by Glenn Beck
Since their last ill-fated meeting, the other members of his party had also been keeping to themselves and he’d seen very little of them. Meanwhile, the Merricks were all occupied with serious concerns of their own. It was becoming clear that they were the targets of a dedicated smear campaign, and the regional press had begun to relay some of these stories without even questioning their truth. There’d been three visits so far from the law, including this one from the sheriff that very afternoon. The first two were official but this time he’d evidently come calling off-duty, apparently to offer some unauthorized legal counsel to his old friends.
Along his route Hollis paused in the shadows near enough to the front door so he could overhear a bit of the conversation. As unbelievable as it sounded, the sheriff had come with his deputies to let this family know that they were soon to be the subjects of a federal terrorism investigation.
At length Hollis moved on, and before long he came to the small outbuilding that contained the supplies he needed. He opened up the metal door, but before he could step inside, the boy Tyler came running up to him, breathless.
“Oh man, I’m glad I found you,” Tyler said. “Come on, my great-grandmother wants to see you.”
Hollis frowned. “Well, I sure as hell don’t want to see her.”
“No, you don’t understand. When she asks for you, you go. Believe me, you don’t want her coming after you.”
“Did she say what she wanted with me?”
“She never does. You’ll find out when you get there.” The boy reclosed the cooler door and locked down the handle. “Come on, seriously.”
“I ain’t ready for this,” Hollis said.
“You don’t know how true that is. Now let’s go,” Tyler said, and they started off. “I’ll take you as far as the last hallway and then you’re on your own.”
Chapter 40
Her name was Esther, he’d been told, but under no circumstances was he to call her that to her face—not if he knew what was good for him.
After the boy had abandoned him at the corner, Hollis had kept his apprehension under control for the first few steps, but by the time he’d reached the entrance to the antiquated original section of the Merrick house, the long walk down the darkening, lamplit hall had begun to feel like the last mile to the gallows.
It was a trip back in time as well, those last twenty yards. The wood in the walls and the floor seemed to age and weather with every step onward. The clean, rustic look of the rest of the ranch was mirrored here but it had gradually changed its character, transforming from a quaint designer’s choice in country décor to the old-fashioned real McCoy.
Hollis took a deep breath and rapped three times on the heavy varnished door.
The voice that came from inside wasn’t at all what he’d anticipated. It was neither the screech of a winged harpy nor the weakened wheeze one might expect of a typical centenarian. It sounded spirited and sure and gracefully feminine, all that conveyed in only five little words.
“You come on in, now.”
He opened the door and stepped softly into the front room.
She was seated in a cane rocking chair near her stone hearth, warmly outlined in the amber glow before the low, crackling flames. A round Dutch oven hung from a hook in the top of the firebox, and whatever concoction of beef and herbed gravy and root vegetables was cooking in there, it smelled so good it nearly weakened his knees.
The place was like a lovingly preserved museum exhibit, the very essence of the American West at the turn of the twentieth century. Beneath the rafters to a vaulted ceiling the rough log walls were painstakingly planed and shaped with every joint hand-fitted. The frame and structure looked as though it had been built with little more than a hatchet, a wedge and a great deal of love and care.
The wide mantel was lined and hung with an array of archaic things: bear traps, powder flasks, articulated metal toys, nutcrackers, and cook’s helpers. There were implements of various shapes and sorts made of wrought iron, bronze, hammered copper, hardwoods, and thick tanned leather. These relics recalled the essential technologies of a time gone by, things on which life itself had once depended but whose practical functions were now mostly long forgotten.
She sat there, rocking gently with her sewing in her lap, a cup of hot tea by her side, and the handle of a fireplace poker in the grip of one bony hand.
“Well, my stars,” Esther said quietly, “if it ain’t Lucifer’s servant himself, Thom Hollis.”
“Ma’am, with all respect, I’m nobody’s servant, least of all—”
“Don’t you say one word to me, not until I give you my leave. The devil uses good people, too, once he sees they’ve lost their salt. Now find you a seat and pull it up here close. I need to see you good and clear and these eyes of mine aren’t all they used to be.”
There was an ottoman near the couch and he brought it over in front of her chair, and sat.
“The Good Lord has ways of herding lost sheep back into the fold,” Esther said. “You do need to listen, though, otherwise He’ll only speak His wisdom again, but louder and stronger the next time, in a voice that makes it harder to ignore. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“No, you don’t understand,” she snapped, and it looked for a moment like she was about to swing the hook of that poker at the broad side of his skull. “You’re either about Satan’s work or you ain’t got the sense that God gave geese, and we don’t have much time to sit and ponder which it is.” She leaned forward with the tractor-beam glare that he’d seen before only from a safer distance. “Best that I can figure, you’re afraid, Thom Hollis, and fear in a man like you saps the will out of every blessed soul around you.”
“I’m not afraid. I’m only trying to protect Molly—”
“She’s protected already.”
