The Eye of Moloch ow-2 Read online

  The Eye of Moloch

  ( Overton Window - 2 )

  Glenn Beck

  THE LAST BATTLE FOR FREEDOM IS UNDER WAY…

  By the end of Glenn Beck’s #1 bestselling political thriller The Overton Window, a young rebel named Molly Ross had torn aside the curtain to reveal a shadow war being waged for the future of America. In the six months since then, her fight for freedom hasn’t gone well. Marked as traitors and hunted by ruthless government-sanctioned mercenaries using the most advanced surveillance technologies ever created, Ross and her “Founders’ Keepers” find themselves cornered and standing alone. but the fight is far from over.

  The battle lines in this bitter rivalry are as old as civilization itself: On one side, an unlikely band of ordinary Americans ready to make their last stand in defense of self-rule, freedom, and liberty—and on the other, an elite cabal of self-styled tyrants who believe that unlimited power should be wielded only by the chosen few. That group, led by an aging, trillionaire puppet-master named Aaron Doyle, will stop at nothing to destroy the myth that man is capable of ruling himself.

  As Doyle prepares to make his final move toward a dark, global vision for humanity’s future, new allies join the fight and old enemies change sides. In the midst of it all, Molly draws together a small but devoted group willing to risk their lives to infiltrate one of the most secure locations on earth—a place holding long-standing secrets that, if revealed, would forever change the way Americans view their rare, extraordinary place in history. Exposing these truths, and the real-life game of chess being played for mankind’s freedom, is their last chance to save the country they love.

  To those who have changed everything in their life, including much of what they thought they knew.

  To those who feel compelled to live their life in a way that often makes them the object of ridicule and scorn.

  To those who hide their fears and tears from their tenderhearted spouse or children.

  I dedicate this book to all of you who are living a life you never hoped or asked for, but chose it anyway because you know that freedom is worth standing for.

  I admire you, love you, and pray that history will remember your name.

  In loving memory of Mercury’s mom.

  You taught us to work hard and never give up.

  You gave us your love of books and reading.

  Because you lived, Mercury came to life. Because of how you lived, we are all better people.

  May you rest in peace knowing that those things, incredible as they are, were still just a very small part of

  why

  you lived.

  Patricia Balfe

  1944–2013

  The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.

  We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood.

  It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation—enlightened as it is—if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men.

  —SAMUEL ADAMS

  You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men.

  You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid.

  —MATTHEW 5:13–14

  Prologue

  The Battle of Gannett Peak is not where this story started, but for those of us who lived to tell it that’s as good a place as any to begin. A few brief remarks are in order, though, before we get well under way.

  First, the great weakness of the enemy we face: there’s no honor among thieves. And what they’d all forgotten—the globalist elites, the predator class, the puppet-masters, the kleptocrats, the red-carpet mafia, call them what you want—what they’d forgotten about pandemonium is that once you set it loose to rampage you can’t as easily whistle it back into the box again.

  It was to be their boldest move yet, the endgame of a hundred-year scheme to crash the old and usher in their new world order, once and for all. They would wield fear and chaos as weapons as they always had, and demonize those who opposed them so the uninformed majority would misplace their blame. Riots and food panics, incited uprisings and sponsored overthrows, blackouts, meltdowns, market crashes, hyperinflation, depression, currency and commodity wars every bit as deadly as the shooting kind—these contagious terrors were meant to drive the desperate people at the bottom to storm into the streets and cry out for the benevolent tyranny of a waiting savior from above.

  These tactics had proved tried-and-true through thirty centuries of repeating history, but this time their mayhem spread too fast and got out of hand early on. Spawn too many devils all at once and they’ll soon start to organize, and then those dangerous servants can forsake their masters and awaken to ambitions all their own.

  Second, and you’ll forgive me if, by your measure, I’m a trifle late to this simple understanding: there really is such a thing as Good, and likewise there is Evil. We each have a decision between the two that we’re bound to make, and if the cynics among you should scoff at that need and decline to commit, that’s a sure choice for the darker side. At times it’s not at all clear who’s with who; those who declare the loudest for one camp are often hard at work in the other. As Bob Dylan wrote it, sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.

  The last thing now, and I confess it was the hardest for me to finally believe: there is a God.

  I won’t pretend to know His nature or His plan, and put no trust in most who claim to. I don’t know which faith is His chosen or what church He would have me attend, if any would abide me after all I’ve done. What I do know for certain is that this God of all creation would prefer us to be free. That means He must love this country, not so much for what we’ve allowed it to become, but deeply for what it was once meant to be. And if this great nation should fall, as we may well do, then in some distant age He’ll move His children to try to refound it anew, with hopes that those future Americans are better, braver stewards of His brightest dreams for us all.

