The Standoff

Paradise Point

Banish squeezed the trigger and blew into the bullhorn, testing it. He was kneeling by a thick, wet-smelling pine. The rain had ended overnight and the predawn fog was just now rising off the mountaintop, the sun coming up and cutting through the haze. More than fifty marshals and agents in camouflage jumpsuits and flak vests stood, crouched, or knelt in the trees around him, all heavily armed, all aiming across the forty-yard no-man’s-land of stumps and scattered trees at the dewy mountain cabin.

“Glenn Alien Ables.” Banish’s trained voice sounded robotic through the bullhorn. “This is Special Agent Bob Watson of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Your cabin is completely surrounded. There is no chance for escape. Listen carefully to my instructions and no one will be hurt. Lay down your weapons and come out one at a time through the front door with your hands empty and up.”

He lowered the bullhorn and eased out the trigger, and waited. The BOLO marshal posted behind him aimed noiselessly. The silence on the mountaintop was profound. Banish pictured the family holed up inside, crouched on the floor beneath the windows, backs to the walls, weapons in hands, hanging on his every word.

The opening speech was very much a formality. Familiar words, recalled like a song lyric from his youth. The past favorite of some forgotten sweetheart. The old routine. He glanced to his right. Fagin was ready in the trees, squatting behind a five-man team of marshals dressed in full riot gear. Banish returned to the bullhorn.

“Occupants of the cabin. Agents of the United States Marshals Service are prepared to deliver to you a telephone. This is not, repeat, not an act of aggression. Any movement or activity from your cabin will be regarded and responded to as a hostile gesture.”

Another moment of pure silence, then Banish lowered the bullhorn and nodded across to Fagin, who hand-signaled his group to go. The five-man procedure was brief and efficient. A pair of marshals in black fatigues fronted the team with riot shields, concussion grenades held at the ready in their free hands. A second pair crouch-walked directly behind, M-21s braced against their shoulders, sighting the cabin through the plexi face shields hanging off their helmets. The point man himself was obscured in the middle.

The team advanced in fits and starts. The drop target was fifteen yards before the porch steps. Banish saw Fagin moving ahead to the edge of the no-man’s-land, his .44 down at his side. His lips were moving, issuing orders through the radio on his shoulder. Even at that distance, Banish could see the thin black ribbon stripe across Fagin’s chest badge, the same as on the BOLO sharpshooter positioned above Banish’s head. The sharpshooter was stiffening now, and reaiming.

The team had stopped at the target and were beginning their withdrawal. The cabin showed no sign of life as the ten-legged creature backed away through the trees as slowly and as cautiously as it had approached, past the first twisted dog carcass, past the second, finally reentering the thickened wood where Fagin stood covering them from behind. Banish felt the shoulder of the sharpshooter above him drop ever so slightly.

The throw phone, contained in a plain-looking, hard black plastic carrying case, waterproof and temperature-resistant, sat quietly fifteen yards before the porch.

Banish took up the bullhorn again. “Glenn Alien Ables. The telephone has been delivered to you. Your physical safety and the safety of your wife and family and relatives are our primary concern. You have my word that you will be allowed to retrieve this portable telephone without harm.” He paused a moment, taking a preliminary read of the situation, considering his final words. “I know we can reach an acceptable and mutually dignified solution.”

He lowered the bullhorn. Again the woods waited for the cabin.

Nothing. The front door remained shut. No movement or reaction or acknowledgment.

It flashed through Banish’s head then that they were already dead in there. That Ables had taken a knife or whatever was handiest and had already massacred the entire family. He saw the death masks of the slaughtered children and the slumped arrangement of their bodies and the bloody defensive marks on their hands and the staring eyes and the gore.

It was a while before Banish released his grip on the bullhorn. He stood then and said to the BOLO behind the tree next to him, “Tell your CO to clear everyone back another ten yards. I want to make it easy for the suspect. Let’s give him some room.”

Staging Area

Sheriff Blood was leaning against his Bronco holding a Styro-foam cup of Red Cross coffee, which was serviceable in a caffeinated way but lacked the sweetness and texture of Marylene’s time-honored brew. He had called her on the police radio first thing that morning and invited her to take a few days off, as he did not think he would be coming in at all the rest of the week. This forecast had required no special divining on his part.

A military tank rolled past him across the clearing. A full-blown U.S. Army tank. It had been brought in on a rumbling flatbed trailer, backed down off a ramp, and loosed to the feds. It lumbered past him now, toward the two National Guard helicopters in the rear. The feds pointed these things around the clearing like Tarzan with his elephants.

From where Blood was standing, near the center of the tree-lined oval clearing and facing the upper two thirds of Paradise Ridge, an entire fleet of parked military vehicles stretched out in a line along a brand-new chain-link fence, like a watch hand pointing to three o’clock. The largest equipment was stored farthest away, green-painted canopy trucks and more flatbeds holding bulky machinery under camouflage nets. The rest of the lineup included Jeeps of various sizes, both covered and uncovered, used mainly for shuttling men back and forth to the bridge at the bottom of Paradise, and sedans and four-wheel-drive Explorers with two or three whip antennas each, all sporting blue government license plates and inspection stickers from different states. Local fire trucks and ambulances were set way down alongside the largest equipment at the farthest right edge of the clearing, Huddleston firemen and Border County Hospital EMTs standing around drinking coffee and earning overtime.

Squarely in front of him, heading out toward what would be about noon, sat four good-sized U-Haul trucks boxed in by the tents. There were seven large tents now, anchor ropes overlapping, sharing between them three or four outdoor generators that hummed and rattled on like well-fed mulchers.

At about the ten o’clock position, wide out to the left near the opening of the road down to the bridge, dozens of trailer barracks sat crammed in like winter specials on a dealership lot. This meant close quarters for the feds, as well as the marshals bunking in the larger tents; Blood had spent the night in his Bronco. At seven o’clock, behind him, agents were busy constructing what looked to be two make-do kitchens. Portable toilets had been trucked in alongside the wooden latrine shed, and a Salvation Army truck now sat squat alongside its sister vehicle, the American Red Cross.

Finally, across the clearing before him, just beyond the tip of midnight at the foot of the rest of Paradise, a dirty orange backhoe ripped at the entrance to the narrow mountain path, beeping as it backed up and dropping its load into a dump truck before digging back into the hard ground full steam ahead. The work crew appeared to be widening the goat path with an eye toward building a road up the mountainside, most likely to allow up some of the larger vehicles. That was a little like widening a drink straw to suck up hamburgers.