“She’s not the woman she used to be, she’s blind—”
“We walk by faith, not by sight,” Esther said. “That girl’s got a calling, and she needs you next to her for one thing and one thing only: to help her do what she’s been called up to do. And some which way or t’other you’ve got the idea into your thick head that you know destiny better than He who shapes it, that you alone know what is and isn’t possible. You tell her and her people to surrender His fight when the battle’s hardly begun. And then you’ve got the crust to strut around here in high feather, like a tall dog in a meat house, like you think you’re still on the side of right. You come into my home, talking back and prideful while you sit there given in to cowardice and sloth, makin’ eyes at my granddaughter all the while. I saw you myself the other night in the billiard room, feet up in an easy chair like there wasn’t a worry in the world, and drunk as a peach-orchard boar. If my husband was alive today he’d haul you out back on general principles and beat you like a rented mule.”
“Ma’am, we’ve been through hell enough already—”
“Hell’s empty, Thom Hollis,” Esther said, “and all the devils are here. Even now their master sends them forth, at this moment they move against you, and even now the Lord whispers His will and gathers a fellowship set to come to your aid. But you don’t see His miracles. You’re afraid to be tested, you’re afraid to stand up and believe—you fear to walk out onto the threshing floor. You’re afraid if you try and are found wanting, you’ll fail her. But in that very act of choosing not to try she’s lost already. Do you see?”
He nodded slowly, and he really did see, though he didn’t want to.
“Take my hand,” Esther said.
He did. Her touch was electric, an immediate cleansing shock that passed through him head to toe and left him feeling thunderstruck and sober as a judge.
“The spirit has always dwelt among us,” she said, “since long before it had a name and a nation for its home. It’s burned in the hearts of millions in other lands who dreamed of its promise but never lived to reach these hallowed shores. It survived slavery and Civil War, depression, organized crime in the v
ery halls of its government, and time and again it’s weathered the looting and corruption and schemes of a ruling class that pledges no allegiance to anything but its own dark designs.
“Now that spirit lies dormant and shunned and forgotten in all but a precious few of even our own sons and daughters. Its light dims but still it burns, it waits to be awakened so this one nation and the love of true liberty at its heart can be restored to her old glory. It demands much of those that hear the call, and the first hard thing it asks is courage.
“Now, then,” Esther said. “Are we dust, or diamonds? Will you be a slave to the creeping tyranny that’s stalked every try at moral government since time began? Or will you be a free man who stands beneath the shield of nature’s God, clad in His armor, sworn to protect and defend the founding bedrock of this wounded, blessed land? Are you only human after all, Thom Hollis? Or are you an American?”
• • •
After he’d left her, he stood outside under the darkened, cloudy sky, near enough to a lamppost to see the keepsake in his hand, the gift that Esther Merrick had passed to him as they parted. She’d given something of hers to all of them, she’d said, something they might have lost along the way.
“So am I to understand that you’re the trail cook for this lot?” she’d asked as she walked him to the door.
“Among other things,” he’d answered, “and in better times than these.”
What she’d given him then was a saltbox; that’s what the old-timers would have called this little round, hinged wooden case. Though it appeared to be solid when closed against the elements, there were many small compartments accessible with a twist or a press along its sides. These held within them a surprisingly wide variety of dried herbs, ground spices, aromatics, and cracked peppercorns. The deepest of the enclosures was reserved to keep an ample supply of fine white salt pure and dry and protected.
Such a thing might not seem essential to survival, if one’s goal were simply to live out one bland and tasteless day to the next. But that isn’t really living at all—while the flesh may be sustained by little more than shelter, dry bread and lukewarm water, the soul needs more.
There was a small handwritten note tucked into that last compartment, and this is what it said:
Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the event is in the hands of God.
He began to walk again, and then to run, and when he reached Molly’s room he knocked on the door but didn’t wait outside for her to answer. Her dog alerted and stood at the foot of the bed as Hollis burst into the room, but he didn’t bark or threaten, and Molly turned her face toward the noise.
“Who’s there?” she asked.
“It’s me, Molly.”
“What’s wrong?”
“That plan you were talking about the other day, the one I said was impossible and desperate and nothing but an elaborate attempt at suicide?”
She sat up. “Yes.”
“I was wrong,” Hollis said. “I’m in. By God, let’s do it.”
Chapter 41
The first urgent order of business would be the fabrication of a do-it-yourself anti-aircraft bunker in the barn east of the house.
Watching from cover, after only a few minutes with a pair of proper binoculars, Hollis confirmed that what he’d feared was true: a surveillance drone had been orbiting the ranch and it was still up there, circling. Under the prevailing conditions he might not have been able to spot it had the craft not descended under the overcast to maintain its view. Even at that lower altitude its distinctive outline was only barely visible against the backdrop of featureless gray clouds.
