The Eye of Moloch

Chapter 15

Alone in the conference room, from deep in his studies George Pierce became aware of a faraway sound outside. With a finger he held his place in the open Bible and listened; it was the shrill, swelling roar of a helicopter coming up to full power and lifting off. By the transit of its noise he could follow the craft as it slowly rose above the trees and made a single orbit low overhead, as if to complete a rude inspection, and then it faded steadily away on a heading toward the southeast.

Pierce smiled. With a final rattling of the shingles this smug interloper Warren Landers was gone, no doubt in full confidence that his mission here among the simpletons had been a success.

But a success for whom? Among other burning questions, that remained to be seen.

“Mr. Pierce?” A voice from the doorway interrupted his thoughts.

“Yes, what is it?”

“That prisoner we’ve got, he’s come around now, and you said I should let you know.”

“Bring him to me,” Pierce said, but then another thought occurred. “Wait—where is Olin Simmons?”

“Him and some of the others walked out with the gentleman you all was meetin’ with before, I guess to see him off on his way home.”

“Of course they did.”

All will be tested, so the Good Book says, and all duly judged in the Lord’s good time. But the darkest corners of perdition were reserved for those who once knew the ways of righteousness and then turned their backs on the sacred command.

“Don’t just bring the prisoner,” Pierce said. “Bring Mr. Simmons, as well. Bring them all.”

When the men had been gathered, on his orders some cleared the central table to the side. Soon the guest of honor was brought into the middle of the room and roughly seated in a straight wooden chair. He was conscious, though so bloodied about the head it would be a genuine surprise if no permanent damage had been done to his brain. Whatever the case, he really wouldn’t need to last much longer.

“My brothers,” George Pierce began, “as you’re all well aware we’ve been honored over the past few days with a visitation from the invisible empire. A messenger has descended to us, come down from Olympus and the awesome, faceless powers that be. I foresaw that it would happen at some point near to the end, and I’ve told you as much, and now it’s come to pass. The great deceiver has sent forth his ambassador and finally shown his hand.

“But I am not taken in by his idolatries, I’m not deceived. We—will not be deceived. If you think we’ve lost our power with this new alliance, I tell you now, we’ve only gained. We will accept their money, we will use their weapons and resources, and to the degree that they coincide with our own ambitions we will execute their plans. We will help them collapse this broken American system, but it is we who will rebuild it, true to our vision. We will not lose ourselves. We will not lose this war.”

The men responded enthusiastically, and amid the cheering and encouragements Pierce scanned each of their faces for any signs of duplicity or reserve. He committed what he saw to memory, and pressed on.

“Now I’ve got me a grudge to satisfy,” he said, and the crowd hushed as one. “There’s a wrong that cries out from the grave to be put right. Some of you may have heard that I’ve been forbidden from on high to act in this matter. That I’ve been warned by this Warren Landers against avenging the betrayal and the killing of my own nephew.

“And I don’t know, some of you might even agree with that prohibition. You may have heard and seen what’s been said and done here in the last two days, and you may be standing there believing that the only choice we’ve got is to kowtow to our new overlords, to worship at their pagan altar with our hats in our hands and hope to cuddle up and curry favor like gelded lapdogs. As for me, boys, that is not my way.

“Now I’m not proud, and I’m not perfect. God’s made no perfect men. But let me ask you, has it ever been said that George Lincoln Rockwell Pierce would ever shy from a fight? That I don’t look out for my people?”

The long room erupted in a rowdy chorus of cheers, stomps, and loud applause.

“You!” Pierce shouted, as he pointed at the seated man. “What have you got to say?”

The prisoner raised his battered head to nearly level, and it seemed to take considerable effort to focus his good eye on the one who’d spoken to him. “I told them everything already—”

“You will stand when you address the company in this room.”

It was all quiet as the shattered man strained and suffered to get to his feet. A would-be good Samaritan took a step forward to help but at a stern gesture from George Pierce he stopped short and quickly resumed his place.

“For those here that may not know,” Pierce said, “tell us all your name.”

“My name is Ben Church.” He was standing by then, but with an unsteady sway and crooked posture, clearly favoring something torn or broken inside.

“Mr. Church is a devotee of Molly Ross and the Founders’ Keepers. He came to me with an olive branch just the other day, as a self-appointed peacemaker, without her knowledge or approval, as I later came to learn. When all of you were up to your necks in government lead and brimstone in that battle up at Gannett Peak, it was this man who’d come to solicit the help we provided her there. He knew his people were outmatched and he came begging for the kind of salvation that only we could offer. And now the lives we’ve lost since are on his hands, and no one else’s. Isn’t that right?”

