The Eye of Moloch ow-2 Read online

  “You rescued us today,” Molly said, “and I was grateful for it.” She turned her head and raised her voice slightly. “Thank you. I want to say that up front, to all of you here.”

  “And we all appreciate that expression of your gratitude,” Pierce said, “tardy though it may be. I for one had begun to wonder—”

  She turned back to the sound of his voice. “What I don’t understand is why a man like you would stick his neck out for people like us.”

  “People like you?”

  “Yes. People like us. People who’ve clearly and repeatedly condemned every single thing you stand for.”

  The room became somewhat restless, particularly toward the back, as her last words hung in the air. After a series of sharp raps on the desk—did he actually have a gavel over there?—the scattered muttering died down right away.

  “Oh,” Pierce said quietly, “surely you don’t condemn everything we stand for, Molly. May I call you Molly?”

  “Sure.”

  “Far from everything, Molly.” A creaking of old wood and springs arose as he stood. By the sound she could tell that someone stationed behind him had slid his chair back, butler-style, to allow the great man adequate space for an anticipated oration. “All of us here have sworn to uphold the divinely inspired U.S. Constitution,” Pierce said, “to the letter, as it was originally written and intended. We stand for American interests to be first and foremost in our foreign policies. We oppose globalism. We believe this country has the right and the obligation to secure its borders, its sacred heritage, and its values. We believe that American jobs, American ingenuity, and American resources must be protected and preserved for the good of the American people. We believe that the blame for our economic woes, past and present, lies with that incestuous den of thieves and shylocks in the revolving door between Washington, Wall Street, and the Federal Reserve. And we believe in a small and constrained federal government, with its inevitable corruption confined within the limited role set out for it by the Founding Fathers—”

  “All due respect, Mr. Pierce,” she said, “the few things we might happen to agree on are far outweighed by everything else. On which we don’t.”

  “I met your late mother once, Molly, may God rest her soul. And I’m not surprised to learn that the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree.” This was obviously spoken for the benefit of the others in the room, and his crowd responded with tentative laughter.

  Having grown up as a drifter Pierce never acquired a legitimate regional accent of his own. In his recorded speeches and videos, however, he had a way of mimicking the native dialect of his varied audiences. Hack politicians often engage in such faked familiarity in an attempt to ingratiate themselves to different ethnic or cultural groups while stumping on the campaign trail. Presumably on her behalf, he’d begun to shade his words with a generic cornpone twang that no true southerner, much less a real Tennessean, would ever mistake for authentic.

  “I’d like to go now,” she said.

  “Hear me out, Molly—”

  “Nothing you say will make a difference.” She moved to stand but rough hands from either side gripped her shoulders and kept her seated. “I’m warning you—”

  “Warning me,” he said, with what was obviously meant to be a good-natured amusement in his voice. “It shouldn’t come to this. We have a common enemy in this revolution. You shy away from the clarity of some of our beliefs, I understand that, but it’s only a small step I’m asking you to take. We’re both outlaws in the oppressors’ eyes, after all. Have you seen what they’ve done to you, and your group, and to your mother’s memory?” He paused. “You haven’t, have you? You’ve been on the lam all these months, and you haven’t seen, or your people have kept it from you. You’ve been spared from what the Jew-run blogs and the leftist underground media and their minions have made of you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ve officially become an enemy of the state, Miss Ross. You, and your insiders, and your dead friend Danny Bailey—by all accounts you’re all homegrown terrorists, enemy combatants, the dreaded white al-Qaeda. You plotted with a turncoat FBI man to destroy a federal building and half of Las Vegas last fall, and you nearly succeeded. Your mother was so distraught over your treason that she committed suicide.”

  It took a physical effort, but Molly kept her voice steady. “All lies.”

  “If a hundred million people believe a lie and only one knows the truth, tell me, whose version do you think history will record?”

  “More than one knows the truth.”

  Pierce sighed heavily and retook his chair. “Let’s cut to the heart of it. On my orders we saved your life today, at a considerable cost of men and materials. Though some of my advisors disagreed with me on this course, the decision was mine. In my view what that means, at the minimum, is that you owe a great deal to me. In our discussion outside this door just now there were differing opinions on how that debt was to be paid.

  “After much prayer and soul-searching I’ve determined there are two courses, and the one we take will be yours to choose. The first is an official and public alliance between us.” The room was still as he waited for her to respond in some way. She didn’t. “Do you understand?”

  “I understand the word alliance, yes.”

  “With your eyesight as it is, can you see at all?”

  “Only some light and shadow,” she said.

  “All right.” There was a brief rustling of paper. Someone walked past her to the desk and then came back, took her wrist, and put a single sheet on a clipboard and a heavy marker into her hands. “Despite the best efforts of our enemies there are still likely hundreds of thousands of your mother’s faithful who still may believe in you. These represent a valuable constituency to me. I’ve written a statement and you hold it there. We’ll have someone read it to you so you can memorize it. I want you to sign it, and sign it big, John Hancock–style. We’ll scan it then for a mass e-mail announcement, and when you’re ready you will deliver it for the camera—”

  “You don’t have to read it to me. I’m sure I know the essence. It’s addressed to your audience, and mine. It says that I’ve seen the error of my ways and decided to join forces with you. It says that everyone who believes in what my mother stood for, and that I still stand for, should all follow my lead and do the same.”

