bullets stitched across Mr. Galileo’s chest and knocked him off his feet and to the ground. And since dragon-scale armor was one of the best vests and held against penetration, it did not stop the barrage of gunfire from snapping the bones of his ribcage.

Under the spell of great pain, Mr. Galileo remained lucid. Then as he managed to raise himself to his elbows as the assassin approached with the bared teeth of blood lust and savagery, Mr. Galileo, holding the tip of his Ka-Bar, tossed the weapon with a side-armed throw.

The knife crossed the distance in a blur and lodged deep in the assassin’s throat, the action catching the operator by surprise. Bringing a hand to his throat as he gagged, he tried to dislodge the weapon by grabbing the hilt and pulling it free, only to fail in his effort to do so. Then as his eyes began to roll to half-mast, he at least had the presence of mind to aim his weapon and pull the trigger.

The first few rounds went wide and chipped the concrete floor around Mr. Galileo. But a single bullet had found its mark before the assassin turned his weapon skyward, then rolled onto his side and died with his finger still on the trigger, the rounds going skyward until the magazine finally emptied.

In an area not covered by the vest, which was just above the lining that covered the chest but not the bottom of the throat, a bullet had found its way to do considerable damage by striking the carotid.

Blood seemed to boil outward from the wound, the loss immense as the circular edges of his peripheral vision began to grow dark.

The remote.

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