No matter how much firepower Cowboy, Mimi and I were packing when we went in, we were still only three strong. We’d be up against an unknown number, in unknown locations, with unknown weapons and capabilities.
I didn’t like those odds.
The key was Dariell. If we could get to him, then perhaps we could take control of the group by corralling their leader.
I didn’t even know if he was there.
My brain was winding in ever-tightening circles and the phone was jangling as I headed up the stairs.
Hoping it was Lucy, I bulldozed through the phone book stacks and strangled the wise-ass salutation rising in my throat.
“Mr Rafferty?” Exhale.
“Hi, Lucy.”
“Don told me you really need my help.”
Despite my growing desire to get this thing over and done with, and against Hilda’s assumptions, I wasn’t unfeeling to Lucy’s past.
“I really do, Lucy.”
Then I did something that I don’t do often.
I told the truth. The whole truth.
About the dreams. Kimberly and other young girls in cells. Dariell and his home-grown pulpit rhetoric. The common ending of my dreams with everything, and everyone, on fire.
About what I’d seen in the rain and about Steve and the guns he was chasing and his lack of concern over the possibility of mass suicide.
“Something is wrong out there Lucy, and you’re the only one who knows how bad. With the ATF involved I might not have much time before the whole situation turns to shit and who knows how many good people suffer for it.
“Help me before that happens.”
Silence.
It took everything I had to shut up and let Lucy do what she needed to do.
A deep breath.
“You’re right, Mr Rafferty. If it’s like where I was, and it sounds the same, things are worse than you could imagine.”
The snap of a lighter.
“Help me fix it, Lucy.”
Breath. In. Out.
“It’s been terrible reliving it all. It feels like I’m in the middle of it all over again.”
“I know.” Inhale down the line. “No … I don’t know, I can’t know, what it was like … what it is like. All I do know is that I might be able to help Kimberly and whoever else is there.”
“What can I tell you?”
“I don’t know which specific thing will help, Lucy. Can you tell me what happened while you were there?”
“I don’t know …”
“I know you’re scared, Lucy. Hell, I’m scared, and I don’t say that to many people.” I took my own deep breath. “I bet the girls I saw are scared, too. And the old man and the mothers, and the kids. I bet they’re all scared.”
“They are. But they can’t do anything about it.”
“Let’s help them together, Lucy.”
Pause.
Another lighter snap, the crackling burn of a fresh cigarette and a deep exhale.
“Okay, Mr Rafferty. I’ll try.”
“Thank you.”
“Well, the first thing you need to know is those gir—” A breath. “Those girls that you saw … I was one of them.”
I grabbed everything within me again, shut up, and listened to the story in her own words.
We arrived in North Dakota and the changes started straight away, but they weren’t subtle this time.
It was like Dariell had been waiting for people to leave families, friends, and possessions behind … to get to a point where they had only the church in their lives, before … well, before he showed everyone who he really was.
We were still stepping off the bus when the congregation was called to the main hall. An announcement to assemble for O Holy Night came out of these speakers. Whatever that was. I’d never heard of it before. But, a few people started walking towards the biggest building and soon, like a line of ants, everyone was following.
I never found out what happened in the hall during the O Holy Night because the rest of the Youth Leaders and I were met by Ana as soon as we got off the bus and told that we weren’t going with the others. There was a special place for us and a unique way we would help Father be closer to God so he could be the best leader of our church.
“Do you mean Dariell?” I asked.
“We are all children of God here, Lucy,” Ana said, “and he is our Father on Earth. We will refer to him as Father from now on.” She was scared. I could see it in her eyes.
Anyway, she led us across the dirt to a smaller building.
“This is The Temple,” she said, as she opened the door.
It looked more like a summer camp dormitory to me. It was plain inside, with a row of metal cots lined up against the wall. Seven cots. One for each girl, and on each one was a white robe.
“You will change out of your clothes and into your robe,” Ana told us. “After you are done you will put all your other clothes and belongings into the trash bags. Getting rid of your earthly skins symbolizes the shedding of sin and darkness, and being born anew ready for communion with God.”
One of the other girls found her voice. “When do we go back to our parents?”
“Did Jesus beg to return to his parents when he was chosen?” Ana said. “No. He knew God had called him for greater things and that human emotions no longer befit him.” Her eyes shone. “You’ve been called to be part of God’s Glory and ordinary things like families are not your concern.”
Ana left us alone and we did as she said. We dressed in the robes and put our clothes and other belongings into the big plastic trash bags and the bags bulged like grinning, fat men.
Later that night, we were allowed to have dinner with everyone else, in the main hall. That would be our last time, but we didn’t know it then.
No-one was sitting with their family. The men were at one side of the room, women on the other, with the children mixed together in the middle. I leaned closer to the young girl sitting next to me. She was staring down into her lap and crying.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Father has said that we are one family now. No marriages, no moms, no dads, no families. Only one Father and we are all his children.”
