Shepherd One (8 page)

As he traced a fingertip along the rim of the last shot
glass, a male in his early twenties stopped just beyond the edge of the table,
his fingers ticking off and counting down the empty glasses before focusing his
gaze to the Roman Catholic collar Kimball was wearing, and then shifted to the
priest’s eyes. “Excuse me, Father.”

Kimball raised the corner of his brow. “Something I can help
you with?”

“Aren’t priests supposed to uphold a higher standard? Are
you supposed to be drinking like this?”

Kimball looked at the guy in such a way that the young man
took a step away from the table. He had encroached too closely into his
personal space. Worse, he infringed upon his personal life with audacity.  And
then in a tone that was less priestly. “Hey, kid.” The young man hesitated as
Kimball beckoned him closer to the table with his forefinger. “Come here.”

The young man came forward with every line, shadow and
premature crease on his face spelling out that he had overstepped his
boundaries and wished he hadn’t. There was something very different about this
priest, something dangerously roguish.

The moment he stepped into close counsel with the cleric,
Kimball whispered, “Look, I already have enough on my plate without people like
you passing judgment on me. If you don’t like what I do, then piss off.”

The young man did not retort. He simply turned and walked
out of the bar at a pace much quicker than when he entered.

Across from him, behind the bar, was a mirror smudged with
layers of dust—a mirror that had not been wiped down in months, perhaps years.
Staring back at him was the reflection of a man wearing a cleric’s collar, the
image of a priest, a father, a man of the cloth. Perhaps the kid was right
after all, he considered. Without the collar he would have been like anyone
else in this bar—someone who was stooped over their drink and blending in with
the shadows; people who were nondescript and without hope.

After glancing into the mirror one last time, Kimball pushed
the last shot glass away, still full, and left the tavern.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Perugia
, Italy

Just after Dusk

Although they were a cell totally
separate from Hakam’s, they shared the same agenda. They were now soldiers in
the eyes of Allah—six men who had fought admirably with the Republican and
Revolutionary Guards, and later surrendered their national birthright and
prejudices to fight under the one true banner of their God as jihadists, the
only true soldiers.

However, not all were content with their station as
combatants. Young and fit and full of the determination to fight, most kept a
silent countenance with the exception of al-Rashad who, like Hakam, was an
American-born Arab who gravitated toward the radical side of Islam. He was
tall, six four, with broad shoulders and thick limbs. The slope of his brow and
the massive muscle development gave him a simian appearance which was brought
on by chemical evolution rather than ancestral inherency. By taking steroids he
had become addictive to its fallout, the results unmistakable. And nobody dared
to contest his often aggressive nature or cantankerous moods. 

Through his own due diligence al-Rashad was tagged as the
team leader of five men, all experts, each man with the commitment to surrender
his life for Allah, which he respected. But to serve in the capacity to babysit
a mother and her heathen offspring seemed humiliating. But al-Rashad was
assured by the clerics from the Ponte Felcino Mosque that the service of his
team would prove to be a great service to Allah. And that his team would impose
a serious and heavy blow upon the United States and its Zionist ally, Israel.

How a woman and her children were tantamount in such an
event was lost to al-Rashad. But he adhered to the cleric’s claim, believing
his team to be a true instrument serving their God in a most important way.

As night was beginning to close over them, al-Rashad
normally walked alone through the vacant warehouse, his footfalls echoing with
a hollowed cadence that often gave the impression he was not alone when, in
fact, he was. His men were stationed elsewhere on the second floor next to the
holding chamber, a room fashioned with sheets of corrugated tin, steel framing,
and a welding torch.

His captives, for the most part, were passive and quiet with
the exception of the female child who cried on occasion, her sobbing a soft and
haunting melody that carried throughout the warehouse like the moan of
something long dead, of something caught in void between life and death.
Hearing such noises often prompted him to take these measurably long walks. And
for al-Rashad, these walks had become medicinal.

He never deviated from his path or course, always walking
down the same dark warrens, listening to the same perpetual drip of water,
smelling the same rancid odor of mildew and waste, but always ended up at the
same grated stairway that led to the second floor balcony which gave him a
westward view.

