by Glenn Cooper
Meanwhile, at retailing giant Four Seasons Apparel in Atlanta, Georgia, Ann Rosenberg, the newly appointed human resources chief, has been getting an earful from the company’s chief financial officer on the deteriorating economic picture at the company. At the Four Seasons warehouse and distribution center in suburban Atlanta, a few employees started a chapter of the Inner Peace Crusade and wreaked havoc through the organization. And if that wasn’t enough, consumer demand throughout the retail sector is as weak as people can remember. Still, Rosenberg is pleased about her promotion even though she hasn’t had time to hang her pictures. “I’ve wanted this kind of job my whole career. I only wish the previous head of HR hadn’t quit after taking Bliss.”
Editor’s note: Last Wednesday, BusinessWeek experienced the ravages of Bliss firsthand. Writer Stephanie Vogt, 26, a contributor to this article and a four-year employee of the magazine, took her own life following a single dose of Bliss.
Alex smiled and decided to add a post to a long comment thread attached to the article—but his train of thought was interrupted by loud percussive whumps from fast-approaching helicopter blades.
There were shouts outside and someone downstairs called his name.
He put on his shoes, ran down the staircase and headed for the back yard where Erik emerged from his RV. He and Steve were pointing toward the east.
“They’re coming!” Steve shouted at him. “It’s an attack!”
Four AH-64 Apache helicopters with U.S. Air Force insignia were coming in low and fast.
Alex was dumbfounded. The FBI had called the Bolz farm to try to set up a line of communication but he hadn’t allowed it. The previous day, there had been a leaflet drop over the fields asking people to leave the site and urging Alex Weller to turn himself in to the authorities and avoid confrontation. Would they ratchet things up so quickly? Risk mass casualties with a full assault?
Steve raised an elk rifle one of the militiamen had given him as a present.
“Don’t shoot!” Alex shouted. “Let’s see what they do.” “Please Alex, go inside!” Steve insisted.
Alex ignored him, fascinated by the spectacle.
One chopper took the lead and three held back. The lead craft slowed to a hover less than thirty feet over the back yard, creating a deafening prop wash. A side door slid open and a helmeted soldier leaned out, a megaphone in one hand.
“Hold your fire!” he boomed. “We are not hostile!”
“Who are you?” Steve shouted at the top of his lungs.
“Major Ben Thomas, U.S. Air Force, Fifty-fifth Wing, Air Combat Command, Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska.”
Alex decided to speak. “What do you want?” he shouted.
“We want to join you and we want to help protect you!” the major thundered. “Me and my men don’t report to the United States government anymore. We report to God!”
Fifty-three
3 DAYS
As Moreno Stasi was wrapping up his RAINEWS 24 broadcast segment outside the Duomo in Milan, reporters in every major city on all continents were working on some variant of the same assignment.
TV screens in dozens of languages flashed the IPC countdown clock and quite a few producers had the same idea as Stasi: using churches, cathedrals, mosques, and synagogues as evocative props for their stories.
These looped reports combined with frequent live cut-ins to news chopper shots of the expanding humanity at the Bolz farm in Nebraska and the hapless road blocks keeping only the least-determined out.
There were new angles too. Many news crews in unmarked cars and vans simply drove off-road onto the farm, hitting holes in the FBI perimeter and joining the congregation. There, armed with cameras, satellite dishes, and battery packs they embedded themselves and roamed the dirt of New Rising City, interviewing anyone who’d talk to them and turning long lenses on the federal agents staking out the other side of no-man’s-land. Erik Bolz was a plum target and occasionally he obliged; but the ultimate “get” was Alex Weller, who remained elusive, preferring the controlled medium of his own web videos.
The FBI set up its command center in the cafeteria of Rising City Elementary School. Public schools were shut down and parents were keeping their kids at home or sending them to relatives elsewhere. Led by Bob Cuccio, the FBI team, manned mainly by Washington and Quantico people, was supplemented by agents from the Omaha field division. The ever-expanding field perimeter was patrolled by agents and U.S. Marshals from contiguous states.
