Noah took the camera from his eye and stood. The word formed in his mind but before he could shout it the fire had already begun to fly.
Ambush.
Dozens of gray-white streaks arced down from hidden emplacements in the high ground on either side of the valley. These rocket-propelled grenades were targeting the helicopters but the ones that missed fell with devastating effect among the boxed-in vehicles and the scattering foot soldiers. As the lumbering Abrams tanks swiveled and swung their turrets toward the threats, a flashing line of detonations shook the ground around them. The tanks and Humvees all stopped dead, pouring smoke, gutted by the explosively formed penetrators that had been buried along the bottleneck of the pass.
The last surviving Apache helicopter was maneuvering and returning fire, but the enemy commanders had saved an ace in the hole. Two guided missiles streaked into the air in the distance, shoulder-fired Stingers most likely. One missed wide as the chopper jinked and evaded, but the second tore through the blades into the heat of the turbines and the aircraft disappeared in a bright yellow ball of descending fire.
As the rebel forces coldly found their range and the mortars began to rain down again, in front, between, and behind, Noah Gardner had only a moment to turn and run before a final blinding, deafening boom carried him away.
The approach of his death seemed a lot like he’d always heard it might be. Calm, a warm, settling peace, almost no pain at all, darkness coming on, the scene before him softening around the edges, a blurring of the lines between the real and the remembered. As consciousness passed away, Noah’s last thought shouldn’t have surprised him, but it did.
Though her cause was lost, with all the world now joining forces against what remained of her fragile, fading American dream, he thought of Molly Ross, closed his eyes, and wished her luck.
Chapter 2
The last thing she’d ever seen clearly had been a nearby nuclear explosion, an instant of unimaginable brightness before the coming of the permanent dark. But Molly didn’t need her eyes to know one thing for certain: as bad as the last few months had been, the gravest danger yet was right outside the door.
Though she was obviously a prisoner in this place, no one had been left to guard her, and no one was watching—even without vision she was assured of this somehow by the atmosphere of the space, the solitary feel of the strange, stuffy room around her.
After months on the run, she and her dwindling inner circle of Founders’ Keepers had nearly been cornered by—what was an accurate term for them?—by the state-sponsored mercenaries who’d seemingly been granted federal police powers, a borderless jurisdiction, and the skeleton key to the national armory. The events of the weeks that followed had blurred into one long flight through the wilderness, broken only by stretches of tense, restless waiting in various safe houses and hiding places.
This day had started with an anonymous message that their pursuers were finally closing in for the kill with a massive force. After that urgent warning all she could remember was running, desperate and directionless. That, and the gradually building sounds of a moving battle, the fury of it echoing like rolling thunder and never far behind. Hollis, her friend and longtime bodyguard, had split from the group at some point in hopes of drawing the enemy’s attention and buying the rest of them some time.
And then, just as it seemed that she and her people had finally reached the hill they would die on, out of the blue they’d all been swept up and spirited away by a shockingly well-armed and -organized resistance. In the moment the help had seemed to be a gift from above. It was becoming clear now that these new allies had sprung up from another direction entirely.
Voices drifted through the rugged wall on the far side of the room. Their words were mostly sifted out by the dense old varnished logs and rosined mortar in between. Still, through only these muffled remnants the gist of the debate next door was unmistakable. These men who’d snatched her from the jaws of certain death had done so with an evil intent of their own. Now they were deciding what was to become of her, and their hasty mock tribunal seemed to be nearing its final verdict.
Her guide dog, Cody, was seated on the floor next to her chair, his chin resting on her knee, so attuned to her by then that he could hardly be counted as a separate being. Molly held the dog’s harness, her free hand resting on his side. She could feel the tension in him, but, like his sworn companion, he was as calm as these circumstances would allow. Neither of them was at ease in the company of strangers, particularly men of the sort in the adjoining room.
A knot of fear had been twisting its way into her stomach, waiting there to cut free and flood her mind at the first invitation. Molly took a long moment to get a grip on what courage still remained, and resolved to think her way out of this place.
Blind is a tidy word coined by the able majority, a black-and-white term for what’s been lost that overlooks all that might have been gained in the bargain. There were other, older forms of perception, much deeper than sight, that had been steadily reawakening in her over the past several months as she recovered. Only in the faintest hints at first, from out of the dark these neglected human senses had slowly knit together to restore a different kind of seeing. Lesser in some ways, greater in others, this subtle new vision was a sense she’d learned to believe in—to entrust with her life at times—and she would have to trust it now again.
Okay, then, she thought. Now what do we need to know?
A heavy door from the noisy meeting hall was behind and to her left, closed and key-locked from the outside. A pale yellow blur of flickering illumination shone high up and in front of her—an old cyclone lamp by the sooty coal-oil scent on the air. A different, cleaner light—the late afternoon sun through a tall, wide window—was there on the other side.
“Cody,” she whispered, and Molly felt the dog stand ready beside her. She got to her feet as well, her right hand extended forward as though in preparation to explore unknown surroundings. “Let’s have a look around, boy.”