Blood shook his head again and finished his coffee and looked around for a garbage can. There was Banish now, coming down out of the trees near the demolition derby, distinct from the other men in blue windbreakers because of the bullhorn in his left hand and the tall, striding figure he cut, moving across the land with clear purpose, seemingly unaware of the clamor and activity and general busywork going on around him. He walked straight over to a large, unmarked six-wheel black van that Blood hadn’t noticed previously. It was backed in right up to the foot of the rise along which agents were erecting tall wooden poles and setting up lights and stringing black telephone wire. Banish disappeared behind the van and Blood waited, watching for him to reappear on the other side. He did not. Blood crumpled the empty cup in his right hand and started slowly across the rumbling clearing.

Sound Truck

Banish stood before the open side door of the modified black Econoline van, recalling the long days and longer nights he had spent in a larger, more advanced model, drawn up on the tarmac at La Guardia, or parked around the block from a midtown bank, even pulled up on Liberty Island under the shadow of the big statue. The Hive, as it had been called, a dark, bustling, information-processing brain that Banish had sat at the helm of, receiving information by headphone and issuing orders to the agents buzzing around him. This Butte unit, however, was without digital recording capability and satellite uplink. It offered only reel-to-reel Dolby equipment, and a six-bank of five-inch monitors numbered beneath with Dymo-embossed labels, and accommodated only two fold-out desktop workstations. But it was just as well. He knew he would seek out instead the privacy and the retreat of his command tent office.

“Everything ready?”

The sound man pulled off his headphones and turned in the swivel chair. “If he picks up,” he said.

Banish set the bullhorn mouth-down onto the van floor. He watched Perkins move busily past the front of the van, then stop and nod to himself as he saw Banish. Perkins was wearing a suit jacket and tie, and an ear wire now. A thin newspaper was folded in his right hand. He recognized the sound van as he came up. “Clunky,” he said. “Why not just toss a clean cell phone onto the porch and call him direct?”

Banish appreciated the immediate query, inane as it was. It saved him the tedious pleasantry of “Good morning.” He said, “No negotiations on an un secure line.”

“The time element, though. Even if outside parties could monitor, don’t we want a quick resolution?”

Banish shook his head. “Not at the expense of security.”

Perkins handed him the newspaper, folded open to a page. “Local county fish wrap he said. “Reprint of an interview with Ables from about six months ago. May change your mind.”

Banish scanned the article. The slant of the piece was the irony and embarrassment of the United States Government’s inability to recapture a hometown federal fugitive whose whereabouts were publicly known. The newspaper was painting a local outlaw as a folk hero for circulation purposes. The reporter had interviewed Ables outside the cabin. In one paragraph, underlined in blue pen, Ables stated that he would not be taken alive.

Banish nodded. It fit the man’s profile.

Perkins said, “You don’t take that seriously?”

“He’s been waiting for this,” Banish said, “which is precisely why we don’t rush.”

Banish looked up to see the Indian sheriff sauntering toward them. Banish asked Perkins what his name was.

“Blood,” said Perkins. “He’s the one who first called us in.”

The Indian approached with his cowboy hat brim low on his forehead. His face was loose and the color of soaked cherry wood, his nose not very prominent. Cleaved lines extended from the corners of his dark eyes and his mouth, and his elbows were comfortably bent, hands fit snugly into the pockets of his tan sheriff’s jacket. Brown wool lining made the jacket look soft. “You asked to see me?” he said.

He kept his eyes steadily on Banish. Banish said, “What was the winning slogan?”

The sheriff looked at him. “Come again?”

“Your political campaign. What banner did you run under?”

The sheriff pursed his lips as though recalling it. “ ‘Blood for Border County,’ ” he said.

Perkins smiled wanly and looked up at the sky. “Super.”

There was a period of silence then, Banish standing there looking at the Indian, who didn’t seem to mind, and Perkins between them rocking slowly on the balls of his feet.

“We’re going to question a local resident,” Perkins said, evidently feeling the need to break the silence. “Then he’ll be remanded into your custody.”

The Indian figured it out immediately. “Deke Belcher,” he said.

“You know him?”

The Indian nodded. “Local color. But I wouldn’t say he did anything I could hold him on.”

Perkins said, “When the federal government is through with Mr. Belcher, that will be your determination.”

Banish was still watching the Indian sheriff and thinking that he ought to have appeared more uncomfortable.

Two marshals turned the corner escorting Deke Belcher in hand cuffs between them. Belcher was small and grizzled, with stiff white hair and rotted teeth; approximately seventy-five years old. He brightened upon approaching them and grinned excitedly at all the activity going on around the staging area.

“Oughta sell tickets!” he said.

“Mr. Belcher.” Perkins nodded after introducing himself. “What did you think you were doing up on top of this mountain yesterday?”

Belcher grinned. “Ain’t against the law to walk a man’s own land, or visit a neighbor.” He looked from face to face with aggressively mirthful eyes. “Anyways, not yet.”

“You do understand that a United States Marshal was shot and killed there yesterday.”

Belcher mumbled acknowledgment. The man’s chattering grin did not go away. “I saw a whole lot of trespassers up there,” he said.

Perkins nodded. It was an official nod that gave away nothing while imparting a sense of developing rapport. Perkins executed it better than most. “So you’re a close friend of Mr. Ables.”

Belcher nodded. “Glenn’s a good neighbor. Clean liver. Real high morals. Got to admire a man who don’t buckle. Been mooning these marshals since ever.” He smiled up at the taller men on either side of him.

Banish said, “He’s holding his family hostage up there.”

Belcher looked at Banish and shook his grinning head as though he were being teased. “You federal boys all crap out your mouths. Don’t you think we’re ready for you? Don’t you think we know what the hell all this here is?”

Banish said, “Who are ‘we’?”

Belcher’s face was wide with sly, knowing excitement. “This here is the federal government trying to push us into armed confrontation. So they can rampage through here, taking our guns, killing off our families, imposing their New World Order on us. That’s known.”

Banish said, “Who is ‘us’?”

“See, around here people believe in the right to bear arms. The right to raise a family whatever way they see fit. The right to worship Yashua — your Jesus — however pleases you. This here’s the Great Northwest, the last stronghold of pure white freedom in this country. Do you see that? There’s a principle involved here.” His shackles, clattering as he grew more animated, became suddenly quiet. “I’ll say this, though. If Glenn ain’t come down off Paradise yet, he ain’t never coming down at all. Glenn’s willing to die for what he believes in. Big morals, a man of great faith.”

He was reveling in the attention, looking from face to face not merely for reaction but also for approval. Banish glanced over at the Indian. His eyes seemed a little brighter under his hat brim, but clearly not from anything he hadn’t heard before. The two marshals stood rigidly.

Perkins said, “That would be the Christian Identity faith.”

