13. Under the Radar

by Fern Michaels

  Annie was already dialing Pearl’s number. The retired justice picked it up on the first ring. “Listen carefully, Pearl. We’re on board, but we need at least thirty-six hours until we can get there, possibly sooner, but we don’t work by the seat of our pants. Now, here is my suggestion: Move your people just the way you would, but this time use that fellow who owns the barn. Get them to a safe haven. I want you to pile those young girls into that special bus of yours and drive it to Montana to Jack’s cabin. This is the plan for the moment, and it will probably change, so don’t get too comfortable with it. We’ll be sending someone to stay with the girls there. Listen, Pearl, you might want to give some thought to changing your appearance once you leave Utah. I know, I know, you can disguise the bus and change the plates, but I’m talking about your physical appearance.”

  “Yes, yes, Annie, I understand all of that; but, I’ve never delivered a baby. Some of these girls are in their third trimester. You might want to think about sending a midwife and everything that will be needed.”

  “I’m on it, Pearl.”

  “Annie, I need to tell you a few things, so listen carefully.” Pearl, her voice a little shaky, recounted the events leading up to her arrival at George Ellis’s barn. “I’m going to be leaving as soon as I can get the girls together. You realize, of course, that I am literally kidnapping them, right?”

  “All right, I understand. Don’t worry about that right now. In the meantime, try and engage those girls in talk about how they live, what they believe, all the little et ceteras that make up their lives. After that, you won’t worry too much about the kidnapping charge. Take pictures of them so that Maggie can use them if it becomes necessary. And drive carefully, Pearl.”

  Annie’s eyebrows slid up to her hairline. She gave herself a mental shake and dived into the papers in front of her. Oh, she could hardly wait to get her hands on those bastards at the HOE compound and the guy—whatever the hell his name was—who ran the place.

  The discussion continued, with the Sisters commenting and taking turns reading aloud from the information they’d printed out from the Internet.

  Kathryn went first. “As we all know, because we saw it on satellite TV for weeks on end, that guy Warren Jeffs who was the head of the FLDS was convicted and jailed. I think he got ten years to life, and he has two more trials pending. If I remember correctly, they said he’ll probably spend the rest of his life behind bars. So, we shouldn’t have any qualms about invading that place. Okay, they rehashed all that until we were nearly brain-dead, then they hit us with all those women in their Little House on the Prairie dresses who carried cell phones. The ones who spoke like zombies about wanting their children back, etc.

  “A while back, this guy Harold Evanrod stepped up to the plate, even though no one voted him in, if in fact that’s how you get to be the Prophet. He splintered off and formed his own little group and started calling it the HOE, and, as we now know, that stands for Heaven on Earth, according to him and his followers. That particular compound is located approximately twenty miles from Sienna, where Pearl is right now.

  “Jeffs and the FLDS people in Texas are a separate issue. There’s nothing we can do about that, and we don’t even want to go there since the authorities are making a mess of things as it is. Let them all stew in their own juice. What we can do something about is the HOE group.

  “I have a little background, but not much because they practice secrecy to the nth degree in those places.

  “There was an attorney named David Leavitt who prosecuted a guy named Tom Green. Green broke with tradition and went on the TV circuit with his seven wives and bragged that he’d married some of them when they were minors. At the age of thirty-seven, he impregnated a thirteen-year-old.

  “Many of the spiritual/celestial wives register with the state as a single mother and draw welfare for their families. In one decade, Green and his dependents received more than $647,000 in public assistance. Do the math here, girls. He’s just one guy. Multiply that by all those guys in similar compounds, and the amount of free money they get is mind-boggling. And it’s the taxpayers who foot the bill.

  “Leavitt considered Green a pedophile. He said little girls are raised from the cradle to marry as children and know only a life of polygamy. Leavitt said the children are victims of pedophiles and victims of the state of Utah, which turned its back on polygamy for sixty years. It appears it’s a new ball game these days, with new rules.

  “Long story short, Leavitt filed charges against Green and won convictions on charges of bigamy, criminal nonsupport, and child rape. Unfortunately, the judge was lenient and Green only served five years total in prison.

  “After that, the voters turned on Leavitt and voted him out of office that same year, with many voters saying the publicity was distasteful to them. Try and figure that one out, girls.”

  Alexis took her turn and started reading. “What the polygamists were hoping was that the practice of polygamy would sink back into obscurity, but that hasn’t happened. A few have gotten away to tell of the abuse and are, as we speak, providing the authorities with as much information as they can. Some of them are suing the United Effort Plan, which is a communal property trust held by the FLDS. A judge removed the trustees and appointed new ones. Believe it or not, police officers have been forced to resign because they practiced polygamy and refused to uphold the secular laws. They even forced a judge out of office for the same thing.

