by P A Duncan
“And he gave it?”
“Yeah, because that’s what you do for battle buddies.”
“The complaints were sour grapes?”
“Yeah, and the officers loved that guy. Whenever one of us would have a problem with, uh, the local girls, the officers would point out Carroll didn’t pick up women and was close with his money.”
“I thought the two of you talked about ‘hot women?’ Wasn’t he interested in dating?”
“He wasn’t queer, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“How did you know?”
“Like I said, we’d, uh, discuss any woman we saw, and on the occasions he did go out with some of us to the bars, he’d walk right up to the hottest chick and get rejected, most of the time. Every now and then, he scored.”
“How did you know that?”
“We knew.”
“Did he brag about it?”
“No.” Block looked at the man. “When a buddy of yours got laid, he didn’t have to say nothing for you to know it, am I right?”
The man’s stern expression eased a little, and he said, “Indeed. We could tell by the look in his eye whether he got any or not.”
The woman glanced over her shoulder at the man, who gave her a wink. She turned back to Block.
“Carroll was promoted quicker than the rest of you,” she said.
“Yeah. I already talked about the gung-ho thing. All his promotions were deserved, and he never lorded it over us. I mean, he expected what he was due as a sergeant, but he also got respect from most everyone in the COHORT. Remember how I said Parker was put in charge during basic? When he didn’t work out, they picked Carroll to replace him, and even Parker was fine with it.”
“Your unit went to West Germany for a joint exercise, correct?”
“Yeah.”
“How did Carroll like that?”
“We all liked it. It wasn’t Fort Fucking Riley.”
She gave him another brief smile.
“Carroll,” Block continued, “he liked the German soldiers, liked their discipline. They were hard-core, and he wanted to be the same. When we got back from that exercise, he reminded the L.T. he was still interested in the Rangers. The L.T. put the request in right away and said he was all for it. Jay kept up the physical training to get ready. He got copies of the Ranger manuals and started studying them. He got a date to report for the fitness test.”
“When?”
“Uh, summer of ’90.”
“Did he pass?”
“Flying colors, and he even got a date to report for the special forces assessment course in November.”
“Was he excited about that?”
“Was he! He went on and on about dreams being fulfilled, and, I mean, he was a shoe-in. If anyone was going to be the top Ranger in his class, it was Jay Carroll, but Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, and the Pentagon in its typical twisted logic froze all leave and training assignments, so we’d be ready to deploy. That didn’t mean Jay wouldn’t get into Ranger training, but he was worried he’d buy the farm in the Gulf and never get the chance.”
“Was he angry about that?”
“Nah. We’d been in the Army long enough to understand the decisions didn’t make sense sometimes. It was him who reminded us it was our job to carry on, faceless paper-pushers in D.C. be damned. The L.T. did get him into a Primary Leadership Development Course, which went through because it was right there on base. He got promoted to tech sergeant after that. It wasn’t too much later we all got shipped out for Desert Shield then Storm.”
“You were assigned to the First Infantry Division, yes?”
Block couldn’t help but grin. “The Big Red One,” he said and sobered. “My grandfather was a Tuskegee Airman. You know who they are?”
“Of course.”
“I was damned proud, not only as a soldier but as an African-American soldier to be in the Big Red One.”
“And rightly so. How did Carroll feel about leading men into battle?”
“He loved it.”
The woman studied him and frowned. He’d betrayed himself.
“What?” she asked.
“A lot of us were afraid, Jay included, not of the enemy but about the National Guard and Reserve guys. You know, friendly fire. Some of them weren’t quite up to speed. We felt like we had to watch out for them and the Iraqis, but Jay, you know, he was duty-bound. He carried out his orders.”
“Did he voice his doubts?”
“Yeah, he spoke to the L.T. about some of the crap from the reservists. You know, how they had to have air-conditioned tents and crap, that they seemed there to party.”
Again, she made notes. Without looking up, she asked, “Would you say Carroll seemed ideally suited for the Army?”
“I’ve answered that, like, three ways to Sunday, but, yeah, I figured him for a twenty-year guy. He re-upped while we were in Kuwait, so I was surprised when he took the early out.”
She looked at him again. “Did you and he discuss why he did that?”
“Not in depth. Me, I’d seen enough killing.” Block took a couple of deep breaths as the memories came back. “We were in that Basra Road crap. I fucking hated that. Sorry.”
“Again, no problem. How did Carroll feel about it?”
“He never said, but, yeah, after that he was harder. Like I said, less easy-going. I mean, we were chasing down a retreating army, shooting them in the back. The Warthog pilots over the radio laughed about shooting monkeys in a barrel, and that was not cool. Those guys, the pilots, they weren’t down and dirty in it like us. I didn’t understand why we had to do that.”
The man said, “Because a retreating army can turn and fight again. However, I understand the disillusionment. Many a soldier decides the military isn’t for him after his first taste of battle.”
Block nodded, not certain of his words yet.
“How did Carroll handle himself in battle?” the woman asked.