Cody took the cue and began to walk her carefully through the space, giving a polite head-nudge to her thigh or an outward tug on the harness to shift their path when an obstacle would have blocked her way. Step by step, she began to sketch the detail of the floor plan in her mind, measuring and memorizing along the tour.
Eight diagonal paces to the southeast corner and (thus far) the only door, sixteen more down a long credenza with wooden bookshelves up above—the books were bone-dry to the touch, old, leather-bound, and dusty, clearly on hand for show rather than any actual reading. What seating she encountered felt antique, handmade, almost formal, of carved wood and hammered metal with embroidered upholstery. A slick wall-mounted whiteboard and a rolltop secretary brought her to the corner.
Along the back wall her thumb was nicked by something smooth and sharp. With new care she felt around the protruding object: bared teeth in frozen jaws, stiff lacquered fur, wide glass-marble eyes. And there were more of these farther down, uneven rows and columns of them. It was like a taxidermist’s front-room showcase—animal heads large and small, their last moments preserved as trophies on mounted plaques.
When she and Cody had come almost full circle her fingertips brushed against cool glass, an arm’s length from a large varnished desk facing the chair where she’d been seated before. She walked the span of what must be a picture window, which in this direction would be looking out onto a vista of surrounding mountains to the west.
A workplace with perks like these would be reserved for the leader. That would account for the backwoods opulence of the furnishings, and for the garish wall of trophies as well.
After the walk-through she knew more than she had before, though there’d been little comfort to be found. Still, that they’d chosen to let her wait in here was the one piece of good news. They hadn’t shoved her bound and gagged into a closet or a storeroom; that at least meant she retained some respect, and maybe just enough leverage to get out of this hornet’s nest in one p
iece.
That tangle of fear in her gut worked loose for just an instant and a chill passed over her skin. Other things were lingering in this musty air, things quite beyond the physical. Cody must have felt them, too; by the end of the circuit he was pressed even closer by her side than he normally would be. There were ghosts of a wicked past within these walls, as present and real as any living person.
As they reached the gathered curtains she touched the bottom corner of the large windowpane. A small factory sticker was there; she couldn’t be sure but in all likelihood it would certify this as tempered glass. No easy exit this way, then; grabbing that straight chair and swinging it against the window would serve only to bring her guard bursting in to investigate the noise.
Still facing the glass, Molly stepped to the center, where she was sure she could be seen from outside. She pointed back over her shoulder, toward that oil lamp burning high on the opposite wall. What had occurred to her didn’t qualify as an actual plan of escape—more like the kind of last-resort improvisation reserved only for the soon-to-be far outnumbered and outgunned.
And then she held up a flat hand, palm near the glass.
These were signs meant for Thom Hollis, made with no reasonable expectation that he was even still alive to see them. Faith and friendship were all she had to count on, an unshakable belief that he would somehow be up there, watching.
Wait, her last gesture had said. But don’t wait too long.
• • •
Stealth, endurance, navigation, marksmanship, survival off the land—any average rifleman who’s worth his candle has mastered all those skills before the first day in combat. Deadliness, though, is the only meaningful measure of a sniper.
Hollis brought the long scope nearer to his eye. He took in a deep breath, held Molly’s distant image centered in the hairline cross of the reticle, noted her measurement on the scale, and prepared to do the math to find the range.
There was no need to interrupt his view as he dialed in the distance; the Remington 700 in his hands had been with him since the early days of Desert Storm. After all that time together he could break it down to nuts and springs and rebuild it by feel.
At 791 yards this was far from the longest shot he’d ever taken, but the present prevailing conditions left much to be desired. A moderate variable breeze would demand moment-to-moment compensation. His position provided little cover; as long as he lay still he’d blend in well enough, but the first flash of gunpowder would stand him out against the bare terrain like a new copper penny. And the low sun at his back put a harsh migrant glare on the tinted picture window, obscuring the view inside that room right where he needed most to see.
He had watched as she walked the floor, no doubt searching out her options should the coming situation begin to slide farther southward. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst; that was her watchword, and she’d stuck by it through these recent harsh months in which all hope should have long since dwindled away.
Hollis had seen only three sentries patrolling these foothills. Against instinct he’d only noted their patterns and positions, without taking further action. They were likely in radio contact, and if that communication was interrupted it could raise an alarm. But he’d also left them alive because he was under Molly’s standing orders to avoid any violence unless absolutely necessary. His repeated objections to this policy had been overruled as usual, so if and when the fighting started on this hillside the hot lead would be arriving fast and loose from all four cardinal directions.
In the scope he saw her react to a sound behind her and hasten to the chair where she’d been seated before. A few moments later the door opened and a number of men began to file into the room. The short, skinny one in the lead he recognized, and if there’d been any remaining whim of a peaceful conclusion to this unholy summit, with this man’s arrival that glimmer was gone.
For one side or the other, this waning day wasn’t going to end well.
Chapter 3
Let us pray.”
