Vatican Suspense

Kimball Hayden is the commander of an elite commando group known as the Vatican Knights, a black-op force that works for the Church to protect its sovereignty, its interests, and the welfare of its citizenry. But Kimball is being stalked by someone from the past, a soldier who is stronger, faster, and far more brutal - an assassin so deadly not even the Vatican Knights can stop him.

While traveling across the United States during the Papal Symposium, the papal plane, Shepherd One, is commandeered by a terrorist cell calling itself the Muslim Revolutionary Front. On board: a nuclear payload with half the yield that destroyed Hiroshima. Their demand to the US government: assassinate the five leading principals of Mossad.

While vacationing in Paris, Shari Cohen's children are kidnapped by Jadran Božanović, a Croatian kingpin who runs a human-trafficking cartel and is as deadly as the knife he wields. Few dare to challenge him. And even fewer dare to defy him. With time running out and her resources running thin, Shari calls upon the aid of Kimball Hayden and his team Vatican Knights - an elite group of commandos dedicated to protect the sovereignty, interests, and citizenry of the Church - and are once again reunited.

Based on a wealth of documents long buried in the Vatican archives, Prisoner of the Vatican tells the story of the Church's secret attempt to block the unification of Italy and seize control, not in ancient times, but in the late 19th century. For more than 50 years, the pope was a self-imposed prisoner within the Vatican walls, planning to flee Italy, to return only as the restored ruler of Rome and the Papal States.

The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), or Vatican II, is arguably the most significant event in the life of the Catholic Church since the Reformation. The Council initiated, intentionally or not, profound changes not simply within Catholic theology, but in the religious, social, and moral lives of the world's billion Catholics. It also reconfigured, intellectually and practically, the Church's engagements with those outside of it—most obviously with regard to other religions.

Conspiracy, intrigue, deceit, and murder in the holiest of sanctuaries result from man's ultimate fall – thou shall not covet. It's based on religious and historical events that portray the fierce enmity within the Catholic Church emanating from the challenge of modernity versus tradition. The novel traces an early nineteenth-century secret Italian document, The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita, that maps out a generational blueprint to overthrow the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.

In Geneva, a highly valued product with the power to cause major destruction is stolen from the CERN. Eighty kilometers from the Austrian border, a young girl becomes the key that controls the will of the man with the power to create and destroy. In the mountainous regions of Switzerland, a hostile force from a pariah regime attempts to extract a scientist from a fast-moving train.

After the march on the Vatican by the Islamic State, the radical group begins its push deeper into the European and American Fronts. But when the True Cross - the wooden remnants of the cross Jesus was crucified upon and the holiest of all relics - is stolen from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre by the Islamic State, it becomes clear that the relic is to be bartered to an arms dealer for weapons so devastating that Europe and the United States could be rocked to their very foundations.

With a round, open face and a penchant for tall tales, Matteo de Lorenzo resembled everyone's kindly uncle. But Uncle Marty, as he was known throughout the Genovese crime family, was one of the New York mob's top earners throughout the 1960s and '70s, the mastermind of a billion-dollar trade in stolen and counterfeit securities.

In a Galveston, Texas lab, a lethal strain has been stolen by a terrorist faction. In New Mexico, the population of a small town is completely wiped out. In Las Vegas, a vicious underground clan called the Community surfaces at night to prey on the weak. In Paris, two old foes of Kimball Hayden reunite as a kill team to hunt him down. Now considered dead by the Vatican, Kimball Hayden is leading a secretive life on the streets of Las Vegas. But when a parish comes under the threat of a vicious mob, he finds himself thrown back into a world of violence.

The pope is dead. Cardinals are beginning to arrive at the Vatican to select his replacement, but one has fled for Malta in search of a document that dates back to the fourth century and Constantine the Great. Former Justice Department operative Cotton Malone is in Italy, on the trail of legendary letters between Winston Churchill and Benito Mussolini that could rewrite history. But someone else is after the same letters, and when Malone obtains and then loses them, he's plunged into a hunt that draws the attention of the legendary Knights of Malta.