Belcher nodded matter-of-factly. “That’s so.”

Perkins grandstanding again. “A fundamentalist creed holding that Anglo-Saxons are the only true Israelites and that America is their promised land. That nonwhites are subhumans to be banished from the country.”

“Got to watch your separation of church and state there,” said Belcher, smiling, pointing. “Glenn likes agreeable people. So do I. The great race war is coming here. Glenn knowed it. He said all along, he said: the first shots’d be fired at his cabin. And now just take a look around you.” He was getting worked up again, clattering his handcuffs. “You know the United Nations Tower of Babylon in Jew York City is making all our laws. Twenty-five hundred blue-helmeted troops massing on the Canadian border right now. What does that tell you there? It’s coming. See, Glenn’s for preserving the white race. He’s for the Grand Old America.”

Belcher was nodding proudly, looking from face to face. Banish looked him back. He was recalling for some reason a patient at the Retreat, a former doctor in fine physical health who went around telling people that his body was riddled with cancer, describing the entire destructive process in florid detail.

Banish watched Perkins and Sheriff Blood watching Belcher. The sheriff was remarkably nonplussed. Perkins appeared proud of his success in drawing Belcher out — a chatty old fool who could have been drawn out in conversation by a mime. This episode was the sort of thing that Perkins might later try to bring up with Banish as a flint for conversation: “So how about that old guy...” But Banish had no interest in cultural oddities or the local color of one wrinkled mountain man. He did not care who hated whom, nor certainly why. The only thing he cared about was the nodding certainty in the old man’s voice, and the strong antifederal sentiment behind his words. Banish knew that this man did not stand alone.

Banish looked at Perkins and nodded, and Perkins said, “Thank you, Mr. Belcher, that is all.” The marshals led him away.

The Indian sheriff said, “Fifty more just like him living within a few miles of here. And none of them ever broke a law in their life.”

Banish turned to the van and rapped twice on its side with a single knuckle. The sound man nodded to him from inside the open door and began cueing up a reel of audiotape.

Paradise Point

The throw phone remained untouched on the ground fifteen yards before the front porch. Banish stood at the imagined border of the roughly forty-yard no-man’s-land surrounding the cabin. A loudspeaker was mounted on a steel tripod near him, its legs anchored in the ground, metal flaps turned on either side to direct sound at the cabin.

Banish said into his Motorola walkie-talkie, “Go.” The hard bass beat and repetitive treble patter of urban black music boomed out of the speaker. The deepest bass notes shook the ground where he was standing, and then the rap lyrics began — shouted, abrasive.

Banish got behind the speaker and instructed the sound man by radio. “Twenty-minute loop, followed by ten minutes of silence the first play-through, one minute less each half hour. And req some earplugs for these men up here ASAP.”

Fagin was standing apart from his cadre, picking at an unlit cheroot in his hands and frowning at the music. He came forward and said above the noise, “You rattling him so fucking early?”

“I want him to get the phone and tell us to turn off the music,” Banish said. “I want him to start making demands.”

Fagin was shaking his head. “It’s too fucking early,” he said.

Banish just nodded. He looked back at the no-man’s-land and the two dog carcasses rotting there. They lay ten yards apart, backs tossed wildly, each drawing a distinct black cloud of hungry flies now. In another day or two the stench would be overwhelming.

Banish moved past Fagin to start back down the mountain. “Your kind of music?” he said to him.

Fagin scowled. “I’m the only man on this mountain who hates this fucking music more than Ables does.”

Staging Area

Brian Kearney had just come up the road from the bridge, where things were really getting going. The number of protesters there had practically doubled again. Parked cars lined both sides of the grass road now and people were hiking along beside them to the bridge, carrying signs, coolers, picnic baskets. There was plenty of speech-making and milling around in general. The work itself, what Brian and the other four cops were doing in support of the marshals, was pretty much like any other detail he was used to except that, unlike phone company workers or road repairmen, the marshals didn’t take any time to chew the fat. There was not much else to do on a detail other than drink coffee and stamp your feet, both of which made Brian piss like a fountain angel, which was why he was currently back up at the clearing.

Things were happening there too. He stood back and tried to picture the empty space he once knew. It was continuously rush hour here. And music now too, which was strange, from far off, drifting in and out like someone playing a radio or beating a drum. It seemed to echo off the peaks.

The latrines and the Red Cross truck dispensing coffee and plain donuts were right near each other, to Brian’s right as he parked the Jeep at the top of the mountain road, so he didn’t have to go far. Men were hammering and constructing two long wooden sheds behind the trucks, and when Brian asked one of them what they were building, the agent looked up and said, “Kitchens.” But Brian had to admire their efficiency; ask the Huddleston cops to build their own soup kitchen and forget about it. Obviously the feds were shaping up to be in this for the long haul.

It was two wooden steps up to the latrine, and a thin wooden door that might not stand a storm if they got one. Inside was a narrow row of plastic urinals set one next to the other. It wasn’t as private as the Porta-Johns outside, but probably cleaner, Brian figured, and definitely more airy. There were no mirrors, and the one sink basin near the door had an empty mop bucket in it. There was a stained green towel hanging off the sink, and two bulbs in socket cords were strung along the low ceiling where the planks were warped anyway, letting in long streams of slanting daylight. A wave of odor hit Brian that was briny and foul.

There was one person in there already, and as in any public restroom, Brian tried not to look at him first. You don’t want to meet a stranger’s eye in a public toilet. You want to do what has to be done and then wash up and leave. The guy was maybe four urinals away, right in the middle of the row, so there was plenty of room for Brian to go discreetly two or three away from him on either side. But this person had his back turned to Brian. When he shut the door and the guy didn’t even turn around to look, Brian was able to size him up without risk. That was when he realized it was Agent Banish.

His first impulse was to turn right around and leave. As though he might be disturbing the man just by being there. But then Brian stopped himself. It was just the two of them inside there, one on one. Brian figured this was his chance.

He remembered his ring again with a grateful start and slipped it off and dropped it into his pants pocket. He started along the creaking boards, literally swallowing, thinking of what to say. Agent Banish wasn’t wearing a ball cap just then, his hair grayed and slightly curling, and he was staring straight ahead at the drab wood wall. He was running his water. Brian made sure to make plenty of noise walking so as not to be thought of as sneaking up on him.

