End Times

by P A Duncan

  “What the hell,” he panted, “did you think, you were, doing?”

  “Something. Anything.”

  “Later. That comes. Later.”

  Calvary Locus, the Place of the Skull, exploded in a fireball. Whipped by thirty-mile-per-hour winds and fueled by tanks of propane gas, gasoline, and lamp oil, the flames rose hundreds of feet into the air.

  A wave of heat washed over them. Dana Howard screamed, “Oh my God!” over and over.

  Mai keened, an almost inhuman sound, and Alexei shivered against her back.

  25

  Respect for the Dead

  Rural Michigan

  April 19, 1993

  April mornings in Michigan could be cold, cold enough the chore of changing the oil in his car had to be put off until midday. Outside the well-kept farmhouse, a set of long legs emerged from beneath a worn car. The car had to last a lot longer because without a steady job there were no prospects for a new one.

  The farm had geared up for planting, thanks to his hard work repairing fences and prepping machinery. Glad to be outside, he’d walked the fields to spot and remove rocks frost heave had brought to the surface. The one job he hadn’t liked was weaning the calves from their mothers. The plaintive moans from both were distressing.

  He’d never shied away from hard work. He enjoyed it, and he loved farm life—the independence of growing your own food, making your way off the land. His grandfather had taught him how important that was, and Jerry and Tom, who owned this farm, had shown him the reality. The two of them had farmed so long they were jaded by it, by all the economic ups and downs, but he was learning a new skill. If he had to retreat someday to a backwoods place with food, water, and ammo, at least he’d know how to grow more food when his MREs ran out.

  Unlike the other farmhands, also bored with the tedium, he met each day and each new chore with enthusiasm and had worked more than his share. He’d had some fun, too. He and some of the others had played around with homemade bombs. Nothing serious. Mixing household cleaners and stuff together and lighting a match to the concoction. When he’d been boning up for special forces training, he’d studied improvised explosives and had shown the farmhands how to MacGyver them right, so no fingers or hands got blown off.

  In a few more days, planting would start, and he’d see that through as well to earn the small amount of cash Tom had promised him. He would have done this for free because he enjoyed the experience, but he did need the funds. He wanted to go back to Killeen, to Calvary Locus.

  He hadn’t wanted to leave back in March, but he’d promised Jerry and Tom he’d come here and help. He’d never go back on his word. That wasn’t in his nature. When he said he’d do something, he did it, even if it weren’t always the right thing to do.

  Oh, he’d never broken any significant laws, but keeping his word was important to him. That was how he gauged the worth of a man or a friend, and he wanted to be seen the same way. Whether it was promising his friends he’d help on their farm or promising the folks at Calvary Locus he’d return to provide moral support, he wouldn’t shirk his duty.

  The ongoing siege had plagued him his whole time here. He and his friends had talked non-stop about it, his anger and dismay fueled by their rhetoric and his substantial ingestion of vodka screwdrivers. His plans to go back to Killeen were set, and his friends supported that. He’d wanted both of them to come with him, to show the people there someone cared about what happened to them. It was an important issue to him. These guys had forged his political beliefs when he’d had none, and this was something he wanted to share.

  The long drive in his for-shit car had put them off, but Jerry had agreed to come, after the planting, a little vacation before farm work picked up in earnest.

  Despite the car’s age, he’d kept it clean and tidy on the inside, like the work area now surrounding it. His tools filled the toolbox with precision, the ones he needed for the oil change lined up within reach. Beneath the oil pan, he’d placed a plastic dishpan to catch the dirty oil. That was for cleanliness, but he’d dump it in a big barrel his friends kept on the farm. Later they’d use it to make fireworks. Mixed with some fertilizer and packed inside milk cartons, the combination made effective little bombs, which he and Jerry’s kid liked to set off for fun. He’d put them to practical use as well, dislodging stumps and large rocks.

