Shepherd One (Vatican Knights)

by Jones, Rick

  By 9:00 a.m.—thirty minutes before Pope Pius XIII was to arrive by gubernatorial limo—Hakam, Enzio Pastore, and the members of the Muslim Revolutionary Front appeared in the sublevel, with Captain Pastore summarily dismissing the TSA officers with a simple fanfare of a hand wave, leaving him alone with the MRF.

  Each motorized cart was capable of holding two, the driver and passenger, with the carts facing a 900-foot tunnel that led to the executive hangers. Without saying a word, Hakam boarded the passenger side and gestured Enzio to the driver’s seat.

  “When we reach Shepherd One,” Hakam told him, “make sure you do not falter, slip, or give any indication to the TSA officers watching over her that something is wrong.”

  Enzio said nothing; he merely eased into the driver’s seat.

  Hakam turned and looked down the length of the tunnel that passed beneath the tarmac. “If you do, Captain, then your family will die.”

  “So you keep saying.”

  “And I will keep saying it until you realize what’s at stake every waking moment that you fly Shepherd One. Now move.”

  Turning the ignition key and depressing the pedal, the electric cart began to move through a concrete tunnel that was barely wide enough to let the carts pass. Light bulbs stretched along the hallway cast feeble light, and myriad pipes of various diameters and umpteen coats of paint ran along the ceiling before branching off to other sections of the airport’s underworld.

  During the drive, Hakam’s shadowlike features shifted in the inconstant lighting as they drove away from the weak luminosity of one bulb, and waxed into the dim light of another. “No matter what happens,” Hakam told him, “you will never alter your planned heading unless I say so. Is that understood?”

  The pilot nodded.

  “The only reason why you are alive is because I need someone who knows all the intricacies of that plane, such as the flares and all the other wonderful defense mechanisms built into its configuration.”

  “Expecting an aerial assault, are you?”

  “I plan for every contingency and expect to win at every turn,” he answered. “And what better way to plan for such an event when the pilot of Shepherd One also happens to be one of the best pilots who flew for the Aeronautica Milatare?”

  “So you know my background.”

  “Like I said, I plan for every contingency with the expectation to win at every turn.”

  Reaching the incline that led to the executive hangers, both men remained silent as the carts moved out of the tunnel and onto the sunlit causeway that led to Hanger 11, the storage unit for Shepherd One.

  The time was 9:07 a.m., twenty-three minutes away from the pope’s scheduled arrival to the airport. From their vantage point they could see the masses lining up within the cordoned off areas to glimpse upon the pope one last time. All security had been transitioned to the populated areas with law enforcement converging to the points of interest, leaving Hakam’s team to breach the area with minimal opposition.

  When they neared the end of the causeway, the carts in perfect alignment like the cars of a train, Enzio headed straight for Hanger 11 with the others in tow, the carts looking diminutive in the shadow of the massive structure.

  The building was huge, a half-oval-shaped construction rising fifteen stories high with its outer shell fashioned with steel framing and corrugated tin. The bay doors were open, offering a view of one of the most technological advancements to currently hit the circuit, the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, a new and top-of-the-line aircraft.

  Although this particular airliner was set for papal excursions and geared with additional equipment designed to keep the pope safe, the similarity in its appearance with others in its fleet made it difficult to target, since this Alitalia airliner looked no different from any other in its line. Like any other plane in Alitalia, Shepherd One sat gleaming with its signature red and green dorsal tail, and a green stripe running along the length of its fuselage.

  “She’s a beautiful ship,” Hakam mentioned.

  “And what will you do with her? Fly her into a building?”

  Hakam shook his head. “Nothing as redundant as that,” he said. “In fact, Captain, I don’t plan to crash her into anything at all.”

  As they drove near the hanger doors, they noted two TSA officials standing guard.

  “Just do and say all the right things,” said Hakam. “I’ll have my team manage the rest, if necessary.”

  Captain Pastore said nothing as he drove into the hanger and parked next to the check-in dais. As required, he proffered the ID cards to the officials for examination. Neither officer gave them much consideration. They simply grabbed the cards and noted the tag numbers on their logging sheets before handing the cards back to Pastore without giving the photos a detailed inspection.

  “Thank you, Captain. Will you need any assistance to load the cargo bay?”

  Pastore nodded. “We’ll be fine,” he said in accented English. “Thank you.”

  “Then have a safe trip back to Rome.”

  “We will.”

  After the officers called into the command post to inform them that the pope’s crew had arrived, they were immediately dispatched to alternative points to bolster security.

  “And what if they had checked the photo ID’s?” asked Pastore.

  “Then my team would have killed them and their bodies would have been placed on board Shepherd One. But the one thing that is a given in this country, Captain, is American complacency. Right now they should be praying to their God for thankfulness.”

  Hakam exited his cart, his team exiting theirs, and stood before the massive plane and examined the aircraft to its full incredible height, each man craning his head upward as if watching the slow trajectory of a rocket.

  “We need to get inside,” said Hakam. “Now.”

  The time was 9:16 a.m.

  The pope was minutes away.

