by Thomas Perry
Other people took the news differently. Six of them spoke on that day when Leah Hawkins slept in her small house on Calloway Street in Weldonville and two police officers cleaned and stored the guns that had been used in the murders of the six escapees from Weldonville prison.
The remaining six had all been living for two years under the names that Regina Varga had invented for them, and which were embossed on the driver’s licenses, credit cards, and other identification they carried. The first call they received came from her, telling them about the series of killings that had gone on during the previous few weeks in Florida, Buffalo, and New York City. The Susanville, California, killings had to be part of the series.
The first call she made was to Timothy McKinney. He listened to the warning and afterward remained silent.
“Tim, are you still there?”
“Yeah. It’s a strange feeling. It’s hard to think of those guys as dead.”
“Okay,” she said, a bit of the frustration she felt beginning to be audible in her voice. She had heard this before from clients. “Now you know what I know. You’re probably in trouble. If I were you, I’d do something about it. But it’s up to you. I’m going out of this business, at least for a while, so I may be hard to reach.”
“You’re telling me you won’t help us again if we need to disappear?”
“A month ago I went to four funerals. My brothers are dead. Our shop was burned. The machines we used are destroyed. The technology changes so fast, I don’t even know what I’d buy to replace them. I have to find out what the next thing is and get some training. The one thing I can do for people right now is passports.”
“How can you do that if you can’t make a driver’s license anymore?”
“I can do it. This is very difficult, but it works. It takes great artistry, things nobody else but me can do. If you want one, I’ll do it.” What she did was to begin with a genuine expired passport. Most of the artistry she was referring to was done on the old passport sent in with an application for renewal. She would show a change of address, alter the name, and sometimes she would tamper with and replace the original picture so that it looked like a younger version of the client and match the new photographs. Then she would submit the application, including the old passport she had transformed.
“How much is it?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Hundred?”
“Thousand. It’s a federal crime. It’s probably twenty-five years in prison—a lousy thousand dollars a year. And what you get is a real passport, good for ten years, not a street counterfeit. And once you’ve got the new one, you can renew it in ten years yourself. It’s real.”
“That’s a good offer, but maybe not right now. How long does it take to do?”
“It takes as long as it takes. You’re dealing with delicate work, and with the U.S. government. If you might need one, don’t wait.”
Regina Varga sold four passports that day. Since the originals were ones she picked up in bulk from people who resold papers and identification from estate sales, she paid an average of $10 for them, and $145 plus postage for a renewal application. But she was not lying about the forgery work. It was difficult and risky.
The six men called each other and arranged to meet in the best place any of them had. The best was an out-of-the-way spot in northwest Arkansas, not far from the Missouri border. The place was called Ararat, and it was the world headquarters of the Swift Sword of the Savior, USA.
Their host was Lee Wolf. Paul Duquesne had chosen him for transfer to Weldonville prison to be one of the organizers of the July 19 breakout because Wolf was a leader of a coalition of white supremacist prison organizations. He had been convicted of the federal crimes of manufacture of explosives, arson, and conspiracy to commit murder. He had also been charged with simple murder, but the U.S. attorney had dropped that one because it wasn’t clear that he had pulled the trigger, and a weak charge might taint the other charges. The sentences for what they could prove would make him over 150 years old before his release date.
Lee Wolf was not especially unhappy about the deaths of the five men who had been in the concrete house in California. He had been a rival and an enemy of Martin Ortega’s, because he didn’t like Hispanic people of any sort, but particularly not Mexican prison gangs. At Weldonville, both men had seen the practicality of a temporary cessation of hostilities until after July 19. This had ensured a majority of violent prison organizations would participate.
Lee Wolf had been living in the new compound of the Swift Sword congregation at Ararat for the two years since the prison break. The original compound had been in Oklahoma, but the explosions, fires, and other activities that had ended in the conviction of Lee Wolf and a few others had prompted the survivors to disband and then reappear in the Ozarks, where there were lakes, mountains, forests, and a number of old towns where they could send foragers to buy supplies without attracting too much attention.
At Ararat, Lee Wolf was often called Pastor Lee, or sometimes just the Pastor. When he described the compound at Ararat and his place in it to his fellow escapees, the others all agreed to travel there to talk. One by one, the other five arrived by car, all of their license plates from other states. They were Timothy McKinney, Edison Leonard, Joseph Lambert, Lonny Mann, and James Holliman.
After they had been installed in a building that was used for storage but had been outfitted with bunks, they went to a smaller, simple wooden building and sat around Lee Wolf’s table. They talked about how good it had been to have two years of freedom. They all implied that they were thriving but didn’t say enough about their new operations to make them vulnerable. None of them forgot that the other five were, after all, some of the most dishonest and vicious men they had ever met.
The one who opened the serious part of the conversation was Ed Leonard. “With the exception of Lee, we’ve each come a very long way to get here. We wouldn’t have come if we didn’t believe what Reggie Varga was saying. So what do you think is going on?”