  “. . . You’d rather speak it from the heart, then?”

  “Actually,” Molly said, “I’d much rather die.”

  Pierce crushed out his cigar with a good deal more force than would have been required to simply snuff it. “And there you’ve struck upon the second option, but you should know something before you choose it. Any noble stand you take will be for nothing. Out on the Internet a dead person can go on living for a long time, for years maybe. So through the magic of technology you’ll sign and deliver that statement postmortem, and many others after that, and nobody will ever know that it wasn’t really you.

  “But I’d rather we didn’t go that way. If you’re to be a living ally you bring several advantages to me. If not, then you bring only one. My boys here haven’t seen such a pretty young woman in a month of Sundays, at least one whose affections they didn’t have to purchase. I expect they’ll all want to enjoy you for a spell before we bury you alive.”

  Pierce said this with the inhuman detachment of a textbook sociopath, with no discernible anger or malice. Molly sat for a few seconds, thinking. The character of the waning light through that window had dimmed and grown warmer, but not yet quite enough. She would need just a little more time.

  “I’m still listening,” Molly said.

  “That’s better.”

  “What about the people who were with me?”

  “What’s left of the Founders’ Keepers? They’re out there under guard in the next room, sweating out your decision, and I’m afraid they’re quite a bit worse for the wear. One’s wounded and I’m told that we brought back another—a Mr. Church,
if I recall—who’d sadly expired from the rigors of the day. But it’s good you asked, because there’s one of your number we can’t account for. This big mulatto that rarely leaves your side, this Thom Hollis, I believe his name is. What is he to you, some kind of a Secret Service?”

  “He’s my friend.”

  “And he’s a half-blood, is he? Or a quarter?”

  “I wouldn’t know. It’s never come up.”

  “Well, despite the fact that he’s a good fraction of a porch-monkey, I’m told that he’s a rare breed. From what I hear he’s not your typical black man; hell, I’d say the half that’s Caucasian may be a better soldier than most of these whole white men right here. I hear he fought well for you. They also tell me he’s articulate, and bright, and clean. He’s light-skinned with no Negro dialect. I want you to know I need men like him, so don’t you worry about that boy.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “What I’m saying is, he’d have a place with us here if that’s what’s on your mind. You just think about how far we’ve come. A few years ago this guy would have been fetching us coffee, and here I’m pulling up a seat for him, right here next to me. And it would be a considerable load off my mind if you told me where he is right now.”

  “I wouldn’t tell you that, even if I knew.”

  “Now, there’s no need to be that way. Look, I’ve got three of my best trackers out there looking for him, and they’ll bring him on in living or dead before too much longer. Three against one on enemy territory, them’s tough odds to beat, I don’t care how good he is. But, if I had an encouraging word from you about my proposal, well, then, I’d just radio my boys and it’d go much better for him. For both of you. The choice is yours, it’s no skin off my nose either way.”

  His voice had taken on a new earnestness that only made the words that much uglier. “I think you’ve got me all wrong, Molly. I think one man is just as good as another so long as he’s honest and decent and not a nigger or a Chinaman. My old mom told me, ‘George, you can’t go to heaven if you hate anybody.’ We practice that. There are white niggers, I’ve seen a lot of white niggers in my time.

  “See, I don’t hate the kikes, or the spooks, or the beaners, or the rag-heads. I don’t even hate the chinks anymore. I don’t hate any of those unfortunate people. We should all just stay with our own, you see? I think even brother Farrakhan would join hands with me on that score.

  “This is our time, Molly, and our God-given commission. It falls to this generation to cleanse this country, to take it back to the purity it once was. It’s us or them. That’s why I’ve got to know right now if you’re going to be one of us. You’ve got a way with the common people I’ll never have, but you’ve had no muscle behind you. These men here that fought for you today and thousands more like them across America, this is your army. We’re ready to march. Now let’s do what we have to do and take these sons of bitches out.”

  Since the accident that had nearly taken her life, she’d seen enough sunsets through her failing eyes to recognize the delicate transition to twilight. That moment when the last gleaming arc of the sun has passed just below the horizon had finally arrived.

  “I have an answer for you.” She pulled the cap from the marker and then, by feel, drew a thick diagonal line across the paper from the bottom right to the upper left corner and then down again, upper right to lower left from the other side. Still seated, with the large X complete she unclipped the sheet and held it up high and away, facing flat to the window, and said, “Nobody move.”

  For several endless seconds they all seemed dumbfounded; neither George Pierce nor any of his men behind her breathed a word.

  And then there were three sounds at once, each distinct but simultaneous. A clink from the window, a solid rap on the wood of the bookshelf on the opposite wall, and a sharp flutter of the paper that she held high in her hand, as though someone had flicked it with a finger.

  As she turned the sheet toward the man across the desk, just before the distant echoing sound of a rifle shot had arrived, she didn’t need to see it to know what was there. A clean bullet hole, precisely through the cross of the X.