Ben Church nodded, though he winced at a pain brought on by the movement.

“Once you brave men had done your duty I brought Molly Ross and her folks here in good faith. I kept Mr. Church’s involvement a secret from her, I told her we’d found this man shot and killed by those government men so she could make her choice without feeling that one of her own had come to me, to set her up behind her back. I gave her every chance to make the right decision and join us. But it wasn’t too long before she showed us her true colors, and we all saw the results.”

Pierce turned again to the prisoner. “Three more of my men are dead, now, Mr. Church, and my own flesh is among them. Who’ll answer for that?”

“It’s my fault, I won’t deny. I’m sorry for it. Coming here and asking for your help, it was the only thing I knew to do. I only wanted to save her life. I didn’t know—”

“We’re not here to receive your confession. We know what you did and why you did it. All you can do to help yourself now is to tell us where she is.”

“But I don’t know.”

“Speak another lie,” Pierce snapped, “and see what it gets you.”

“She’s no threat to you,” Ben Church said. “She never was. Molly Ross is no leader; her mother was a leader, but she’s not. She’s young and weak, now she’s blinded, and she’s got no idea what to do next. It was all we could manage just trying to stay a step ahead of that army they’d sent after us. We were just trying to stay alive, that’s what it got down to in the end. You don’t need to kill her. She’s no threat to you at all.”

“I’ll ask you once again,” Pierce said, and he gave a nod to the men who’d been in charge of the prisoner before. “Where is Molly Ross?”

“I don’t know.” It was obvious that he could hear the heavy footsteps approaching but he kept on pleading as the men came for him. “She wouldn’t tell any of us where we were going, none of us knew, not even the ones she trusted more than me—”

The words were cut off sharply by a bare-knuckled blow to his rib cage. His knees gave out and he would have fallen but a second man held him up from behind.

It went on that way for a time, the same question asked, the wrong answer given, and the punishment applied. This unappreciated art of controlled savagery can take years to properly refine. Considerable skill is involved in beating a man to the very edge of his endurance and yet keeping him conscious all the while so the pain can do its patient work.

“We were shown an image of the place she’s run to,” Pierce said. “A large house with many outbuildings, acreage fenced for livestock. It must be somewhere less than a day’s drive from the nearest road they could have reached on foot. That much we know. Now where is she?”

Ben Church’s head lolled so loosely to the side it nearly came to rest on his shoulder. He was bleeding freely from the mouth and when he spoke next the words were largely drowned in fluid and slur. A sharp twist of his arm snapped him bolt upright and forced him alert enough to say it again, but clearly. “I don’t know.”

George Pierce approached the wretched man, whose handlers held him straight in the event that their leader might wish to strike him personally.

“Very well, then,” Pierce said quietly. “We’ll take you at your word.”

Not much of Ben Church’s face retained the capacity for expression, but still, he managed to look bewildered.

“The last we saw,” Pierce continued, “she was headin’ north up the foothills out there. If I was you I’d hurry up and take off that same way. Maybe you can catch up to them.”

“I can go?” Church whispered.

“I’ve got no use here for a man like you. Go on, now, before I change my mind. A couple of you men”—he pointed them out—“you see Mr. Church safe out the door and get him walking off in the right direction.”

When they’d left, with Ben Church half dragged between his escorts, Pierce walked over to the long canvas bag on the table, unzipped the length of it, and took out the long rifle that had been replaced there.

“Now if you fellows will accompany me to the portico, I want to show you something,” Pierce said, as he opened the bolt, pulled a box of ammunition from the bag, and began pressing cartridges into the well. “That underhanded rat bastard Thom Hollis is about to claim the first of many innocent victims on his nationwide rampage.”

The men filed behind him as he walked through his office and out onto the balcony beyond. His crew had worked around the clock and the damage from the fire was mostly erased already. Some valuables had been lost, but nothing irreplaceable.

On the other hand, as he’d told them, so much had been gained. From this high vantage point he could see the extent of the bounty of arms and supplies that his new alliance had already rendered. It had taken years to accumulate the few advanced weapons they’d expended in an hour at Gannett Peak, and many dealings with characters every bit as unsavory as Warren Landers.

But now, arrayed there before him was an arsenal he wouldn’t have dared to dream of holding only a week before. Stacks of crated Stinger missiles, factory-built RPGs, cases of advanced explosives and high-tech detonators, a truckload of untraceable guns and banned ammo—all that, and a free pass for under-the-radar transport to any target, any city, any time. Tomorrow, at long last, was when it all would begin. The possibilities might boggle the mind of a general less prepared for action.

