Shepherd One (Vatican Knights)

by Jones, Rick

  Like all men, he feared violent death despite his station with the Vatican. And above all else, he was human with the inherent trait of self-preservation. To die as an aged man because life had systematically come to its end by natural causes was one thing; to die by violence when life still had meaning was another. Pope Pius XIII truly believed he had much more to do, so much more to give. But right now he had to sermonize to the bishops, his words becoming an opiate to their ears.

  If it’s God’s will, he told them, then they were not to lose or question their faith because death would be a glorious transfer into His kingdom. Nor were they to question their devotion or loyalties, since blind faith required no proof since none existed. But in the end, as he stood there, and no matter how melodious he sounded, he could see the human side of their expressions, the aspect of self-preservation ruling over internal faith.

  Taking his seat, he couldn’t help the overwhelming feeling of his failure to pacify the bishops.

  And although shaken, Pope Pius XIII maintained his love for God and believed devoutly in His being. What bothered him, however, was his unwavering fear of knowing what was about to come, which was his death—so violent, so cruel, so unnecessary. But he was not hypocritical either, since fear was a human element and not a godly one. And though he was frightened he knew this to be good, the sense humbling him, which gave him the realization that he was not above the standards of the people, but a representative of them. Although he was the pope, he was not braver, wiser or better than any man on this plane. He was not godly or above all else. He was simply . . . human.

  Turning to his left he saw the Garrote Assassin looking at him. By the cockiness of his grin Pius could tell that killer had the insight to see his dread, the marginal grimace on the assassin’s face relishing the fact that the pope was frightened.

  Just because I’m the pope, he wanted to say, doesn’t make me any less or more than you. I fear, I think, I love like anyone else.

  Pope Pius XIII leaned back into his seat, closed his eyes, and began to pray.

  And when prayer was over he thought about one thing. He thought about Kimball.

  But even this was too much for one man to conquer alone.

  #

  Hakam paced the twin aisles of the jet airliner, up one aisle, then down the other. Something was clearly on his mind, his demeanor not escaping the insight of the Garrote Assassin, who held a steady eye on him.

  “Are you all right, al-Khatib?”

  Hakam raked his hand nervously through his hair and feigned a smile. “Fine,” he said, and then moved on.

  He had penance to pay for losing his faith. This much he knew. What he didn’t know is if Allah would forgive him for the transgression of losing faith, and then accept him into His Glory upon his death. The moment Shepherd One began its steep decline, the ideology of self-sacrificing his soul to Allah had become reality. His faith wasn’t even a consideration, only self-preservation. So now he had to rediscover himself in a way to appease his God by regaining his conviction and prove his worthiness. And he would start with prayer.

  While making his way back to the fore of the plane he observed the pope who appeared distant, his eyes vacuous, as if staring through the solid masses before him and toward that beatific plane of existence only he could see. Perhaps he, too, Hakam considered, was in prayer.

  “Are you in prayer?” asked Hakam.

  The pope never altered his gaze. “I am.”

  “And what do you see?”

  “I see hope.”

  Hakam nodded. “One man’s hope is another man’s apathy. You want to live and I want to die,” he lied. “Only one of us can have their way.”

  “Hope drives men forward while apathy inhibits growth. Hope will prevail.”

  “My hope is that we shall die for a cause. So does that mean my concept of hope will prevail over yours? Or will the semantics of ‘hope’ be left to the subjective interpretations of men of distant philosophies, such as yours and mine? There is no clear answer.”

  “No, but there is a clear path,” he returned. And then he faced Hakam. “I pray for the hope of good will, whereas you pray for its downfall.”

  “I hope for the progress of my people.”

  “And the price of progress is destruction?”

  Hakam did not counter, although he was fascinated by the art of debating. “Keep praying,” he told him. “So we shall see whose hope is the greater.”

  Pope Pius turned away, his eyes once again growing distant.

  From the periphery of his vision, Hakam saw a jet fighter make its way to the pilot’s side of the plane. “Keep praying,” he said dully, his sight tracking the flight of the jet’s path. “But I think your words will fall on deaf ears.” And then Hakam moved toward the cockpit with urgency.

  But Pius knew his hope to be the stronger.

  And his hope lay within Kimball Hayden.

  #

  The Flight Commander of Fighting Falcon Two-Six-Four-Three positioned himself alongside the cockpit window of Shepherd One. When Enzio saw the pilot gesturing to him by tapping the lip-mike area of his helmet to reopen communication, Enzio didn’t hesitate and flipped the toggle.

  “Go ahead, Two-Six-Four-Three.”

  “ . . . Shepherd One, Base Command would like to establish open communication with the hostile factions on board your flight. Do you copy? . . .”

  “Copy, Two-Six-Four-Three—will have to get back to you on that.”

  “ . . . I’ll be waiting . . .”

  The Fighting Falcon never left its position, its wing tip less than thirty feet from the cockpit window.

  #

  Hakam would make penance later. Right now he would show Allah his true devotion and commit to the cause through immediate action. Prayer would come later.

