Shepherd One

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Basilio Pastore was dismayed. In the preceding hours he had seen his father plead for the lives of his family from the position of his knees. The man was crying, begging — the one-time hero of the Aeronautica Milatare surrendering his pride before the lens of a distant camera. And Basilio wanted to weep. Whenever he closed his eyes he could see his pleading father burned as an afterimage behind the folds of his lids. So he planned to never close his eyes again.

Sitting in the corner of the room with his knees drawn up into acute angles and his arms hugging his legs close, Basilio stared at a fixed point on the opposite wall, his gaze and manner unflinching and statue still.

He never felt so ashamed.

“Basilio?” His mother’s voice was soft and honeyed, the lilt of her tone possessing a maternal comfort which he needed at the moment, but was unwilling to admit.

Basilio’s line of sight never wavered from the fixed point.

“Basilio.” She took a seat beside him, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them in mimic of her son. “Your father loves you very much. There’s no shame in what he did.”

Basilio’s response was to clench his teeth, which caused the muscles in the back of his jaw to work.

“Someday,” she added, “when you have children of your own, you’ll understand.”

Vittoria could see the welling of tears along the edges of her son’s eyes. And the way he caught himself and reacted by holding his chin out with forced stoicism.

Inwardly she had to smile, the boy who tried so much to be a man. “Your father did what he did because he’s not here to help us. So he did the only thing he could do — the only thing that was left to him.”

Basilio’s chin began to quiver with jelly-like consistency, the dam beginning to break, his tears ready to fall. “I never saw Papa cry before,” he finally said. “Papa never cries.”

“Just because your father cries doesn’t make him any less than a man.”

An awkward moment of silence passed between them, each trying to find a new approach to address the other without hurting the fragile feelings they were sensing at the moment.

It was Basilio who finally took the initiative. “Have you ever seen Papa cry before?” he asked.

Vittoria smiled a loving, almost gingerly, smile of dreamy endearment. “Plenty,” she said. “When you were born he was so happy, so proud, I didn’t think he’d ever stop crying. ‘A son,’ he said, and then he held you high. ‘Someone to play soccer and carry on the Pastore name,’” she stated, trying to imitate his father in a deep and manly voice.

And it brought a smile to the corners of his lips. “Really?”

She nodded. “Really. And you want to know something else?”

Although responsive, he still kept his eyes glued to a focused point on the wall across the way. “What.”

“When you became the MVP of your soccer league and brought home the trophy — do you remember that?”

“Of course.”

“You were thirteen at the time, and your father wept for two days afterwards because he was so proud of you. And he made sure everybody in Rome knew about it, too.”

His smile blossomed. “Really?”

“Oh yeah. And the greatest thing about your father — tears or no tears — is that the men of his unit were willing to follow him to the ends of the Earth because they respected him so much. So you see, Basilio, great men do cry. There’s no shame in that.”

For the first time since viewing the live video feed, he closed his eyes. The afterimage of his father on his knees was still behind the folds of his lids. But now it was somehow acceptable. “He’s really proud of me?”

“He’s very proud of you, Basilio. A father couldn’t ask for a better son. And you couldn’t ask for a better father.”

Basilio broke his gaze and leaned into his mother, who followed through by sweeping her arm around him, and pulled him close. Softly, she kissed the crown of his head. “He’s very proud of you,” she repeated. “And you should be of him.”

Her son continued to lean into her no longer feeling less masculine by doing so, finding salvation in a mother’s hold.

If his father could not serve in the capacity to rescue his family, then it was up to him to do so, he considered. How much prouder would his father be if he saved the lives of his mother and sisters?

How proud would his mother be?

Basilio smiled enough to show the perfect lines of ruler-straight teeth. How proud would they all be?

President Jim Burroughs felt bottled up. Topside, with the sky above him a uniform patch of blue and not a cloud to be seen, he took his leisure and walked the compound. The air was clean and crisp. The chill factor was greatly welcomed as he stood along the fence line made of corral posts. Six feet beyond that was a severe drop off.

Dean Hamilton joined him, both men saying nothing but thinking the same thing.

From their vantage point they could see nothing but tree tops as far as the eye can see; the landscape to the horizon nothing but a sea of green. And they soaked it all in, both marveling at the backdrop and wondering if it was to become a poisoned terrain with its seasonal foliages to bear the hues of black timber and ash-gray limbs…

… Or if the subsequent foliages would be known as one continuous period referred to as the ‘Season of Fallout.’