  That made him smile, that he could bring joy to a kid’s life. His grandfather had made sure he had things to keep him occupied, especially when he’d hit his teenage years. With his father at work and his mother… Well, never mind about his mother. His grandfather always had something planned to “keep you out of trouble,” he’d said. Target shooting, how to build a proper campfire, or re-stocking the old, unused fallout shelter. All that had provided him with a sense of preparation, and that had served him well when he joined the Army.

  The dripping oil finally slowed and stopped. He wiped the fitting clean and put the plug back in. He oiled the new filter’s o-ring and screwed it in place. With care not to spill it, he pushed the dishpan with the used oil from beneath the car. He gathered his tools and slid out himself. The tools went back to their proper places, and he fetched the requisite number of oil cans from his stash in the trunk.

  Again, careful not to spill, he tipped the first can’s contents into the oil reservoir. While he worked, he listened to his favorite radio talk show. Killeen was a favorite topic of the host’s, on all the talk shows he liked. Thank God someone was getting the truth out.

  “Killeen, day fifty-one,” came the host’s stentorian tones. “Fifty-one days of watching law enforcement in this country lay siege to a house full of women and children. I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, if we’d had CNN in Nazi Germany, we’d be seeing the same as what we see every day in Killeen, Texas. There are tanks, ladies and gentlemen. Tanks! Helicopters! The whole Texas prairie looks like the Gaza Strip! Unbelievable! But what do you expect from the licentious liberals in the White House? The First Lady…”

  The host played a pre-recorded tape of dogs barking.

  “…must be having a bad-hair day. Or Attorney General Vee-Hair…”

  This time it was a Mexican with a thick accent saying, “Andale! Arriba! Donde esta mi taco?”

  “…must not be able to get the other dykes at the Justice Department to play with her.” He made munching sounds and said, “Mmmm, carpet.”

  “This is what we get,” the host continued, “ladies and gentlemen, from the spineless libtards in Washington. But that’s only my opinion. Let’s hear what you have to say. Go ahead, Junior from Georgia.”

  “Jay!” came a shout from the front door of the house.

  He turned to see Jerry, Jr. waving at him, a terrified expression on the boy’s face.

  “What’s wrong, JJ?” he asked, wiping his hands on a clean cloth as he walked toward the boy.

  The Army had given him a number of skills, among them basic battlefield medic training. Between his grandfather and the Army, there wasn’t much he couldn’t handle.

  “It’s on fire! They set it on fire!” The boy ducked back inside the house.

  Jay tucked the rag in his pocket and ran into the house, expecting to see smoke. He heard the TV and Jerry and Tom’s angry voices. He headed for the living room.

  Jerry, his son, and Tom were gathered around the television. Tom looked at him when he walked in.

  “The fuckers burned it,” he said.

  Jay stepped closer and studied the image on CNN. When he recognized it, his knees buckled. The whole of Calvary Locus was on fire.

  “Look!” Jerry, Jr. shouted, pointing. “There’s fire coming outta that tank!”

  Jay knew the Bradley inside and out, and it would take quite a modification for one to spew napalm. He watched as the tank backed away from the flames. That was probably a piece of flaming debris on the cannon.

  Or was it?

  “America’s fucking holocaust, a real one,” Tom said. “Sons of bitches.”

&nbs
p; Jay watched, mute, for nearly ten minutes. This was impossible. This was America. How could this happen?

  He sat on a worn ottoman, long legs folded before him. His heart pounded as if he were back on the battlefield, but he sat still and quiet, tears streaking his splotched face. He glanced around and wiped his cheeks, afraid somehow his father, though hundreds of miles away, would know he cried.

  Not long ago, he’d fought a war at this country’s request. He’d seen people die. He’d even killed, from a distance and using his skill with the Bradley’s laser aiming device. People were dead and dying inside that inferno, people he’d fought an enemy to protect. He heard Jerry and Tom’s invective, heard them say the government would pay for this “with blood.”

