“That’s right. And I got five years. I owed ’em twelve thousand dollars and I got five years in here. And a ten-thousand-dollar fine I can’t ever hope to pay. Lost m’farm, my stock, house. And I got this.” He wafted his arm around the room. “A dozen men a year go stark raving crazy in this place. They got a whole wing where they hold the crazies, most of them in straitjackets. You come in here, they shave your head, take away all your personal belongings. You can’t even have a picture of your family. Nobody to talk to. Alone all the time. Sometimes I’d give anything just to see a fuckin’ cockroach walk across the floor. You do anything to piss them off, you get ten days. That’s ten days with the lights on in your cell twenty-four hours a day. They degrade you, that’s what it’s about. Break your spirit, take away your identity. When you leave here, you’re nobody, with a hate that’s bigger than it ever was. That’s if you ain’t crazy.”
“So they spring you in three years and you’re right back at it?”
“I’ve learned a few lessons. Let’s just say if I ever get out of this shithole, I sure as hell ain’t coming back.”
“No, you’ll end up getting your brains blown out by some GI sniper. There’s something to look forward to.”
“Nobody’s looking forward to anything,” Jordan snapped, with bitterness in his tone. “We’re talking about survival. Don’t matter whether there’s fifteen hundred or fifteen thousand of us, it’s the way it’ll come down. Strike and vanish, like ghosts.”
“Or Phantoms?”
“Whatever you like.”
“You’re talking about suicide.”
“Which is a helluva lot better than lettin’ the government come, take away everything you got, and then kill you.”
“Tell me more about the General.”
“I’m sure you people have a file on him the size of a horse’s dick.”
“I’d like your take on him.”
Jordan considered that for a minute or so.
“Best damn soldier who ever lived. That pussy, Pennington, is everybody’s pretty boy. He don’t know shit about makin’ war. The General was the best. Nobody loved his men the way he did. We’d go out there in the fuckin’ jungle, months at a time, he never passed a bitch. Tell you something else, when one of our boys got clipped, he was never left behind. We carried body bags with us to bring our guys back so they’d have a Christian burial. Six go out, six come back. Ten go out, ten come back.”
He got up and shuffled around the room as he continued.
“We done the dirtiest work there was over there. We did it with the General’s prayers in our ears. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. And nobody done it better. Hell, Oz once took out a gook general from two thousand fuckin’ yards out. You think about that. That’s twenty football fields.”
“Who’s Oz?”
“Don’t matter, he’s long dead. Thing is, we never was recognized for what we done. No medals, no citations. Not even a damn thank you from anybody. They took away our identity just like in here. But the General, he gave it back to us. His people love him.”
“And you’re one of his people.”
“Fuckin-A.”
“He should know better than to pick a fight with the federal government.”
“People’s rights are being taken away every day, man! Illegal searches and seizures. Breakin’ in on people without a warrant. Keepin’ track of our weapons. Dogs baring their teeth at you for no damn reason at all. The massacre at Marion. Waco. Ruby Ridge. Taxes. Fuckin’ IRS comes in and takes everything away. House, furniture, everything, without even a trial.”
“So you start a fight you can’t win.”
“Can’t win? Victory is in the Bible, Mr. Vail. Some of the few verses I do know. I heard him speak them often enough.”
Jordan leaned his elbows on the table and stared straight at Vail. When he spoke, it was without emotion, as if he were describing a news event on WWN.
