Shepherd One (Vatican Knights)

by Jones, Rick

  “Reverse technology?”

  “More like reverse prognosis,” he said. “But it’s only conjecture at this point. At the very least, we should be able to obtain the marked settings in the altimeter’s programming to find out what its purpose is.” Simone nodded in self-agreement as he leaned over the altimeter roughly the size and shape of an eyeglass case, but less rounded and more squared. “I believe that might work.”

  “Talk to me, Ray.”

  “The altimeter is not a part of the hard drive at all, but a conduit set up as a receiver to accept a certain signature from the central processing unit. Unlike the hard drive and striking pins, which are protected by the roving laser grid, the altimeter is not. So what I need to do is to find a way to tap into its receptive memory core and ascertain the exact code necessary to make it responsive. Once done, then shutting the unit down may be doable once we intercept and alter the code.”

  The president felt a slight sense of relief but remained cautious. “Tell me something,” he said, his tone remaining even. “Do you see any downside to this?”

  Simone removed the loupe from his head and placed it on a nearby table. “When you’re dealing in theory, Mr. President, there is always a downside. What you need to understand is that the altimeter simply measures the altitude of an object from a fixed point. After making note of its apparent connection to the hard drive as a receiver, it tells me that its purpose is to engage after the device has begun its countdown sequence. Once the weapon has begun, then it will send a signature code to the altimeter which, in turn, sends a response to the mother brain informing it that the code was received and all systems are go. I will then insert a virus into the altimeter’s answering sequence, which should disable the master memory in the hard drive and render the unit inoperable.”

  “It sounds solid,” said Thornton. “But what if you’re wrong about the altimeter?”

  Simone stared back from the viewing monitor, his features expressionless as an awkward silence passed though the room.

  The president finally had to prompt the engineer for an answer. “Ray?”

  Simone sighed. “Mr. President, from where I’m standing, the altimeter is its Achilles’ heel. If I’m wrong, then there’s nothing I, or anybody else, can do to stop it from going off once the initiation code has begun. The altimeter has been designed to communicate with the central processing unit for a reason. So I am totally confident in my assessment.”

  The president nodded while his mind worked. “Achilles was crippled by an arrow’s blow to the heel,” he said, “which incapacitated him long enough to be defeated by Paris. I need you to be our Paris, Ray. I need you to use whatever engineering tools and skills you have at your disposal to kill . . . that . . . thing . . . dead.”

  Simone nodded. “I’ll have my team on it immediately, Mr. President.”

  “And, Ray . . . keep me posted.”

  “Of course.”

  “Then see what you can do and get back to me as soon as you can.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  After the connection was severed, he turned to his team consisting of Craner, Hamilton and Thornton. “An altimeter?” he said, more as a comment than a question. Yet it begged for an answer. What possible purpose could such an attachment serve?

  CIA Analyst Craner spoke in his usual clipped tone. “Like Simone said, Mr. President, an altimeter serves a single purpose.”

  Burroughs concurred, his eyes suddenly taking on a faraway look. “If its purpose is to measure the altitude of an object from a fixed position, then that leads me to believe the device was manufactured to work at a high altitude.”

  “Agreed,” said Thornton. “But it could have been engineered to serve another purpose as well. Like Simone said, we really don’t know at this point.”

  “But if you were to hazard a guess, a rational guess, then what would you say its purpose was?”

  “A plane,” said Hamilton, the answer was simple and quick. They had massed the same collective thought suggesting the units were created to work at high levels of altitude. The first intimation was obviously a repeat performance of commandeering airliners with a much more devastating payload that would topple strategic points of interest, most notably New York City and Washington D.C. But what was the third site?

  Point was, if the devices worked at a specific level based upon the confidence of trying to hijack jumbo jets, no matter how much time had elapsed since 9/11, it would have been a foolish gesture on their part since there were no less than two armed Air Marshalls on every flight and even more on United and American, the two airlines the terrorists held an affinity for since they contained two of the three words in United States of America.

  “There’s no way in hell they could get those devices on any plane in this country,” stated the president. “Not with the high alert. So let’s assume they know this and have already altered their plans.”

  “Which leads us back to square one,” said Hamilton.

  Square one was the whereabouts of Hakam, his team, and the nuclear weapons. If they were not located soon, then it wouldn’t matter if Ray Simone found a solution to disable the units or not. If Hakam could not be found, then America would fall prey.

  Even though President Burroughs took some comfort in knowing he and his team had made significant strides forward, he felt like he was doing so on leaden soles.

  Where are you, Hakam? he asked himself.

  And how do you find six individuals in a country with a population of three hundred million people?

  The president closed his eyes against the onrush of a coming headache.

  So much for progressive steps forward, he thought. Finding Hakam and his team would be like trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack the size of Manhattan.

  Understanding this, hope began to fade. And not only within him but he could also see it on the faces of his team. “We’ll get this right,” he told him. But if he could have heard his own voice, then he would have detected the same sense of vulnerability they were all feeling.