  Jay stayed and watched the rest of the day. The others in the house came and went. Maybe they spoke to him. He didn’t remember. Hours later when the fire had died down on its own, he watched as federal agents hoisted an American flag on Calvary Locus’ flagpole. Salutes and high fives accompanied the flag raising, and he could swear the agents smiled and laughed.

  Bastards. Where was their respect for the dead? How could they be so cold-blooded?

  The newly raised flag stood out in the stiff wind. Wind. Had they attacked Calvary Locus on a windy day on purpose? Didn’t they know tear gas was flammable? He realized he’d voiced those questions when Tom answered.

  “Of course they did. They knew they couldn’t win, so they fixed it so everybody would die. There weren’t even any firetrucks nearby. Take a long look. That’s what’s going to happen to everyone who owns a gun in this country.”

  “What have we become? What has America become?” John Thomas Carroll, called Jay by his friends, murmured.

  Somewhere in the Midwest

  The old man snapped at the sniveling women, telling them to get back to work.

  “Prepare yourselves, sisters,” he said, his German accent harsh. “Take a long look. This is what they will do to you and your babies.”

  He smiled at what he saw on the television. He would get a report from his people on site, the ones who’d blended in so well. The plan would be easier now. The pieces would at last fall into place.

  He took an antique silver lighter from his pocket. He polished it daily, not allowing a speck of patina to mar it. As he did, he remembered the day, some fifty years ago now, he’d received it, how it had been pressed into his hand with a strong and lingering grip.

  For a long time, he studied the Iron Cross on one side. He turned the lighter over to read its inscription, his thumb caressing the engraved signature of the man who’d given this to him.

  A. Hitler.

  26

  Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

  Her throat dry from the dust and raw from emotion, Mai sat on the steps of one of the RVs and nursed a bottle of water. Trickles of smoke rose from the ashes of Calvary Locus; lingering fires burned. A few had escaped, some walking through the holes punched in the building by the tanks. Others jumped from windows. The FBI had arrested them all, including an elderly woman, and charged them with murder.

  The site itself was too hot for any forensic examination to begin, and the medical examiners stood by. A shift in the wind brought an odor toward the federal enclave. Sons and daughters of World War II veterans smelled what their fathers had when liberating concentration camps. For Mai, it was the smell of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia.

  Alexei, looking perhaps pale but that had to be a trick of the light, emerged from the command center, looked around until he spotted her, and walked to her.

  “I’m going over with the medical examiners,” he said. “I want to check some things out for myself.”

  “Fitzgerald agreed to that?”

  “He’s already on his way to D.C. to brief Vejar and Steedley. He’ll pay for this. Trust me.”

  “What things do you want to see for yourself?”

  “Shell casings at the spot where the FLIR showed someone shooting into the buildings.”

  She suspected that brass had been policed or caught up in the fire that had spread to the surrounding brush. Only then had the Killeen Fire Department been called.

  What the hell? If he wanted to conduct an exercise in futility, who was she to stop him?

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice soft, as intimate as when they were alone. “Maeve and her children were not among the survivors.”

  Mai hadn’t expected them to be. Her world didn’t work that way.

  “Will you be all right here?” Alexei asked her.

  She wasn’t going with him?

  “There’s no need for both of us to see it,” he continued, “and I need for you to do something for me, something no one should see you do.”

  “What?”

  “The snipers have packed up and left. Go up to their nest and see if they left any signs about. A piece of Ghillie suit to match what you found a while back.” He leaned closer, lowering his voice even more. “Shell casings of a specific manufacturer and caliber. Understand?”

  Both of them, it seemed, would be conducting exercises in futility.

  “And,” he added, “you need to be strong for both of us later.”

  All right, enough emoting. She stood, staying on the bottom step so they would be eye to eye.