Cyrus and Emily arrived for Cuccio’s morning briefing from their Super 8 Motel in Columbus about twenty miles north of Rising City.
In the parking lot she asked, “Are you sure it’s okay for me to go to this?”
“Bob was impressed by what you had to say yesterday. You’re on the team.”
“This is a new experience,” she said, taking in the sea of police and FBI vehicles.
“It’s a new experience for everyone.”
Cuccio had played college basketball and still had a beanpole body. Set against the diminutive tables and chairs of the elementary school cafeteria he looked whimsical, like an elongated giant; but no one was sniggering. Cuccio’s message to the packed room was sobering.
“The president, the attorney general, the secretaries of Homeland Security and Defense, everyone, and I mean everyone has us under a microscope, ladies and gentlemen,” he began. “We’re sitting at T minus three days on the IPC clock and the closer we get to zero the more this situation turns into a tinderbox. Now we’ve all seen the theories about Weller’s intentions when the clock winds down. I know some think it’s a publicity stunt and nothing of substance is going to happen but we have to play out all the scenarios. The president, I know—because he’s told me directly—is concerned about worst cases, something apocalyptic, some call to violence or destruction or social disruption. Frankly, no one sitting in the White House Situation Room has the inclination to sit back and wait to see what transpires.”
One of Cuccio’s aides fired up a projector and another pulled down a movie screen commandeered from the school’s audiovisual department. The photos, taken at dawn that morning, revealed that the farm population had swelled even further overnight. Estimates were that up to 10,000 people now occupied the farm—and that in three days, with all the publicity, those numbers could go much higher. He mentioned Woodstock, invoking the prospect of 400,000 people.
“Here’s the main house,” Cuccio said, pointing at the roof. “We suspect Weller’s there but we have no direct evidence. We’ve tried to spot him in aerial crowd photos but it’s like trying to find Waldo. Even though it’s private property, I’m certain there’s a laundry list of illegal stuff going on in that farm including narcotic use, child endangerment, even—look at this shot from yesterday afternoon—burying bodies without a permit! But Weller is our primary target and we’ve got a federal capital murder warrant to back us up. We have to decapitate the IPC and that means taking out Weller. The clock hits zero Sunday morning at ten o’clock, central time. We’re under direct orders from the DOJ and White House not to let that happen. I’m going to recommend to my superiors that we continue our efforts to engage him in negotiations and urge his voluntary surrender but absent that, we enter the farm at eight-fifteen A.M. on Sunday and capture Weller by force, if necessary.”
For the next hour, a succession of speakers from the FBI Hostage Rescue Team, the U.S. Marshal’s Service, and the Nebraska State Patrol discussed tactical options, and every speaker began and ended their talks the same way: We don’t want another Waco.
Yet to Cyrus, sitting beside Emily in the middle of the cafeteria, his legs wedged under a child-size table, none of the tactical plans held water. Alex Weller was not going to allow himself to be taken. There would be bloodshed, tremendous bloodshed. Waco would be dwarfed. Rising City would be the new national stain.
The last man to speak came to the front from the side of the room where he’d been standing by the American flag. If he weren’t in uniform
, his mild, unassuming appearance would allow him to pass for a middle-aged, midlevel executive.
“I’m Brigadier General Evan Kates, Fifty-fifth Wing Commander of Offutt Air Force Base. I know my presence here might be seen as controversial. Believe me, I know all about Posse Comitatus, I know all about the military’s supporting role in Waco and the second-guessing that followed, but Rising City is a special situation.” His voice cracked with emotion when a photo was projected of the four Apaches parked on one of Bolz’s fields. “And damn it, this is personal with us.”
Emily nudged Cyrus’s shoulder and whispered, “What’s Posse Comitatus?”
