The Eye of Moloch (13 page)

“You have to leave her to me.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not paying you to be subtle, and it’s a delicate business to kill an idea,” Landers said. “She’ll be dealt with soon enough. She’s just an insignificant person who’s going to be used as a patsy, nothing more. If we can we’re going to push her into some public act that we can call terrorism, and then we’ll take her down. If she only continues to cower and hide, we’ll stage a bombing or a mass shooting ourselves and pin it on her. See? All this violence you’re about to commit is going to be blamed on Molly Ross and her ignorant followers, and once that’s done, we’re finished with her. Then I’ll have her sent here and you can do whatever you want with her, but not until we’ve beaten the last breath of life out of this pathetic patriot movement she’s stirred up.”

“You’ll never find her. They’ll be long gone soon and hid underground, but I’ve got a man right now in the other room who can lead us right to her—”

“No need,” Landers said. “We’ve already found her.” He tapped a
small square on the grid of the laptop screen in front of him, a small moving image ballooned wide, and he spun the display around so the room could see. The live video was an extreme telephoto view of a large house and its surroundings, drifting and correcting, streamed down from a surveillance drone orbiting its target at nearly twenty thousand feet. “In fact, we never lost sight of her.”

“Where is that place?”

Pierce had started around the table but Landers snapped the screen closed before he’d gotten near. “When it’s time, and not before. For now, if you really want to hurt Molly Ross, you can use this.” He unzipped the equipment bag next to him and took out the scoped rifle inside. “The report tells me this all belonged to a man named Thomas Hollis. He was a modestly decorated Army Ranger and I understand he’s now her enforcer. If you’ve lost lives, he’s the one that took them. But I’m sure you knew that already.”

George Pierce nodded.

“Good,” Landers said. “So this is how you’ll start to take your justice. Who’s your best marksman?” After a moment Olin Simmons raised his hand and Landers passed the weapon to him. “Gentlemen, this will be the last point on the agenda today. Mr. Thomas Hollis is about to go on a coast-to-coast killing spree.” He briefly consulted the dossier again and turned to Simmons. “We only have an old description and one dim photograph of the man. You’re tan enough to pass, you’re about the right size, and with a wig and a beard from the costume shop you’ll be a reasonable match for any eyewitnesses to report. It’s a plus that Hollis is ex-military; good for the standard mythology. But he doesn’t seem to have a middle name, and that’s a pity.”

“Why is that?” Simmons asked.

“It’s better for the headlines.” Landers smiled. “Every ruthless lone gunman should have a middle name.”

Chapter 15

A
lone in the conference room, from deep in his studies George Pierce became aware of a faraway sound outside. With a finger he held his place in the open Bible and listened; it was the shrill, swelling roar of a helicopter coming up to full power and lifting off. By the transit of its noise he could follow the craft as it slowly rose above the trees and made a single orbit low overhead, as if to complete a rude inspection, and then it faded steadily away on a heading toward the southeast.

Pierce smiled. With a final rattling of the shingles this smug interloper Warren Landers was gone, no doubt in full confidence that his mission here among the simpletons had been a success.

But a success for whom?
Among other burning questions, that remained to be seen.

“Mr. Pierce?” A voice from the doorway interrupted his thoughts.

“Yes, what is it?”

“That prisoner we’ve got, he’s come around now, and you said I should let you know.”

“Bring him to me,” Pierce said, but then another thought occurred. “Wait—where is Olin Simmons?”

“Him and some of the others walked out with the gentleman you all was meetin’ with before, I guess to see him off on his way home.”

“Of course they did.”

All will be tested, so the Good Book says, and all duly judged in the Lord’s good time. But the darkest corners of perdition were reserved for those who once knew the ways of righteousness and then turned their backs on the sacred command.

“Don’t just bring the prisoner,” Pierce said. “Bring Mr. Simmons, as well. Bring them all.”

When the men had been gathered, on his orders some cleared the central table to the side. Soon the guest of honor was brought into the middle of the room and roughly seated in a straight wooden chair. He was conscious, though so bloodied about the head it would be a genuine surprise if no permanent damage had been done to his brain. Whatever the case, he really wouldn’t need to last much longer.

“My brothers,” George Pierce began, “as you’re all well aware we’ve been honored over the past few days with a visitation from the invisible empire. A messenger has descended to us, come down from Olympus and the awesome, faceless powers that be. I foresaw that it would happen at some point near to the end, and I’ve told you as much, and now it’s come to pass. The great deceiver has sent forth his ambassador and finally shown his hand.

“But I am not taken in by his idolatries, I’m not deceived. We—will not be deceived. If you think we’ve lost our power with this new alliance, I tell you now, we’ve only gained. We will accept their money, we will use their weapons and resources, and to the degree that they coincide with our own ambitions we will execute their plans. We will help them collapse this broken American system, but it is we who will rebuild it, true to our vision. We will not lose ourselves. We will not lose this war.”

The men responded enthusiastically, and amid the cheering and encouragements Pierce scanned each of their faces for any signs of duplicity or reserve. He committed what he saw to memory, and pressed on.

“Now I’ve got me a grudge to satisfy,” he said, and the crowd hushed as one. “There’s a wrong that cries out from the grave to be put right. Some of you may have heard that I’ve been forbidden from on high to act in this matter. That I’ve been warned by this Warren Landers against avenging the betrayal and the killing of my own nephew.

“And I don’t know, some of you might even agree with that prohibition. You may have heard and seen what’s been said and done here in the last two days, and you may be standing there believing that the only choice we’ve got is to kowtow to our new overlords, to worship at their pagan altar with our hats in our hands and hope to cuddle up and curry favor like gelded lapdogs. As for me, boys, that is not my way.