“And the Philistines stood on a mountain on the one side, and Israel stood on a mountain on the other side: and there was a valley between them. And there went a champion out of the camp of the Philistines named Goliath of Gath whose height was six cubits and a span. And he had an helmet of brass upon his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail; and he had greaves of brass upon his legs, and a target of brass between his shoulders.” He stood up and shuffled across the small room again, his voice rising slightly. “And David hasted, and ran to meet the Philistine. And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and smote the Philistine…” He stopped and smiled. “… and the stone sunk into his forehead; and he fell upon his face to the earth.” Jordan shuffled back, the chain clinking between his ankles, and stood next to Vail. He turned his head toward the ceiling and his voice became a preacher’s voice. “So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and smote the Philistine, and slew him; but there was no sword in the hand of David. Therefore David ran, and stood upon the Philistine, and took his sword, and drew it out of the sheath thereof…” Jordan leaned forward, his face a few inches from Vail’s. His voice became suddenly quiet, and he said, almost in a whisper, “… and cut off his head therewith. And when the Philistines saw their champion was dead, they fled.”
He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.
“First Samuel, Chapter Seventeen.”
Vail thought for a moment and said with a sigh, “You really think you can destroy the U.S. government with a slingshot and a stone, Gary?”
Jordan replied softly, “It’s what God meant, Mr. Vail. Nothin’s impossible for the righteous.”
A chill suddenly coursed down Vail’s spine, not because of the words, but at the quiet assurance with which they were spoken.
“I’m a God-fearin’ man. I go to church, but I never been much for remembering the words. Except for a few verses of the Bible, I leave that up to the preacher.” He smiled faintly. “Don’t want to put him outta business, y’know.”
“Do you think General Engstrom will talk to me?”
“Why not? He ain’t hidin’ from anybody. Not yet anyway.”
“You say he’s a logical man. Maybe he’ll listen to logic.”
“Your logic?”
“Give and take. We’ll listen to each other.”
“Yeah, we’ve heard that song before,” Jordan said bitterly. “The government never keeps its promises. Broke every treaty they ever made goin’ back to the Indians. Here it is 150 years later and they still ain’t learned to keep their word.”
“What promise did they break to you, Gary?”
Jordan didn’t answer.
“Look, if you don’t pay your taxes like everybody else, you go down. Hell, if I try to screw the IRS on my taxes, they’ll dump on me just as fast as anybody else. Trying to kill that agent didn’t help.”
“What a joke. He was a hundred and fifty feet away. If I wanted to kill him, he’d be dead. I just scared the little bastard. Anyway, income tax is illegal. Nowhere in the Constitution does it justify taxing people for doing a hard day’s work.”
“Hell, if you told ’em you were sorry and it wouldn’t happen again, you could have worked something out.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Jordan’s eyes turned to fire, his back straightened an inch, his voice trembled with the fervor of an evangelist as he spat the words out.
“The strength of Israel will not lie nor repent: for he is not a man, that he should repent. First Samuel, Chapter Twenty-nine. Let me tell you something, when they come down on me, I had to listen to this little rabbit telling me I had to suffer for cheating Uncle Sam. Those were his words. Suffer! Who was that miserable little fag to be judging me! Some pencil-pushing prick couldn’t get an honest job anyplace else, living off the taxpayers, giving me such shit as that. I fought a war for his scrawny ass. Repent? Tell such as him I’m sorry? I’ll break rocks in this satan’s brig for another twenty years before I’ll break the word of God to a sorry little bastard li
ke that.”
Vail leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette. He had no desire to get into a discussion about taxes with Jordan or anyone else. He changed the subject.
“Is your family still out in Montana?”
“Stayin’ with my wife’s daddy. Least the IRS ain’t robbed him yet.”
“Maybe you should move them out of there,” Vail said.
“Why? Something you heard? Is something going down?”
“Not that I know of.”
Jordan squirmed in his seat, then waved off whatever he was thinking. “Where would they go to, huh? We worked hard all our lives for what we got, my father and grandfather and those before them. Go to New York or St. Looey or Chicago, live in a cardboardfuckinbox on a street corner? That’s a damn go-to-hell suggestion if I ever heard one.”
“I’m not suggesting that. I’m saying get your family out of harm’s way—”
Jordan cut him off, his face deep red, his eyes darkened with anger. “Fuck you. We got no fear of you and your heathen friends. First John, Chapter Three, Verse Eleven, says, Love one another. Not as Cain, who slew his brother. The feds are brother slayers and you’re one of them.”