In the distance and beautifully lit by a semblance of lights
was the Ponte Felcino Mosque. Its dome was perfectly rounded and its color,
even in the shadows of the coming darkness, seemed to be emblazoned in gold. It
was the home of his God. It was the House of Allah.

Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, al-Rashad
relished the moment.

He would do Allah’s bidding, he considered, and he would do
it without question. And when it came time to kill the woman and her children,
he would do so as an integral part of the movement and wield the cutting blade
himself. There would be no underlying guilt or warring of conscience. Since the
easiest thing for man to do was to justify any act no matter how heinous the
act may be, he saw that killing non-believers was an ordained task expected by
Allah.

Taking one last look at the mosque, al-Rashad soaked
everything in with an appreciative eye.

The man was completely at peace. 

#

Raven Rock (Presidential Bunker), Pennsylvania

1700 hours. Eastern Standard Time

While the sun had already descended
in Perugia, Italy, it had yet to settle on the eastern side of the United States.

Raven Rock was located on more than twenty thousand acres of
federal land with its exclusive retreat situated on a plateau-like rise
accessible only by helicopter. In the camp’s leveled base area, a single cabin
was positioned in the center with three helipads located to the north, south
and east points of the cabin’s central position. Aerial towers mounted to the
rooftops maintained surveillance dishes capable of intercepting non-legitimate
aircraft from several miles away. Anything remotely hostile would be targeted
by predators, which were computer-manned by a military defense team from inside
the cabin.

The landscape was completely unadulterated as the grass
swayed with the direction of a light breeze, giving the terrain a constant
undulating motion that rippled across the mountaintop, as if the land was
alive. In communion with nature the conifers danced in performance, the concert
of their limbs moving in a slow, hypnotic grace as the wind traced a cool
breeze over the summit. Everything moved in perfect harmony. 

From the east Marine One made its way toward the compound,
the thumping of its rotors growing louder as it neared. When the helicopter
poised itself over the north heliport, the down draft of the whipping blades
caused the grass to ripple in tumultuous waves and the limbs of the pines to
thrash about wildly in playful sparring. 

After Marine One landed and the rotors stilled, the hatch
door lowered and the president and his team took solid footing on the compound.

From a distance the quarters appeared rustic like a log
cabin should, the wood bucolic in its appearance and the surrounding air
pastoral. But the cabin wasn’t a cabin at all. It was a high-tech bunker. The
building had blast-mitigation windows and a logwood veneer that covered the
underlying walls of concrete casting and three-inch steel, rendering the
stronghold impermeable to assault.

Inside, the interior was without standing walls to partition
off rooms. Instead, it was a single large area with a security station manned
by the defense team who could navigate the predators and maintain surveillance
from their seated positions along the console. In the room’s center was a large
cylindrical tube emanating from the floor, the huge cylinder not quite reaching
the building’s ceiling, with stainless steel doors. As the president and his
team neared the doors, an electronic eye caught their images and immediately
processed the landmarks on their faces with facial recognition software, and
automatically opened the doors, giving them access to an elevator spacious
enough to hold them comfortably. 

As soon as the doors closed behind the president and his
team, the elevator descended two hundred feet into a hollowed cavern that
served as the Comm Center.

When the doors parted they were met with a subterranean
coolness, a vestige reminder that the air was constantly being filtered,
purified, and re-circulated back into the atmosphere by computer-powered fans. 

The room itself was large, circular, the ceiling above them
a perfect rotunda of carved rock. In the room’s center was a large table with
tracks of lighting suspended above it by metal framework. And positioned along
the length of the walls hung several large viewing screens and display
monitors.

Taking a seat at the table, President Burroughs was joined
by his staff and other leading principals, who were transported to Raven Rock
from other points of the country on earlier arrivals.

“Thank you for coming on such short notice,” stated the
president.

Within moments the viewing screens attached to a flat wall
of colored shale winked on, proposing pictures of extraordinary quality from
technology that has yet to land on the public market. 

What surfaced on the minimal-sized screens were the boasted
images of the Presidential Seal. On the large multi-pixel screen hanging down
from the metal framework and separate from the other monitors, was the image of
CIA Intelligence Liaison Jaxson Wilhite.  