  “This paternalistic need to protect me—”

  Alexei put a finger on her lips. His hand shifted to cup her cheek. There’d been little intimacy between them the past few weeks with their different training schedules and sleeping in an RV on site. Before she wanted more than a cursory touch, she stepped down and away from him.

  “Don’t worry about me, Alexei. Go pick among the ashes of the dead.”

  His icy façade may have cracked a bit, but he turned on his heel and walked away.

  Using the line of RVs to cover which direction she arrived from, Mai strolled back into the main section of the FBI compound. She saw a communications technician she recognized, and he waved to her before jogging to meet her.

  “Ma’am, I’ve been looking all over for you,” he said.

  “I needed some space.”

  “Agent Howard needs you.”

  “For what?”

  “To talk to the Attorney General with her.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Ma’am, Agent Howard said if I ever wanted to have children I shouldn’t come back without you.”

  Mai pursed her lips so she wouldn’t smile. Dana Howard was almost as profane as she. Mai motioned for the tech to lead the way.

  When Mai entered the command center, Dana turned to the tech and said, “Get the Attorney General’s office back on the line.” To Mai, she said, “Let’s use Hollis’ office. He’s got a speakerphone.”

  After they entered, Dana closed the door. “Look, Mai, I’m sorry about tackling you.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Dana. It’s rare I’m impulsive, and I needed to be stopped.” She smiled at the HRT agent. “If Hollis were here he wouldn’t be too happy we’ve invaded his office.”

  “I’m the senior agent here, so technically it’s now my office. Still, I might leave a used tampon in his trash can in case he comes back.”

  Mai decided Dana Howard was not a woman to piss off. “You know, Alexei and I will be debriefing the Attorney General later.”

  “She wants your take. Now.”

  The phone rang, and Dana stabbed the buttons for the line and the speaker.

  “Special Agent Howard here with Mai Fisher.”

  “Fitzgerald got on an airplane before I could ask him this, but what the hell happened?” Vejar asked.

  Howard nodded for Mai to answer. If the Attorney General wanted her take, so be it.

  “What happened, Madame Attorney General, was a bunch of macho assholes with a hard-on for violence led you down a garden path. They pushed, and your heels were round.”

  Dana Howard gave her a thumbs-up.

  After a moment, Vejar replied, “I deserved that kind of answer for such a stupid qu
estion. Your Mr. Nelson informed me we would get a full debrief on the entire situation.”

  “I’m outlining it in my head as we speak, but here’s your sneak preview. We told you, and we told Fitzgerald, exactly what would happen if he went ahead with his plan. He ignored and dismissed us. Not the first time, not the last, but I never thought this government would respond in such a way.”

  “When can we expect that debriefing?”

  “At least a month from now.”

  “I’d like myself and the Directors of the ATF and FBI to get the full briefing. The President can get a… A condensed version.”

  “That’s usually Mr. Nelson’s purview, but whatever you work out with him, we’ll be there.”

  “I know you and Mr. Bukharin did your best, and I thank you for that.”

  “I wish we’d done something you could thank us for.”

  “But you tried. Sometimes that’s all we have. Thank you for responding, Agent Howard.”

  “I’ll have a report, more of a personal observation, for you as well.”

  Vejar murmured another thank you and hung up.

  “Well, that was useless,” Howard said, shutting down the phone at their end.

  “She needed someone to talk to,” Mai said.

  “And I’ll have a lot to say about our absent SAC. You saw the three new guys?”

  “Yes, I’ll be looking into that.”

  “Any way I can know what you find?”

  “Not officially, but I’m sure if you’re in D.C. at some point, we can have a nice chat over drinks somewhere.”

  “You know, I have a lot of seniority in this organization. Rest assured I won’t be quiet about what went on here.”

  “It might be better if you stayed quiet for a while. I smell something rotten. I know Vejar from a few years back, and she was fearless. Fitzgerald spooked her.”

  Howard gave a slight flinch, some discomfort showing in her eyes. “You think Hollis has something on her?”