by Jones, Rick
As the plane took its rises and falls, making the situation much more difficult to manage, he was able to type a message to Cardinal Bonasero Vessucci.
Bonasero:
Shepherd One commandeered by terrorist faction of six; however, one has been terminated and two disabled. At least one bishop is dead. Pope Pius, at least for now, well. Options limited due to being locked in the lower level, with no access to upper.
Heightened hostile intent; two nuclear weapons on board!
Enzio flying under duress; family believed to be held captive in Perugia—maybe at the Ponte Felcino Mosque or the old munitions factory on the outskirts. Send the Knights to secure their safe release. Have Leviticus lead the team.
I’ll do what I can from my end. Contact me ASAP.
KIMBALL
And then he hit the ‘SEND’ button, the screen reading MESSAGE SENT.
#
In a restricted chamber situated beneath the Basilica, seven chairs were situated on a marble platform rising four feet from the floor. The pope’s chair, a king’s throne layered in gold leaf with carvings of winged cherubs and angels, sat vacant. The six corresponding chairs were less imaginative; three to each side of the pontiff’s centered seat were quasi-thrones occupied by the remaining members of the Society of Seven, all dressed in full regalia.
The hall was grand, ancient, an underground recess where past popes and their secret allegiances met time and again. The walls were made of lime, the ceiling vaulted and supported by massive Romanesque columns, and the acoustics were poor, words often traveling across the room as echoes. The only light provided came from the gas-lit lamps moored along the walls, giving the room a medieval cast to it.
As the Society of Seven waited an echoing cadence of footfalls sounded from beyond the chamber door, the pace quick with urgency and the steps weighted as if something colossal was making its way toward the sequestered room. From the opposite end of the chamber a door of solid oak labored on its hinges as a man of incredible height and stature walked toward the platform with a gait and bearing that spoke of power and self-assurance. His shoulders were broad, his massive chest and arms denoting atypical strength with the facial features of a warrior scarred in combat. When he reached the base of the staging area he removed his beret, dropped to a knee, and placed a closed fist over his heart.
“Loyalty above all else,” he said, “except Honor.” This was the salute of the Vatican Knights.
Cardinal Bonasero Vessucci remained seated, as did the rest of the cardinals who watched Leviticus from their raised vantage point.
“Stand, my friend,” said Vessucci. “We’ve received word from Kimball for which you are to be the recipient of.”
Leviticus, a smaller facsimile of Kimball, stood to his full height. “And what has become of Pope Pius and Shepherd One?” he asked.
“For that, there is nothing any of us can do,” he returned. “For the moment the pope is alive and well. And Kimball is doing what he can from his end. But I’m afraid the odds are not in anyone’s favor but the terrorists.”
The shadow lines on Leviticus’s face undulated with the movement of the torches’ flames, his features coming alive when, in fact, he remained neutral.
“You, my friend,” said Cardinal Vessucci, standing, the sleeves of his garment sliding to his elbows as he clasped his hands in an attitude of prayer, then made his way to the edge of the stage. “Kimball has sent word that the family of the pilot flying Shepherd One is being held against their wishes, either in the Ponte Felcino Mosque in Perugia or the old abandoned factory that borders the city. We need you to find them,” he said, “and bring them back well. There may be nothing we can do for the pope. But we can at least provide Enzio with the peace of mind that his family is safe, if something should happen to Shepherd One.”
“The Ponte Felcino Mosque is under tight security,” he said. “Getting in won’t be easy.”
“No, it won’t. But the probability of them being housed inside the old factory is more practical, since the Italian government has been keeping the mosque under close surveillance ever since it was raided a few years ago for terrorist insurgency. And it is for this reason we believe the clerics wouldn’t risk the future sovereignty of the temple, if this was discovered.” The cardinal turned and labored away from the edge of the stage, his steps choppy, and took his rightful seat next to the papal throne. “Therefore, you will begin with the factory,” he said.
Leviticus bowed his head. “Understood.”
“Leviticus, please be discreet in your dealings as much as possible. War is war, we understand this. But if something tragic should occur, then the Vatican will have no choice but to disavow any knowledge of the Knights since we cannot afford any unwanted attention toward the Church.”
Again: “Understood.”
“Then bring them back, my friend. And with the blessing of God,” he gave the sign of the cross, “and with the blessing of the Society of Seven, be it known that the Church holds faith in those who believe in true righteousness.”
Leviticus got to a knee and placed a closed fist over his heart. “Loyalty above all else,” he said, “except Honor.”
The cardinals stood, an act of homage, each man placing a closed fist over their hearts. In unison they praised the Vatican Knight in perfect concert. “Loyalty above all else,” they said, “except Honor.”
Leviticus stood, turned, and walked away from the cardinals with his footsteps echoing off the ancient stone walls in haunting cadence.
