Myrmidon

by David Wellington

  “When I got home,” Belcher told him, “with a dishonorable discharge, well, there weren’t a lot of opportunities for me. I was a little surprised, mostly just sad, to find out that my fellow Americans barely knew there had been a Gulf War. Oh, they’d watched CNN and seen Patriot missiles duke it out with scuds over the Kuwaiti border. But they didn’t seem to understand there had been real men, real soldiers over there. I couldn’t find a job, couldn’t get any money together. I’d gone to Kuwait with nothing and came back to less. I was homeless for a while, even. The only ­people who would give me the time of day were ­people I hated. My father’s fans.

  “They wanted to help me. They wanted to take me into their homes, and all they wanted in exchange was to hear stories about how great and wise and forward-­thinking my father had been. They treated me like I was a Second Coming. I wanted to spit in their faces. But when the option is to go sleep under a bridge and eat out of Dumpsters, well . . . I told myself I was taking advantage of them. Using them, the way the officers in Kuwait had used us. I told myself I was just going to put up with their white-­supremacy nonsense long enough to get back on my feet.

  “A ­couple years passed like that. I met so many ­people, listened to so many screeds. There was one kind of guy I met a lot of. Young men covered in tattoos, full of hate for ­people they’d likely never met. Guys who had gotten in trouble for what they believed in, thought they were hardcases, and the world was picking on them. I recognized way too much of myself in them, and I knew I could have turned out that way if I’d been dumb enough to believe what my father preached. If I just hadn’t known better. They had the hatred in them, the hate I felt in my own heart. They looked me in the eye, and I could tell they saw it, too. They would come to me and ask me if I knew what they should do with themselves. A lot of them had gotten in trouble with the law. They trusted me because I’d been in prison and because I was my father’s son, and they knew I was smart, and they figured I would have a plan.

  “The funny thing about these guys—­guys like Charlie and Andre. The funny thing is, for all their hate, for all that the world has kicked them around, they have this incredible quality of optimism. After all they’ve been through, you’d think that reality would have sunk in eventually, but it hasn’t. They’ve seen how the world comes down on you when you don’t think like everybody else. But still they believe. They believe that maybe in their lifetimes, maybe soon after, all their dreams are going to come true. That the white race will be triumphant. They have this dream. And the thing about dreamers is, they’ll do anything to make their dream come true.

  “I started getting my big idea, started developing my master plan, right there and then. I knew, you see, that one man alone was never going to make a difference in this world. That I was going to die having achieved nothing. The world doesn’t listen to one man. But a man with an army all his own—­well, that’s how history happens, isn’t it?

  “I told them what they wanted to hear. I knew all the words by heart because my father had beaten them into me. I told them about mud ­people and the sons of Ham and about Nordic destiny. I told them we needed to stick together and that we needed to work toward a greater goal. You wouldn’t believe how easy it was. These kids are dreamers, and if you tell them their dreams can come true, no matter how ridiculous they really are, well, they’ll follow you right off a cliff.

  “I started recruiting them, one by one. I only wanted the ones who I knew I could trust. There were plenty of skinheads out there who talked a good game, but all they really wanted was to get in fights and listen to terrible music. I had no use for that kind. I wanted the true believers. The ones who would follow my rules. We had to lie low, I said. The world wasn’t ready for our message, so we had to stay free and clean. No drugs. No criminal activity of any kind. We couldn’t afford even so much as a parking ticket because this country would take any excuse, even the slightest, to crush us. Of course, they needed to do something, show their hatred somehow, so I got them doing nonviolent demonstrations.”

  Chapel sighed in disgust. “Like picketing biracial weddings.”

  “Exactly. That’s why I said it was distasteful but necessary. They needed that outlet, my soldiers. They needed to feel like they were doing something. I despised going to those protests. Afterward, I had to scrape my skin clean in the shower, just to feel human again. But I did it. I went and picketed. I published books by idiots even crazier than my father. I put together an empire based on hatred, and every day I watched it grow stronger. I knew I was getting close to the day when I could finally use that power for my own ends, when they would obey my every command. I knew that day would come sooner rather than later.”

