Shepherd One (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

Inside the Cipro Residential District, Rome, Italy

Six months later

It sounded like a child crying at
the edge of her peripheral hearing. The type of sound that was distant and
hollow, as if coming from the end of a long tunnel or part of a dream. Or
perhaps it was something real on the cusp of waking. Either way, Vittoria
Pastore heard it.

Raising her head slightly off the pillow, the mother of
three listened.

The room was dark. The shadows still. Outside, a breeze
stirred, animating the branches of the trees just beyond the bedroom window.

But nothing sounded.

After laying her head down onto the pillow, she once again
heard the softness of voices beyond the bedroom door. The clock on the
nightstand read 3:32 a.m.

Vittoria quickly set herself onto her elbows and listened,
her eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness. To her left by the window stood
the armoire, an exquisitely crafted antique intricately detailed with hand
carvings of cherubs alighting above the doors. Directly in front of her sat its
matching dresser, its mirror reflecting the image of a woman who appeared
vaguely disoriented. As if to parallel her thoughts regarding the uncertainty
of the moment, errant locks of hair shaped like question marks curled over the
woman’s forehead, giving her a more inquisitive look.
Is there somebody out
there?
  

Her answer came swiftly. The voice that called out to her
sounded distant and hushed. Immediately she sat upright with her hands fisted
and planted against her breasts.
“Chi è là?”
Who’s there? Her voice was
barely above a whisper.

Silence.

She cried out once again, this time louder and more
forceful.
“Chi è là?”

“Mama? La mama, viene qui.”
Mama? Mama, come
here.

Although the voice sounded distant, she could not mistake
the quality of her fifteen-year-old son, or the tone that was in transition of
a boy becoming a man. “
Basilio, è tre trenta di mattina. Che cosa è esso?
”
Basilio, it’s three-thirty in the morning. What is it?

This time Basilio’s cry held urgency to it, like a bemoaning
of terror. “
Per favore, mama. Per favore!”
Please, mama. Please!

Suddenly the door at the opposite end of the hallway slammed
shut, the reverberation felt throughout the house.  

“Basilio?”

Nothing.

“Basilio?”

Vittoria tossed the covers aside and was standing at her
door in less than a half dozen strides. Beyond her door the hallway remained in
shadows. “Basilio?” Vittoria homed in blindly in the darkness with her hand and
found the switch. Manning the lever, she played the switch—up, down, up, down—but
the lights never turned on.

Slowly, she edged her way toward the children’s rooms, her
arms stretched outward like a somnambulist, feeling her way.

In the daylight the walls were pastel blue, too bright for
the non-European appreciative eye. But it reminded her of the brightly painted
chain of houses lining the Venetian canals, her home. However, in the darkness,
the color made the walls appear ominously dark.

Feeling her way down the corridor with her fingers tracing
the many watercolor prints lining the walls and knocking most off balance, she
gave them a drunken tilt. Something she would fix later.

Her steps were soft and quiet, the floorboards beneath her
feet as cold as the pooling shadows.

From beneath the door leading to the bedrooms, light fanned
out from the crack underneath the door.

“Basilio?”

The door opened slowly in invitation, as full light spilled
into the corridor.

“Mama?”

“
Basilio, che cosa l'inferno voi sta facendo?
”
Basilio, what the hell are you doing?

When she opened the door, she found her children sitting
along the couch with Basilio, who embraced his younger sisters into a huddled
mass, the children crying.

Standing beside them with the point of his assault weapon
leveled was a man of dark complexion, wearing military fatigues and a
red-and-white
keffiyeh
.
Attached
to the barrel of the assault weapon was a suppressor that was long and thin and
polished to a mirror finish.

Sitting in a chair opposite the couch with one leg crossed
over the other and his hands and fingers tented before him as he rested his
elbows on the armrests, sat a man who appeared marginally older than her
fifteen-year-old son, who looked upon her with the calm and casualness of an
old friend. He was slight of build with an unkempt beard. His eyes, dark and
humorless, studied her for a long moment before he finally directed his hand to
a nearby chair.