#
Dr. Simone took careful effort to avoid the roving laser grid inside the unit by precisely cutting an oblong hole in the case with a laser that allowed minimal passage to the underside port of the altimeter, which led to its processing unit. With a mechanical arm and its automated hand, the end of the relay connection was carefully guided by the hand-clamps which inserted the cable from the facility’s mainframe to the altimeter, securing a linkup.
Immediately the large screen against the wall showed a series of binary numbers, a primitive code, the series easily altered or manipulated to raise or lower the altitude range. The code was a simplistic form of figures provided by the BlackBerry’s minimal capability to supply complex data to the CPU.
With the seasoned skill of a programmer, the binary code was reconfigured with mock courses running on the screen to see if the newly encoded instructions could lower the altitude score. On the monitor it did, going as low as one foot above sea level. The CPU in the weapon continued to maintain its memory read.
He then reconfigured the data to be programmed into the altimeter and hesitated before depressing the ‘SEND’ button. Although the unit was considered dead because the activation code was never fully entered, and with the exception of setting the weapon off by breaking the snare of the roving laser grid, which was not going to happen, he couldn’t help wonder if there was another catch hidden somewhere within. Something he didn’t know about.
Taking in a long breath and letting it out with an equally long sigh. He looked around the lab, which was as vacant.
And then he pressed the button, the informational relay going through.
The numbers in the altimeter’s readout window started to move downward from the 10,000 foot mark and rapidly picked up pace, the digits then moving so fast they could not be discernible from one numeral to the next. And then the pace slowed at a hundred feet and more so at ninety. It finally stopped at ten feet above sea level.
Simone smiled and nodded in approval. “Gotcha,” he said. He immediately contacted the president.
#
“I can’t fully disable the weapons,” said Simone from the viewing monitor, “but I can certainly reconfigure the data to well below the ten-thousand-foot mark so that Shepherd One can land at LAX.”
The president sat with his hands and fingers tented, his eyes staring with a marginal spark of hope. “How?” he asked.
“All this time I’ve been looking at the approach by attacking
the main CPU in the device when I should have been looking at it from other points as well—white wall, black paint; black wall, white paint.”
The president appeared mystified. “What?”
“I’ve approached this from the wrong angle,” he said. “Instead of disabling the weapon’s CPU system, why not modify the readings on the altimeter?”
The president eased forward in his seat. “Can it be done?”
On the screen Simone presented a brash smile. “I’ve already done it,” he told him. “I brought the readings down to ten feet. And LAX is one hundred twenty-six glorious feet above sea level.”
“I see,” said the president, falling back. “But how do you propose to do that, Ray, when the units you need to reconfigure are flying over LA?”
Simone’s smile abruptly left him. He’d been so enthusiastic about his discovery that he forgot a way to apply the breakthrough.
“Ray?”
“I would have to send the data to someone on board,” he said. “And they would have to connect a laptop to the unit. At that point I would forward the programming that would feed the figures to the altimeter’s CPU.”
“And who do you propose that be, Ray, since everyone on board is being held captive? You think maybe a terrorist would oblige us?”
Simone did not like the condescending tone of the president’s voice, and answered with his own brand of guided annoyance. “Mr. President, you asked me to find that Achilles’ Heel, which I did. Right now I have come up with the answer to land Shepherd One at LAX without the consequences of the nukes going off. If I’ve failed you, then I apologize for my lack of effort to find the proper solution.”
Burroughs raised his hands, as if conceding. “Listen, Ray, I didn’t mean for it to come out the way it did, so please don’t take it personally. Everybody here is in stress mode and even though I appreciate your efforts, the fact remains that your findings cannot be applied unless someone on board Shepherd One can do it manually, correct?”
“That’s correct—yes.”
“So tell me, is there another way to alter the readings on the altimeters?”
“Not unless somebody onboard does it.”
“And there within lies the problem,” said the president. “We have no one on board.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
LAX Tower
Attorney General Dean Hamilton issued a demand to maneuver the Feds into key positions along the United States and Mexico border, as well as locations in California, which included the LAX Tower.
At the moment Shepherd One was 30,000 feet in the air, a perceptible dot in the sky, in a constant state of circling. Approaches to reopen a second round of interaction between the insurgents and the Commander-in-Chief have proven unsuccessful, with Hakam refusing to open a channel of communication since the initial exchange was terminated two hours before.
At the top of the glassed-in Control tower, Federal agents Wilcox and Sanford examined the vacant tarmac knowing the terminals were ready to combust with angry flyers that had been delayed for an indeterminate period of time.
That situation, of course, was beyond their control.
The agents were poised as the interceptors of incoming data that was to remain covert—and act as the disciplinarians if such information should ever find its way into civilian hands, where they would act accordingly in the interest of national security by meting out certain courses of action mandated by President Burroughs.
Sometimes situations had to disappear and be explained away, even in a democracy. And sometimes particular methods had to be employed to justify the means.
Around them the console panels inside the Tower blinked intermittently as voices piped through the intercom systems in aviation terms the agents did not understand. The phones rang constantly, the room always in an unremitting drone. In the center of the area where the Com Center was located, faxed documents poured out in chronological order. The delay, depending upon the number of pages sent, was more than an hour behind.