He shuffled to the door of the room and looked back at Vail, his eyes narrowed. The close-up of Engstrom’s eyes on the computer monitor flashed in Vail’s memory. Jordan’s voice shook with wrath.
“At the time of Parousia when there are great voices from the temple of Heaven and thunders, and lightnings, and there is such an earthquake as has not been seen since men were on the earth, and the cities of nations fall, and islands flee away, and the mountains will not be found…
“…on that day when Armageddon comes, my family’ll be the first to fly to Heaven. And you? God’ll judge you and smite feds like you and send you all straight to Hell where you belong.”
Jordan rapped for the guard.
Later, when they were in the car, Firestone asked Vail what he and Jordan had talked about.
“Death and taxes,” Vail answered. “Get me the hell away from here.”
CHAPTER 12
In the tower of the small airstrip outside the village of Coyote Flats, the pilot scanned the two-lane blacktop road through his binoculars. He checked his watch. It was 11:55 Mountain Time.
“They should be along soon,” he said to the air controller.
“Can’t imagine them staying any longer than they have to.”
“Never been out there,” the pilot said. He sat on the corner of the large console and lit a cigar.
“I went out there once,” the controller said. “Once was enough.”
“It looks grim enough from the air,” the pilot said. “I don’t need to see it close up.”
The terminal—if it could be called that—was just a one-room adobe shack with a fast-food machine, a coffeemaker, two long benches, and two rest rooms. The two-story tower was equipped with radar and a computer, and was manned by an air controller attached to the Bureau of Prisons.
Once a month an airline connector was permitted to land on the long concrete jet strip, bringing inmate visitors. Otherwise the field was closed to private air traffic. A bus took the visitors to the Grave. The field was surrounded by a twelve-foot electrified fence and guarded by Marines.
Neither the controller nor the pilot noticed the janitor standing outside the door to the tower. He stared into the room, watching the pilot walk to the sectional map of the U.S. The pilot held one end of the elastic measure over Coyote Flats with his thumb and stretched the string to the northeast.
“Twelve hundred miles,” he said to himself, then walked back to the controller’s table and took a calculator out of his flight case.
The janitor tapped on the door and stuck his head inside. “Okay if I clean up now?” he asked.
“Sure,” the controller said.
The janitor entered the room. The pilot and controller ignored him as he pulled his wheeled trash can into the tower room and emptied an ashtray into it.
“What kind of winds do I have to the northeast?” the pilot asked. The controller checked the weather maps on his computer.
“Clear sailing all the way to Canada and east to the coast,” he said. “Looks like about fifty at thirty thousand.”
The janitor quietly pushed his broom across the floor, an innocuous man moving silently around the room doing his chores.
“Looks like about two hours and fifteen minutes,” the pilot said. He took up his binoculars again and stared at the highway. Far off, a twister of dust rose from the road.
“Here they come now,” he said.
“See ya tomorra,” the janitor said, and left the tower.
After he left, the controller said, “What’s your destination?”
“Fort Wayne, Indiana.”
The janitor pulled his pickup truck into a deserted filling station on the outskirts of Coyote Flats and parked under the sagging roof beside two old, rotting pumps. He connected the minicomputer and modem to his cell phone and waited. At twelve-fifteen he saw the big jet soar off the desert floor and climb past him. He typed a number into the computer. It answered:
“HOREB CQ. U?”
“SIMON.”
“WHICH?”
“PHARISEES. CFLTS. 2-3-13.”
“UR HOME.”
“AM1 TO 12:15. DEST FTWAYNE, IND. ETA 2:30 CST.”
“UNID PASSENGER?”
“NO HIT.”
“SELAH.”