  The Bible says the first thing God created was the light, but you’ll notice that He also left the darkness. Every dawn is a steadfast reminder that even the longest night can be overcome. Here on earth that overcoming is not the task of the Almighty; in His grace He’s left that up to each of us. That choice to fight or to join the darkness is the first of the freedoms we mortals are born with, and like the others, it’s ours until we prove ourselves unworthy and let it be taken away.

  The sole thing tyranny fears is truth, and therein lies the simple, sworn mission of Molly Ross—to find and tell the truth to the good people of the United States, and through that revelation, to restore her country to the greatness it was founded to attain. That’s why they feared her so much, why they came after her with everything they had, and also why this war will never cease. Because true Evil cannot be stopped, and the truly Good will not be moved. Hers was a battle that must be won or lost every day, by one side or the other, and no less than the fate of free mankind hangs in the balance.

  Believe that and do your part, or don’t, and sit by to let others lay down their lives on your behalf. But be assured of this one true thing, and I’m a witness: one more or one less can change the world.

  I lived through what follows here, and in some small way through this account you may now do likewise. The outcome may still be in question, but I know where I stand. To those yet undecided, there’s a place here beside me or out there ag
ainst me when you’re moved to make up your mind.

  Humbly yours,

  Thom Hollis

  Thom Hollis

  Founders’ Keepers

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  DHS-CDFO/USD19-47544-R60

  Civilian/Conscript Field Deployment Order (US/Domestic)

  Temporary Change of Station: -FOB- UN Joint Op. Iron Rain

  Subj: Gardner Noah W

  Desig: Embedded correspondent / combat support unit

  Report to transport depot F23, bay 17—0530 tomorrow—outfit for immed. transit to points west; duties TBD at discretion of allied ground command.

  ** Intel determines surviving hostile forces to be pinned down, poorly trained, and only lightly armed. Enemy supply lines are cut, leadership is infiltrated, weakened and dispersed. Anticipate a rapid & decisive outcome, requiring of coalition forces only a brief engagement; days, not weeks. **

  Four Months Post-Deployment: Gannett Peak, Wyoming

  As it passes close by your head a hypervelocity bullet makes a little snap that’s hard to describe until you’ve heard it for yourself. When you hear that snap with your boots on the ground in a shooting war it means that someone just wanted you dead but you’re still alive, and the very next breath you draw brings a kind of thrill that doesn’t fade with repetition.

  Whoever was in command of this fiasco must have thought the day’s job would be easy, because there didn’t seem to be much strategy to the advance. Part of the reason for this lax approach might have been the language barrier; many of the men seemed to be fresh off the boat, as new to U.S. citizenry as Noah Gardner himself was to the field of battle. In any case, FORWARD was the only clear standing order—just keep moving in the most dangerous direction on the map until the enemy starts shooting and then concentrate your fire on their revealed position. With a big enough budget and plenty of expendable human resources, who could say? It might just work.

  What had started months before as a simple manhunt had gradually escalated into a full-on in-country paramilitary action. The target was Molly Ross and the Founders’ Keepers. Though a national climate of fear was being carefully managed, so far the American people had been kept in the dark on the specifics—mostly because these supposedly dangerous fugitives were stubbornly refusing to shoot back. Until today, that is; today somebody out there was shooting back with a vengeance.

  Something heavy whistled down from the sky and exploded thirty yards away and as the concussion hit, Noah felt himself pulled down into a muddy ditch for cover. Through the low morning haze and drifting smoke he saw a number of fallen men, heard the sharp clatter of returning gunfire and calls for a medic and shouts over the radio for the overdue air support.

  Three combat helicopters thundered low overhead, moving out to flush the snipers and a mortar team thought to be hunkered down in the valley beyond. A pair of M1 tanks roared past at nearly highway speeds, not even slowed by the trenches the surprisingly resourceful rebels had dug out to confound the rolling artillery.

  Noah clenched the rifle they’d given him in a white-knuckle grip across his chest; it was still an unfamiliar burden in his hands. The sounds around him swelled to a hollow scream; his eyes wouldn’t focus; his brain was so overwhelmed with a hundred conflicting decisions that he couldn’t make even one. He tried again to clear his head of the hell breaking loose all around him, his eyes shut tight, his back pressed to the cool sandy slope of the berm.

  Someone shouted his name and smacked him on the shoulder, jolting Noah back to the earsplitting blur of his new reality.

  Volleys of unguided Hydra rockets screamed from the stub-wings of the hovering Apaches downrange—buh buh buh buh BOOM—pounding a ragged tree line along the riverbank in the foothills of Gannett Peak. Though the virgin forest was taking a real beating, the true impact of all this firepower remained to be seen. Recon had placed the remaining enemy combatants in the general area ahead, but this was big, rough country with enough natural cover to hide almost anything.

  Still, whatever their skills at evasion, there couldn’t be more than a handful of them left out there. For weeks now it had seemed that these freedom fighters—or homegrown terrorists, depending on one’s allegiances—couldn’t last much longer against such overwhelming odds. Maybe their persistence came from a shared devotion to some ideal, and that was a strength the forces on Noah’s side certainly didn’t possess. Nobody seemed to believe in anything, in fact, though the constant propaganda from the top assured these men that every skirmish could be a turning point in the most critical military effort in generations: the war on domestic terrorists.