Dariell, Father, was sitting at a table up on the stage with Ana and smiling fit to burst.
“I don’t want to lose my family,” the girl said through a curtain of tears.
I looked around the room at the separated parents and broken families. The adults were all smiling and laughing, clasping their chest or making prayer hands when Father looked at them.
Even my mother and father.
I wanted to stand up on the bench and scream at them. Make them know what a monster he was and what he was doing to us girls.
I was too scared.
I didn’t do it that night.
Or the next.
Or any other night.
All the other girls were the same. None of us did anything other than what we were told to do.
And O Holy Nights became a regular thing.
They would often happen late at night and go for several hours. We would all be woken up by the announcement—I realized later that Ana was the voice crackling through the speakers—and the Youth Leaders would have to help Father prepare before he went to the hall to preach.
The only praying I ever did was that I wouldn’t be chosen to help Father prepare on these nights. He was always more aggressive and I’d rub my bruises for weeks afterwards.
But even that wasn’t much relief.
You could see the tears of the girls when they came out of the prayer room after Father had finished and we’d all hear them sobbing themselves to sleep. The seven of us only had each other, but I know we each hoped we would be spared on those nights, no matter how much pain the others carried for us.
As time went on the temple evolved.
Men—even my own Dad—brought timber and sheetrock and built new walls. The space where we slept got smaller and the cots got crammed
in like sardines. More prayer rooms were created so Father could go from one to the next, leaving us girls to clean up after he was done.
With the new prayer rooms, and the cots squashed to the corner near the bathroom, the space in the middle became where Ana would instruct us.
She told us that our calling was to serve Father and help him become the Leader of God’s Chosen People. That our reward would be in the next life where we would sit by his side in New Jerusalem: Heaven on Earth.
She taught us to make the tea that Father drank with his Youth Leaders.
Two spoonfuls of leaves for the silver pot. Boiling water. Let the tea stand for three minutes and twenty seconds. A dropper full of clear liquid sweetener for the girl’s cup. No sweetener for Father—he suffered for God by having his tea bitter. Turn the pot twice clockwise and fill the two silver cups before carrying the tray into the prayer room and setting it on the table near the bed.
When it was my first turn to prepare the tea, I accidentally bumped the tray, and spilled both cups. Ana slapped me across the face. After I cleaned up the tea, and my tears, and prepared again, she held me and stroked my hair, telling me I must try harder. Father would not be as forgiving as she was.
She showed us how we were to fetch a clean robe and sponge the night’s chosen Leaders, cleaning them of dirt and sin before their communion with Father. They always sat in silence while we washed them and most times I wiped away tears. I know when it was my turn, I went as far inside as I could, and often didn’t notice what the other girls were doing until they were sitting me down on the bed in the prayer room.
Ana forbade us from speaking when anyone returned from the prayer rooms, telling us that it would stain their spiritual connection. They had just touched the face of God, she said, and for us sinners to speak with them would put their souls in danger.
It was hard to believe that no-one else saw what was going on, what he was doing, but all the adults bought into the whole holy image thing. Some of the things I heard them say made me sick.
“Father is a physical manifestation of the one true God on Earth. He is my God.”
“I believe in what God says to me and I will obey Father’s instructions. They are instructions straight from God.”
“I know that wonderful things will happen for all of us because my view is the view Father has given me.”
I tried to understand who were the rational, wise adults and who were the stupid, gullible children. I never did work it out.
For several months things stayed the same. We spent almost all our time in that horrible building—the doors were locked whenever Ana wasn’t with us—and we could go weeks without seeing the sky or breathing fresh air. The adults counted themselves as blessed. Ana taught us and we played our roles within the temple.
The thing that finally changed was me.
One morning I woke up without fear.
Only acceptance.
And that scared the hell out of me.
I knew I was right on the edge of giving up. Losing myself in the nightmare and worse, being okay with that. I knew if I had any hope of a real life, I had to get out before that happened. I knew I would be turning my back on my fellow Leaders, my family, and everyone else, and that hurt. But it was a choice between that or disappearing forever in that North Dakotan hell-hole.
That night, when O Holy Night was called and in a moment that Ana wasn’t watching, I emptied the jar of tea leaves under one of the floor cushions. She told me to get more from the kitchen, and be quick. Not to inconvenience Father. I stepped out of the temple with my heart pounding out of my chest. Halfway to the kitchen, I saw that the men holding the guns were all looking away.
I turned and ran.
I ran through the dark, not caring that rocks and grasses were cutting my feet and bashing my toes. I ran until my lungs burned and my heart felt like it would burst out of my chest. I had to sit down after a while, but couldn’t stay still. I was too frightened. After I caught my breath a little, I started running again.
As the sky began to lighten, I made sure to keep going towards the brightest part, concentrating only on taking the next step further from the church and further from him.