Agent Banish’s head didn’t turn even as Brian stopped at the urinal next to him. But Brian still couldn’t think of anything to say, or how to go about starting, so he just cleared his throat and pulled down his fly and began pretty much as usual. Of course by this point, he didn’t have to go anymore. He had forgotten all about that. But it would have looked even stranger if he didn’t follow through with procedure, so Brian was standing there with his fly down, facing the wall and smelling the salty odor of the place and waiting for something to happen. He was looking straight ahead just like Agent Banish. He was too intimidated to look any other way. Agent Banish’s water splashed in fits and starts and Brian knew then that it was now or never. Brian’s father liked to say things, and one of the things he always said was, a man’s got to take the initiative in life. Brian knew he wasn’t going anywhere, wasn’t ever getting out of Huddleston, Montana, if he didn’t go to the big table and speak up and ask for his plate of food.

So he finally turned his head. It shocked him how close they were. “Agent Banish,” he said, pretending to have just noticed him there. Brian took his right hand and extended it across. “Officer Brian Kearney,” he said.

Agent Banish’s water stopped. His head turned and his steel-blue eyes drilled Brian, just as they had in the rain the night before. He looked at Brian’s open hand and then again at his face, all with an expression of hard-to-believe.

“I just wanted you to know,” Brian said, forcing it out bravely, “I’m not like the other cops. I mean, they don’t see things the way I do. I mean, I don’t see things the way they do. In fact,” he managed, “two months ago I filed an FD-646, a Special Agent application. I’m hoping to sign on with the FBI myself.”

That was when Agent Banish’s eyes darkened. He looked at Brian as though from across some great divide, then his eyes dropped away. He zipped up and walked off without a word, without even washing his hands. The thin door whacked shut behind him.

Sawdust blew through shafts of daylight in his wake. Brian stood there frozen, not sure what to do. Then he zipped up and went right out quick after him.

Agent Banish was striding away fast across the clearing and Brian hurried to catch up, then kept apace at his side. It surprised him that they were about the same height.

“I was one of the officers who got shot at,” Brian said quickly, so that Agent Banish would know. “It ricocheted right off my hip radio. Not even a scratch. I guess I’ve always been lucky—”

Agent Banish stopped then. His face was turned toward the open clearing, eyes reading the activity and the surrounding trees the way people look at words and punctuation and make out a sentence. Brian followed his gaze to where Sheriff Blood was standing across the way.

Agent Banish said, “What’s his story?”

He was asking Brian a question. Brian stumbled over the answer, because Agent Banish had asked it, and because Brian was wondering what an FBI hostage negotiator could possibly want with the sheriff.

“Sheriff Blood?” he said. “He doesn’t have one.”

The answer made little sense even to Brian. Agent Banish was still looking, though. The impression Brian got was of deliberate curiosity, the way big animals sometimes paw at smaller animals before killing them.

Agent Banish said, “What’s between him and your Chief of Police?”

Brian kind of squinted then. He was trying to decode Agent Banish’s face. “How did you know?” he said.

But it was the wrong thing to do, asking a question of the man, because Agent Banish just turned his head and looked full at Brian, recognizing him then, or maybe just seeing the uniform. “Shouldn’t you be down at the barricade?” he said.

“I am. I mean — I was. I came back up on a coffee run for the others, and because I had to take a leak too. You know how it is. Only two things to do on a detail like that, stamp your feet and drink coffee, both of which make—”

Agent Banish was already walking away. Brian stayed put, just watching after him. He didn’t know why he was trying to waste Agent Banish’s time. These were men of action. They did not stand around talking or stamping their feet or drinking coffee. A man couldn’t just go up and ask for their camaraderie. They owned the brand of respect you had to earn.

Brian saw that he had bungled the whole thing pretty well, and actually was starting to feel his water again, but now knew he had to see the sheriff. Sheriff Blood noticed him coming and stopped halfway to his Bronco, and then looked and saw Agent Banish walking off in the other direction. Knowing that the sheriff had seen them standing together put a little more pepper into Brian’s stride.

“Brian.” The sheriff nodded, in his way, arms crossed and casual. “How’re you keeping yourself?”

“Good,” Brian said, turning back to look at Agent Banish and prompting the sheriff to do the same. “You know,” Brian said, “he was inquiring about you.”

Brian stayed looking a while longer, for effect, and then turned back to the sheriff, expecting a few prying questions whereby he might be able to dope out some useful information. Instead, the sheriff was eyeing him with some reproach.

“Ables is the man you ought to be concerned with,” he said.

The sheriff seemed almost not to care, but Brian realized he had played it badly, and that if he had turned back and looked at the sheriff right off, he’d probably have seen him surprised or curious or worried or whatever. Brian had to believe that was true. This was the Federal Bureau of Investigation taking a personal interest here.

“So,” Sheriff Blood said. “How does it feel being a bachelor again?”

Shit. Brian quickly fished out his ring and pushed it back onto his finger. “You won’t say anything to the feds,” he half-asked.

The sheriff dropped his hands deep into his coat pockets, a stern look on his face. “How’s Leslie getting by?”

Shit again. “To tell the truth,” Brian said, knowing how much it sounded like an excuse, “I haven’t been able to get away to call.”

Now the sheriff was angry. Brian knew that he had lost a wife a few years back, to cancer or something, but it was nothing he had ever spoken of, because they didn’t have that kind of relationship. But maybe that was why it always seemed that Brian’s marriage and Leslie’s pregnant condition were so much on the sheriff’s mind. He drew his hand out of his pocket and handed Brian a small ring of keys.

“You go call her from my car,” he directed.

Brian nodded and went away and did just that.

Command Tent

[PARASIEGE, p. 23]

SA Banish first entered the command tent that day at approximately 11:00 hrs. SA Coyle, operating in her new capacity as directed by SAC Perkins, caught up with SA Banish halfway to his office. The conversation was brief.

SA COYLE: Two more SAs came in from the Bureau overnight, sir. Behavioral Sciences. They’re working up a psychological profile of Ables.

SA BANISH: Fine. Have them chart me his horoscope too.

SA COYLE: And the ATF agents have arrived.

SA Banish became distracted at this point. He was staring at a nearby utility refrigerator stocked with fruit and bottled water for the support personnel. SA Coyle determined that a six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer set on top of the unit was the focus of SA Banish’s interest. SA Coyle advised that item had been delivered by a local physician. She advised that the beverage containers had been tampered with and a narcotic suppressant introduced. She advised that they were being kept on hand in the event that alcoholic beverages were requested by Ables.

SA Banish directed that the item in question be removed immediately from the command tent. He then proceeded without explanation into his office.

Office

Banish sat behind the bound reports and files stacked on his desk and watched the two casually suited agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms seated across from him. The FBI and ATF operated under similar charters and therefore often found themselves bumping into each other. The press frequently billed them as rivals, but that was inaccurate: the FBI’s annual budget far outreached ATF’s $265 million, thereby eliminating any basis for equitable comparison. The real source of interagency contention was procedural. The ATF thought of themselves as cowboys; the FBI, lawmen.

