The Hand of Christ (4 page)

Reliving those vivid moments from three months ago, and just like then, one bead of sweat from the many now attached to his brow trickled down the side of his face. He felt his heart race as he continued to recall that day.

The marble had been too heavy for him to lift, moving only slightly from the floor when he had tried.

Sitting at his table, Leo looked across his private studio to the shelves where the large golden crucifix sat. Leo had eagerly grabbed it from the shelf and used it as a lever to pry the marble tile from the floor.

Shaking himself from his thoughts, Leo was suddenly compelled – he didn’t know from what – to stand up and walk over to the cross. Rising gingerly to his feet and without pause, Leo scampered across his studio and toward the shelves where the cross rested.

Once there, he stared at the cross for a moment and then picked it up from the shelf. He kissed it more so as an apology than as a blessing or for respect. With the cross in his hand, he looked down at the tile and then with care he knelt to the floor. He felt a slight tremble in his hands; unlike that moment three months ago, this time he knew what was underneath the tile.

Leo inserted the crucifix into the space he had created, and, with a bit of effort, lifted the marble slab once more. He lowered himself closer to the ground. With his left eye near the newly opened chasm, he squinted and looked into the dark space. The Pope could make out the faint tubular shape of the parchment.

Leo reached into the hole; grasping the parchment, the Pope slowly extracted it from where it had rested – up until three months ago – for nearly a century.

Eighteen inches in width and wrapped tightly in a deteriorating rag, the parchment was calf-skin vellum. In use nearly two centuries before Christ, vellum was washed, limed, and stretched for writing, but did not always stand the test of time. This parchment had obviously been well kept.

Leo removed the outer wrapping and dropped it to the floor; the sealed letter that he had read over and over again fell with it.

On the letter was the Holy Seal of the Papal Arms with the recognizable papal tiara and crossed keys of a Pope stamped into the thick red wax of the letter’s seal. Underneath the seal, penned in heavy black calligraphy, were the letters “PPX.”

Leo had instantly recognized the significance of the letters when he had first found the parchment three months ago. He bent over to pick it up from the floor but was disturbed suddenly by a knock at the door.

“
Your Holiness, it is I, Geoffrey, may I enter?”

Monsignor Geoffrey Hauptmann is the personal secretary to the new Pope. An extremely handsome man, at age 47 has been likened to the Catholic George Clooney. Athletic and with a sense of adventure, he plays a fantastic game of tennis, is a competitive skeet shooter, and even flies airplanes when possible.

The Pope snatched the fallen letter from the floor and stood abruptly to his feet – too quickly for an old man he realized – and spun toward the door with the ancient parchment and letter still grasped in his hands.

Leo didn’t answer. Geoffrey called out once more, “Your Holiness, are you awake? I have documents in need of your approval and signature.”

Leo had become lightheaded and groaned a bit from rising much too quickly but retorted, “One moment, Geoffrey, give me just one moment.”

Flustered by his need to act in secrecy, Leo placed his weight on top of the marble slab forcing it back into position which caused a piece to break off with an inordinately loud crack. Quickly, and with the parchment still in his hand, he put the golden cross back on the shelf and grabbed his pen.

A shiver of nervousness surged through Geoffrey as he heard the loud noise through the door. Suddenly afraid for the Pope, and with his hand on the apartment door’s handle, Geoffrey cried out, “Your Holiness, are you alright, are you in need of assistance?”

The Pope discerned the turn of the door handle, and not knowing what to do with the parchment, quickly tucked it under his robe.

As Leo returned his attention to the door, he was surprised to see that Geoffrey was already half way to him and staring with obvious concern. “Your Holiness, please excuse my unannounced intrusion. I was worried. I had heard a loud noise; I thought that maybe you had fallen!”

Leo was startled by how quickly the younger man had closed the distance from the door to where he now stood and answered, “No, Geoffrey, I did not fall, but thank you for your attention to my well being. I only hit my leg on the table. Please, help an old man back to his chair.”

The Pope silently wondered why he had lied to Geoffrey and limped slightly as Geoffrey walked him to the chair that stood in front of his writing table. Geoffrey seemed unaware of the Pope’s lie as he scanned the face of the old man and the rest of the room.

Geoffrey noticed the sweat on the Pope’s brow. He saw the cracked marble tile, too. He said nothing.

Chapter Three

North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)

Colorado Springs, CO

Housed two thousand feet deep inside the protective solid granite heart of Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado is the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). Originally, NORAD was chartered to monitor airspace in order to warn of and prevent air attacks against North America. Its primary focus was born from the escalating, but since then proven unfounded, fear of global nuclear war between the United States and the former USSR.

At the end of the cold war, NORAD was faced with budgetary cutbacks, forcing the Air Force to reinvent NORAD’s usefulness and need.

Drug runners became the target.

NORAD redefined itself by developing an expertise in conducting counter-drug operations that included the use of advanced satellite live tracking technology. NORAD had done well and the intelligence community took notice.

Officially, the team that operates the Combatant Observation Room (CORe) inside NORAD falls under the command of the Combined Intelligence Watch Center. Unofficially, and unbeknownst to the public and nearly all members of Congress, CORe’s budget and organizational construct is black with a direct and untraceable line to the CIA by any congressional watch groups.

Private First Class (PFC) Jonathon York, an Image Intelligence Specialist and the youngest member of the CORe team, sat in the small, uninspiring windowless room of CORe. His terminal was the farthest one from the door, and the CORe Center was as deep in the mountain as one could go, which meant that where he sat was, quite literally, at the bottom of a hole.