“The law banning the military from engaging in police actions within the United States,” he whispered back. “But wait for it: we’re going to see them dance around it.”
The general talked about the firepower of his Apaches and the experience of the pilots who deserted. “If they decide to take to the air and become hostile,” he said, “their thirty mm autocannons and machine guns and their Hellfire missiles have the capability of overwhelming any conventional civilian law enforcement measures. That is why there are, I believe, active discussions at the highest levels of our government to find a lawful way for the U.S. military to provide materials and men to assist you folks in your operational plans. I’m going to follow orders that if and when issued, will come down a long chain of command that goes up to the secretary of defense and the commander in chief. Those are my men who illegally took these helicopters and it’ll be men and women under my command who take them back.”
After the briefing, Cuccio kept Cyrus and Emily waiting for an hour. When he was ready they went to the principal’s office, which he’d commandeered.
Cuccio had them sit and joked, “I’m at home here. When I was a kid I spent a lot of time in this kind of place.”
Cyrus didn’t feel like bantering. “Bob, you don’t know Weller the way we know him.”
“That’s why you’re here,” Cuccio said.
“Good. I want you to hear Doctor Frost’s assessment of what he’s likely to do.”
“Go ahead,” Cuccio told her.
“Alex has severe narcissistic personality disorder,” she began. “Even before he discovered Bliss he was preoccupied with power and prestige. His salon, the Uroboros Society, was a temple to all things Alex. I attended once and was unsettled by how self-centered and controlling he was. Around the hospital he had a reputation for brilliance and arrogance in equal measures. The wild, unimaginable success and influence of his Inner Peace Crusade will have had the effect of pouring kerosene on a raging fire. My guess is he’s feeling omnipotent, like a king or a czar or even a god. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s taken on some paranoid features, and that would make him particularly dangerous. He won’t surrender. He’ll want martyrdom. Bliss has probably made him completely unafraid of death.”
Cyrus jumped in. “If we raid the farm, there’re going to be mass casualties, Bob. I think you know that. There’re likely hundreds of guns on that farm and you heard what I heard about the Apaches’ capabilities. And maybe if Weller sees himself going down, he accelerates his countdown clock, sends out whatever message he intends to send out earlier, and we get the same apocalyptic result anyway. We think there’s another way.”
“I’m listening,” Cuccio said.
“Let Doctor Frost and me go in and negotiate with him directly. We both know him. He was my daughter’s doctor. It may be a long shot, but we’ve got a finite chance of being able to persuade him that he’ll be held in even more esteem by his followers if he walks out of that farm and prevents bloodshed.”
“If he agrees to let you in, you’d be sitting ducks. He could introduce Bliss into your food or water. That’s in his bag of tricks.”
“We can bring our own provisions,” Cyrus said.
“He could take you hostage. If you don’t succeed and we get a go decision from the White House, it won’t matter that you’re in the line of fire. I’m telling you that straight.”
“I understand.”
“Do you understand, Doctor Frost? You’re a civilian. You’ll be in harm’s way.”
“I fully understand,” she said firmly. “I want to go with Cyrus.”
Cuccio reclined pensively in the principal’s chair. “Let me run it up the flagpole,” he said.
That night, while Alex was having dinner with Jessie, Sam, and Steve, there was a knock on the kitchen door.
Erik Bolz came in clutching his cell phone.
“The FBI called me again.”
Alex laughed. “No, I still won’t talk to them.”
“It was a different fellow this time, a guy named Cyrus O’Malley. He said to tell you he’s with Doctor Emily Frost and the two of them want to come here to talk to you.”
Alex dovetailed his fingers, slowly put his hands behind his neck and leaned into them. “Now that’s interesting,” he said with a satisfied look.
“He scares me,” Jessie said. “It’s some kind of a trick.”
“Well, he doesn’t scare me,” Alex said. “You call him back, Erik, and tell him I’ll sleep on it.”