Neither man wanted to consider the ‘perhaps’ or the ‘probability’ of possibilities.

But nor could it be discarded as improbable either.

The truth was, and both men realized this, that the United States was about to fall victim to nuclear devastation since the atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

That thought alone pierced both men’s hearts.

With his face taking on the appearance of a man desperately seeking solace, President Burroughs took in a deep breath and released it in an equally long sigh. “I never wanted to be known as the reigning president at the time of a nuclear attack,” he stated. “But, by God, it looks like I’m going to be.”

Dean Hamilton kept his hands deep in his pockets, his vapor breath in the cool air coming in even rhythm. “You’ve got to hang in there, Jim. I have every agent looking into every possible scenario from east to west. The airports are completely covered, all strategic sites are battened down — and even if a device should go off, the damage done should be marginal.”

“Dean, it’s not whether or not damage is done. The point is it would be a devastating blow to the psyche of the American people, if a nuclear weapon went off on U.S. soil. If that should happen, then I want you to tell me what’s going to make the people of this country believe that their government can stop additional nuclear weapons from crossing the border undetected in the future?”

The Attorney General hesitated before giving the politically correct answer. “We tell them what we always tell them,” he said. “We tell them that we’ve shored up the borders.”

“And you expect the people of this country to believe we have the capability to shore up more than ten thousand miles of open boundary?”

Dean said nothing.

“If by the grace of God we don’t happen to catch Hakam and his team, then something like this could go away,” he said, sweeping his arm in indication of the entire landscape. “And if not here, then it’ll be somewhere else.” The president sighed. “Sooner or later someone will get a weapon across and light it up… I just don’t want it to be on my watch.”

“Look at the upside,” said Dean. “Perchenko’s gone and the objective of destroying his black market trade has been achieved. So I don’t think a nuclear weapon will make its way onto American soil anytime soon, now that our foreign constituencies are aware and are working to see that it never happens again.”

“I pray you’re right,” he said. “I honest to God do. Because we both know that nuclear retaliation spells the beginning of the end for us all.”

Other than the sweet warble of a blue jay and the engaging melody of sparrows singing in the surrounding boughs of the pine trees, Hamilton and Burroughs said nothing as a cool breeze caressed them.

With his voice mired in appreciation, the president spoke in reference to the landscape. “It is beautiful, isn’t it?”

Dean nodded. “It is that.”

And for the longest time neither man spoke.

They simply took everything in.

Angelina Cordova-Vasquez had worked at the Chateau Grand Hotel for eighteen years and never missed a day of work, sick or otherwise. She possessed an elliptical-shaped body with wispy-thin limbs, and a face that was worn and fatigued from too many years of struggling to make it in an economy that was far exceeding her financial means. The signs of stress were becoming obvious as well, the lines on her forehead beginning to widen and deepen. And rarely did she smile.

When she pushed the housekeeping cart along the hotel corridor, she did so with an aged, shuffling gait. As she neared room 616 she noticed the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging on the doorknob. Yet her cleaning directory was marked as the room being vacant. At first she knocked lightly, then louder, announcing herself as ‘room cleaning’ before slipping the keycard into the slot, the light going green, the lock retracting.

She opened the door. The room was dark. The drapes closed.

“Hello. Room cleaning.”

And then the smell hit her like a tangible blow to the face.

She had never been around the butchering of animals. The slaughtering of meat for the family meal had always been her father’s job in Mexico; the lopping off of the chickens heads before they hit the pot was that of her mother’s. So she never became familiar with the stench of blood or its overwhelming copper scent that assaulted her like a bad aftertaste.

“Room cleaning.” Angelina moved to the drapes and felt for the edges. When she parted them light filled the room as if to spotlight the blood spatters and red drippings. Macabre designs were painted in blood. And the smell of copper and death became too intense for her as her stomach threatened to revolt. In the bathroom a bloodied and clawed hand stuck out over the edge of the tub, frozen, yet positioned in such a way she was sure it would beckon her to come closer to view the prize lying within its well.

Drawing balled fists to the base of her chin, Angelina Cordova-Vasquez let a scream rip from her throat as she raced down the corridor with all the alacrity and speed of youth.