  “Some of the states have tried to crack down on the endemic welfare fraud in polygamous groups. The fraud is even institutionalized as ‘bleeding the beast,’ by which church members mean taking from federal and state governments because the government has persecuted them or their Mormon ancestors.

  “Two listeners paraphrased the polygamous priest James Harmston as preaching that God ‘wants’ them to take from every government program possible. God ‘doesn’t expect you to wallow in turkey manure. In another lifetime, we were persecuted and thrown out of our country by the government. We are entitled to everything we can get.’”

  Alexis read on. “With God ordering up fraud, as argued by modern-day polygamists, there is plenty of it. Many plural wives claim they don’t know the whereabouts of their children’s fathers. As many as 50 percent were on public assistance in a place called Hildale, Utah, in 2001; 33 percent were on food stamps in 1998 compared to Utah’s average of 4.7 percent. In 1997, every school-age child in Colorado City, Arizona, was living below the poverty level.

  “That guy Jeffs got $2.8 million dollars from the federal government to build an airport for his chartered Lear jet. But that’s Arizona, so you have to believe it’s the same in the other states where they practice polygamy. Oh, another thing, Homeland Security gave that tiny little place a grant of $350,000, and it was the state’s largest HS grant. The state of Arizona had to take over the Colorado City school system because of gross mismanagement of public funds.”

  Isabelle shuffled her papers until she found what she wanted. “Ah, here it is. I never heard of this, but since it’s been reported, I have to believe it’s true. The youngsters were called ‘the lost boys.’ They were kicked to the curb because they had a surplus of males. These kids were left to fend for themselves and didn’t know how. There were four hundred of them. Those children were taught from the cradle up that the Prophet must be obeyed as God’s representative, that the outside world is evil, and that anyone leaving will be ground to dust and damned in the afterlife. The youngsters didn’t know how to cope, some committed suicide, some turned to drugs, they steal, and are homeless. Those poor boys live their lives like it’s their last day on earth. They can’t believe they won’t have three wives as promised and are convinced that they’re doomed. All they want is to go back to their mothers. There are just too many heartbreaking stories here to read,” Isabelle said, tears in her eyes.

  “Some of the boys, with some help, filed a civil suit back in 2004 against the FLDS. It’s in negotiation now. The church is fig
hting it, saying that because they are a church, they have a constitutional right to set their own standards for excommunication.

  “Some of the appointed lawyers are saying that the ‘Babyland’ cemetery in Colorado City has many unmarked graves, plus eighteen minor children, plus eight stillbirths.

  “It’s said that some women pray to have children with Down’s syndrome because such children usually have docile temperaments and because the mothers get $500 a month in assistance for a handicapped child,” Kathryn said in a cold, brittle voice.

  “I don’t want to hear any more of this,” Annie said. “I think we’re all getting the picture here. Young girls are being forced to marry old men, and their mothers do nothing to stop it, and even encourage it. Since the children don’t know any better, they do what they’re told. They’re broodmares, nothing more. So, we’re going to go to the HOE compound, somehow. We’re going to take on those old men and the women who support them. Somehow we will get the children out of there to safety. Is that how you’re all seeing it?”

  “Damn straight,” Kathryn said, speaking for the group. “But, Annie, what are we going to do with them once we take over?”

  “I have a glimmer of an idea,” Annie said, her eyes sparkling. “Tell me what you think. Remember when we were in Las Vegas, and we went to that abandoned nursing home down the road from Mr. Fish’s property?” The women nodded. “Well, think about this. What if I buy that, add on a couple of wings, refurbish, and set it up to take care of all those people who want a better life? We can hire nurses and doctors and therapists. I even know just the person who I bet will jump at the chance to run the place. Paula Woodley. Remember her? I think she’ll jump in with both feet, and she’s loyal to all of us. Even after what we did to her awful national security advisor husband.”

  “Damn, Annie, that’s a stupendous idea,” Yoko said. “But it is rather like putting the cart before the horse. What if we screw up our mission?”

  “Honey, don’t think like that. We were all born to succeed. This time will be no different, and I, for one, am anxious to see if we can do it without Charles. Say the word, and I’ll put the wheels in motion.”

  The chorus of ayes rang in the enclosed room.

  “There you have it,” Annie said happily.

  Thirty minutes later Annie had those wheels in motion, and Paula Woodley was on board.