Fifty-four
1 DAY
Alex played cat and mouse with Cyrus and it wasn’t until Friday night that he agreed to let him and Emily come to the farm on Saturday afternoon.
It was a bright day, unseasonably warm, and Cyrus adjusted the Ford’s air vents for comfort. He could tell from Emily’s stiff posture that despite her denials, she was apprehensive. For his part, Cyrus had no trepidation about entering the belly of the beast. He wanted Weller so badly he could taste the rage in his mouth.
His only fear was for Emily’s safety. He’d spent the morning wildly second-guessing his own better judgment, trying to change her mind about coming. He began to argue with her as they were lying in bed and he continued while she was putting on makeup, then over breakfast, and throughout the journey to the farm; but she was adamant. She wanted to see it through and held fast to her assertion that her help could be critical in dealing with Weller.
The state road leading to the farm was deserted in both directions beyond the roadblocks. He turned at the Bolz mailbox. Men with rifles were waiting.
He took a deep breath. “Here we go.”
Cyrus got out first. A large bearded man approached.
“I’m Steve. I’m with Alex. We need to frisk you, check your car, check your stuff.”
“I know,” Cyrus said. “I agreed to that. No weapons. No cell phones. As advertised.”
Steve patted down Cyrus and another man had him open the trunk of the car.
Emily scowled as Steve swept his hands over her chest and up and down her jeans, finishing before Cyrus could witness the maneuver. “Isn’t it customary for a woman to search another woman?” she whispered angrily.
Steve snorted. “Nothing’s customary around here.”
Their backpacks were thoroughly searched.
Steve laughed out loud at their provisions. “You don’t trust our food?”
“We didn’t want to impose,” Cyrus replied.
Steve led the way to the farmhouse but he stopped on the porch.
“So how do I know you don’t have a microtransmitter that shows your location?”
“Why would we bother?” Cyrus asked. “They know we’re here.” He pointed to the helicopter overhead. “We figure Weller’s staying in the house. If he wants to go sleep in one of the barns or a tent or a hole in the ground, it’s okay with us.”
Steve shrugged and opened the door for them.
Alex was in the kitchen at his usual spot at the head of the table. He’d taken to wearing his hair untied and flowing, the way Jessie liked it: very Christlike, she gushed. He rose and greeted Cyrus and Emily as friends, exuding the warmth of a generous host.
“Hello Special Agent O’Malley! Do I still have to call you that? Couldn’t it just be Cyrus? And hello, Emily. I was very surprised you were here. I really can’t understand why you’re invol
ved with this but I’m sure you’ll explain. Come and sit.”
Cyrus glowered but Emily smiled sweetly and shook his hand. “Hello, Alex. It’s a long way from Children’s Hospital.”
“A very long way,” he replied, sitting back down. Cyrus and Emily took chairs at the table, joining the others. “I want you to meet my inner circle. This is Jessie, the love of my life; Sam, our computer genius; and Steve, whom you’ve met, my guardian angel. It’s smaller than it used to be thanks to your work in Bar Harbor. Steve’s girlfriend, Leslie was taken. My brother was killed.”
“You took my daughter. I rescued her,” Cyrus said simply.
“How is Tara?”
Cyrus took a breath to control his rage. “She’s dead.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that.”
“Are you?” Cyrus asked.
“Yes, I am.”
“Why did you take her?”
“I wanted you to leave us alone. It didn’t work.”
“The trauma sped her passing.”
“We took excellent care of her. It was her brain tumor, not me, Cyrus.”
“Fuck you,” Cyrus seethed, almost coming out of his chair. He’d agreed with Emily’s admonition to try to keep his emotions in check but it wasn’t possible. “You’re under arrest. I want you to come with me and end this.”
Alex responded with a forced smile. “I don’t think that’s going to happen. Tomorrow’s a big day. I wouldn’t want to miss it.”