Jurisdictions overlap and frustrate. The FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service are both divisions of the Justice Department. ATF is Treasury. It was ATF that, acting on independent information involving weapons and explosives trafficking, carried out the original sting operation which netted Ables. When Ables defaulted on his scheduled court appearance, he forfeited his surety, the cabin, and was declared a federal fugitive. Responsibility for his recapture then shifted to the Marshals Service. The murder of a federal agent and the development of a siege situation moved the marker a third and final time, to the FBI. There was no higher domestic law enforcement authority.

Both sides were being professionally courteous on this case, and ATF had so far been forthcoming. Banish did not know if the reason was internal pressure, media heat, or quiet influence from the long reach of the U.S. Attorney General’s Office, nor did he care. The Spokane agents seated across his desk, Riga and Crimson, did not immediately impress him. Riga’s broad musculature overcompensated for his short stature. Crimson was quieter, less ethnic, more helpful.

Riga explained that he had shaved off his mustache and all his hair at the time of the sting in order to fill the role. “We were White Aryan Resistance members up from Nevada doing a buy at a road-house just a few miles from here, a skinhead bar called the Bunker. It was a prearranged meet set up by our confidential informant inside the WAR compound. Simple paint-by-numbers. Ables joined us at a booth, we brokered the deal, paid in cash, then followed him out to the parking lot and received the merchandise.”

Banish said, “He had the guns with him?”

“In his truck. Said he was in a rush. It cost him.”

“No explosives?”

“Not this time. You remember Miles City?”

Banish nodded. A few years before, a homemade bomb had exploded overnight in an office building that shared a common wall with the Miles City, Montana, FBI Resident Agency.

Riga said, “They never traced the chemicals, but the detonators were definitely his. He’s an electronics freak.”

Banish said, “Did he resist?”

“No. Grinning, even. Wouldn’t go along with Miranda, though. “Do you understand these rights as I have read them?” Said he didn’t. Wouldn’t comply.” Riga sat back and crossed his legs. “Just being a Nazi prick.”

Banish was jotting this down. “What was the final haul?”

Riga said, “One.”

Banish scribbled his notes. “One crate.”

“One gun.”

Banish stopped writing. He looked at what he had written, looked up at the both of them. “One gun,” he said.

Riga smoothed out his thickly halved mustache. “A Beretta Model 12 submachine gun. Forty-round magazine. Fires two 9-millimeter rounds per second. Effective range of more than two hundred yards.”

Banish said, “You took him down for one piece.”

Crimson leaned forward in his chair. “It’s a terrorist weapon, popular in South America and the Middle East. How he got it is another question, but that’s no cap toy. We know he’s connected. He sold a full gross to The Truth just six months before we nailed him. That’s confirmed.”

“Then why didn’t you get more?”

“It was a virgin meet. He was feeling us out.”

“Why didn’t you ride him?”

“Our informant advised no. Ables only deals with Aryans. Our cover story was too thin to ride out a long relationship.”

Banish just nodded. He was taking a long, burning look around his small office, fighting off some of the same dizziness he had felt when he saw the Pabst. Again he had the sensation, like a farmer stamping out locusts, that things were getting away from him.

So it had been a headline bust. Taking guns away from white hate groups always made the national wires. Must have been nearing budget appropriations time at Treasury. State highway patrolmen refer to it as “getting their period,” the rush to meet citation quotas at the end of each month. Every agency was susceptible. Every branch of law enforcement had numbers to crunch.

Banish wanted to invite Riga and Crimson outside. He wanted to show them how their one-gun pinch was working out. But it was all bullshit. Because the past didn’t matter. A federal marshal was dead. There were criminals and hostages and lawmen all over the mountain, and the welfare of each and every one of them ultimately fell onto Banish’s shoulders. Mitigating circumstances equaled hallway chatter, and Banish put it right out of his mind. He would not allow himself to be dissuaded or distracted from doing his job.

Bronco

Blood didn’t like watching Paradise Ridge shrink in his rearview mirror. He was worried that something might happen without him being there. Not that he mattered even a whisker to the overall operation. But he could admit that he was caught up in it. Like a baby-girl-trapped-in-a-well story on TV. You didn’t want them to bring that baby up without your being there to see it. Especially if there was a chance that baby might have a gun.

So he was hooked — as were others, by the look of the satellite dishes on the TV trucks they passed out beyond the bridge. That was after driving through the protesters who rushed at the Bronco, hammering on the hood and kicking the car doors as Deke Belcher waved from the passenger seat, their fists pounding on the windows, open-mouthed faces bellowing. The old man smelled of a dull, dirty-sour odor that offended Blood in ever-increasing waves. Out on the interstate Blood rolled down his window. He loosened the plastic wrapper on the pine-scented cardboard tree swinging from his dashboard lighter. Then he pulled the plastic wrapper all the way off.

“You taking me to the pokey?”

That aggressive, mangle-toothed smile. He showed it off to Blood the way children hold up their dirty hands to be washed. Blood had the Bronco up to seventy.

“Can’t arrest me,” said Deke. “What for?”

“I’ve got some paperwork to do on you,” Blood said, trying to speak without inhaling. “Things that need your signature. Then you’re free to go.”

Deke nodded and kept smiling and watching out the windshield, content as could be. “How about them federal boys?” he said, shaking his bewildered head as if to say, Hoo-ee. “They don’t even know what they started. Can’t see what it is they’re into. You know,” he said, turning his head then, “I’ll lay a wager it was you that called them in the first place. I’ll bet that.”

Blood didn’t care to bite.

“Because Chief Moody is a man who knows how to handle things around here. You always seem to need help getting things done. Such as, I know you got elected, and you been sheriff here two years — but where’s your support now? A sheriff who’s Indian? Like putting a rock in charge of a forest, I say. People don’t know their place nowadays. But it’s happening all over. The country’s changed. A cigar-store Injun, a wooden statue, all of a sudden wants to move inside and own the whole damned store. You see there? It’s as screwy as that. You might even agree with me. What about them deaths, for example, those Indian boys? Nothing ever came of that, right?”

Blood held his face steady. The back of his neck flared.

“You take an Indian boy who had too much to drink and then goes out walking in the middle of the road. That’s hit-and-run, but who could blame a driver for not reporting that? A drunken Indian who walks in front of your car? Who’s to blame there? Fact is, your kind favors imbibing, which is a simple thing of nature, and these things just happen.”

More bait. The old mountain fool might have been craftier than he seemed. But Blood played his part as Deke rattled on, chewing words.