  #

  Kimball Hayden sat in the gubernatorial limo alongside Pope Pius XIII. The trailing vehicles, three black SUV’s, transported the additional members of the Holy See.

  Kimball stared out at the Los Angeles skyline, taking in everything he once took for granted. The graffiti strewn bridges and cement overpasses, the congestion and constant tie-ups, the haze of pollution that hovered above the city like a tarnished crown would seem bleak and hollow to most. But to Kimball it was home, a place he missed, his self-exile making him a criminal to his country and to his conscience.

  Once he left the limo to aid the pope aboard Shepherd One, he would have to wear his scarlet beret bearing the emblem of the Vatican Knights, and a neat pair of shades. Most likely nobody would notice a forgotten man once renowned as an elite assassin in the covert circle of the White House staff, namely the president of the United States. But if he should be discovered, would he become targeted to keep matters quiet? Since Kimball didn’t know the current political mindset, he couldn’t answer his own considerations. Nor did he want to assume that all would be forgiven or forgotten, since he was a wealth of black information of past administrations.

  “You miss it, don’t you?” asked the pope.

  Kimball eased away from the window and donned his sunglasses. His scarlet beret was folded into the shoulder strap of his specially designed cleric’s shirt. “I do,” he answered. “It’s my home.”

  “As much of a great service you provide the Vatican, Kimball, we still recognize the fact that God has given you free will to choose whatever it is you want.”

  “What I want and what I must do are two separate things,” he stated somberly. “Right now the Church is where I belong. I leave this behind because I choose to.”

  The pope smiled, his features looking upon Kimball in a paternal gesture. “You’re a good man, Kimball. I know you seek the Light of Forgiveness for things you have done in the past.”

  “It’s hard,” he said. “I can never seem . . .” His words trailed.

  “What? See an actual blinding light at the end of a
tunnel?” The pontiff leaned forward and placed his hand on Kimball’s forearm. “The Light, Kimball, is not just ‘The Light.’ It’s also the Light of Enlightenment. You have seen the ways of your past and are in conflict by trying to fill the void with contriteness. To me, Kimball, your repentance is that Light of Forgiveness.” He retracted his hand. “Although you may feel that you have not found It . . . I believe It may have found you.”

  Kimball turned toward the pope, not knowing if he was silently casting judgment against him for what he truly was, an assassin. “I killed two children,” he said as if it was common knowledge.

  The pope briefly closed his eyes and nodded his acknowledgement. “And if you hadn’t, how many more people would you have killed by now?”

  Kimball did not reply. He turned his gaze to the passing landscape.

  “Those two children became your saviors,” he added. “And their deaths served to make you change your life. Their deaths were not in vain, Kimball.”

  Kimball thought otherwise. “Then why do I see their faces every time I fall asleep. There’s never an escape.”

  “All I can say, Kimball, is that your service to the Church is invaluable and you have proved your worth to God time and again. You have committed yourself to saving the lives of good people.”

  And Kimball thought: As an assassin I was killing despots and international tyrants who threatened the sovereignty of the United States—and by doing so I was saving the lives of good people, as well. So what’s the difference? That I do the same exact thing for the Church in the name of God instead of the Holy American Empire? People are still dying by my hand, only this time it’s viewed as acceptable under the scrutiny of God instead of the acceptable examination of a reigning politician. Only the request for doing so was far less in demand. It was kind of like . . . Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, type of thing.

  “I feel totally lost within myself,” he finally said. “I feel . . . confused.”

  “Sometimes a person needs more than faith, Kimball, since faith alone does not get a man by despite what you may have heard. Sometimes men, all men, need something more.”

  Kimball faced him. The man looked daunting wearing his shades. “And that would be?”

  “That Vatican has a battalion of psychologists for a reason,” he answered. “And there’s no shame or weakness in seeing one. In fact, I highly recommend it.”

  Kimball gave a perceptible nod. He was more than willing to try anything in order to vanquish the demons in his sleep.

  Staring out the window with LAX in view, Kimball wondered if he would ever gravitate away from the extreme violence that seemed so much part of his life.

  He would soon get his answer.

  And the answer would be no.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The dimensions of the 787-9 Dreamliner are that it’s 206 feet long and 56 feet high, with a cargo volume of 5,400 cubic feet. Its configurative measurement is a little more than two-thirds of a football field and stands nearly as tall as a six-story building. It had taken Hakam’s team less than ten minutes to load the cargo bay, which seemed to extend impossibly long in either direction from the center of the fuselage. Crates and packaged goods were tethered down with straps. However, as scantily loaded as the bay was, there remained so much available space that whenever anyone spoke, their words would echo throughout the cargo area.

  Fashioned between a series of crates were the two nuclear armaments. The two cases separated by no more than two meters, and were securely fastened to the floor by vacuum cups and bonded seals to assure that nothing could lift them from their anchored positions. If separated manually, then the central processing unit would immediately recognize the movement as antagonistic and initiate the detonation sequence.

  After securing the cases, Hakam stood back and appraised the units. Although separated, each would accept the other as a single element with a six-kiloton yield, once he instructed the CPU with a shared command to detonate simultaneously.