“Jay was a machine, man. Like Robocop. First day of combat, night operations, an Iraqi soldier walks out of a bunker less than a mile away from Jay’s Bradley. Probably needed to piss, but he spotted us. If he’d gone back inside, he’d have radioed ahead, given us away. So, you know, he was a risk.”
The women took his silence for a short time. “And?”
The memory of what he’d seen through his imaging system came back. “Jay took the guy’s head off with a single shot,” he murmured.
The woman turned again to look at the man, both their expressions unreadable. Block realized these were people he hoped to become like—cold, calculating, able to communicate without words. Block cleared his throat. “But we all whooped it up over the radio, congratulating him.”
“Did he respond?”
“Not that I heard, but him and me, we talked later. I said, ‘Good shot, man,’ and he said, ‘Did what had to be done.’ That’s all.”
“Mr. Carroll earned a Bronze Star, correct?”
“Not for that. That was a few days later. I happened to be leading the way this time and came upon a fortified gun nest. It was a fierce firefight. My tank got some damage from RPGs, lost maneuverability, and I figured we’d had it. Here comes Jay, hauling ass, ‘Bad Company’ blaring over the radio. He puts his Bradley between mine and the nest and fucking obliterates it. Nothing but dust and ashes left.”
The woman’s eyes went far away; she wasn’t here. The man noticed it, too. He unfolded his arms and took a step toward her, but her eyes came back to Block. She was back in the moment.
“Did he obtain any critical incident counseling, see a chaplain, anything like that?” she asked, her inflection flat and toneless.
“Hell, no. None of us did that. That does not go over well in the Army. They put all kinds of crap in your file, and suddenly you’re not getting promotions when expected. I think Jay felt like most of us did. Better them than us.”
The woman closed the file folder and leaned back in her chair again.
“How’d I
do?” Block said.
“You’ve been helpful,” she replied. “You will not contact Mr. Carroll and discuss this conversation. It’s now classified.”
“Yeah, got that. Why are you interested in Jay? Is he in trouble?”
“That’s classified, too. If he contacts you, there’ll be no mention of this discussion. Am I clear?”
“Absolutely, but I haven’t seen or heard anything from him in two years. After I’m done with training, I’m told I’m headed to Africa, for obvious reasons. I’m not likely to run into him.”
The woman smiled at him; this time, real amusement shone in her eyes. “Diverse times require diverse personnel, Mr. Block,” she said. The smile, the humanity switched off. “If I learn there has been contact between you and John Carroll, we’ll know where to find you.”
And here he thought gathering intelligence for the United Nations would be a cakewalk. “I got it. Are we done?”
“Indeed we are. Thank you for your cooperation, and good luck.”
36
Opium of the People
Bukharin-Fisher Residence
Mount Vernon, Virginia
Analysis had obtained copies, and sent them to Mai, of the trial transcripts for a domestic terrorist group the FBI called The Order.
“I think you’ll find them pertinent in prepping for a meet with your subject,” Grace Lydell had said. “If not to be able to use the right buzz words then to confirm or eliminate him as one of them in spirit. That name, The Order, by the way, comes from a mid-1970s novel called The Turner Diaries, written by a Ph.D. in physics named William Pierce.”
“Yes, that book, and Pierce’s whites-only compound in West Virginia, have come up in my research,” Mai said. “The book’s on my to-read list, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.”
“Elizabeth Drake has read it in depth, as well as all the trial transcripts. She’ll be able to answer questions for you. I’ll have her call.”
And Drake had done just that, albeit reluctantly, given her wary tone of voice.
“Describe the book for me,” Mai said.
“It’s among dystopian fiction’s worst offerings,” Drake replied. “It has, however, become a how-to book for the far-right fringe. It describes a simplistic, implausible overthrow of the government, and the revolutionaries are anti-black, anti-Semitic, and pro-Caucasian—male Caucasian at that. In the book, the victorious revolutionaries are all men, and the women stay in the background supporting the seditious actions of the men or sacrificing themselves so the men can fight on. We can trace it back to the man who founded the Bruders Schweigen, aka The Order from the trial transcripts. The former members are on record saying they set about trying to re-create the novel’s fictional events.”
Drake gave her a detailed overview of the book. Good, because Mai wouldn’t have to make time to read it. Bad, because the ideas it embodied were depressing.
Mai’s positions on social and political issues were far from predictable and not because of The Directorate’s necessary neutrality. She dismissed the trappings of her class but availed herself of the privileges her money could obtain for her. She had little patience for people and institutions who would take civilization backwards to some “ideal” time where only men enjoyed those privileges or where patriarchal religions tried to define her place.
“Have you ever been to the U.S. northwest?” Drake asked her.
“No, why?”
“That area of the country has become something of a haven for violent exclusionary groups. Some have actually petitioned the government to set aside Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana as an Aryan Homeland. Whites only, of course.”
More than once since John Carroll had piqued her curiosity, she questioned why she’d entangled herself in such extremism so soon after her last mission in the Balkans.