When the sun got above the horizon I was standing on a small hill, and there was nothing to see but rocks and grass in every direction.
No people. No buildings. No rules. No pain. No tears.
I closed my eyes, felt the sun on my face and the light breeze through the thin robe.
It was the most spiritual feeling ever, and I let myself stand there a few minutes trying to enjoy it. I was scared and had no idea where I was going, but I know that I smiled for the first time that I could remember.
Then I opened my eyes and kept running.
“Does any of that help?”
I thought about everything Lucy had said.
If we got to Lincoln during the main event, I was likely to find the congregation in the biggest building with Dariell doing his dog and pony show. The girls, and Kimberly, would probably be together in a different location. Maybe the structure Cowboy and I had seen?
I didn’t know anything more about Dariell, or how he would react when push came to shove. Would he run? Fight? What would his security force do?
I knew a little more. Not enough.
“It helps a lot, Lucy.”
“I hope you find her, Mr Rafferty.”
“Me too, Lucy.”
As soon as the handset hit the cradle, the phone burst into bells again.
It was my favorite DPD lieutenant.
“Hell, Rafferty. I’ve been calling for the last forty-five minutes. You fall asleep?”
“Unlike you public servants Ed, we of the working class are trying to run businesses. Perhaps if you spoke to my appointments secretary, she could pencil in a suitable time for us to converse.”
He sighed on the other end of the line.
I cut him a break. “I’m here now. What’s the deal?”
“The deal is that my DC guy called and the whole thing in Lincoln is going down. Soon.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. He was in the room when Wesson phone-conferenced in and requested a green light. Seems you might have even had something to do with Steve’s decision to go.”
“What?”
“Steve’s pissed that you got within spitting distance of the compound. Twice. And he’s not going to let anyone else with a missing family member get close enough to fuck up his investigation. Congratulations, Rafferty. Single-handedly, you’ve changed the course of a Federal investigation. It’s no wonder you fuck things up so often here in Dallas.”
“When’s he going? What’s the plan?”
“No idea. The head honcho in the phone conference gave Steve operational control. It could be going down now.”
“I gotta go, Ed. Thanks for the heads up.”
I called Cowboy and Hilda.
In that order.
Cowboy said he and Mimi would be rolling inside half an hour and be at my place an hour later. With the drive to Lincoln, that left a possible five hours, give or take, until we were at Dariell’s front gate. I hoped Steve would take longer to get his shit together.
I caught Hilda leaving the store. She wasn’t happy.
“Leave it to that Steve guy. If Kimberly is there, they’ll get her out.”
“It might not be that simple, Hil. Remember what we talked about in Austin? Jim Jones?”
All the air was sucked out of the phone line.
“He wouldn’t do that?” she breathed. “Would he?”
“I don’t know. And that’s the problem. There’s no telling what he might do. I might be Kimberly’s only chance, if she’s there.”
Hilda’s voice got thin. “And if she’s not?”
“If she’s not, I might be able to get to Dariell and make me tell him where she is. And I might be able to help the others if everything turns to shit.”
I didn’t believe myself either.
“Rafferty, this isn’t your fight,” she said.
“I have to try, hon.”
A pause.
“I know. And I love you for it. At the same time, I hate knowing that you have to. Does that make sense?”
“Yes and no. Nothing makes much sense right now, but I know what I have to do and I’ll call you once it’s over.”
“Don’t you get yourself killed, Rafferty. I’ll never forgive you. You know, I’ll kill you if you die.”
We were both laughing as she hung up, but I could imagine her sitting in her office chair with tears streaming down her face. I had no time to sit and think through what my life would be like if something happened to my beloved.
I needed to focus and make sure we were prepared when we crashed Steve and Dariell’s party.
I needed to think through the possibilities of how things might go down so I could reduce our risk.
And I needed to pack every weapon I owned.
Chapter 33
I was sitting on the front porch, puffing blue smoke in front of the sun hanging blood-red in the west, when a mud-splattered, maroon GMC Sierra ghosted down the street and pulled into the driveway. The driver killed the engine and the ticking countdown of cooling metal filled the silence.
Sounded like a countdown.
From the driver’s seat, Cowboy raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment on my face, while the passenger door opened by itself. It closed again and I watched the crown of a Stetson over the hood. The hat moved toward the garage, turned to me and then Mimi was crossing the driveway. If she hadn’t had her hat on when she got out of the truck, I wouldn’t have been able to see her for the hunk of Michigan’s finest in the way.
“Rafferty, you grouchy ol’ tomcat. It’s been too long since I’ve seen ya.”
I bent down—jack-knifed at the waist would be a better description—to give Mimi a hug.
Mimi was short. Real short.
That had fooled a lot of people over the years who didn’t realise that tough wasn’t in any way proportional to size. Anyone who had made, or would make, that mistake would only do it once.
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