  When he stepped into the cockpit he saw the jet fighter about twenty meters away. “Has he made contact with you?”

  Enzio nodded. “He wants to reestablish communication with you.”

  “Then let’s not disappoint,” he said. “Open the line.”

  Enzio handed Hakam the lip mike and headpiece, then flipped the toggle.

  “And with whom do I owe the pleasure, since you are the one who tried to knock us out of the sky?”

  “ . . . Shepherd One, this is Fighting Falcon Two-Six-Four-Three, I have a message from Command Base who wishes direct communication with you. Do you copy? . . .”

  “It all depends on who it is at the Command Base who wishes to speak with me,” he said.

  “ . . . That would be the Commander-in-Chief . . .”

  Hakam didn’t even flinch. This was the moment he’d been waiting for—a moment with the president of the United States.

  “ . . . Do you copy, Shepherd One? . . .”

  “Shepherd One accepts the invitation,” he said.

  “ . . . The Commander-in-Chief has requested a live feed from your position . . .”

  “Then they shall have it.”

  The Flight Commander gave Hakam the ISP coordinates to open communication with the staff at Raven Rock.

  Once Hakam entered the contact address into his laptop on the navigation desk, he opened communication and viewed the president’s team from his monitor. “So tell me, Mr. President . . . how are you today?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  President Burroughs tried to show no sign of weakness, but an unyielding strength with the projection of his jaw. “I’m going to ask you once, Mr. al-Khatib Hakam. Do you have weapons on board that plane?”

  Hakam’s image peered back at them from the large viewing monitor, the image grainy. “You know who I am. Very good, Mr. President, but as you can see the advantage is mine. First, let’s get several things clear: I run the show, I make the demands, and you follow them to a T. Or Los Angeles becomes a wasteland. This I guarantee.”

  “So you do have the weapons?”

  “Perhaps,” he said. “Or maybe they’re well hidden somewhere in Los Angeles.”<
br />
  Then why were you trying to make it to Washington before your mission was compromised? he wanted to ask. It wouldn’t make sense to leave them behind when you could have used them to destroy the highest political seat in the land.

  No, he thought, they’re on board. And they would have used them over D.C., if they had made it.

  “What do you want, Hakam?”

  “And that’s what it really comes down to, doesn’t it, Mr. President?”

  “I suppose you want us to release your terrorist clan members from custodial facilities throughout the world and other impossible considerations, right? So tell me, Hakam, what do you really want?”

  “So terse, Mr. President . . . I don’t think I like the tone of your voice.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you like. What . . . do . . . you . . . want?”

  “For the moment . . . a change in attitude,” he said calmly. “Mr. President, if you believe for one moment I would allow you to press your authority on me by trying to impress your staff by the way you address me, then you’re sadly mistaken.” And then the screen went dead, the image winking off.

  Burroughs raised his hands. “What the hell just happened? Did we lose contact?”

  CIA Analyst Doug Craner nodded. “We did,” he said. “But from his end.”

  The president looked briefly at Doug, then back at the screen. “That son of a bitch turned me off.”

  “Mr. President, we still don’t have confirmation if the weapons are on board.” This came from Thornton.

  “He’s maintaining leverage. He wants us to believe that if we should drop the plane, then the additional unit would still be alive somewhere in LA. He doesn’t want us to think all the eggs are in one basket.”

  “Maybe they’re not.”

  “Before their position became compromised,” he said, “I believe they were heading for the most powerful political city in the world with the intent to destroy it. Now that they’ve been found out, they’re creating a new agenda for which maintaining leverage is the key. And Hakam knows this.”

  “But what if his plan all along was to set off a blast in LA, and then another over Washington? A nuclear blast is a nuclear blast. Not only would he have destroyed the highest political seat of the nation, but wreaked havoc with the populace of LA as well.”

  Burroughs considered this. Hakam maintained a huge advantage by handing the president and his team the idea of ‘not knowing.’

  “I wish we could get the pilot to confirm something for us,” he said.

  “Maybe he doesn’t know.”

  “Then get that little prick Hakam back online,” he ordered.

  “We’ve tried,” said Hamilton. “But he’s locked us out.”

  The president fell back into his seat and pitched a sigh. That little son of a bitch!

  #

  Hakam closed the screen to the laptop. After terminating the transmission with the president, he knew that Burroughs was trying to position himself as a man with a strong and unyielding constitution by confronting the face of adversity with a sense of bravado. His tactic, however, never made it beyond the first stage.

  As with most negotiations, psychology was the key to the outcome of any situation. And Hakam knew this, letting the president know by cutting off the transmission that he was not in charge of the circumstances, only Hakam. Therefore, Hakam employed his own brand of psych posturing by letting the president stew over the prognosis of whether or not there was going to be future contacts. Which, of course, there would have to be; otherwise, the mission would hold no purpose for the Muslim Revolutionary Front. But Hakam knew that the president would appear far more passive on the second broadcast, which brought an inward smile to the Arab who was holding the greatest country in the world on its knees. And for the moment he could no longer hold back the vanity of his pride as that inward smile of his made its way to the surface. Game one went to him.