  “And that day is now?” Chapel asked. “Why?”

  “Because you came along.” Belcher laughed. “I had them train and drill for the day the government would come and raid our little town. I bought all those guns and told my soldiers it was for their defense. I always expected a massed force of ATF and maybe FBI agents. You showing up like you did, just one guy—­that I wasn’t really ready for. But I saw I could use it anyway. You’re my excuse, Agent. You’re my justification for why we have to go to war today. And you’re also going to be my witness.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The convoy of cars, pickups, and SUVs roared through a residential part of Pueblo, unhindered by traffic lights or stop signs. Chapel saw ­people out on their porches catching an evening breeze. They watched the vehicles race past with looks of mild disapproval at most—­they could have no idea what they were seeing.

  Chapel wished he knew himself. Belcher still hadn’t revealed his plan, and there was nothing Chapel could do without knowing where they were even headed. The convoy blasted through town and didn’t stop, and he racked his brain, trying to think of some target, some opportunity for mayhem just north of Pueblo . . .

  “We’ve been training for this for years,” Belcher told him. “Running constant drills. Going over and over the plan, fine-­tuning every element. Hatred can fuel you through long nights and so many setbacks.”

  “I understand,” Chapel said.

  “Oh?”

  “I understand your problem, now.” Chapel peered forward through the windshield, looking for any sign of their destination. It was useless—­all he could see was a pickup with a bed full of ex-­skinheads loosing a chorus of rebel yells. “You were raised on hate. Nobody ever gave you anything to believe in.”

  “I believe in my ability to send a message,” Belcher told him. “The world is going to hear this one.”

  Chapel nodded. “I’m sure. I even understand, a little. When I was in the seventh grade—­well, it wasn’t a great time for me. I’d discovered girls, but they had yet to notice me. All the kids I’d thought were my friends turned out to be jerks. My grades suffered, and I didn’t want to do anything but lie on my bed in my bedroom and listen to my heavy-­metal tapes. I used to think about blowing up my school. I mean, I really fantasized about it, about how I would do it, about all the teachers running away on fire. I never thought about how to get away with it without being caught—­I wanted the world to know who had done it. But I had good reasons not to do it, too. My family. The one friend I could actually count on, even if sometimes I wasn’t a great friend to him. The history teacher who actually took the time to work with me, to figure out why my test scores were slipping. I figured blowing him up would be kind of, you know, ungrateful.”

  “You’re wasting your time, Agent. You’re not going to psychoanalyze me out of doing this.”

  “I know,” Chapel told him. “I just hope you’ll have one moment of doubt, somewhere down the line. That you’ll pause for half a second and wonder if you did the right thing, devoting your whole adult life to one colossally stupid act. By the way, when are you going to tell me . . .”

  “Agent? You just kind of trailed off there.”

  Chapel shook his head. No. I
t couldn’t be.

  A high-­value target north of Pueblo. The airport didn’t count, it was too small to make a big splash in the news even if it were demolished by terrorists. There was an army depot north of the town, but it had barely been used in decades, except as storage for one thing. One leftover from World War I that nobody wanted around anymore, which had been scheduled for destruction for years . . .

  “Belcher,” he said, very quietly. “Belcher, this is—­it’s too much. If you blow up those igloos—­”

  “Figured it out, did you?” Belcher asked. “Won’t be long now.”

  Up ahead, at the front of the convoy, someone leaned out of a truck window and started firing an AK-­47.

  The attack had begun.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Chapel could see little from his position near the rear of the convoy, but he could guess what was happening from the noise and the shouts and the flashes of light.