“You got a pretty good job there anyways. Least you ain’t one of them Indians always crying about his homeland. I give you your credit for that. Saying the white man stole it. Hell, we did steal it. We fought you off pretty easy and took your land right out from under you. Because we could, because that’s the law of the land. But now here’re these Indians trying to change all the laws and take back all the land, and you know who’s behind it. The Jew lawyers whispering in their ears, that’s who, who could turn a copper penny off near anything. Indians’re just too slow to come up with this themselves. You natives should all just be quiet and honor those original treaties. We didn’t have to section off those reservations, you know. That was purely generous.”

Blood said, “You also capitalized ‘Indian.’ ”

“Do you think, for a second, that if someone couldn’t take over this land today, they’d do it? And believe me, they wouldn’t go run us off and change the whole country completely around, and then all of a sudden feel sorry for us and change all their new laws and give it back. They’d take it and they’d keep it for their own. And that’s what is happening here, right now. That’s how we have to stay strong, to preserve ourselves. Sure enough — we could go the way of the red man. Federal government has declared war on the white Christian race. Glenn Ables is just the tip of that iceberg. But don’t you think you and your ancestors wouldn’t scalp and fight like all hell if you got a second chance? Thing is, there ain’t no second chances. That’s the way this is. We’re preserving our race here and preserving it now. You probably understand that as good as anyone.”

Blood wiped a stripe of sweat off his thick upper lip. “I understand you perfectly,” he said.

They arrived at the station and Blood turned into the gravel lot. Except for the flag flying high, the place looked closed for the season. It was as though the building had been shut down for high quarantine. As though a fever had broken out across the county.

Deke moved anxiously in his seat. “Just sign some papers?” he said.

“That’s right.”

“Then I’m free to go.”

“That’s right.”

“Then you’ll ride me back on up to Paradise?”

Blood put the Bronco in park and turned off the ignition. He grabbed his hat off the dash and worked the door latch and stepped out quickly, standing on the gravel drive and breathing in the open air. He fixed his hat tightly upon his head and turned around to look back through the open door at Deke.

“Then,” Blood told him, “you’re on your own.”

Paradise Point

Now it was dark. Fucking stars again, and fast-moving black clouds. Night wind fluttering the trees. Fagin looked out and saw his sharpshooters crouched all around him, black forms against the tall black trees and purple night. Other men in the woods too, Bureau agents, in duck boots and down jackets from fucking L.L. Bean. They were working at various stations around the cabin perimeter, making a lot of noise, clanking things, and Fagin was pretty sure he knew what they were up to, and it pissed him off. But fuck it if he’d ask. Banish would keep him in the loop or else.

At least the music was off again. Fagin heard the garbled bullhorn barking and started through the dark trees toward it. On his lunch break he had commandeered an outside line and hit up an FBI contact for info about his new friend, Special Agent John Banish. It seemed that Banish had taken the entire year of 1991 off for compassionate leave six months more than normally allowed for bereavement — and it was halfway through that when the psycho chick plugged him in the hospital. The circumstances surrounding that incident were vague — purposefully fucking vague — but she put a round so far into his gut that he was nearly fitted for a colostomy bag. He’d been at an inactive one-man Resident Agency somewhere in the middle of Montana since getting out of the hospital, just marking time to retirement. The whole thing stunk. It reeked of meddling and preferential treatment and string-pulling and sticky fingers and all the things about the Bureau that Fagin fucking despised.

A man in an FBI windbreaker was kneeling in the dark at the edge of the kill zone and Fagin thought at first that it was Banish, but upon closer examination saw that it was someone else, an agent in headphones mounting a microphone gun with a parabolic dish. Banish was crouched just beyond him, finishing his bullshit bullhorn spiel. “... lay down your weapons and come out with your hands clasped firmly behind your head.” He lowered the bullhorn and waited then. “Anything?” he said.

The agent in the headphones was kneeling perfectly still, staring at the ground. “Some scurrying,” he said, in inflected Virginian, the accent of preference both for FBI agents and astronauts. “But nothing clear. Those walls may be thicker than we thought.”

Fagin squinted into the dark distance. Somewhere among the trees in the starlight before the black cutout of the cabin sat the black plastic phone briefcase, like a big fat fucking piece of cheese.

“So here we are,” said Fagin, implying the scope of things. No use fucking around anymore. “You turned a dog-and-pony act into a fucking three-ring circus. Now what?”

Banish stood without turning to look back at Fagin. “Have your men switch off their NVDs.”

Fagin scowled. He shook his head in disgust, but it was wasted because all he had was Banish’s back. He flicked on his shoulder radio. “This is Fagin,” he said. “Everybody click off. Repeat, everybody. We’re gonna have a show here.”

Banish remained looking straight ahead, waiting another good half a minute, looking for the cabin through the black trees or maybe just watching the night sky. If he wasn’t doing it solely to piss Fagin off or to prove how in charge he was, then he was a mope pure and simple. Finally Banish turned his head. He raised his left hand.

Loud metallic clanks sounded all around the mountaintop as switches were thrown and six big stadium lights flashed on, showering the cabin in near daylight. Fagin squinted and raised a gloved hand as his pupils contracted. The lights appeared to be evenly spaced in a wide half-circle, set on raised standards around the convex perimeter of the no-man’s-land, and humming. The lit area was washed out and nearly shadowless, the cabin now made plain through the trees.

“That’s good,” Fagin said. “You’re pissing into the fucking wind. And you got me standing right behind you.”

Banish’s back was in silhouette, the trees and the super bright cabin beyond him, as though he were standing in front of a picture. “Has he broken the phone?” Banish said.

Fagin was still squinting.

“Has he shot at the phone?” Banish said.

Fagin frowned. “Not yet.”

Banish nodded. “He’ll talk,” he said. “They always do.”

Then Perkins came up behind Fagin in a hurry. He had run up the mountain and was trying to mask the fact that he was sorely out of breath. “More trouble down at the barricade,” he huffed.

Banish stood there, thinking about it some more — fucking mope. He turned finally and looked back at the agent wearing the headphones. “We’ll have some more music,” he decided. Fagin watched him start back down the mountain with desk agent Perkins. Then the fucking music started up again. Jesus fucking Christ—

Bridge

Used to be, news happened and then it was reported. And that had seemed fair. If a person caught a big fish, there’d be a picture in the newspaper the next day of that person standing on the dock next to his strung-up prize. Before-and-after seemed like the natural progression of a story.

