Myrmidon

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” Chapel said. “You’re one of the most respected members of the white-separatist movement—”

“Nobody’s life makes sense if you just look at what they do in public, Agent. Especially if they’ve got a secret to keep.”

Belcher turned away from the tombstone. He reached down and picked Chapel up, setting him on his feet. “Get in the vehicle, all right? If you try to run or anything, you’re going to get hurt.”

Chapel knew better than to argue. He walked over to the car and—not without some difficulty—wedged himself into the passenger seat. Belcher climbed into the driver’s seat and started the car up. He headed north, across the desert. The car jumped and bounced until they got back on the road. “I wish I had more time to explain this all. Your part in it, especially. See, I’m going to die today, along with a lot of other people. But you’re going to live, I hope. You’re going to live so you can tell people who I really was. And why I did all this.”

“Did all what?” Chapel asked. “You still haven’t told me what you’ve got planned.”

“We’ll get to that. There’s more of my story still.”

Up ahead, on the road, Chapel saw a long convoy of pickups, cars, and panel trucks. He saw men crowded in the beds of the pickups and recognized some of them. It looked like every able-bodied man in the town of Kendred was on the road, headed north, back toward Pueblo. He was afraid to find out why they were going there. He was certain it wasn’t just that they wanted to get away from the attack that was sure to come after they blew up the drone.

“When I got home,” Belcher told him, “with a dishonorable discharge, well, there weren’t a lot of opportunities for me. I was a little surprised, mostly just sad, to find out that my fellow Americans barely knew there had been a Gulf War. Oh, they’d watched CNN and seen Patriot missiles duke it out with scuds over the Kuwaiti border. But they didn’t seem to understand there had been real men, real soldiers over there. I couldn’t find a job, couldn’t get any money together. I’d gone to Kuwait with nothing and came back to less. I was homeless for a while, even. The only people who would give me the time of day were people I hated. My father’s fans.

“They wanted to help me. They wanted to take me into their homes, and all they wanted in exchange was to hear stories about how great and wise and forward-thinking my father had been. They treated me like I was a Second Coming. I wanted to spit in their faces. But when the option is to go sleep under a bridge and eat out of Dumpsters, well… I told myself I was taking advantage of them. Using them, the way the officers in Kuwait had used us. I told myself I was just going to put up with their white-supremacy nonsense long enough to get back on my feet.

“A couple years passed like that. I met so many people, listened to so many screeds. There was one kind of guy I met a lot of. Young men covered in tattoos, full of hate for people they’d likely never met. Guys who had gotten in trouble for what they believed in, thought they were hardcases, and the world was picking on them. I recognized way too much of myself in them, and I knew I could have turned out that way if I’d been dumb enough to believe what my father preached. If I just hadn’t known better. They had the hatred in them, the hate I felt in my own heart. They looked me in the eye, and I could tell they saw it, too. They would come to me and ask me if I knew what they should do with themselves. A lot of them had gotten in trouble with the law. They trusted me because I’d been in prison and because I was my father’s son, and they knew I was smart, and they figured I would have a plan.

“The funny thing about these guys—guys like Charlie and Andre. The funny thing is, for all their hate, for all that the world has kicked them around, they have this incredible quality of optimism. After all they’ve been through, you’d think that reality would have sunk in eventually, but it hasn’t. They’ve seen how the world comes down on you when you don’t think like everybody else. But still they believe. They believe that maybe in their lifetimes, maybe soon after, all their dreams are going to come true. That the white race will be triumphant. They have this dream. And the thing about dreamers is, they’ll do anything to make their dream come true.

“I started getting my big idea, started developing my master plan, right there and then. I knew, you see, that one man alone was never going to make a difference in this world. That I was going to die having achieved nothing. The world doesn’t listen to one man. But a man with an army all his own—well, that’s how history happens, isn’t it?

“I told them what they wanted to hear. I knew all the words by heart because my father had beaten them into me. I told them about mud people and the sons of Ham and about Nordic destiny. I told them we needed to stick together and that we needed to work toward a greater goal. You wouldn’t believe how easy it was. These kids are dreamers, and if you tell them their dreams can come true, no matter how ridiculous they really are, well, they’ll follow you right off a cliff.

“I started recruiting them, one by one. I only wanted the ones who I knew I could trust. There were plenty of skinheads out there who talked a good game, but all they really wanted was to get in fights and listen to terrible music. I had no use for that kind. I wanted the true believers. The ones who would follow my rules. We had to lie low, I said. The world wasn’t ready for our message, so we had to stay free and clean. No drugs. No criminal activity of any kind. We couldn’t afford even so much as a parking ticket because this country would take any excuse, even the slightest, to crush us. Of course, they needed to do something, show their hatred somehow, so I got them doing nonviolent demonstrations.”

Chapel sighed in disgust. “Like picketing biracial weddings.”

“Exactly. That’s why I said it was distasteful but necessary. They needed that outlet, my soldiers. They needed to feel like they were doing something. I despised going to those protests. Afterward, I had to scrape my skin clean in the shower, just to feel human again. But I did it. I went and picketed. I published books by idiots even crazier than my father. I put together an empire based on hatred, and every day I watched it grow stronger. I knew I was getting close to the day when I could finally use that power for my own ends, when they would obey my every command. I knew that day would come sooner rather than later.”

“And that day is now?” Chapel asked. “Why?”

“Because you came along.” Belcher laughed. “I had them train and drill for the day the government would come and raid our little town. I bought all those guns and told my soldiers it was for their defense. I always expected a massed force of ATF and maybe FBI agents. You showing up like you did, just one guy—that I wasn’t really ready for. But I saw I could use it anyway. You’re my excuse, Agent. You’re my justification for why we have to go to war today. And you’re also going to be my witness.”