  Removing the BlackBerry from the inner lining of his Alitalia Airline jacket, he began to type in a series of passwords on the keypad to create the ten characters needed in the display window, the ‘one true password to initiate the weapons. Once completed, and with the password now appearing on the screen as a blinking declaration to commence, he pressed the ‘SEND’ button.

  Immediately the units began to work as one, the CPU’s recognizing the frequency which instructed the detonation pins to activate and remain expectant for the final sequence. Once done, he began to type in a second arrangement of characters, this time for the altimeters. After Hakam pressed the ‘SEND’ button, nothing special happened. The altimeters windows remained blank. But Hakam knew the altimeters would not respond until they reached an altitude of twenty-five thousand feet. Once engaged, then the plane could never land, since the altimeters were set to go off automatically once Shepherd One reached the descending altitude of ten thousand feet.

  Placing the BlackBerry into the inner lining of his jacket, Hakam became aware that he had fallen behind schedule. The pope was arriving, and Shepherd One needed to be taxied onto the runway since the airspace was closed.

  Quickly, he made his way down the lengthy fuselage and to the stairway that led him to the upper level.

  Behind him, the packages silently ticked on with the promise of death.

  #

  Every exit leading in and out of the Chateau Grand Hotel was battened down tight. Guests were not allowed to leave. Employees remained on the clock. And law enforcement interrogated every available employee and guest with a volley of questions.

  Did you see anyone?

  Did you hear anything?

  Are there any security surveillance tapes?

  Etcetera . . .

  So far, everything was coming up blank.

  In room 616, investigators from the Los Angeles Police Department took careful study as the Crime Scene Analysts combed the area for trace elements and latent prints.

  When Investigators Marty Cardasian and Joey Bardaggio entered the room, it was like stepping into a black museum. Macabre patterns of blood splatter covered the walls and ceiling, and the smell of copper continued to hang in the air with the thickness of humidity. It was a difficult place to wade through as investigators made their way to the bathroom where the bloodied and clawed hand of the deceased extended over the tub’s edge.

  Cardasian was tall and gangly and a husk of his former self. Twenty-five years ago when he entered the force as a rookie, he was full of the typical bravado and enthusiasm that usually accompanied someone who often romances the ideas of law enforcement by seeing himself as someone who could single handedly change the streets of a city growing decadent by the day. But over time his face had become long and jaded from partaking in too many tragedies that held the promise of more to come. And now when he walked he did so in a stoop, his body bowing in the shape of a question mark. The reality of life had hit him hard.

  Bardaggio, however, learned to desensitize himself and left the pressures of life at work when he went home a night. And that is why he—and two years older than Cardasian—looked much younger with a marginally youthful appearance, lean shape, and hair that was thick and full.

  When they entered the bathroom they observed the victim with mutual indifference. Within the yellowing pool of light they could see that the victim’s skin had marbled as he laid there with an eye slightly opened, as if to spy a glimpse of the path Death was taking him. And his throat, a grisly display, was in terrible ruin, the flesh surrounding the straight-lined gash paring back in a horrible grimace, as the blood within the crease glistened like black tar.

  “Got two tickets to the Dodgers game for next Saturday,” said Bardaggio. “And they’re burning a hole in my pocket. Interested?”

  Cardasian shook his head. “Got plans,” he said. The tall man got to a bended knee, his ligaments cracking—another testament to his aging limbs—and measured the victim with a seasoned eye. “St
raight line across the throat,” he commented. “And . . .” He snapped on a pair of rubber gloves, the type surgeons wear, the ones that fit like a membrane, and carefully positioned the victim’s head until the deceased was looking away, the rear of his neck exposed. “Take a look at this.”

  A ligature mark that didn’t bite through the flesh but left a bruise was apparent.

  “Strangulation,” Bardaggio remarked. “And not from a cord, either.”

  Cardasian stood up. “More like a garrote.”

  “A professional hit?”

  “It appears that way.” The taller man removed the gloves and pocketed them, the gloves to be discarded later. “We know anything about this guy?”

  Bardaggio nodded. “All we know right now is that his name is Mario Morgenessi, an Italian national whose room was billed to the Vatican account, which makes us believe he was part of the Papal Symposium. But we’re trying to verify that.”

  Cardasian took a position at the doorway between the bath and hotel room, the analysts canvassing and cataloguing every piece of evidence as he watched them. For nearly two decades he had analyzed and conceived his own theories based on ‘similarity’ styles of murder. And in the case of Mario Morgenessi, such brutally often wagered in as a signature for a passion killing. The excessive gore often a telltale sign. But for someone like Morgenessi whose duty was to the pope and had no American affiliations, left Cardasian scratching his head. It definitely was not robbery. So why take the time to kill the man so viciously? “Are there any other rooms billed to the Vatican account?” he finally asked.

  “Five,” said Bardaggio. “But the rooms were vacated early this morning.”

  “Are you sure? Like this room was supposed to be—before the maid found Mr. Morgenessi here?”

  Point made!

  Bardaggio immediately forwarded a call to hotel management, asking them to allow all rooms billed to the Vatican account to be checked.