  But the game was far from over.

  No doubt the president would try to reestablish contact by sending the F-16 forward. But Hakam would ignore the calls.

  In two hours he would contact Burroughs and his team with a desired game plan with demands to be issued at that point in time. In the interim, Hakam would make penance. And for those two hours he would pray for Allah’s forgiveness and guidance, along with the courage and strength to see this mission through.

  If Allah was testing his faith, Hakam vowed never to fail the test again.

  But something inside him that could not be wholly exorcised clung to him with unwavering dependence. It was the fact that his faith remained shakable. And if he couldn’t fool himself, then how could he fool Allah?

  Grabbing his prayer rug from an overhead bin, Hakam went to the rear of the plane, removed his shoes, got on bended knees, and began to pray with devotion, hoping this act of homage would grant him Paradise.

  He was sure Allah would give him his needs.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  When Dr. Ray Simone attended Harvard University and spent the majority of his time working at the Science Center, he fell in love with something more than just his work, though most people thought it impossible, given his academic acuity that nothing truly existed beyond the world of academia.

  But there was.

  Her name was Tia-Marie Castellano. By most standards she was not pretty. Nor was she displeasing to look at. She was, however, an academic with a thin face and soft brown eyes that appeared too close together. And whenever she parted her lips to display slightly irregular teeth, her face beamed with the afterglow and warmth. It was the little things about her that drove him pleasantly and deliriously crazy with desire, such as the way she cocked her head in that silly little slant of hers, or the way she held that odd look of trying to analyze a problem but couldn’t quite grasp an immediate solution. In time they gravitated toward each other, two unique people who found comfort in each other’s interests—talking about atoms and flows and theories that drove most people from the room. And in the course of human primal urges, uncovered a world beyond the pages of books and discovered each other romantically. She was his only woman, and he her only man.

  Three years into their relationship and having moved on from Harvard, she began to act differently, her mood shifting with sudden changes and becoming prone to rages and bouts of impatience, then fits of severe depression. In the apartment they shared in Boston she often flew into unprovoked rages, which convinced him that she was suffering from bipolar disorder. That changed, however, when she began to slur her speech, her words coming forward in drunken effect.

  Within a week of testing, a diagnosis confirmed a tumor on the amygdala portion of her brain, which controlled the emotions of fear and aggression. And with all the intellect between them, there was nothing either could do to save her. Her life was ending due to malignant cells running wild.

  Almost two months later she was gone.

  And he wept.

  And he mourned.

  And he continued to think of her constantly.

  If she was at Area 4 right now, there was no doubt in his mind that she would have found the solution to disable the payload circling above Los Angeles. As intellectually stellar as Tia-Marie was, however, her only setback, at least in his eyes, was that she lacked common sense.

  One night while driving through Roxbury, one of Boston’s seedier suburbs, she noted the black markings of graffiti on a block wall, prompting a comment that the walls should be painted black, so that no one could write graffiti on them. And he could remember his response clearly: ‘Then all they would have to do is write with white paint. Black paint does not wash things away forever.’ And for some odd reason she thought that was the greatest solution to a marginal problem. To him it was simply common sense. To her it was something that never entered her mind because the matter did not prove to be highly analytical. And for the rest of the evening she continued to tell him how brilliant she thought his answer was—which really wasn’t brilliant at all. Just s
omething he noted with little consideration.

  And then a thought struck him as he sat next to his locker staring at an aged and creased photo of Tia-Marie. She had seen the world differently than he did, with fewer dimensions and more of a straight-on and singular approach, reminding him that his world possessed a negative side to her positive, black verses white. He viewed the situation of Shepherd One being the black wall, and tried to find the solution with white paint. She viewed the white wall in Roxbury with black paint, the other side of the spectrum

  Of course!

  For hours he was trying to figure out a way to breach the payload’s brain by initiating a virus through the altimeter to kill the CPU. But what if he looked at the situation as the white wall, like Tia-Marie? What if he looked at the altimeter instead of the CPU? He could readily access the altimeter and reprogram its detonation attitude to as low as 10 feet above sea level, not the 10,000 feet it was locked in at. The CPU would still read the memory as being active since a numerical balance of attitude remained, but could only detonate at 10 feet. Surely the sea level of LAX was above that.

  Dr. Simone kissed the tips of his fingers and pressed them endearingly against the faded photo of his one-time love, quickly recalling a Simone-ism he created for her upon the moment of her death. Soul-mate: Two people who are forever linked by unconditional love, never sees fault in the follies of their loved one, and is willing to self-sacrifice their personal needs for the welfare of their companion without consideration of their own consequences. It is a connection that is timeless and cannot be cut off by distance or events. It’s a connection that takes a moment to create, but exists for a lifetime.

  “Thank you,” he whispered. You always did show me the way.

  After that he sprinted to the lab.

  #

  In the inconstant light provided from the flicking bulbs on the Avionics board, Kimball could hardly see the keypad of the laptop as he typed a message to the Vatican.