In an abandoned church deep inside the Syrian Desert, Father Jenkins watches over a group of children who'd been orphaned by war and unrest. Having been marked for extraction by the Vatican Knights, a cabal of ruthless killers from the Islamic State cripples all attempts of safe passage and gives chase across a desert landscape that's completely ruled by scorpions and snakes.

When the Vatican Knights are called upon to seek the Holy Grail of the dark messiahs that is the tome of the Baal Manifesto, Kimball Hayden and his team must go against their most lethal enemy that surrounds himself with tier-one mercenaries. With the manifesto having been mythicized as being created by the master of the Unholy Trinity, the Vatican Knights soon find themselves in a battle against a man who might have the power of Satan behind him.

His name is Joseph Turner, a brave young construction worker, who rescues an imperiled co-worker trapped on a swaying iron girder twenty-four stories high-only to slip and plummet to the pavement below. Horrified onlookers are astonished and the world is stunned by what happens next...Suddenly, miraculously, Joseph Turner is granted a rematch with life. Only this time with a beautiful unusual power. An astounding adventure, a romance of tenderness and passion, a spiritual thriller that spans time and the world-THE SECOND SON is all these, and above all, gripping edge-of-the-seat entertainment.

Growing up with a sheltering mother and a belligerent father, Kimball Hayden's young life goes from one of innocence to the depths of chaos. When a vicious syndicate of murderers and extortionists begin to run the streets, Kimball soon becomes the focal point of their attention. His family is placed within the crosshairs, friends go missing or are found dead, all messages from the Gangster Prince. But when Kimball's world shatters and he grieves a great loss, the sleeping giant within him awakens.

In France, a member of a secret guild is killed for the secrets he keeps. In Croatia, a stronghold is breached, and a treasure is stolen. At the Vatican, a corrupt pontiff views Kimball Hayden as a threat to his rule. When a Croatian stronghold is breached and scores are killed, a religious icon is stolen that contains a dark particle that’s powerful enough to either create worlds or destroy them. With a corrupt pontiff who sees Kimball Hayden as a threat to his power, Pope Clement XV mobilizes the Vatican Knight without his team to retrieve the dark particle.

Before Kimball Hayden became a Vatican Knight, he was the commander of the Pieces of Eight, a kill squad that worked as part of a black-arm force of the CIA. He kills with impunity and acts with the cold fortitude of a machine. But when he begins to question the morality of his actions and the motives of his superiors, he is placed within the crosshairs by high-end principals who want to see him dead.

Long before Kimball Hayden became a Vatican Knight, he once served as an elite assassin for the US government. After the ordered assassination on a United States senator by a cabal within the US command, Kimball is set up for failure and is believed dead by the Pentagon brass. But when a leading political principal involved with the senator's murder discovers that Hayden is alive, he's immediately seen as a threat to a certain few on Capitol Hill regarding the sanctioned hit on the senator, and those involved.

In Mindanao, Philippines, a terrorist faction holding members of the clergy hostage is summarily liquidated. On the same night in Manila, a separate team of sophisticated thieves with a considerable amount of military training enter a high-tech security facility to steal the coveted Scepter of Light, a staff once used by Saint Peter as he spread the Gospel of Jesus. In Greece, the buyer of the relic learns that the item he purchased for one hundred million in American funds had hit a hurdle, galvanizing his team to aid in the scepter’s recovery in the Philippines.

Thirty years ago, the world was in the exploratory stages of creating a technology capable of artificial intelligence. Thirty years later, that technology has been perfected. In a lab somewhere in a remote mountain region in Iran, nanoparticles, or micro-bots, have been created to be self-sustaining and self-reproducing, each day evolving and learning from experience. They have been programmed to be the ultimate predator, devouring everything in their path and leaving nothing behind.