  Pueblo Depot had been a significant army base once, a munitions storage-­and-­maintenance facility that had supplied half the country with ammunition from bullets to guided missiles. It covered more than twenty-­four thousand acres, and had been one of the major dumping grounds for equipment coming back from World War II. The vast majority of the depot had been shut down over the ensuing decades, though—­it was so reduced in usage that big parts of it had been leased out to civilians as warehouse space, and what the military still owned was scheduled to be closed in less than five years. Now it was only lightly guarded, definitely not up to a concerted attack by two thousand neo-­Nazis. Belcher’s men were overwhelming the gate guards and whatever reinforcements they could call up. The shooting was over in a few minutes, with what looked like only minimal casualties on Belcher’s side.

  Once it was clear, Belcher took his truck off the road and headed up toward the gate. Chapel got a good view of the gatehouse, a little booth enclosed in now-­shattered glass. An SAF guy in a leather jacket and Doc Martens boots had climbed up on top of the gatehouse and was firing his rifle in the air, while two others pulled the bodies of dead soldiers out of the way of the oncoming vehicles. Someone inside turned off the folding-­tire-­spike barrier, and pickups and SUVs moved quickly through the opening, spreading out among the buildings just past the fence. Belcher waved vehicle after vehicle through while he studied the road behind them, occasionally glancing at his watch.

  “Your friends should be here soon, Agent,” Belcher said. “We’re going to have to move quickly. But we’ve run enough drills we should be okay. My ­people know the layout of this base like the backs of their hands.”

  “Those soldiers never did anything to hurt you,” Chapel insisted, watching a body get dragged up to the fence surrounding the base. A skinhead propped the dead man up to look like he was sitting, then slapped the dead face playfully. Chapel felt his stomach turn over. “You hated the brass in your unit in Kuwait? Fine, go get revenge on them. These were just kids, doing their job.”

  “Nice speech,” Belcher said. “You have any more like that, why don’t you save it for the media when this is all over? If you live through this, you’re going to be a star. Every news outlet in the country’s gonna want to hear your story.”

  Chapel shook his head but said nothing.

  Belcher got the last of his vehicles inside the fence, then pulled his own truck up to the gate. He waved at a neo-­Nazi in the gatehouse, and Chapel heard the sound of a hydraulic system starting up. Looking out his window, he saw the vehicle-­deterring spikes rise from the gateway, directly under Belcher’s truck. A row of steel spikes on a hinge, they were designed to shred the tires of any vehicle stupid enough to try to charge the gate. They hadn’t stopped Belcher’s men, but now Belcher intentionally drove over them, first forward, then back, until all four tires of his truck popped with a noise like low-­caliber gunshots. The truck sank a few inches, one corner at a time.

  Chapel knew what he was doing. Belcher didn’t need the truck anymore—­he didn’t plan on driving out of here—­so he had turned it into an obstacle. When the army arrived to retake the Pueblo Depot, they would find the truck sitting there on its rims, blocking the gate. It would take a real effort to tow it out of the way, especially if the tow truck was under heavy fire the whole time.

  “We walk from here,” Belcher said. He jumped down from the driver’s seat and ran around to Chapel’s side to help him out of the car. Belcher kept a pistol in his hand the whole time as he gestured for Chapel to move forward, into the base.

  He saw more bodies as he walked in, and bloodstains across the concrete. Up ahead, Belcher’s private army were moving through a cluster of small buildings, checking every angle, breaching every door to make sure they’d gotten all of the base’s soldiers. Belcher prodded Chapel down a wide thoroughfare with disused barracks buildings on either side. Before they’d gotten very far, though, he grabbed Chapel’s shoulder to make him stop. Andre and a skinhead in a black polo shirt came running up, dragging another man between them. The man was balding, maybe fifty years old, wearing a short-­sleeved button-­down shirt and chinos. He didn’t look like a soldier, in other words. He was weeping openly as he was pushed forward to fall on his knees in front of Belcher.

  “Please,” he begged. “Please.” He couldn’t seem to say anything else.