He kept it in sight as it followed an unvarying and apparently automated oval pattern at only a few thousand feet over the land. Not as big or as fast as the latest deployed versions, he noted, it was likely an older, unarmed model, maybe a Gnat, capable only of carrying various cameras and telemetry gear. It slowed drastically as it bucked the breeze on its inbound, upwind leg and was also flying much too low for its own good. Whoever was remotely piloting this thing didn’t seem too concerned that his robotic spy might be discovered—much less that it could be vulnerable to a well-placed shot from the ground.
Night would have already fallen by the time they were ready to flee, but if they managed to bring that thing down then the darkness could be turned to their advantage.
While there was still a bit of daylight Hollis summoned the most skilled rifleman among the Merrick clan and asked him to come to the second-floor loft of the barn. He was to bring one of the family’s Barrett .50 calibers, a tripod mount, and as many magazines of incendiary tracer rounds as they had in the stockroom.
Meanwhile the livestock were discreetly moved out of the barn and then a pickup truck pulled the second weapon into position through the back double doors: an eight-foot carbon-arc searchlight on a four-wheeled trailer, complete with its own diesel generator for power.
This light was of the same type as those used to sweep the night skies at movie premieres and grand openings, a distant cousin of those billion-plus-candlepower units that shone upward from atop the Luxor in Las Vegas. In the past the Merrick family had used this big thing and another like it to add some flash and pageantry to nighttime public gatherings and charity events at the ranch. Though it was not quite of military power, if their luck held out it would be more than bright enough for this job.
With a stopwatch they tracked the drone’s flight path over three circuits and it proved to be regular as clockwork. As it approached the barn straight-on and against the wind there would be a narrow window of time in which that small, moving airborne target would become a sitting duck, appearing almost stationary in the crosshairs.
The tripod for the Barrett M82 was soon bolted down to the floor of the loft with the rifle aimed toward the oncoming leg of the drone’s flight path. The searchlight was rolled into place down below. Both manned positions would be hidden from aerial view by the closed barn doors, at least until the time came to fully commit.
When that aspect of the operation seemed as ready as it would ever be, Hollis returned to the house to go over the rest.
When she laid it out for him again Molly’s brainstorm was just as brash and hazardous a plan as he’d remembered it. The details looked different only in light of the fact that this was no longer just a spine-tingling topic of conversation. Now it was an actual, step-by-step layout of the events in their very near future.
As she spoke he watched a transformation taking place: Molly gradually became her former self again. By the time she’d finished with the overview she’d snapped completely out of her despair and reappeared as the same resolute and determined young woman he’d known for many years. His previous lapse in faith in her went unspoken; he’d let her down but only briefly and no further energy was wasted on apologies or explanations. They had much to do in preparing to leave, and he could also see that she shared his own overwhelming sense that there was very little time in which to do it.
With the plan now officially under way, Molly asked him to call two of the ladies to help her dress and get ready for their departure. While she was busy with that, Hollis gathered the other members of the group and told them what was next.
The meeting was brief and it began with the determination of who would and would not be taking an active part in the coming adventure. With the exception of Molly and himself, he told them, all the remaining Founders’ Keepers were to pack up and make their way to the group’s sanctuary to the north, just as previously planned.
Their trip would be no carefree walk in the park; the way home was difficult and some were still nursing injuries. It would be a brave and necessary contribution that they would make, to go on ahead and prepare a place for the remaining travelers should they somehow manage to return victorious. Since it was clear that the Merrick family had also become targets, any of their number who wished to make the journey upstate were welcomed to go that way as well.
As he returne
d to his own room and thought through what was coming, a major barrier to success became evident almost immediately: this mission required technical capabilities that none of the core group possessed, and there was no time to begin recruiting any outsiders.
As he considered his options, Hollis recalled that Tyler’s mother might at least have the skills needed for one key phase. After he approached her with the idea, Cathy Merrick went to her dad and her son and they talked it out for a while. Ultimately she volunteered to go along, but with the further complication that Tyler had insisted on accompanying her.
While the young man had some facility with computers and an amateur’s knowledge of Internet technologies, he certainly lacked the level of expertise they’d need if they actually made it to where they were planning to go. Still, Hollis agreed to take them both, with the full understanding that if things began to get too dangerous they were free to leave at any time.
The Founders’ Keepers had always attracted a great army of passive followers and secret admirers, but relatively few active participants. More recently it seemed they had far more backbiting critics and outright bloodthirsty enemies than anything else. But as Hollis sat at the computer putting out urgent feelers for help in this endeavor he was surprised to find a number of people who were ready and willing to offer their service for precisely the things he’d needed.
In less than half an hour he’d booked charter flights and arranged a few levels of backup transport, acquired anonymous funding and lined up supply drops, ordered up a very special overnight parcel to be prepared and anonymously sent to the mission’s final destination, and—most important—he’d scheduled a critical appointment for an upcoming afternoon of final preparations at a large, big-box home-and-hardware store on the outskirts of Butler, Pennsylvania.
He saw another e-mail, then, from an inside man in a detention center near Denver, Colorado. This elderly fellow—Hollis knew him only as Ira—was the source of the information he’d been passed all along about Noah Gardner.