The only enjoyment that he could look forward to in the deprived environment occurred whenever the pretty new Lieutenant walked by his desk. Nearly every part of her was perfectly round and as equally firm. Her uniform top was obviously and always too small. Its small buttons strained to keep from popping.

PFC York had served in the Army for nearly four years. Promoted and demoted twice, PFC York had a serious problem with authority.

As his time in the Army neared its end, the number of things that he hated about the Army grew.

He hated riding the bus up the broken asphalt of the steep road to the gates of Cheyenne Mountain, especially in winter when hard-packed snow and ice added to the adventure. He swore that the bus driver purposely mishandled the steering to ensure that not one pothole would be missed. No longer wanting to endure the bone-jarring ride, he stopped riding the bus and took to running up the switchbacks, even during the winters. To add to the challenge, he would sometimes wear a heavy rucksack full of gear.

When the bus passed him in the morning, he saw the mocking stares of the other soldiers and airmen as they stared at him through the bus’s windows. Often, the bus came too close and threatened his place along the road’s edge. The bus climbed the steep roads and whined with revolutions that were obviously too high for its weak engine while its diesel motor spewed choking black toxins into the air. If it was at all possible to hate an inanimate object, then he even hated the bus, too.

He hated the low-pitched grating sound made by NORAD’s three blast doors that protected the operations center whenever they were opened or closed. He hated the annual polygraphs that went along with stupid questions about his lurid sexual fantasies: how many times he masturbates, his degenerate hobbies, and whether or not he was a spy selling secrets to the enemy.

He especially loathed the random interrogations that asked the same ridiculous questions to his friends and family about him – all in the name of national security.

He was close to the end of his first, and only, tour of duty and couldn’t wait to get out of the Army. He couldn’t wait to be rid of the never-ending nationalistic bullshit.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like what he did it was certainly interesting. But staring at screens all day, every day, sitting in the same chair looking at the same people just didn’t inspire him; he had an itch to move, to not be confined to a chair. Besides, he just wasn’t cut out for military life; everybody was a
sir
or a
ma’am
, and he always had to snap to attention because someone had more chevrons and rockers or shiny bars.

He just didn’t get it.

From where he sat each day, the multiple LCD screens in front of him displayed three-dimensional images of North Africa, the Middle East, and the Persian Gulf. The territorial borders were outlined from Algeria to Iran, his area of responsibility.

He wasn’t really paying attention to his job requirements as he nonchalantly scanned the screens while drumming his fingers on the desktop. He could barely conceal his boredom.

That would soon change.

Without warning, lights and alarms startled him back into focus; the superimposed border surrounding Syria glowed brightly, brighter than those of the other countries. At nearly the same time, an alarm at his terminal sounded, and alerted him and everyone else at CORe to potential hostile activity in the region. On his monitor, the electronic borders around Syria blinked brightly and incessantly.

Just great
, he thought to himself.
So close to ending the shift and some jackass thought this was the best time for some training
.

PFC York had really looked forward to leaving. A couple weeks back he had met a beautiful girl while having beers at Phantom Canyon, a local microbrewery in nearby Colorado Springs. She was an undergrad studying psychology at Colorado College, which sits within walking distance from the brewery. Since the first time that they had met, they had spent a few more nights and a weekend together: she had been so intoxicating.

Her legs were the first things he had noticed about her. He had no choice in the matter really, the shorts she wore that first night would make Daisy Duke blush. Naturally tanned and lightly muscled, the silky bronzed appendages never seemed to end.

Instantly, he had been attracted.

That night she had idled up next to him at the bar with no real intention of talking to him, but as luck would have it, the seat next to him was the only one available. Like any beautiful woman, every man she met since the age twelve had hit on her; it was for this reason that men often disgusted her with their never-ending state of sexual frenzy from which they perpetually suffered. All she had wanted was a cold beer and to be left alone.

By coincidence, she had ordered the same micro-brewed Hefe-Weizen that PFC York had been nursing only to spill it all over his lap.

She had to talk to him.

PFC York would learn that she was as much a perpetual klutz as she was beautiful. Their conversation soon went from apologies and small talk to a shared affection for mountain biking and distance running. It had become fairly obvious from where those legs had come.

Unfortunately, when she spoke, especially about a passionate topic, she did so as much with her hands as she did with her mouth regardless of whether she was still holding a beer or not. After three hours and as many mugs of Hefe-Weizen, she had spilled on the PFC no less than three more times.

Out of obligation perhaps, but more so from a palpable attraction, she had let him walk her back to her room at Bemis Hall, the ladies’ dormitory at Colorado College. He didn’t mind at all that the pants he had worn that night looked as if he had wet himself.

In his mind, he was sure that the evening had gone brilliantly. Removing the obvious (he looked as if he had pissed himself and smelled like a drunk): he had been on his “A” game. They had agreed to meet again which led to more dates, always meeting at the same place. He had been counting down the hours until they became minutes, almost able to taste the Hefe-Weizen as she sat near, and now this: A damn EDRE.

Every so often, the command would break the boredom of such a job by holding an Emergency Drill and Readiness Exercise (EDRE). It was a way to keep everyone’s skills sharply fine tuned he supposed, but most likely was done to prevent anyone from letting his forehead crash to the desk due to boredom.

When started, an EDRE would last no less than two-hours, sometimes longer. PFC York threw his hands into the air in exasperation and stammered, “Shit, not fucking now!” and just a bit too loudly.

“
What was that PFC York?” Captain Scott, the Executive Officer (XO) of CORe and the shift’s Duty Officer bellowed.