George Lincoln Rockwell Pierce, Molly thought. That voice identified the man beyond any doubt. As bad as this was, at least now she understood what she was facing.
Molly had long been aware of Pierce’s fringe-banished clan, but even if you’d never heard of him within a handful of words his tone and manner would telegraph everything you needed to know. And he wanted it that way; his was a world divided down a clean bright line, with his brotherhood on one side and the hordes of wicked elitists and subhuman barbarians on the other, pounding at the gate. He pushed that separation into your face from the first contact; somehow even in the words “let us pray” he’d said it: This is who I am, stranger. Now, just who in the hell are you?
Around her chair the room felt packed to standing room only. While the air had been stale before, it was now thick with a humid funk of proudly unwashed humanity, an aggressive aroma somewhere between expired lunch meat and a neglected grease trap. Despite all these sweaty attendees the place was perfectly quiet except for the speaker’s sanctimonious baritone.
Most prayers contain at least a smidgen of reverence or contrition, but not this one. It was glib and conversational, peer-to-peer, less a hosanna than a manager’s to-do list organized for immediate heavenly intervention.
Molly let his words fade to a drone and returned in her mind to her own priorities.
Now she knew for sure: if the United Aryan Nations had a White House west of the Mississippi, she was seated in its godforsaken Oval Office. These outlaws were the source of the military aid she’d unknowingly accepted earlier in the day, and there would be a payment due for that brief alliance. George Pierce didn’t have a reputation for taking on risk with no thought of his own reward.
• • •
To his lowlife friends and followers the man across the desk was known simply as George, in a thinly veiled reference to the father of our country. In his younger days, however, the full four names had often graced his mug shots on law enforcement bulletin boards in various jurisdictions. He’d been christened at birth in loving tribute to George Lincoln Rockwell, the mid-twentieth-century mastermind of the American Nazi Party. Legend had it that he was conceived at the moment of his namesake’s friendly-fire assassination in 1967, though some of his faithful went so far as to claim he’d been secretly sired by the homeland Führer himself.
The Pierce tribe had grown large and dispersed over many generations, blown across the country like carnival trash on closing day. It’s hard to put down roots when getting run out of town is the most celebrated tradition of your kin. Their ragbag family tree was hung with an assortment of thieves, thugs, grifters, Klansmen, and other such stellar representatives of the Übermensch.
From a home base in the row-house slums of East Baltimore, young George had accompanied his parents on caravan tours of tent shows and soapbox rallies. In town after town he’d watched and learned as they spouted a bizarre mélange of Bible-bending apocalyptic foolishness and race-baiting bull-roar. At age fifteen he was old enough to take up the pulpit himself, and this proved to be a turning point. Where Mom and Dad had enjoyed only limited appeal even with like-minded audiences, George showed an uncanny knack for drawing larger and larger crowds and filling the collection plates to overflowing.
He soon left home and took his own brand of revival show on the road, drumming up support, gathering disciples, and hawking self-published white-power pamphlets and paperbacks along the way. Back then the regional press gave him plenty of ink because most people really loved to hate him. But some, it seemed, just loved him; the more he was denounced and banned the more popular he became. His litany of run-ins with the law became a test case for the limits of the First Amendment, and with every arrest more anonymous money would pour in for his defense. He even ran for a seat in the state legislature at one point, and to the horror of the good people of Louisiana, he’d very nearly won.
It was only a decade later, though, with the explosion of the online social media
revolution, that George Pierce graduated into a full-fledged underground phenomenon. In this new medium he enjoyed an advantage the old-school KKK leaders never had—no sheets or hoods were required for membership. His followers never even needed to step out of their homes to meet and plan and join in the crusade. Instead they hid behind members-only firewalls, closed forums, and scary nicknames, safe and secure in the anonymous darker corners of the Internet.
As Pierce’s underground white-nationalist movement began to gather strength, the FBI added an alias to his criminal profile. In their internal alerts and briefings they called him the General, and by the look of things he’d now taken that rank to heart.
Grave times can bring out the best in good people, and open the door to all manner of evils for the rest. In the recent turbulent years Pierce had read the tea leaves and transformed himself, at least to the uninitiated, into a grassroots champion for the downtrodden majority. He’d retooled his public messages to be more appealing to a growing audience of hopeless and disillusioned Americans. He’d temporarily put aside his radical pose, in other words, for the sake of his radical ends. To the flocks of newcomers he presented himself as a simple man with plainspoken, commonsense answers to the troubles of a changing world.
All the pus and poison still festered at the core, though, waiting for its time. A day finally comes when the old hatreds begin to rise again and the enemy can be named, and in his twisted end-times gospel that day was dawning soon. George Lincoln Rockwell Pierce had a long list of enemies ready for indictment, trial, and punishment at his hands.
• • •
“Miss Ross?”
She’d heard the closing amen but hadn’t spoken it herself. It was Pierce who’d addressed her with a subtle testiness, the headmaster calling out a promising student caught daydreaming in class.