Sheriff Blood looked at the scene being played out beyond the narrow creek bed not twenty yards away. He had always detested the local Montana news programs. Didn’t favor the network news much either, but they had less time for shenanigans. He bristled at the idea of creating news, but that’s what these people did and that’s what they were doing now. They used cameras like sticks, turning them on people and prodding at them. And satellite dishes like sirens. Just after nightfall they had turned their camera lights on the protesters gathered on the far side of the bridge. They wanted a show and they were going to get one. No sense waiting around to see if any fish swam by. They were chumming the waters. They were scooping out blood and guts and dragging a wide net.

There was, of course, another ingredient going here. Whiskey and beer made instant problem-solvers out of the most irascible characters. The Great Clarifier imparted to them the strength and conviction to act decisively upon solutions which just that moment were themselves revealed. That was when your bar fight or homicide or domestic disturbance was most likely to occur.

Some words rose up distinctly above the din. “Get out of our backyards!” they yelled. “Pigs!” And again and again, from one gang of young, angry, swaying men: “The Truth! The Truth!”

“Jesus Christ,” said Brian Kearney, watching the crowd all of a sudden surge toward the bridge again. He was gap-mouthed. The marshals who had relieved him of his position on the bridge front were fast-talking into their shoulders, rifles drawn and ready. The convention of protesters had become a legitimate mob.

Lights, people, noise. It was all a great big carnival freak show The federal government was the Man with One Hundred Arms, and Glenn Ables was the barker. Kearney could have been holding a pink beehive of cotton candy as he pointed in amazement to a person by the left side of the bridge. “Sheriff,” he said. “That guy just chained himself to a tree.”

Near the man were a group of people holding up a banner:

“Environmentalists,” explained Blood.

Kearney was staring at the scene. “Is everybody gone completely off their nut?”

Blood took another sip of coffee and waved away a whirring buffalo fly. A thrown egg landed near them with a dull splush. Blood admired the slanted shape it made, and the manner of its oozing.

“Yep,” he said.

Headlights sprayed the crowd then. A Jeep pulled up behind and Kearney turned and so did Blood. It was Banish and Perkins, Perkins driving. Perkins’s eyes stayed wide and on the crowd as he stepped out of the Jeep. Banish watched them with more detached concern, sizing up the crowd like a shop owner watching a big sale going on across the street.

Kearney met them first. “There’s been some drinking,” he explained. He might also have let slip that the earth was round. He handed Banish some of the handbills and newsletters being distributed behind the lines, racist things home-printed under such jagged headings as The Covenant.

Perkins surveyed the swelling mob scene. “Jackals,” he said. “Brownshirts.”

Banish barely glanced at the handbills Kearney had given him. “What set them off?” he said.

“I’d say it was what just happened with the Mellises,” said Kearney. When the agents didn’t respond immediately, he added, “Charles Mellis’s parents.” But they were just waiting. They weren’t looking for a conversation. Banish seemed to be counting heads.

Kearney pushed on. “Mr. Mellis wanted to be let through to talk to you people. I told him that no one gets through, so he went over my head and talked to the marshals, and they said no too. Then a TV crew got Mr. Mellis on camera, standing in front of the bridge, and he told them what had just happened and how he was being treated unfair, and that’s when things really started to get ugly. That’s when people started to yell.”

Perkins pointed and said, “There’s Belcher.”

Blood looked. Deke was standing near the front of the bridge, grinning wide and adding his hand to the support of a crude cardboard sign that read FEDERAL BUREAU OF INFIDELS.

Blood turned back to find Banish frowning, probably at him. Kearney pushed on, doing his level best, pursuing whatever it was that he was pursuing.

“The thing is, sir, Mr. Mellis knows Glenn Ables. He says that maybe he can get through to him.”

Banish dismissed it with a single shake of his head.

“But he says Ables will listen to him. Maybe if they could get to talking, it might ease some things—”

Perkins said, “People always inflate relationships with a hostage-taker during a crisis. Hero mentality.”

“But aren’t the hostages really only Ables’s family?”

Banish shook his head. “No one crosses the police line.”

But rookie Kearney wouldn’t let go. “I understand that, sir,” he said, “but it’s the man’s son up there. All he wants to do is just talk to someone to find out if his family is all right.”

Banish looked hard at Kearney. “No one crosses the police line. Especially family members. Is that clear enough?”

Another egg fell nearby. Banish turned and regarded it with some interest. The yolk spread lazily out of its shell and oozed onto the dirt. He seemed to discover the hate literature in his hand then, and pawned the pamphlets off on Perkins. He looked over at Blood.

“This appears to be a riot,” Banish said. “You are the sheriff in this county, aren’t you?”

“Thought I was here as an observer,” Blood said. “A volunteer, I think was how you put it.”

Banish nodded. “I’m wondering why you’re here, too,” he said. “What’s your read on the character of this crowd?”

Blood did not turn back to look. “It’s a pretty good cross section, I’d say. We run the gamut up here. These would be resisters, protesters, evaders, constitutionalists, survivalists, separatists. Or do you want me to be more specific?”

Banish didn’t say no.

“Home schoolers, tax protesters, old hippies, conspiracy buffs, Vietnam veterans, religious fanatics, radical environmentalists, outlaws, Christian Patriots, assorted mystics and so-called doom sayers white supremacists, and sure, probably some people from White Aryan Resistance. Some skinhead members of The Truth as well. Did I leave anybody out, Brian?”

Kearney said, “I sure hope not.”

Blood said, “A pretty good patchwork of angry special interests. All except for one unifying principle.”

Banish said, “Not Glenn Alien Ables.”

Blood nodded at that. “Their hatred and distrust of the federal government. Most of them, the locals anyway, that’s why they live where they do. Instead of, say, a mining community, this here might be considered a protest community. That’s why they’re taking this whole thing so personal.”

Banish stood there inspecting him, clearly deliberating something. Then he nodded. “All right, Sheriff,” he said. “I’m putting you in charge down here, because I don’t have another man to spare. I want a local face of authority dealing with these people. I need you to monitor protests and media reports, collect newspapers and all circulated literature, and report twice a day directly to me.”

Blood looked at him. “That sounds like quite an honor,” he said.

Kearney said, “I’ll do it.”

Banish said, “It’s an important job. If you can’t handle it, you will be replaced.”

Blood nodded. “I had a paper route once,” he said. “I guess I’m qualified.”

Kearney said, “What do you need me to do, sir?”

Banish seemed to really notice him only then, and made as though he was giving him some serious thought. He asked him his name and Kearney gave it to him. “I want you to help the sheriff and the marshals here with security,” Banish told him. “So that absolutely no one crosses the line. That is of primary importance. I need a liaison to the front here and you two are it.”

Kearney said, “Yes, sir,” with all the willingness of a good soldier.

Now it was Blood’s turn to shake his head. He couldn’t help but grin, what with the foolishness going on here amid the chaos all around them.