However, a page not belonging with a certain group of diagnostic reports surfaced and was caught by a Tower employee, who proffered the sheet to an agent. It was an intercepted email from Alitalia Airliner 4161, Shepherd One.
“Are you sure?” the agent asked the Tower employee.
The employee nodded. “Thoroughly,” he said. “All airline transmissions go through the Avionics dock to the airline com centers. Usually they’re up-to-the-date diagnostics of the flight in progress—you know, mechanical, electrical; something to let the airline engineers know if something’s wrong during the flight. Emails are never personal—not like this. Everything coming from the Avionics panel is strictly diagnostics charts. Whoever was in the Avionics Room tapped into one of the ports and redirected the channel by typing in an address, which appears to belong to the Vatican.”
The agent held the intercepted letter up and gave it a mild wave in emphasis. “So this was sent by the pilot?”
The employee shrugged. “I have no idea who sent it,” he said. “All I know is this: the Avionics Room is a secured zone below the cockpit. To access the area one would need a key from an airline diagnostics specialist and not from the pilot since the area is restricted to all personnel with the exception of the plane’s engineers. If somebody was in that room while the plane was in flight, then they forced their way in. Whether or not it was the pilot—I don’t know. But the message has the name Kimball on it.”
“But there’s no doubt that this email was generated from the Avionics Room of Shepherd One?”
“None,” he stated. “The transmission of the diagnostic recordings from Shepherd One was interrupted by this message, which can be confirmed by the time stamp and ISP address on the upper right-hand corner of the page.”
The agent reread the email and noted the stamp and address.
“Can I ask you something?” asked the employee.
The agent looked into the man’s brown eyes. “Sure.”
“Are there really nuclear weapons on board that plane? Is that the reason why the Feds are crawling all over this place?”
From that point on all incoming and outgoing calls were suspended to employee staff with the phones now manned by federal agents. Though the Tower staff was not tagged as hostages, their privileges to leave the facility were suspended for the sake of national security. No one was allowed to communicate by any means with anyone beyond the airport perimeter. For those who strongly voiced their disagreements of current conditions were summarily sequestered.
A lockdown was now in effect.
After reading the email several times, the agent knew the president would be pleased to know they had a man on board. So along with the copy of the passenger list, the federal agent faxed all documents to the principals at Raven Rock.
#
President Burroughs was an emotional pressure cooker by the time Hakam logged on for a second go around. But he maintained himself after learning from the first exchange.
“Are you ready to act accordingly, Mr. President?”
Burroughs looked at the large viewing screen. There was no doubt the question was meant to be a source of embarrassment to him as Hakam’s words resonated throughout the hollow chamber. “You’ve wasted time,” the president said mildly. “We could have been working toward a solution over the past couple of hours.”
“There’s plenty of time,” said Hakam. “No doubt you already know what this plane is capable of—how long we can stay airborne.”
“What do you want?” The question was plain, simple, and proffered far more gently.
“My demand will be a simple one,” he said. “It’s simply addition by subtraction.”
The terminology was clear: addition by subtraction meant the requestor would benefit by the assassination of living obstacles for further gain.
“You want the American Government to assassinate individuals for the benefit of your organization?”
“Your policy, Mr. President, is to ‘keep your frie
nds close, but keep your enemies closer.’ And by that your government has been the watchdog maintaining close surveillance by illegally tapping the lines of the Arabic constituency here in the United States, which makes it easier for your government to access information concerning possible insurgencies regarding American interests—here and abroad. Therefore, your government has made it significantly difficult to wage war in your territory.”
“You mean commit acts of terrorism. Say it as it is, Hakam! It’s terrorism!”
“It’s war, Mr. President.”
The chamber went completely silent. Then: “We do what we do to preserve the American way of life,” said Burroughs, “and push for the commitment of peace within our borders. And I will use whatever methods are available to me to make this happen.”
“I’m not condemning you,” said Hakam. “You’re simply employing a defensive tactic of war. I can understand that. But now you must understand that I have to counter your initiative in order to level the playing field.”
“Seems to me you have the upper hand at the moment,” said the president.
“A slight, but temporary advantage,” he returned. “But what I’m looking for is something long term.”
“And what would that be?”
Hakam appeared to be scanning the faces of those sitting at the presidential table. “Most of your intelligence comes from Mossad; we know that—especially from the Political Action and Liaison Department and the Lohamah Psichlogit.”
The Political Action and Liaison Department, commonly referred by Mossad as the PALD, is responsible for conducting political activities and sustain liaisons with friendly foreign services—such as the CIA—by transmitting data from one agency to another regarding insurgent movement, or to pass on information to update the terrorist database. The Lohamah Psichlogit Department was different in the regard that they were responsible for psychological warfare, propaganda and deception operations. These two departments within Mossad were the umbilical ties that fed America and kept it safe.