“Please,” he said, “no harm will come to the children if you
do as I say. This I promise you.” The man’s voice was gentle and held a honeylike
quality to his tone. His Italian was flawless. “Please.”

Vittoria pulled the fabric of her gown across her cleavage and
took the seat as required. Her chin began to quiver gelatinously as she eyed
the intruder. “What do you want?” she asked.

The man did not answer. He simply appraised her while
bouncing the fingertips of his tented hands together in contemplation. 

“We have money. You can have it all. Just take it and leave
us alone.”

“This isn’t about money,” he said. “This is about . . .
ideology.”

She stared at him as if he was a living cryptogram, her head
slowly and studiously tilting to one side.

“But I need your help,” he added. “I need something only you
can give me.”

She pulled the fabric of her gown tighter. 

The young man nodded to his counterpart, who lowered the
point of his weapon and withdrew a knife from a sheath attached to his thigh.
In a deliberate motion he brought the point of the blade up and rested it
beneath the underside of her chin, the action drawing a crimson bead from her
slightly parted flesh, which caused her children to cry out for clemency.

“What I want from you,” the man stated in perfect Italian,
“is something quite simple.” He then pointed to a mini-cam recorder sitting on
a tripod across the room. The indicator light was in the ‘on’ mode, the camera
running. “What I want you to do,” he said, “is to look into that camera and
scream.” He then leaned forward and spoke to her in a tone laced with menace.
“I said . . . scream.”  

And that’s exactly what she did.

CHAPTER THREE

Ten Miles South of the Arizona/Mexico Border

The Following Day

The Mexican version of a coyote was
one who guided illegal aliens into US territory undetected. On this day,
however, Juan Pallabos escorted an exclusive clientele who paid an admission
price of $25,000—an incredibly sweet windfall—from three Arab men who wore
nondescript clothing, such as non-patterned shirts and Dockers. None of them
spoke or acknowledged the Mexican in any way, making Pallabos feel less
significant in their presence. But for 25,000 American dollars, he could have
cared less. In fact, he would have sealed his mouth shut with thread, if that’s
what they wanted.

As the van moved unevenly along the desert terrain, its
tires kicking rooster-tail plumes of dust in its wake, the Arabs sat quietly as
the temperature soared to more than 110 degrees in the van’s interior.  

Lying on the floor in the rear of the van sat an aluminum
case. The shell was dull-coated silver and centered between the Arabs. If the
coyote knew what he was transporting, he might have forsaken the five-figured
amount. But a condition for receiving such a large amount is that he asks no questions.
Therefore, not a single inquiry passed his lips.   

With a great prudence Juan Pallabos maneuvered across the
terrain careful not to damage an axle, and then came to an abrupt stop where
the tires skidded a few feet in the soft desert sand. Through the dust-laden
windshield he could see a battery of heat rising off the desert floor, and sage
swaying softly with the course of a hot wind.  

Saguaro and Joshua trees dotted the landscape that was colored
with the reddish hues of sandstone, rather than the conventional yellow-brown
of desert sand. In the distance the horizon appeared uneven in pointed caps and
rises, giving it a saw-tooth appearance, which would serve as insurmountable
obstacles for Pallabos’s van.

“We can go no further,” said the coyote, stepping out of the
vehicle. He walked toward the horizon, appraised it, and then he removed his
hat and passed a handkerchief across his brow. “The land is too uneven. My
vehicle can go no further.”

The Arabs exited the van. Their shirts were tacky with sweat
and their flesh slick with sheen. Carefully, two of the Arabs handled the
aluminum case, one on each end, and placed it on the desert floor while the
third Arab took residence next to Pallabos.

