Page 8 of End of Days

The Knights wanted to help the refugees there like they had been doing for hundreds of years the world over, but realized that they couldn’t do so without at least some protection. And they’d approached Garrett, a lowly Knight of Magisterial Grace from theUnited States Order of Malta. A former soldier of the United States Army’s Special Forces, he had contacts they wanted access to, both in Syria and from his past.

Having spent his formative years in Croatia, his life had been one war after another, first the hell of the Bosnian conflict, then the hell after 9/11. He’d fought in countries he couldn’t have even found on a map as a student. But after his life in the army, hedidhave contacts.

Garrett went through the large front door of the mansion, ignored the anteroom with the secretary, and took a left down a hallway, to a stairwell leading to the basement.

The Knights didn’t want to advertise his services—being a humanitarian organization—so he was relegated to the basement section of the mansion, to a group of hastily renovated closets that were once used solely for the cleaning crew.

Now the little rat warren was his office space.

He reached the bottom of the stairs, the faint odor of mildew creeping out, the ceiling at just seven feet causing him to duck his head even if he wasn’t going to hit it.

He walked down to his office and opened the door, finding Leonardo inside waiting.

In his late twenties, Leonardo had hard eyes, having seen much more of the hatred that mankind can bring than the locals in Rome would ever understand. He lived in a so-called civilized world, but at the edges, where the monsters roamed, it was still a vicious, brutal existence, which is why Garrett had recruited him.

All four of his team were former members of the Croatian Special Forces Command, a unit that had been formed after the horrific violence of the Bosnian war. They had been too young to understand the incredible trauma that war personified, but became old enough to see it inflicted elsewhere. They’d served their time, learning invaluable skills, and then had returned to civilian life only to find it wanting.

They’d lost the camaraderie and focus of the military, and all four were floundering, working dead-end jobs when Garrett had sought them out, one by one.

Born in Croatia, he was now a United States citizen, with one foot in both camps, and he had the same zeal that they had. He’d recruited them for a single mission in Syria, and they’d signed on. A good mission—protecting the Knights of Malta as they helped the victims from all sides of the conflict. At least it was a good mission on paper.

That mission had turned into a cauldron of violence, with all of them scarred—none more than Garrett—and because of it, they would now follow him into hell, convinced his new mission was the way to cleanse the world of the scourge they’d witnessed.

When he’d opened the door, Leonardo was sitting behind Garrett’s desk staring at a small flat-screen TV mounted on the wall. He’d leapt up, embarrassed to be taking Garrett’s seat. Garrett waved a hand, telling him it was nothing, and then pointed at the television.

“What’s happening?”

“It’s Paris.”

Chapter 6

Garrett turned up the sound, hearing a BBC report about an Israeli diplomat named Etyan Malka having been murdered in a street mugging. The report detailed that the perpetrators were Muslim refugees and still on the loose, with the focus on the “refugee” slant. What it didn’t say was that the man killed was no diplomat. He was the head of the European Protective Services division of Shin Bet, the Israeli security service responsible for shielding the homeland from threats.

Originally focused solely within the borders of Israel, after the killings of the Israeli athletes in 1972 its sphere went worldwide, with a mandate to protect Israeli interests all over the globe, to include El Al airlines and Israeli embassies on foreign soil.

He was a perfect target for the signal Garrett wanted to send. It showed that the man responsible for protecting Israeli assets in Europe couldn’t even protect himself.

The report also failed to mention the letter he knew his assets had left at the scene, but he had no doubt Israel had it. One more bit of gunpowder loaded in the shell he wanted to fire.

Garrett smiled and said, “I was beginning to worry those savages didn’t have it in them, but after Interlaken I suppose I should have had more confidence.”

His eyes still glued to the television, Leonardo barked a laugh, almost as if he was embarrassed by what was on the screen. By what he had facilitated.

Garrett sat down behind his desk and used the remote to cut off the TV, saying, “What about our own operation today?”

Glad for the reprieve, Leonardo put a map on the desk, pointing out a position near the coast and saying, “Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael are set. We expect the hit in the next hour.” He looked at his watch and corrected himself, “Actually within the next twenty minutes now. Raph is the trigger. Donnie and Mikey are the hit team.”

Garrett insisted that they never use their true names, no matter what they did, as a protection of the reputation of the Knights if anything went wrong. He wanted to make it as hard as possible to put a link to his martial skill and the Knights’ charitable contribution. Which is why he was hired.

After recruiting them, he’d buried their names to the point that even he couldn’t remember what was on their birth certificates. They’d used false passports created by the Knights for years, but he had to keep them straight, so he’d devised nicknames, no matter the name on the passport.

He had anointed them with the names of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They had all thought it funny originally, but the monikers had taken on a life of their own, with each man liking the tag he’d been given. He, of course, was Splinter. At least to his face. When he was out of earshot, they called him the Eunuch.

Because of his insistence on cloaking their names, they were known derisively as the Turtles to the hierarchy of the Knights of Malta, but the officials using the term had no idea of the violence they were capable of inflicting. They would learn that soon.

Garrett rubbed his face, the blackout sleep not giving him the rest he needed. He said, “Can they do it and project the hit on our partners?”

Leonardo said, “Yes. We have his route, and we’re going to use thesame method that Israel does. It will send a signal, and when the car is disabled, we’ll execute him and his wife with a bullet to the head, then throw the letter in the front seat. It will work.”

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