  The hope, in all of them, had no doubt faded to a pinprick spark close to extinguishing itself dead.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Perugia, Italy.

  Basilio Pastore was dismayed. In the preceding hours he had seen his father plead for the lives of his family from the position of his knees. The man was crying, begging—the one-time hero of the Aeronautica Milatare surrendering his pride before the lens of a distant camera. And Basilio wanted to weep. Whenever he closed his eyes he could see his pleading father burned as an afterimage behind the folds of his lids. So he planned to never close his eyes again.

  Sitting in the corner of the room with his knees drawn up into acute angles and his arms hugging his legs close, Basilio stared at a fixed point on the opposite wall, his gaze and manner unflinching and statue still.

  He never felt so ashamed.

  “Basilio?” His mother’s voice was soft and honeyed, the lilt of her tone possessing a maternal comfort which he needed at the moment, but was unwilling to admit.

  Basilio’s line of sight never wavered from the fixed point.

  “Basilio.” She took a seat beside him, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them in mimic of her son. “Your father loves you very much. There’s no shame in what he did.”

  Basilio’s response was to clench his teeth, which caused the muscles in the back of his jaw to work.

  “Someday,” she added, “when you have children of your own, you’ll understand.”

  Vittoria could see the welling of tears along the edges of her son’s eyes. And the way he caught himself and reacted by holding his chin out with forced stoicism.

  Inwardly she had to smile, the boy who tried so much to be a man. “Your father did what he did because he’s not here to help us. So he did the only thing he could do—the only thing that was left to him.”

  Basilio’s chin began to quiver with jelly-like consistency, the dam beginning to break, his t
ears ready to fall. “I never saw Papa cry before,” he finally said. “Papa never cries.”

  “Just because your father cries doesn’t make him any less than a man.”

  An awkward moment of silence passed between them, each trying to find a new approach to address the other without hurting the fragile feelings they were sensing at the moment.

  It was Basilio who finally took the initiative. “Have you ever seen Papa cry before?” he asked.

  Vittoria smiled a loving, almost gingerly, smile of dreamy endearment. “Plenty,” she said. “When you were born he was so happy, so proud, I didn’t think he’d ever stop crying. ‘A son,’ he said, and then he held you high. ‘Someone to play soccer and carry on the Pastore name,’” she stated, trying to imitate his father in a deep and manly voice.

  And it brought a smile to the corners of his lips. “Really?”

  She nodded. “Really. And you want to know something else?”

  Although responsive, he still kept his eyes glued to a focused point on the wall across the way. “What.”

  “When you became the MVP of your soccer league and brought home the trophy—do you remember that?”

  “Of course.”

  “You were thirteen at the time, and your father wept for two days afterwards because he was so proud of you. And he made sure everybody in Rome knew about it, too.”

  His smile blossomed. “Really?”

  “Oh yeah. And the greatest thing about your father—tears or no tears—is that the men of his unit were willing to follow him to the ends of the Earth because they respected him so much. So you see, Basilio, great men do cry. There’s no shame in that.”

  For the first time since viewing the live video feed, he closed his eyes. The afterimage of his father on his knees was still behind the folds of his lids. But now it was somehow acceptable. “He’s really proud of me?”

  “He’s very proud of you, Basilio. A father couldn’t ask for a better son. And you couldn’t ask for a better father.”

  Basilio broke his gaze and leaned into his mother, who followed through by sweeping her arm around him, and pulled him close. Softly, she kissed the crown of his head. “He’s very proud of you,” she repeated. “And you should be of him.”

  Her son continued to lean into her no longer feeling less masculine by doing so, finding salvation in a mother’s hold.

  If his father could not serve in the capacity to rescue his family, then it was up to him to do so, he considered. How much prouder would his father be if he saved the lives of his mother and sisters?

  How proud would his mother be?

  Basilio smiled enough to show the perfect lines of ruler-straight teeth. How proud would they all be?

  #

  Raven Rock (Presidential Bunker)

  President Jim Burroughs felt bottled up. Topside, with the sky above him a uniform patch of blue and not a cloud to be seen, he took his leisure and walked the compound. The air was clean and crisp. The chill factor was greatly welcomed as he stood along the fence line made of corral posts. Six feet beyond that was a severe drop off.

  Dean Hamilton joined him, both men saying nothing but thinking the same thing.

  From their vantage point they could see nothing but tree tops as far as the eye can see; the landscape to the horizon nothing but a sea of green. And they soaked it all in, both marveling at the backdrop and wondering if it was to become a poisoned terrain with its seasonal foliages to bear the hues of black timber and ash-gray limbs . . .

  . . . Or if the subsequent foliages would be known as one continuous period referred to as the ‘Season of Fallout.’

  Neither man wanted to consider the ‘perhaps’ or the ‘probability’ of possibilities.

  But nor could it be discarded as improbable either.

  The truth was, and both men realized this, that the United States was about to fall victim to nuclear devastation since the atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

  That thought alone pierced both men’s hearts.