“Twelve kilometers straight ahead,” said Pallabos, pointing.
“Once you get over the hills, then you will be all right. The American border
is too large for the patrols to watch and maintain consistently. You should
have no trouble getting across. But stay away from cartel tunnels. Drug lords
no like others to use. But crossing over is very easy. And I suggest that you
wait until the sun goes down,
si
?”

“Then drive us as far as you can.”

“No-no.  No can do from here. Land is too much—how you say,
difficult to cover. Must have way back,
si
?”

The Arab didn’t look at Pallabos, his eyes straight ahead.
“We could have paid someone else much less to take us further.”

“No-no,
Señor
.
Juan Pallabos is the best.
Everybody say so. Not possible.”

The Arab mopped his brow with the back of his hand. The
desert heat was much drier in his homeland, which was far more preferable than
the sapping white sun that hung stingingly over his head at the moment. “Do you
want more money? Is that why you stopped?” The Arab’s tone was flat, smooth,
even.

“No-no,
Señor
.
Juan Pallabos is an honest
man. Van get damaged if go any further. Juan tells truth. Juan knows.”

“Then how do you expect us to travel twelve kilometers in
this heat?”

Pallabos smiled, intuiting the question. “Huh, Juan brought
plenty of water. Plenty of water.” He returned to the van and opened the front
passenger door. Lying on the floor were six canteens filled with water. “Plenty
of water,
si
? At night it will only take three hours to cross into United States. Three. Very easy. Juan Pallabos send many across the border. Juan Pallabos
the best.”

The Arab took a long pull of air through his nostrils and
released it in an equally long sigh. “Then I guess we no longer need your
services.”

“
Si
, Juan provide. Juan the best,
si
?”

“Unfortunately for you, Mr. Pallabos, we cannot leave any
witnesses behind. I’m sure you understand.”

Pallabos’s face dropped, his features taking on the sudden
looseness of a rubber mask.

Reaching behind him, the Arab withdrew a Sig. with an attached
suppressor from the waistband of his Dockers and fired the weapon three times
in rapid succession, dropping Pallabos to the desert floor.

Returning the weapon, the Arab, who was tall and lean and
walked with a mild limp that served as a vestige after combating American
troops in Iraq, moved toward the aluminum case and placed his palms flat
against the container. Even under the hot desert sun the shell was cool to the
touch. Undoing the clasps, the Arab lifted the lid.

Everything was in its place beneath the Plexiglas shield,
the circuitry secured, the spheres undamaged, which the Arab worried about over
the course of the rough terrain. The Russians had manufactured well. 

After closing the lid and clamping it shut, the Arab stood
and surveyed the distance toward the American border. “We will take the van as
far as we can, and then dump it.”

With a sweeping gesture of his hand, his comrades lifted the
aluminum case and returned it to the van.

Less than five minutes later they began to traverse the
difficult terrain in the van. And less than half mile from their launch point the
vehicle became mired in sand, the van going nowhere.

Juan Pallabos was right after all.

#

On the western
approach to
the American/Mexican border from the Baja, California route, a separate team of
three Middle Easterners crossed over into American territory undetected. The
aluminum case they carried was safe and secure, the spheres inside undamaged.
And in the end no one could believe how simple it was to maneuver over to the
other side. There was not a single border agent, helicopter or roving patrol
vehicle in sight. There were no dogs or fences or obstacles to act as a
deterrent. Getting the aluminum case and its cargo into the United States proved to be less of an adversity than initially planned for; there was
absolutely no challenge from the opposition, absolutely no one to stop them.

It was that simple.  

#

Team Three also
managed to
slip undetected across the American border from the New Mexico point, a part of
the 2,000 mile stretch with Mexico that was habitually thin when trying to keep
a vigilant eye out for those who cross over illegally. Now with the second
device easily into New Mexico, the team had received word that Team Two had
crossed over from the Baja route unchallenged.

All that was left to do was to rendezvous with Team One,
which had yet to be heard from on the Arizona front.