Shepherd One (10 page)

The captain nodded.

“All I have to do,” he said, letting his finger hover over a
button, “is to push this key right here.” Hakam looked the captain straight in
the eye. “Your family will be dead before your mind could register the act. Am
I making my point clear?”

Enzio nodded frantically, almost in panic.

“Good.”  Hakam let the finger hover. “Now tell me, how
difficult is it to get the pontiff’s personal belongings on board the
aircraft?”

“His belongings and the belongings of his staff are
exonerated from examination or search because there is no indication of hostile
intent. All baggage is taken to the sublevels of the departing gates and
guarded by TSA officers, who make sure no one rummages through the items. Just
before the airspace is locked down for air travel, the items are then loaded
aboard Shepherd One.”

“And I assume to get below the departing gate you need to be
in possession of an access card or key code?”

“A card,” he answered.

“And you possess such a card?”

Enzio nodded.

“We know,” the Arab returned. “We have in our possession all
the cards of your crew.”

Enzio cocked his head.
How could he be in possession of
the access cards
?

“Almost done,” said Hakam. “Now, the price of saving the
lives of your family members will depend upon how much you’re willing to follow
my instructions.” He leaned closer. “Are you willing to follow my instructions
without question, Captain, keeping in mind that I hold the key to your family’s
salvation?”

“Please don’t hurt my children—”

“Captain, are you
willing
to follow my instructions
without
question, knowing that I hold the key to your family’s—”

“Yes, dammit! I will follow your instructions without
question!”

Hakam’s finger no longer hovered over the key. “Then listen
very carefully,” he said. “Tomorrow morning my team will board Shepherd One
along with two packages under your command until we become airborne. Is that
understood?” 

Enzio nodded.

“If any concerns are raised by airport security, then it
will be your duty to deflect them until we get aboard. Is this also
understood?”

The captain swallowed. His throat was as parched as desert
sand. “Yes.” 

“Is getting on board
without
a hassle from security
doable, Captain?”

Enzio nodded, but slowly. “Since Shepherd One is not a
planned commercial trip . . . there will be no problems.”

“Of course there won’t be. But so that you know.” Hakam
traced the tips of his fingers along the blank screen of the laptop, a subtle
reminder. “For some reason if things don’t go as planned, then the heads of
your family members will be discovered lined up on the sidewalk in front of the
Polizia De Stato
with a note stating they were taken by the Sword of
Allah. Am I clear on this?”

Enzio’s face threatened to break.

“Am . . . I . . . clear . . . Captain Pastore?”

“You are.”

“Good.” Hakam fell back in his chair and began to outline
every detail of getting his team on board Shepherd One, starting with the
careful loading of two very special packages.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Raven Rock (Presidential Bunker)

0721 Hours Eastern Standard Time

President Burroughs and his team of
three, including CIA Analyst Doug Craner, Chief Advisor Alan Thornton and
Attorney General Dean Hamilton, remained at the head of the table viewing a
live feed from Area 4 of the Nevada Test Site on a massive viewing screen.
Others milled about the Comm Center manning communications and fax lines from
intel sources around the world.

Chief Nuclear Engineer Ray Simone, although three hours
behind in the state of Nevada where the sun has yet to rise, looked fresh
despite no sleep. “Good morning, Mr. President.”

The president looked thoroughly exhausted. “You got
anything, Ray?”

The engineer shrugged. It wasn’t exactly a vote of optimism.
“As you already know,” he began, “the unit is initiated by an external source
which, of course, is the BlackBerry. However, in order to start the internal
sequence of the weapon, a ten-character code must be typed into the external
source.” 

“I know that.”

“Yes but, to go back on what we’ve already talked about, Mr.
President, is that the device takes a
sequential
order of ten characters
to activate the weapon. And to do this you need to type in a password for
each
character into the Blackberry’s display window. In other words, you need to
type in a specific password to create a single character in the display window,
and then repeat the process nine additional times, with different passwords, to
create the ten sequential characters necessary to activate the device. But the
odds of finding the right combination to disable the unit, Mr. President, can
be accurately stated to be in the tens of billions.”

“But can it be disabled?”

The engineer nodded. “It can. But not in the time you want
it, I’m sure. Even with the aid of the mainframe, it would take days to find
the right combination.”

“Can you get in there and do it manually?”

“The roving laser grid makes it impossible to disengage it
from inside. It would be far too dangerous to even make an attempt—even with
our top-of-the-line equipment.”

Sinking slowly back into his chair, with his face bearing a
pinched and anguished look, President Burroughs appeared on the verge of losing
his projected faith. “Everything has its Achilles’ heel,” he said evenly. “And
I need you to find it, Ray. I need you to find that Achilles’ heel.”

Simone raised his hand. “There is something else,” he said.
“It might not be a weakness, but I haven’t ruled anything out yet.”

“What?”

On the viewing screen Ray Simone hunkered over the open unit,
wearing a specialized pair of lenses resembling a jeweler’s loupe but larger,
and made a closer examination. “There’s an altimeter attached to the internal
computer system, which appears to be independent from the hard drive system.
What its purpose to this particular device has yet to be determined, however.”

“And what is the purpose of an altimeter?” 

Simone placed the magnifying loupe on top of his head. “It’s
used to measure the altitude of an object above a fixed level,” he answered
routinely. “As far as I know, it possesses no other function. It’s a simple
device for measuring air pressure.”

“I want you to find out what its particular purpose is, Ray.
I want you to know everything there is to know about that device as if you
built the damn thing yourself.” 

Simone circled the aluminum case in study.  “From every
point, Mr. President, it appears that the altimeter may have been adapted to
receive a broadcast from the central processing unit. Since the hard drive is
inaccessible due to the safety features, I’m unable to hack into its memory
core. So perhaps I could reverse the process by hacking into the memory portion
of the altimeter, instead.”  

“And what will that tell us?”

Simone hesitated, as if going over of his revelation before
speaking. “It could give us a clue to the unique reception frequency needed to
initiate the weapon’s start sequence, which would limit the need to go through
billions of codes needed to disable the device.”

“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 tears 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 became 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.