“I think they’re hired killers,” Tim McKinney said. “Specialists.” He was tall and broad-shouldered, and had kept himself in fighting shape. He had been brought up on a farm and joined the military young. He had been either a Navy Seal or an Army Special Forces operator, depending on whom he was talking to, but none of these men demanded strict truth, because they had seen him kill. How he had learned didn’t matter.
Lonny Mann, who looked as though he had evolved to compete with McKinney for the same spot in the universe, said, “Hired? Who would hire anybody to do what the FBI would do for nothing?”
Ed Leonard said, “I think the FBI would have arrested those guys, or at least tried to, before they killed anybody. They arrested me, and I’m sure every last one of them hated me and would have loved to shoot.”
“I think you’re right,” said Holliman. “When I heard about it, I went online for a couple of days reading everything I could find about it. These were all killings. Executions. Nobody was trying to bring any of them to a court. Somebody bought himself some hits.”
“There you go,” said Lambert. “I read up on it too. This wasn’t even a dead-or-alive thing, like bounty hunters. It was just dead. When they got Ortega and Bysantski and Duquesne, they piped propane gas into the house and blew them up. Cops might love to do that, but they can’t.”
The men all sat in silence for a moment while the thought settled on them like a weight. Then Holliman said, “They got six guys already, six guys who never had anything to do with each other except when we did the breakout from Weldonville. These people managed to find all six, one of them in Florida, one in Buffalo, one in New York, and the others in Northern California.” He poked the table with his index finger. “It’s only a matter of time before they find the rest of us.”
“There are a lot of hired killers in the world,” said Lee Wolf. “I’ve done a bit of that kind of work myself, and I’m sure some of you have too. And I think that aspect of things deserv
es a closer look.”
“What part?” asked Holliman.
“It’s a business deal. First, a person has to decide he wants somebody dead. Then he realizes he doesn’t want to try to do it himself. He finds a guy, or in this case, probably a squad, to do the hit and tries to make a deal. The hit squad hears who they’re supposed to kill and how much the customer will pay for the job. They make counteroffers and agree on a price, a number of dollars. The hit squad isn’t after the target because they hate him, but to get that money. It’s business.”
“Right,” said McKinney.
“But the hit squad won’t take the job unless they’re positive they can do it without getting shot or caught themselves.”
“Right again,” said Leonard.
“And in this case, the hit squad has already killed six out of the twelve of us. So, they’re probably right—they can kill all of us.”
“That’s a worry,” Joe Lambert said.
Lee Wolf went on. “So, the best thing for us is to assume that waiting for them to come and kill each of us isn’t a great idea.” He looked around and saw the others nodding. “Nor is going out after them.”
“What?” Holliman was shocked. “What is a good idea then?”
“Going after the customer who hired them. That’s the enemy, our real problem. Not which group of killers got hired, but the person doing the hiring. The killers don’t give the remotest shit about us. They won’t kill us for nothing. If they don’t think they’ll get paid, they won’t do it at all. We have to go after the employer.”
“But we don’t know who that is,” said McKinney.
“Oh, yeah,” Wolf said. “I think we do.”
“Who?”
“Let’s think about it. What did the twelve of us do? We killed about twenty guards, all of them locals from Weldonville. We took their clothes and their cars and drove into town. We raised as much hell as we could there—stealing, raping, killing. We caused as much harm and confusion as we could, so no cops in town or coming to town would know where to go first or what to do. Then we all got out of there in time to be gone before the inmates on foot could reach the place. They didn’t have any choice. They had to steal and cause trouble, because they didn’t have cars, or civilian clothes, or money, or food, or even water. A lot of people got killed, including some of them.”
“So, you think it’s somebody in Weldonville?”
“When I hear somebody wants to kill me, I think back on my life. I’ve got people all over the country who would love to see me dead. I’m sure you do too. But if I think about who would be willing to pay a first-rate hit squad to get all twelve of us, there’s only those folks in Weldonville, Colorado—those widows, orphans, and childless parents we made that way. And the fact that they hired killers to get us is their recognition that they can’t do it themselves. We have nothing to fear from them. We know we can hurt them, kill them if we want. We’ve done it before.”
Lonny Mann said, “That makes sense.”
“I’ll go for it,” McKinney said. “It’s better than sitting in my house flinching every time I hear a sound in the yard or see a car go by too slow.”
Lambert said, “If we do it, we can’t go in and half-ass it. We’ve got to ruin what’s left of the place. We need to show them that hiring killers won’t protect them, because we know who’s behind it.”
“We’ve got to make them too scared and defeated to do anything again,” said Holliman. “I’m in.”
“Of course you are,” Lee Wolf said. “We all are. There’s no place else to be.”
“What’s next?” Leonard asked.
“We pack some gear and leave in the morning. But first, I’ve got a sermon to preach.”
The sun was moving westward but was still over the tops of the big trees on the west side of the settlement when the dinners were barbecued on a dozen grills made of oil drums cut lengthwise and installed near the center of the broad clearing away from the cottages and common buildings. The meat dripped onto the charcoal and sizzled and smoked. When the smell of it was strong, the people got in line, took their dishes and cutlery from the long table set up for it, took potato salad, macaroni salad, coleslaw, and beef, and went off to the picnic tables to eat.