Banish said, “Something funny, Sheriff?”

“No,” Blood said. “I just like watching you boys work.” But he couldn’t push it too far. Banish was an animal that could turn on him.

Perkins was staring and thinking. “We could try moving back the roadblock,” he said.

Banish shook his head. “Too late for that.”

Then the crowd was surging again beyond the creek, tangling and pulling like human taffy being made. It swelled dangerously, then crested back, and in the give-and-take an older woman was ungracefully bumped to the ground. She was clearly somebody’s grandmother, wearing as she did a blouse and pink polyester slacks and a mop of tightly curled white hair, getting to her hands and knees on the dirt road before the bridge.

She was helped back up by the concerned people on either side of her. Something she had been holding had fallen to the floor of the iron bridge and now she was giving the business to the nearest marshal. He seemed to be offering to retrieve it for her but she was refusing, or insisting in — any case, she was bickering to be let through. Then suddenly the crowd that had knocked her over threw its full support behind her. She brushed off her short coat and motioned over to where Blood and the other three were standing, and the mob rallied loudly behind. This grandmother was a tiger. You had to feel something for the bridge marshal as he turned and looked helplessly back toward them for help.

Blood saw Banish eyeing the scene and frowning bitterly. He clearly wanted to stall things out but the crowd would not quit, their ranting jeers increasing in decibels like a thunderstorm coming over the mountains, until it seemed as though things were just about to break completely out of control. Banish said to Perkins then, under his breath, “Let her through.”

Perkins motioned to the marshal. An unforgiving cheer rose from the crowd as the marshal helped her duck under the yellow web of police ribbon and onto the checkpoint bridge. He inspected the package she had dropped, then returned it to her with a polite nod. She thanked him and crossed the iron bridge with an air of pride and determination, like a spy being exchanged between countries, and the crowd behind grew quiet, hanging on the imminent encounter.

She stepped past Blood to get to Perkins, who she assumed was in charge. Banish had moved off to the side. She held in her hands a blue Tupperware bowl covered with tinfoil. The woman peeled back the wrap and revealed a batch of homemade brownies, which she then kindly presented to Perkins.

“I just wanted you to know,” she said, “a lot of us Montanans here are behind you boys one hundred percent.”

Perkins tried not to look too surprised as he accepted the gift of fresh-baked goods. “Well, that’s much appreciated, ma’am,” he said.

The grandmother smiled and nodded to the rest of them, then returned to the bridge. The crowd hooted and hollered and a few more eggs were launched. They had been betrayed. In their rush to power they had nominated a representative from the opposing party.

Banish returned. He said to Perkins, “I’ll prepare material overnight for a press briefing tomorrow morning to defuse some of this.” Then he turned to Blood. “I want an emergency county wide ordinance restricting the sale and consumption of alcohol. Cite threats of violence and public safety. That is within the powers of your office?”

Blood said, “I suppose it is.”

Banish nodded. “This ought to send your popularity ratings right through the roof.”

Kearney had dipped into the Tupperware container and was now sampling a brownie, and voicing his garbled approval. “Kind old lady,” he observed between bites.

Banish had started back to the Jeep. “Probably poisoned,” he said over his shoulder.

Kearney stopped chewing.

The Covenant Newsletter

The final hour is here. Agents of the Zionist Occupation Government tread upon our soil. They have moved in their tanks and taken up positions all throughout Huddleston. They are massing on Paradise Ridge. Local raids are imminent.

Our nation is in jeopardy. Our people are being taken. The time is NOW for action. Glenn Ables is only the beginning. They want to make an example of Glenn Ables.

The time is NOW to show our strength. They want to ban our guns. Support Compulsory Firearms Ownership!!! It is the ONLY WAY to guarantee your freedom. Your right to own and carry a firearm and defend your family is GUARANTEED by the Constitution. Stand up for Glenn Ables! If someone trespassed on your private property and shot your dogs dead, you would shoot back too, and it would be within your God-given rights. Keep ammunition well stocked and always keep one gun hidden in the event of an Occupationalist purge. Martial law is imminent. The blue helmets are coming.

This tyranny is not limited to the land of the Great Northwest. The siege on Glenn Ables is just one phase of a series of strategic federal assassinations, beginning with the murder of Order founder Robert Matthews and including the recent massacre at Waco. We must END THIS TYRANNY! If ZOG is allowed to establish a stronghold here at Paradise Ridge, they will rampage throughout Montana and the entire Northwest. THIS IS OUR LAST STAND! We need witnesses on the front lines in the form of freedom-fighting Christian Soldiers. The time is NOW to fortify our charter and establish once and for all time the independent white homeland of Washington, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Wyoming, and secure our borders.

They have targeted Glenn Ables because he stands for a way of living that we as members of the White Race believe in and hold to be true. His is a family like anyone else’s who moved up here to raise their kids away from the drugs and violence and the crossbreeding of the cities, to try and reclaim a little corner of this great country that was once our own. No decent, moral Christian should have to live next to a bunch of niggers and Jews.

This attack is pure provocation. Hundreds of United Nations agents bankrolled by the money merchants in the East, military helicopters cruising the ridge, armored personnel carriers, hi-tech demolition equipment — all for one man and a simple firearms offense? Pure and murderous provocation. ZOG must be stopped at Paradise Ridge.

We all have guns and are not afraid to use them. We take our orders straight from the Bible, and we know that Thou shall not kill is really Thou shall not murder. Yahweh commanded his people all throughout the Book, Go out and slay. In the name of Almighty God, we will do whatever it takes to defend our families and our Christian way of life.

Glenn Ables was not afraid to shout it from the mountaintop. He and his family are a testament to the freedom the federal establishment is here and now trying to take from us by force.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is a call to arms. As our forefathers before us threw off the tyranny and oppression of the Kings and Bankers of Europe and established an independent homeland, so must we now rise to the cause. The final hour approaches! A state of war currently exists in America. This is a call to action. Support Glenn Ables. His fight is our fight. Witness him and join him. Get the word out over the wires. Get fax machines if you already don’t, get computer modems. Use their technology against them. Send it out over the American Patriotic Fax Network. We must come together now. Let the faithful converge on Paradise Ridge.

KEEP AMERICA PURE!

This is our last stand against the Zionist Government and their New World Order. We will not back down. We must keep our land free. FBI agents are white in color only, and by their fruits ye shall know them. The federal agents here will be held accountable for their crimes. If Glenn Ables is murdered, or if any harm comes to his wife or any one of his five innocent children — then in the name of all that is Christian and Good, the second American Revolution will begin right here. The marauders will be overthrown. That is our covenant.