But George Pierce had spent his life imagining such power at his command, dreaming of the glorious ends and only lacking the means to reach them. And here, from the midst of failure, those means had fallen right into his hands. The old saw was true: when God closes a door, somewhere else he opens up a window.

Down below, about fifty yards distant, the men had set him loose and Ben Church was stumbling and limping his way toward the far-off woods.

“Stop me if you’ve heard this story before, boys,” Pierce said. “When I was a little kid, just knee-high to a duck, my daddy introduced me to the man who killed John Kennedy. Now a couple of people shot him, understand, I’m talking about the man who killed him. He was a Frenchie, his name was Lucien Sarti, they call him the badge-man in that one old picture of the grassy knoll.

“But let’s consider, just for grins, that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone. In ’79 even the dopes in the U.S. Congress had to admit that there had to be another shooter, but let’s just say that he acted alone. Now what’s the best reason you know of that would cause you to disbelieve that?”

“Three good shots in seven seconds,” a nearby man offered. “One man couldna’ fired that fast and hit what he aimed for, not unless he was a whole lot better with a gun than Oswald ever was.”

“That’s what they say, isn’t it?” Pierce asked. “All those damned conspiracy theorists. Well, sir, I’m here to tell you those skeptics are right about a lot, but they’re wrong about that.” Ben Church had picked up his pace somewhat, having adjusted his stride to accommodate his injuries. “The range is about right now, though he’s moving a little slower than a top-down limousine. I’ve got me a better rifle here than Oswald had, but then I’m no Marine sharpshooter, either, so I’d say we’re even enough. Let’s give it a whirl.”

Pierce worked the bolt twice to eject two cartridges and leave three, and to check the action—it was smooth as butter. “The first shot was a miss,” he said. “Whoever’s got a second hand on their watch, when you hear that shot that’s when you start the time.” He brought the stock to his shoulder and the scope near his eye. “Number two’s what they call the magic bullet. I’ve gotta put it clean through his neck or it don’t count. And the third, that’s the money shot.”

George Pierce took in a deep breath and held it, sighted down, and squeezed the trigger.

At the first loud report the fleeing man nearly fell as he reacted, though the bullet missed intentionally wide. He’d no sooner straightened up when the second shot struck him just below the base of his skull, and his hands clutched at his throat as though giving a sign that he was choking. He took a faltering step, and then another. Almost simultaneous with the crack of the final shot, the top of his skull exploded in a pink spray of blood and tissue, what remained of his head jerked back and to the left, and he folded like a rag doll to the ground.

The timekeeper called it at 6.5 seconds and with that the hoots and loud applause of the men nearly raised the rafters. Pierce let them go on for a while before quieting them with a raised hand, and then he motioned Olin Simmons to step forward, close to him, and passed him the empty rifle.

“Y’all leave me and Mr. Simmons alone now.”

When they’d gone George Pierce let it stay quiet between the two of them, waiting until the other man spoke.

“That was a damn good shot.”

“That was three damn good shots,” Pierce replied.

“Yeah.”

“Take a team out this afternoon and you dump that body by the highway, thirty miles or so down the road. We’ll call it in next week if the dumb-ass cops take too long to find it. And then you’re going to leave here tomorrow with that rifle, and go raise some hell, isn’t that right? You’re going to go out and terrorize the sheep, get ’em all so scared they’ll be begging for the police state to come in and save them?”

“That’s the plan.”

Pierce nodded thoughtfully. “I noticed you were spending a lot of quality time with that snake-in-the-grass Warren Landers while he was here.”

“Just keeping an eye on him for you.”

“Uh huh.” Pierce took a cigar from his breast pocket, bit a sliver from the cap, and then leaned slightly forward and spit over the rail. “It wouldn’t be like you to forget where you came from, would it? And what you’ve sworn to me?”

“No, sir. I wouldn’t forget.”

“You know,” Pierce said, “they spent a whole lotta energy over the years asking who killed JFK, with not near enough of them asking why. If they’d ever had the guts to get an answer to that one question—why?—then they would have known who it was a long time ago.”

“So why’d they do it?” Simmons asked.

Pierce didn’t answer right away. He lit up his stogie and let the pause stretch out until the other man turned his head and looked him in the eyes.

“Oldest reason in the world,” Pierce said. “Those men in high places, the ones who made him what he was? They killed John Kennedy because he was disloyal.”