  With his face taking on the appearance of a man desperately seeking solace, President Burroughs took in a deep breath and released it in an equally long sigh. “I never wanted to be known as the reigning president at the time of a nuclear attack,” he stated. “But, by God, it looks like I’m going to be.”

  Dean Hamilton kept his hands deep in his pockets, his vapor breath in the cool air coming in even rhythm. “You’ve got to hang in there, Jim. I have every agent looking into every possible scenario from east to west. The airports are completely covered, all strategic sites are battened down—and even if a device should go off, the damage done should be marginal.”

  “Dean, it’s not whether or not damage is done. The point is it would be a devastating blow to the psyche of the American people, if a nuclear weapon went off on U.S. soil. If that should happen, then I want you to tell me what’s going to make the people of this country believe that their government can stop additional nuclear weapons from crossing the border undetected in the future?”

  The Attorney General hesitated before giving the politically correct answer. “We tell them what we always tell them,” he said. “We tell them that we’ve shored up the borders.”

  “And you expect the people of this country to believe we have the capability to shore up more than ten thousand miles of open boundary?”

  Dean said nothing.

  “If by the grace of God we don’t happen to catch Hakam and his team, then something like this could go away,” he said, sweeping his arm in indication of the entire landscape. “And if not here, then it’ll be somewhere else.” The president sighed. “Sooner or later someone will get a weapon across and light it up . . . I just don’t want it to be on my watch.”

  “Look at the upside,” said Dean. “Perchenko’s gone and the objective of destroying his black market trade has been achieved. So I don’t think a nuclear weapon will make its way onto American soil anytime soon, now that our foreign constituencies are aware and are working to see that it never happens again.”

  “I pray you’re right,” he said. “I honest to God do. Because we both know that nuclear retaliation spells the beginning of the end for us all.”

  Other than the sweet warble of a blue jay and the engaging melody of sparrows singing in the surrounding boughs of the pine trees, Hamilton and Burroughs said nothing as a cool breeze caressed them.

  With his voice mired in appreciation, the president spoke in reference to the landscape. “It is beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Dean nodded. “It is that.”

  And for the longest time neither man spoke.

  They simply took everything in.

  #

  The Chateau Grand Hotel

  Los Angeles, California

  Angelina Cordova-Vasquez had worked at the Chateau Grand Hotel for eighteen years and never missed a day of work, sick or otherwise. She possessed an elliptical-shaped body with wispy-thin limbs, and a face that was worn and fatigued from too many years of struggling to make it in an economy that was far exceeding her financial means. The signs of stress were becoming obvious as well, the lines on her forehead beginning to widen and deepen. And rarely did she smile.

  When she pushed the housekeeping cart along the hotel corridor, she did so with an aged, shuffling gait. As she neared room 616 she noticed the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging on the doorknob. Yet her cleaning directory was marked as the room being vacant. At first she knocked lightly, then louder, announcing herself as ‘room cleaning’ before slipping the keycard into the slot, the light going green, the lock retracting.

  She opened the door. The room was dark. The drapes closed.

  “Hello. Room cleaning.”

  And then the smell hit her like a tangible blow to the face.

  She had never been around the butchering of animals. The slaughtering of meat for the family meal had always been her father’s job in Mexico; the lopping off of the chickens heads before they hit the pot was that of her mother’s. So she never be
came familiar with the stench of blood or its overwhelming copper scent that assaulted her like a bad aftertaste.

  “Room cleaning.” Angelina moved to the drapes and felt for the edges. When she parted them light filled the room as if to spotlight the blood spatters and red drippings. Macabre designs were painted in blood. And the smell of copper and death became too intense for her as her stomach threatened to revolt. In the bathroom a bloodied and clawed hand stuck out over the edge of the tub, frozen, yet positioned in such a way she was sure it would beckon her to come closer to view the prize lying within its well.

  Drawing balled fists to the base of her chin, Angelina Cordova-Vasquez let a scream rip from her throat as she raced down the corridor with all the alacrity and speed of youth.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  LAX Airport. 0847 hours

  Los Angeles, California

  With the exception of the pilot of Shepherd One, the murders of the entire flight crew was completed with deadly efficiency and their positions taken over by Hakam’s team.

  In keeping with the specifics of the Alitalia Airline group, Hakam made sure they dressed to uniform specs of the Alitalia Airline crew. Every member of his team wore the designated navy blue pants with red stripes running along the seams, and the stark white short-sleeved shirts bearing the embroidered logo of Alitalia Airlines on the pocket. And because Shepherd One and its crew was exempt from all TSA inspections, all papal baggage was collected and stored in the sublevel beneath the departing gate.

  In total, four electric cars were fully loaded with luggage belonging to the pontiff and his staff. On carts One and Two, hidden beneath the soft-shell cases, were the nuclear devices.

  Three of Hakam’s team appeared to look like they belonged. In each of their hands they held an electronic notepad and dotted the inventory list with a stylus as they circled the carts. To the two TSA officers who were standing as security, everything appeared to be the norm.