  As she’d ordered them, nobody moved, and no one knew better than George Lincoln Rockwell Pierce who the next round would find if anyone acted against her.

  “You’d asked about Hollis earlier,” Molly said.

  “Do you really expect to get out of here alive?” Pierce hissed. He’d denied hating anyone just before, but his voice now seemed to tell a different tale.

  “Cody, go!” she shouted.

  The instant her hand gripped his harness the dog rose and leaped toward the door with a snarl so fierce that men far braver than these would have jumped back and cleared his way. A crash of shattered glass and a bloom of bright yellow heat erupted high in the corner as Hollis’s second shot blew the oil lamp there into an indoor wildfire, instantly out of control. Hands clutched at her as she flew from the room at a full run behind the dog, and she heard the sounds of her people overpowering their guard and then following her through a maze of stairs and hallways that seemed to go on forever.

  But Cody knew the way. He burst through the last flimsy screen door with Molly and the others on his heels, and they were suddenly outside in the cool clean air, running and running toward the shelter of the forested hills, with gunshots soon sounding far ahead and from behind.

  Chapter 4

  A bullet whumped into the turf twenty-odd yards to Hollis’s side, distant enough to tell the shooter hadn’t yet drawn a solid bead on his position, but still far too close for comfort. A sensible man would’ve grabbed his gear and lit off for the high tree line, but self-preservation wasn’t the first thing on his mind.

  Through the scope he saw a knot of nine tiny figures stumble through the lower-level door of the lodge, coming on at a run, led by a familiar young woman and her loping guide dog. Two in the back were supporting a hobbled man between them, and their burdened gait would set the pace for all the others. To his unaided eye the considerable distance made their progress toward freedom look painfully slow.

  A man with a raised handgun emerged from the same porch-lit exit, firing rapidly but wildly off into the dusk. With a quick, deliberate shift of his aim Hollis took him out cleanly, then worked the bolt and heeled it home to shoot again into the center mass of a second gunman, who’d appeared just behind the first.

  He scanned the unfolding situation as he chambered the last round in the well. There would shortly be many more where those two came from. Without a serious diversion this fight would soon take an unsurvivable turn.

  The fire he’d started in the second story was only dimly visible; the wide, clear window he’d shot through before was hazed over like a shower door, no longer transparent. Safety glass. Edge to edge the pane was a brittle mosaic of a million cracks, but the shattered glaze was still holding its fragile integrity.

  He eased his crosshairs to the bottom corner of the frame and took the shot. At impact a fist-sized ragged hole punched through there, the weakened window sagged, and then it buckled and collapsed in a sudden waterfall of glassy pebbles.

  A rush of coal-black smoke and bright curling flames burst forth to meet the backdraft as the wind whipped in to feed the combustion. In seconds the enlivened inferno had spread to threaten the roof above and the unfinished balcony beyond.

  That should do it; vengeance may be sweet but a four-alarm house fire in the wilderness trumps all other urgencies. All hands would be recalled to give up the chase and haul water to extinguish the spreading blaze.

  All of them, that is, but three.

  It was already half-past time to go. He stole a last look at the progress of the escapees; they were well on their way with no visible pursuit. As his thoughts finally turned to saving his own skin an extended volley of automatic gunfire tore up the ground around him on either side. He rolled and with a single sweep of his arm threw off his camouflage of underbrush and snagged his half-buried lo
ng duffel, then he crawled into the clear and headed out for the cover uphill. Crouched low, cutting right and left in no steady pattern, tracers hissing like hailstones through the canopy of trees ahead—in the unlikely event that he made it, these would surely be among the longest fifty yards he’d ever run.

  • • •

  A trio of sentries on their home field, presumably military-trained and well armed for their job, against a solitary man with a bolt-action deer rifle—on its face that scenario should grant unbeatable odds to the superior force. This is what they must have thought as they came for him, because they didn’t do what they should have done. They didn’t work their hunt as a unit, and with that rash oversight their tactical squad of three was diminished to one lone opponent at a time.

  The moment he’d found a secluded spot to lay over, Hollis had traded out his Remington for weapons more suited to close work. A simple Springfield .45 was tucked into his belt in back. Slung over a shoulder was his old 12-bore semi-auto, loaded up with heavy rifled slugs. The rest of his gear was hidden in the brush for later retrieval, if such an opportunity should come.

  The first one made it as easy as a kill can ever be.

  With the sun fully set and no moonlight to speak of, the man hadn’t paused to allow his eyes or his methods to adjust to the gathering night. He broached the woods at the last known position of his enemy and strode in fast and loud, sweeping the terrain with a barrel-mounted flashlight on his weapon, firing at anything that moved and many things that did not. Though his meandering search finally brought him just a stone’s throw away, he never did see the man he came looking for. A single shot through the chest put him down, and then there were two.

  The second was harder, and only a stroke of chance saved Thom Hollis from an early, shallow grave.

  He’d taken up a cramped but hidden perch in the gnarled lower branches of a nearby cottonwood, on the premise that the earlier noise of combat might draw the others to the scene of their partner’s demise. He was correct in predicting the response, but dead wrong on the approach.