“Now I’m not proud, and I’m not perfect. God’s made no perfect men. But let me ask you, has it ever been said that George Lincoln Rockwell Pierce would ever shy from a fight? That I don’t look out for my people?”

The long room erupted in a rowdy chorus of cheers, stomps, and loud applause.

“You!” Pierce shouted, as he pointed at the seated man. “What have you got to say?”

The prisoner raised his battered head to nearly level, and it seemed to take considerable effort to focus his good eye on the one who’d spoken to him. “I told them everything already—”

“You will
stand
when you address the company in this room.”

It was all quiet as the shattered man strained and suffered to get to his feet. A would-be good Samaritan took a step forward to help but at a stern gesture from George Pierce he stopped short and quickly resumed his place.

“For those here that may not know,” Pierce said, “tell us all your name.”

“My name is Ben Church.” He was standing by then, but with an unsteady sway and crooked posture, clearly favoring something torn or broken inside.

“Mr. Church is a devotee of Molly Ross and the Founders’ Keepers. He came to me with an olive branch just the other day, as a self-appointed peacemaker, without her knowledge or approval, as I later came to learn. When all of you were up to your necks in government lead and brimstone in that battle up at Gannett Peak, it was this man who’d come to solicit the help we provided her there. He knew his people were outmatched and he came begging for the kind of salvation that only we could offer. And now the lives we’ve lost since are on his hands, and no one else’s. Isn’t that right?”

Ben Church nodded, though he winced at a pain brought on by the movement.

“Once you brave men had done your duty I brought Molly Ross and her folks here in good faith. I kept Mr. Church’s involvement a secret from her, I told her we’d found this man shot and killed by those government men so she could make her choice without feeling that one of her own had come to me, to set her up behind her back. I gave her every chance to make the right decision and join us. But it wasn’t too long before she showed us her true colors, and we all saw the results.”

Pierce turned again to the prisoner. “Three more of my men are dead, now, Mr. Church, and my own flesh is among them. Who’ll answer for that?”

“It’s my fault, I won’t deny. I’m sorry for it. Coming here and asking for your help, it was the only thing I knew to do. I only wanted to save her life. I didn’t know—”

“We’re not here to receive your confession. We know what you did and why you did it. All you can do to help yourself now is to tell us where she is.”

“But I don’t know.”

“Speak another lie,” Pierce snapped, “and see what it gets you.”

“She’s no threat to you,” Ben Church said. “She never was. Molly Ross is no leader; her mother was a leader, but she’s not. She’s young and weak, now she’s blinded, and she’s got no idea what to do next. It was all
we could manage just trying to stay a step ahead of that army they’d sent after us. We were just trying to stay alive, that’s what it got down to in the end. You don’t need to kill her. She’s no threat to you at all.”

“I’ll ask you once again,” Pierce said, and he gave a nod to the men who’d been in charge of the prisoner before. “Where is Molly Ross?”

“I don’t know.” It was obvious that he could hear the heavy footsteps approaching but he kept on pleading as the men came for him. “She wouldn’t tell any of us where we were going, none of us knew, not even the ones she trusted more than me—”

The words were cut off sharply by a bare-knuckled blow to his rib cage. His knees gave out and he would have fallen but a second man held him up from behind.

It went on that way for a time, the same question asked, the wrong answer given, and the punishment applied. This unappreciated art of controlled savagery can take years to properly refine. Considerable skill is involved in beating a man to the very edge of his endurance and yet keeping him conscious all the while so the pain can do its patient work.

“We were shown an image of the place she’s run to,” Pierce said. “A large house with many outbuildings, acreage fenced for livestock. It must be somewhere less than a day’s drive from the nearest road they could have reached on foot. That much we know. Now where is she?”

Ben Church’s head lolled so loosely to the side it nearly came to rest on his shoulder. He was bleeding freely from the mouth and when he spoke next the words were largely drowned in fluid and slur. A sharp twist of his arm snapped him bolt upright and forced him alert enough to say it again, but clearly. “I don’t know.”

George Pierce approached the wretched man, whose handlers held him straight in the event that their leader might wish to strike him personally.

“Very well, then,” Pierce said quietly. “We’ll take you at your word.”

Not much of Ben Church’s face retained the capacity for expression, but still, he managed to look bewildered.

“The last we saw,” Pierce continued, “she was headin’ north up the foothills out there. If I was you I’d hurry up and take off that same way. Maybe you can catch up to them.”

“I can go?” Church whispered.

“I’ve got no use here for a man like you. Go on, now, before I change my mind. A couple of you men”—he pointed them out—“you see Mr. Church safe out the door and get him walking off in the right direction.”

When they’d left, with Ben Church half dragged between his escorts, Pierce walked over to the long canvas bag on the table, unzipped the length of it, and took out the long rifle that had been replaced there.

“Now if you fellows will accompany me to the portico, I want to show you something,” Pierce said, as he opened the bolt, pulled a box of ammunition from the bag, and began pressing cartridges into the well. “That underhanded rat bastard Thom Hollis is about to claim the first of many innocent victims on his nationwide rampage.”

The men filed behind him as he walked through his office and out onto the balcony beyond. His crew had worked around the clock and the damage from the fire was mostly erased already. Some valuables had been lost, but nothing irreplaceable.

On the other hand, as he’d told them, so much had been gained. From this high vantage point he could see the extent of the bounty of arms and supplies that his new alliance had already rendered. It had taken years to accumulate the few advanced weapons they’d expended in an hour at Gannett Peak, and many dealings with characters every bit as unsavory as Warren Landers.