The man sat on a small folding chair meticulously grafting a twig from one rosebush into the stem of another. He had carefully prepared a bed for the new bush, measuring just the right amount of dirt and fertilizer in the trench before he replanted the mother bush. Then he made a thin slice in the bush, cut a branch from the donor bush, and trimmed the end into a point. He carefully inserted it into the sliver in the first bush and bound the graft tightly with string. When he was finished, he sprayed the graft with water and tied a tag to its base, one on which he had printed the date and words “Elaine’s Rose.”
The air inside the greenhouse was warm and moist, an ideal environment for his hobby. The cold air outside blowing across the warm glass created a thin mist inside, which settled on the blossoms and leaves of the rosebushes. The air was warm and humid, and the bushes were planted with exactly eighteen inches between each plant, assuring them ample room to grow. Waterproof loudspeakers murmured Mozart as he worked. Sweat dribbled down his face and off his chin. When he finished making the graft, he slowly folded the chair and leaned it against one of the two long boxes in which he raised his roses. The boxes were each eight feet long and six feet wide, and were lined to prevent rusting and wood rottage. There was a yard between the two tables and a yard between each table and the wall.
He had built the greenhouse himself, first drawing intricate plans for height and width, where water lines should go, and how big the glass panels would be. His wife of twenty years had taught him all about roses and assisted him in the planning and design of the greenhouse, but she had not lived to see him finish it. Cancer had taken her soon after he started construction, and he’d abandoned the project. Don and Elaine Woodbine had lived in the same house since they married. Childless, they were a devoted couple. When Warren Ferguson died, Woodbine had bought his hardware store and become one of Bad Rapids’s most successful businessmen. The locals were particularly pleased that he chose not to change the name—it was still Ferguson’s Hardware and Lumber Company. Elaine was vivacious and outgoing, a beautiful woman who was attracted to the shy, quiet, balding, plain man who was somewhat reclusive. Some of the town skeptics had predicted an early end to the marriage, but to their surprise, the Woodbines grew closer, stayed deeply in love. Woodbine also worked as a consultant for the government and frequently had to travel, flying his own plane, while Elaine managed the store during his absences. As time went on, he became more outgoing. The pair occasionally had cookouts for friends in the neighborhood, and for two seasons he coached the Presbyterian church Lit
tle League football team.
Almost to the very end, Woodbine had refused to accept the fact that his wife was dying, and that denial led to a deep depression when she passed on, two years ago. But after mourning for almost six months, Don Woodbine had suddenly gone back to work on their dream project, deciding to finish it as a tribute to her. And having finished it, he sought closure and solace in the hobby they had shared.
Now, Woodbine walked down the length of the shelter, carrying a small vase, stopping to check each blossom for aroma and color and size, occasionally cutting off a blossom and putting it in the vase. When he finished, he walked back to the house, his feet crunching on the frozen snow. He took off his shoes before entering the back door, and felt the familiar catch deep in his throat when he entered the simple three-room brick ranch house. He still expected to see Elaine standing there, smiling at him. Like the greenhouse, the place was fastidiously neat and clean. A cleaning service came twice a week, and between times he kept the place spotless. He occasionally fixed dinner for himself, but usually ate at Dressner’s tiny cafe, where the food was as close to home cooking as one could find in the small central Michigan town.
Woodbine carried his muddy shoes into the garage, put them back on, and drove his Four Runner to the cemetery a few minutes away. He carefully placed the vase of roses in front of the headstone and stood for a minute or two talking in a whisper to his departed lover. “I miss you, my dear,” he said.
He was headed into the village to grab a bite of lunch when the pager on his belt interrupted his sad reverie. He punched the button and read the number.
“Damn,” he said.
He turned around and drove back to the house. His study was in a corner of the place, and his computer, which was always on, was blinking. He checked the message, which said simply, “Contact home.”
His fingers moved rapidly over the keyboard as he accessed the modem program and typed in a number. He sat listening to the phone buzzing, then the screech as it connected. Then the message appeared.
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