The Last Templar - Страница 28

He'd been initially surprised to find that this wreck was where Plunkett had trailed Tess and her silver-haired abductor. Skulking through the silent, ghostly remains of the Church of the Ascension, he now realized it was a perfect spot for someone who wanted to work undisturbed; someone whose dedication went beyond simple matters of personal comfort. One more confirmation, not that he needed it, that the man he was after knew exactiy what it was he had taken from the Met that night.

De Angelis had entered the church from a side entrance; less than forty minutes earlier, Plunkett had observed a blindfolded Tess Chaykin being helped out of the back of the gray Volvo and led through the same entrance by her abductor. She had seemed barely conscious and needed the man's assistance to take the few steps into the doorway, her arm looped over his shoulder.

The small church was on West 114th Street, tucked in between two rows of brownstones with a narrow alleyway running alongside its east facade, which was where the Volvo and the sedan were now parked. The church had suffered a major fire in the recent past, and its reconstruction was evidently not in the cards yet. A large panel out front displayed the progress of the fund-raising efforts for the rebuilding in the form of a six-foot-high thermometer, which was graduated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to bring the church back to its former glory. The thermometer currently stood at only one-third full.

The monsignor had made his way through a narrow passage and into the nave. Rows of columns divided it into two side aisles and a center section, which was strewn with mounds of half-burned pews. All around him, the stucco had been burned off the walls, exposing the brick masonry, which was blackened and occasionally holed. Below the ceiling, the few remaining plaster arches that spanned from the exterior walls to the columns were unrecognizable, charred and deformed by the flames. Only a hollow ring remained where the stained-glass window had proudly stood over the church's entrance, its wide opening now boarded up.

He had crept along the edge of the nave, past the melted brass gates of the altar, and had climbed carefully up the steps and onto the sanctuary. The scorched remains of a large canopied pulpit loomed to his right. All around him, the church was silent with only the occasional noise from the street wafting in through one of the many cavities in its exposed shell. He had surmised that whoever had taken the girl must be using the back rooms. With Plunkett outside keeping watch, he now slipped quietly past the remnants of the altar and into the passage behind the sanctuary, slowly twirling a silencer onto the nozzle of his Sig Sauer handgun.

And that was when his foot nudged the debris.

The noise echoed around him in the darkened hallway. He froze, listening carefully, alert to any disturbance he may have triggered. Squinting, he could barely make out a door at the far end of the passage, when suddenly, from beyond the door, he heard a muffled thud, then faint footsteps coming closer. Swiftly, De Angelis stepped aside, hugging the wall, raising his handgun. Footsteps approached the hall, the door handle rattled, but instead of the door opening outward, toward him, it opened inward and all that he saw was a dark space. He was the one in the light.

Too late and too dangerous to retreat, which was not, anyway, in his nature, he hurled himself forward into the darkness.

+ + +

Gripping his gun with tight fingers, Vance stared through the doorway at the man who had trespassed into his sanctuary. He didn't recognize him. He glimpsed what he thought was a clerical collar. It made him hesitate.

Then the man was leaping forward and Vance tried hastily to use his gun, but before he could pull its trigger the stranger was on him, knocking him to the floor, the handgun slipping from his hand.

The passageway was narrow and low and Vance used the wall to thrust himself upward but the man was much stronger and down he went again. This time, he brought his knee up sharply, heard a satisfactory grunt of pain. Another gun, his attacker's, clattered noisily across the floor. But once again his attacker recovered quickly, swinging a fist hard against his head.

The blow hurt Vance but didn't daze him. More important, it jarred him into a fury. Twice in one day, first by Tess Chaykin, now by this stranger, his endeavor was being jeopardized. He used his knee again, then his fist, then a barrage of punches. His blows were unschooled, but they were fired by his anger. Nothing and no one had the right to come between him and his goal.