So soon? No, approaching a year since a Serb paramilitary unit had chained her to a U.N. armored car and left her as a target for a NATO bombing run. Almost a year since a green, French captain had betrayed her status to a Balkan warlord.
Everywhere she turned, she found darkness. When would that end? When she was a tangle of bones in a Balkan mass grave? A bullet in the back of her head in a secret police cell? Betrayed, tortured to death, and buried in an unknown grave, like her parents?
Or would it be what had tempted her more than once? Her gun at her own temple?
“Am I boring you?” Drake asked.
“What? No. Continue.”
Was it time for a session with The Directorate’s shrink? No. No need for that. The research had pushed her down into a pit where she spent too much time anyway. But she couldn’t refocus on Drake’s voice.
“Many of the incarcerated members of The Order,” Drake said, “have recanted their beliefs.”
“Why?”
“Some found God in prison. Others turned state’s evidence. Others yet are in Witness Protection. Of the ten men serving life without parole for The Order’s crimes, only one has remained steadfast in his white-supremacist beliefs. He’s declared himself a political prisoner and insists on being treated according to the Geneva Conventions.”
“As my granddaughter would say, ‘Losers.’”
“Not really,” said Drake. “They were average guys who’d never been in trouble with the law until they teamed up with The Order’s founder, Robert Matthews. What is common among them is they all blamed their lack of personal or professional success on everything and everyone but themselves. Affirmative action. Feminism. Zionism. The government. That held them back, not their shortcomings.”
“Such as?”
“Lack of skills and education mainly. A poor work ethic, too, and many of them followed a fringe Christian religion called Christian Identity, which preaches God created the white race to be superior and that it’s okay to hate anyone who isn’t white and male.”
Mai shook her head. “Wherever I work, it seems religion always gets into the mix with hate. Marx and Engels may have been right.”
Drake quoted, “‘Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.’”
Either Analysis had a communist among them or Drake had an exceptional memory.
“How serious a group was The Order?” Mai asked.
“They probably would have been a laughing stock among true revolutionaries,” Drake said, and Mai didn’t need to prompt her to explain. “They coalesced into the most organized group of domestic terrorists to date, but they were off the FBI’s radar in the beginning. They followed The Turner Diaries closely. They held up gas stations and adult video stores. It was when they moved up to shopping malls, banks, and armored cars they got the FBI’s attention. But the FBI found they weren’t using the money for themselves. It was to fund their plans for the second American revolution.”
“Plans in their heads or real plans?”
“Real plans, put down in writing and speeches. Bombing public utilities, sabotaging the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, poisoning water supplies in cities with large, black populations. What they wanted to do most of all, what they wrote and spoke consistently about was killing Jews. They succeeded at that at least once. They gunned down a liberal, Jewish radio talk show host in Colorado.”
“Obviously, they weren’t good at executing their plans, except for the murder, because their revolution never happened.”
“Here’s the thing. Their big-ticket robberies, the armored cars, netted almost four million dollars, most of which the FBI never recovered.”
“What?”
“Since their take was cash, the FBI suspected The Order made contributions to other hate groups and Christian Identity churches, who laundered the money through legal and illegal businesses.”
Mai whistled. “Four million can buy a lot of weapons. Since it was cash, there’s no way to trace any of it to Isaac Caleb’s group, is there?”
“No.”
“Tell m
e more about Matthews.”
“Matthews was a misfit. He didn’t like modern morals, modern women, so to escape, he bought some land in rural Washington State, private property where he and like-minded friends could swill beer and complain about the ‘guvmint.’ That evolved into target practice with targets that had faces of politicians and well-known Jews on them. Eventually, on his property, he built an obstacle course and barracks so he could ‘train’ patriot commandos.”
“Could you find the triggering event, what turned him from a wannabe into a revolutionary?”
Drake considered that for a moment. “Not exactly, but I think it was the Christian Identity preachers whose writings he absorbed. He corresponded with several, and they invited him to speak to their congregations. Those speeches, which he wrote by hand and which the FBI later found copies of in his Washington State home, became more and more radical in a short span of time. He began to advocate violent means to achieve that Aryan Homeland he wanted. Somewhere along the line, he read The Turner Diaries and decided to turn fiction into fact. His rhetoric grew so strong he managed to lure members of Aryan Nation into Bruders Schweigen, what the FBI called The Order.”
“‘Opium of the people,’ indeed.”
“May I make a suggestion?” Drake asked.
“Of course.”
“You should read the transcripts and The Turner Diaries.”
“I plan to.”
“And you should go talk to the members of The Order. Some of them are locked up in a federal penitentiary in Pollock, Louisiana.”
Why, Mai wondered, would I want to subject myself to these bastards face-to-face?
Because she was a method actor. If her suspicions were correct and John Carroll were a right-wing, patriot extremist, she needed to understand how his head worked, what to say or do to gain his trust. Was Carroll headed for the same crossroads Robert Matthews had reached? Would Carroll take the same path?