“All right,” the president began. “We’ve got a lot of work
ahead of us. And thank you for joining us, Mr. Wilhite.”

Jaxson Wilhite operated out of the London base and worked in
collusion with MI6, the United Kingdom’s highly esteemed Secret Intelligence
Service. “No problem, Mr. President.”

“Mr. Wilhite.” The president leaned forward with his hands
clasped together. “Please tell me you have something.”

Wilhite shrugged with a halfhearted gesture. “Mr. President,
so far our sources in the Middle East, including Mossad, has turned up zero.
Right now there is nothing on the chat lines to indicate that Arab insurgents
attempted to move nuclear weapons across our border. And all intercepted data
from the Middle East—and we’re talking from the guerrilla factions, as well as
intel gleaned from the Palestinian front—has turned up empty. Whoever is
running this campaign is certainly keeping an air-tight lid on it.”

It was not what the president wanted to hear. Intel is
often, if not always, intercepted by unsuspecting agencies who believe their
secured lines and untenable data resources could not be appropriated, which
always made them vulnerable to American intelligence groups. But in this case
there was nothing to garner, which was unusual given the circumstances and
magnitude of the situation. 

“And what about Hakam and his team? Any leads thus far?”

“No, sir. Not yet.”

The president could feel his mounting frustration come to a
boil, but held it in check with forced calm. “We have nothing at all?”

“I’m afraid not, Mr. President.”

Jim Burroughs slapped an open palm against the table. “Then will
somebody please tell me how in the hell those units got into Mexico? Will somebody—anybody—tell me how a team of radical insurgents were able to bypass
all Interpol points and transport nuclear weapons halfway across this planet
without even raising an eyebrow! Somewhere—somebody knows something!” 

Wilhite did not flinch. “We’re still working on the answers
for you, sir.”

“What about Yorgi Perchenko? Were you able to track him
down?”

Wilhite nodded. “We’ve located Perchenko and mobilized units
to secure him. However, Mr. President, there is a problem.”

Burroughs closed his eyes
: Of course. Why wouldn’t there
be
? “Go ahead, Mr. Wilhite.”

“It appears the Russian Central Intelligence Service is
swooping in to intercept him as well.”

“Can your men get to him before the SVR can?”

“If we do, then it’ll be close.”

“Use whatever means necessary to secure that man and/or the
information he possesses. If you need to engage the Russian’s, do so.”

“Mr. President.” Alan Thornton’s interjection was one of
discernible alarm. “Sanctioning a fire fight with officers of the SVR would definitely compromise our position there. To expose our coverts like that would have
consequential results should they be captured or killed.”

“I would agree with you, Al. But from where I’m sitting I
don’t see how we have much choice. Yorgi Perchenko is the key holder to what we
need to know. And that information, as far as I’m concerned, is worth the
jeopardy we place them in. If they succeed, great; if they don’t, then we
inherit a nation that will no doubt come under the attack of nuclear weapons
and its subsequent fallout. We have no choice but to take gambles from here on
in.”  He turned back to the viewing screen. “Mr. Wilhite?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“How much of a guarantee can you give me that the Company
will get there before the Russian team?”

Wilhite hesitated. “I’m afraid I can’t give you a guarantee
at all,” he said. “Right now it looks like a head-on collision.”

“Do the Russians know our team is converging as well?”

“No, sir.”

“Then let’s hope their complacency will become our ally.”
Easing back into the chair, the president quickly reflected. Hopefully, in Minsk, where it was already dark, the American team would prevail under covert conditions.
But Burroughs knew better, realizing the Russians would do anything to quash
the truth about Perchenko in order to keep them from being judged by the
international community as the administration who allowed such weapons to be
distributed from under their watchful eye, and earn them global mistrust. They
would find Perchenko, make him disappear, and deny everything. The solution for
any political machine was to dig its way out of a deep hole by putting
something else in its place, and then cover it over with a cairn of lies.

“Mr. Wilhite?”

“Sir.”

“How long before the team reaches the point of
interception?”

“I’d say within the hour, sir.”

Burroughs checked his watch. No doubt sixty minutes would
seem like a lifetime.

Even more so, there was nothing worse than the sentiment of
being rendered impotent.