There were not only men, but couples with children and a number of single women, people who lived here because something about the philosophy of hatred and envy and fear that was taught here sounded like the truth to them. Lee Wolf led his five guests to one of the tables and ate with them, but then he got up and went from table to table, chatting, smiling, and acknowledging his people like the mayor of a small town.
Before the sun set, people gathered their dishes and implements and took them to one of the steel drums that had been cut in half to make a tub. It was over a fire and it was full of soapy water. The other half of the steel drum was full of clear water being heated up for rinsing the dishes after they’d been washed. When the process was complete, the dishes and silverware would be returned to the table to air-dry.
As night fell, the people of the Swift Sword of the Savior went to the large canvas tent in the middle of the grounds. The tent had rows of folding chairs facing a podium and lectern. A few men lowered the sides, and people filed in through the openings at each end, pushing the mosquito netting aside like a curtain and letting it close again behind them. When the members were inside, Pastor Lee Wolf appeared on the podium. He had no papers or book, just leaned his elbow on the lectern and waited.
He had a strong voice, and so there was no need for a microphone. “Evening, folks,” he called out.
As people stopped chatting and looked up at him, the silence grew profound. “Today I’ve been thinking a lot about us,” he said. “You and I are here in this place for a common purpose. We got here in different ways, on different paths, and this is by no means our final destination. We have spent a couple of years here learning about the world and our places in it. One day each of us will look around and say, ‘I’ve learned about all I can in this place,’ or maybe, ‘I’d like to stay and keep learning, but I can’t. I’m being called elsewhere.’ And we’ll know it’s time to move on, so we will.
“For this time, we’ve taken ourselves out of the chaotic, pointless, competitive, stupid society we were born into, mostly because it had become impure and corrupted by newcomers and inferiors and their helpers and apologists. We had enough of the fake political system and the rule of degenerates and hypocrites. So we kicked ourselves out. We became outcasts.
“In order to do that, we’ve had to learn to protect ourselves and each other. We learned to fight, to cut a throat, to shoot. We learned that when they expect you to give in is the time to dig in. We’ve also learned that sometimes the way to win is to make them think you’re retreating. We learned to disperse and disappear, to become indistinguishable from our surroundings, to live in the enormous forests of this continent or to be in plain sight in the most crowded cities, and then come together again when it’s safe.
“That brings us to now. Tonight, we have five guests.” He pointed at the five, who were sitting in a row at the back of the tent. “They came to see me, and they brought with them a problem. It’s my problem too, so the six of us are going off to solve it together.”
He looked around him at his audience. Most were on the folding chairs, and others stood around the walls of the tent, their arms folded in front of them. Many of them wore pistols in holsters. “I’ll thank you for not worrying, or saying that you hope what I’m doing isn’t dangerous. Whenever I go out in the world, whether it involves violence or not isn’t up to me. It’s up to them. I’m seldom looking for trouble these days. The time isn’t right yet. But I’m always ready for it.
“If you study this planet we live on as I have, you know that violence is pretty routine. Killing is as natural as eating. Everybody is a killer. Do you have any idea who died making your clothes or shoes or cell phone, or even what country they lived in? Do you know who got shot off the land where
the gas in the tank of your car came from? No, you don’t, and you don’t care. I don’t either. That beef we had for dinner tonight sure was good, wasn’t it? Think about all the animals that die so I can eat meat every day. I don’t eat as much meat as I used to—no more than two or three steers a year, and a few pigs, but they’ve got fat and cholesterol, and I want to live forever. So I’ve added in about a hundred chickens a year, and about a hundred fish. Even if I don’t shoot it, hook it, or cut its throat, I still kill it. My life requires the taking of all those other lives. If we didn’t eat meat, you know how much hay or something we’d need each day for the same nutrition? About a bushel or so. But we can’t, because we’re not creatures that can process it. We’re creatures who kill, because we thrive on the flesh and on the killing too.
“Think about your life, ladies and gentlemen. The first thing you learned as a baby was not to get shit on yourself, and the second was that the planet is populated by things that mean you harm. Most of the ones you have to worry about don’t weigh three tons and charge you at fifty miles an hour. They look just like you. We came here for a simple bit of education that your mama wasn’t able to give you. It’s learning how to kill those bastards before they kill you.
“But make no mistake. I am a religious man, and I believe in Jesus. It takes a lot of courage to decide it’s better to be the one who dies instead of the one who kills. If you’re that sort of person, you’ll get from me deep respect and a nice funeral. But I’m not that sort myself.
“Now, these gentlemen and I are about to leave you for a while. Some of us, for one reason or another, may not ever be back here. So tonight we’re giving you our final regards, just in case. We’ll be leaving at first light to go take care of our business. While we’re gone, the fate of the rest of you will be in your own hands. The truth is, it always was, and you’ve done very well for the past few years, both in Oklahoma and here. Continue to be vigilant. I don’t think that anybody the six of us might offend or frighten will be able to trace us back here and blame you, but be prepared for it anyway. That’s the end of my little talk. Good night, friends. I hope I see you soon.”