The intruder blocked his blows expertly and backed off, but as he did so he stumbled over some planks of wood. Vance, seeing his opportunity, kicked out, connecting savagely with the man's knee. Snatching up his gun, he leveled it and squeezed the trigger. The stranger was fast, though, throwing himself sideways as the bullets flew out. By the strained cry that followed, Vance thought one of them may have struck its intended target, but he couldn't be sure. The man was still moving, staggering backward into the sanctuary.

Vance hesitated for just a moment.

Should he follow, find out who the man was, and finish him off? Then he heard some noise coming from the far corner of the church. The man wasn't alone.

He decided it was best to escape. Turning, he hurried back to the trapdoor that shielded his cellar.

Chapter 36

Tess heard a loud gunshot, which was followed by what sounded like an angry cry.

Someone was hurt. Then footsteps were rushing back toward the trapdoor. She wasn't sure if it was Vance or someone else, but she wasn't about to just stand there and wait to find out.

She dived across the chamber, grabbed her bag off the table, and pulled out her cell phone. In the faint glimmer of the candles, the LED screen lit up like a flashlight, only to inform her there was no signal in the cellar. It didn't really matter; she didn't know the FBI's number by heart and, while dialing 911 was an option, she knew it would take too long to explain what was happening. Besides, she didn't have a clue where she was.

Help, Pm in a, cellar somewhere in the city.

I think.

Perfect.

Still dazed, and with her heart thumping loudly in her ears, she darted nervous glances around the chamber, then remembered the shuttered opening she'd spotted by the table. On impulse, she cleared some of the clutter off its surface, scrambled up onto the table, and pulled wearily at the planks of wood covering the cavity, trying to loosen them. They wouldn't give. She pounded at

them helplessly, but they held tight. Then she heard a sound as the cellar door opened. Turning, she saw legs beginning to descend. She recognized the shoes. It was Vance.

Her eyes quickly scanned the room and settled on the Taser Vance had discarded. It was lying there on the corner of the table nearest to her behind a stack of books. She grabbed it and leveled it at him, her hands shaking as his face emerged from the darkness, his eyes staring calmly into hers.

"Stay away from me!" she yelled at him.

"Tess, please," he shot back with an urgent, calming gesture, "we need to get out of here."

"We? What are you talking about? Just stay away from me."

He was still moving toward her. "Tess, put the gun down."

Panicking now, she pulled the trigger—but nothing happened. He was now less than ten feet away.

She turned the gun, glaring at it, her eyes straining to figure out if she had missed something. He was moving faster now, coming at her. Fiddling desperately with the gun, she finally spotted the small safety and flipped it up. A small red light flashed at the back of the gun. She raised it up again and saw that she had also somehow activated its laser, which was beaming a tiny red mark onto Vance's chest. The dot danced left and right, mirroring her trembling hands. He was very close now.

Pulse racing, she shut her eyes and pulled the trigger, which felt more like a rubber-coated button than what she imagined was the cold steel of a handgun's trigger. The Taser came to life with a loud pop, and Tess shrieked as the two metal probes and their stainless steel barbs came blasting out of its front, trailing thin wires behind them.

The first probe just missed its mark, flying past his chest and disappearing into the darkness, but the second bit into his left thigh. Fifty thousand volts of electricity seared into him for five seconds, overriding his central nervous system and triggering incontrollable contractions in his muscles. He jerked and arched upward as the burning spasms erupted through his body and his legs gave way.

He collapsed on himself, helpless, his face contorted with pain.

Tess was momentarily confused by the cloud of tiny confetti-like ID disks that exploded out of the cartridge as she fired the gun, but the groans of Vance, lying there writhing in pain, soon whipped her back to her immediate predicament. She thought of stepping past him and heading up the stairs, but wasn't too keen on getting any closer to him. She also wasn't sure who Vance had confronted up there and was too scared to find out. She turned again to the shuttered opening and kicked and pulled at the panels until at last one of them loosened. She yanked it off, used it to jimmy the others loose, and looked in through the hole she'd made.

Beyond stretched a dark tunnel.

With nowhere else to go, she started to climb through the opening, then looked back, saw that Vance was still writhing in pain, and saw the encoder and the sheets, the manuscript, lying there, within reach.