  Andre smacked him across the back of the head, and he shut up. “We found him in one of the civvy warehouses, hiding under a forklift.” Andre laughed. “Picked the wrong day to do inventory, huh?”

  “What’s your name?” Belcher asked the man.

  The balding man was too scared to answer. He put his hands together like he was praying and stared up at Belcher with hopeful eyes.

  Chapel had to do something. “Come on, Belcher, he’s nothing to you. Let him go.”

  “He’s in my way,” Belcher said, and pressed the barrel of his pistol against the man’s forehead. “That’s reason enough. I’m on too tight a timeline for any kind of distractions.”

  “You said you needed witnesses,” Chapel pleaded.

  “I’ve already got you.” He pulled the trigger. Chapel had seen enough men die in his lifetime. He turned his head and didn’t look as the body fell to the concrete.

  “Come on,” Belcher said when it was done. “I want you to see something real special.” He grabbed Chapel’s shoulder and shoved him hard to get him moving again.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Sporadic gunfire made Chapel jump as he was herded through the base. He didn’t know if the neo-­Nazis were shooting at anyone or just firing their guns in celebration. They lacked the discipline of real soldiers, but Belcher didn’t seem to mind that they were wasting ammo and making way too much noise as they laughed and whooped with success. Maybe he figured they deserved to have a little fun since they were all going to die in an hour or so.

  None of them looked scared. None of them showed even an iota of regret. “What about their families?” Chapel asked, when none of them were in earshot. No women had come along for this particular bloodbath. “What about their wives?”

  “The women who were dumb enough to marry skinheads and white-­power assholes?” Belcher asked, quietly. “They’re still back in Kendred, armed to the teeth. When the ATF or the army or whoever shows up to investigate, they’ll have a nasty surprise waiting for them. Those women are just as ready to die as their men.”

  “What about all those kids you showed me?”

  “They’re being herded into an underground bunker where they’ll be safe. Those kids still have a chance, if they can get away from their parents. The state will have to take care of ’em,” Belcher told him. “Find them nice new homes. Find them families who will teach them better than this lot could. Maybe they’ll grow up not hating anybody. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

  “You’re willing to sacrifice all these lives—­including your own—­just to make a point,” Chapel said, scarcely believi
ng it. “You care to tell me what the point actually is? Beyond just how much you hate everyone?”

  “Isn’t that enough?” Belcher asked, then he laughed. “You’ve got me all wrong, Agent. You think I’m trying to send a message, here? That’s a common misconception about terrorists.”

  “So you admit that’s what you are? A terrorist?”

  “As in someone who uses fear as a weapon? Yeah, I accept that label. Your lot, the media, the vast majority of ­people in this country, they’ve got the wrong idea about terror, though. They think your suicide bombers, your hijackers, your abductors are political dissidents. That they’re using TV and the newspapers to get their cause some attention. But you actually talk to real terrorists, that’s not the word they use for themselves. They call themselves soldiers. I’m not here to tell America that white supremacy is bad. If they can’t figure that out for themselves, they’re too fucking stupid to understand anyway. No, I’m here to punish.”

  “Punish? Punish who?” Chapel asked.

  “The white-­power movement. The US Army. Everyone who ever wronged me. I don’t claim to be a deep man, Agent. I live by a very simple code. You blacken my eye, I break your neck. My father’s fans are going to die here today. The men who threw me in jail for beating up my CO will die here today.”

  “That’s it? That’s all this is about?” Chapel asked. “You’re just working out your daddy issues, and all these ­people have to die for—­”

  Belcher’s arm flashed forward, the butt of his pistol coming right at Chapel’s mouth. Chapel had time to roll his jaw to one side, but nothing more, so the impact just tore open his cheek instead of breaking half his teeth. He staggered backward, trying not to fall down. It was tough with his arms tied, but, somehow, he managed. He turned to face Belcher again as blood dripped onto his shirt.