  He looked around again at the others as they assembled for a final rout of the surviving rebels. What this multi-sourced, multinational mercenary peacekeeping unit might lack in patriotic zeal was more than balanced out by their advantages: sheer numbers, a license-to-kill bravado, and all the twenty-first-century military hardware they could carry.

  The heavy artillery was apparently having its effect; the incoming enemy mortars soon ceased to fall. Likewise, the distant echoing reports from hidden sniper nests went gradually silent.

  A few moments later from down the line came a barked order to move out and mop up.

  Noah slung the rifle over his shoulder, then cautiously stood and took in the quieting, cratered landscape. The coast seemed clear enough, and after another moment he brought out his camera and notepad to record the morning’s glorious campaign.

  Though technically he was designated as a combat reporter with this unit, his ill-fitting, generic uniform lacked any indication that he wasn’t as eligible to be shot as anyone else. The weapon they’d shoved into his hands was another clue that his true function might be only to serve as a slow-moving target, just an expendable cipher to walk point and take a bullet in the place of some more valuable guy—a man who could actually find the trigger, for example.

  The nearby squad collected itself, huddled to confirm a hasty strategy, and fanned out for the forward march.

  Noah pulled himself up over the lip of the trench and made his way to a slight elevation nearby. From this higher vantage point he dropped to a knee and snapped a series of pictures: the ranks of blue-helmeted ground forces, on foot and in light armored vehicles, advancing down into the wooded ravine for what would seem to be a low-risk search-and-destroy run; the Apaches moving in loose formation, scanning the terrain with superhuman sensors and unleashing an occasional salvo from their heavy guns at any suspect movement.

  He began to walk in back of the descending troops, lagging farther and farther behind them each time he stopped to take a photograph, until he came to a fork in the path. One way dead-ended at a bare, shallow cliff, so there was no going there. The other branch wound on downward through a dense cluster of scraggly trees. That’s the way the rest of the squad had taken and so he followed in the eerie morning quiet, watching his step, until a pair of eyes peering through the high foliage startled him to a halt.

  Noah fumbled for his rifle but soon saw there wasn’t any need. The danger had already passed through here and it had left a warning behind.

  The face he’d seen belonged to a man he recognized. He was one of the veteran troopers of his unit, a swaggering retired SEAL washout who’d been far from the best of his breed before he retired from active service. In his second career as a consulting soldier he’d found the respect he’d always wanted and he abused his position to the hilt. In the weeks Noah had known him he’d never missed an opportunity to throw his weight around and let everyone know who was the man.

  Eyes wide open, mouth agape in an expression of abject horror and utter surprise, his head had now been separated from his body.

  Shock numbed him in place before Noah could take a step or look away. More of these dead lined the narrow trail before him; much care had been taken to set this scene. The hacked-up corpses of the murdered men were scattered about on the side of the path, all showing signs that they’d suffered horribly before t
he savage end.

  These were the remains of the morning’s forward scouting party—contact with them had been abruptly lost earlier—and they’d been left here to deliver a primitive message in a language that all would understand.

  This wasn’t Molly’s doing, Noah thought. None of this was, it couldn’t be, not in a million years.

  He fell to his hands and knees and vomited, his stomach heaving until nothing was left in his guts but the fear that had overcome him. When his pounding head began to clear he staggered to his feet and began to run. There was no going back the way he’d come, and if he tried to flee into the forest he knew he wouldn’t last the day; long before the enemy or the elements could kill him he’d no doubt be found by his own side and shot for desertion.

  By the time he reached the edge of the trees, the rest of his company was ahead of him by a quarter mile.

  Down there, just in front of the men on foot, the tanks were slowing to navigate a narrowing path through the natural and man-made obstructions. They reached a choke point with the river on the left and then maneuvered into single file to begin to creep through the restricted pass.

  But something wasn’t right.

  Through his zoomed-in viewfinder he searched the hilly terrain, finding nothing for long seconds but knowing it must be there, and then suddenly he saw a glint of reflected sunlight from above, on the steep face of the minor mountain to his right.

  Noah took the camera from his eye and stood. The word formed in his mind but before he could shout it the fire had already begun to fly.

  Ambush.

  Dozens of gray-white streaks arced down from hidden emplacements in the high ground on either side of the valley. These rocket-propelled grenades were targeting the helicopters but the ones that missed fell with devastating effect among the boxed-in vehicles and the scattering foot soldiers. As the lumbering Abrams tanks swiveled and swung their turrets toward the threats, a flashing line of detonations shook the ground around them. The tanks and Humvees all stopped dead, pouring smoke, gutted by the explosively formed penetrators that had been buried along the bottleneck of the pass.