  Chapter 5

  Nikki licked at her dry lips and worried her bottom lip with her teeth as she contemplated the stack of papers in front of her. She flexed her fingers before she started to sift and collate the inch-thick pile of printouts she’d just run off. How did Charles do this and not make mistakes? She’d lucked out, though, with Avery Snowden, a pal of Charles’s from the old days. Like Charles he was a former British intelligence agent and only too happy to get back into the game. She had to admit that she was surprised at how much the man actually knew about the Sisterhood’s activities, which meant Charles trusted him implicitly.

  Nikki perused the papers in front of her one more time before she stepped away from the computers and marched down the steps and over to the round table, where the other Sisters were waiting for her.

  “I think we’re in business. Mr. Avery Snowden, Charles’s go-to guy and the one who heads up the behind-the-scenes network Charles uses, is on board and will get back to me within the hour. In other words, we’re going to see Annie’s and Myra’s money working for us. I will say this, Avery was a tad upset that we were not going to be compensated for taking on such a large-scale mission. He said money talks and bullshit walks, but whatever he could do, he would do.

  “He explained it this way. It takes thousands of people to make the network function to our advantage, and if one of them just makes phone calls or lends a car or buys materials, they all have to be paid, and it adds up at the end of the month. He said this particular network has people waiting in line to help because our reputation is so sterling. We can always help ourselves to some of the HOE’s funds when we’re finished. Just enough to pay all those people for helping us. They’re stealing it to begin with, so we’ll just steal it back. Works for me,” Nikki said loftily, as the others nodded to indicate their agreement.

  “Our biggest hurdle right now is getting off this mountain and to Utah. When I told Avery this mission involved the polygamy sect, I heard him suck in his breath. The authorities, as we all know, are all over those people, especially in Texas and Arizona. He admitted he didn’t know anything about the HOE group in Utah but said he would know everything there is to know by the time he calls me back.”

  Nikki turned to Alexis. “Is your Red Bag filled? Do you need anything? If so, make me a list, and I’ll pass it on to Avery.”

  “I don’t need anything, Nikki. I replenished what I’d used when we got back from Vegas. Everything’s good to go.”

  “Did any phone calls come in while I was working on the computer? Yoko, any word from Harry?”

  Yoko shook her head.

  Annie’s phone rang. The room turned silent as they tried to make sense of Annie’s end of the conversation. Kathryn scribbled the word “speakerphone,” and Annie pressed the button. Pearl’s panic-stricken voice invaded the room.

  “It’s a huge white bus, no lettering on it that I can see. The girls are getting excited like they know who it is.”

  “Why are you traveling by day, Pearl? I thought yours was a nighttime operation,” Annie said, her voice rising with anxiety.

  “Things changed rapidly. There was a deputy who was a little too curious. I’m sure the Highway Patrol is monitoring my last stop or will be soon. You need to call and put my people on alert. By now I have to assume those polygamy people are looking for the girls. I just crossed the border into Idaho. You know what that means. They are gaining on me, and the girls are getting really excited. They keep saying the Prophet is coming to take them home. Don’t even think of telling me to try and outrun them.”

  “Stay calm, Pearl, and leave your cell phone on for as long as you can so we know what’s going on. Just put that ear bud in your ear and none of them will be the wiser. Help is on the way, but unfortunately you’re all the way across the country, and it’s going to take a while. If they just want the girls, give them up. You have no other choice. Do you have your gun?”

  “Yes, in the you know what, under the you know what,” Pearl responded. “Do you want me to…to use it?”

  “God, no. Well, not unless you have to. My best advice is to play along, you’re taking the girls to safety because they wouldn’t tell you anything, and when you mentioned the police, they panicked. You’re being a Good Samaritan, that’s all. Make up some fictitious clinic that takes in unwed mothers in Idaho, and that’s where you’re headed. Remember, Pearl, they can identify you, the barn, and George and Irma.”

  “I know, I know. The people I just left have a plan in case something like this ever went down. Have someone call them right now to put that plan into effect. Oh, oh, the van is trying to cut me off. I have to pull over. I can’t risk an accident with the girls on board.”

  “Okay, I’ll stay quiet, but leave the phone open on the seat,” Annie said.

  The Sisters crowded closer to make sure they could hear everything that was going on. They heard Pearl downshift, heard the brakes on the bus start to catch. They could hear the excitement of the young girls as they whooped and hollered. Then they heard Pearl release the catch that would open the bus’s doors.

  “Who are you? What do you want? I’m going to call the police if you don’t get away from this bus right now!”

  A big man in his midfifties stepped up into the bus. His hair was gray as was his moustache. He was dressed—Pearl sought for the proper word and finally came up with it—nattily. She wondered if young people these days even knew what that meant.

  “There’s no need for hostility, ma’am. We just came here to pick up our property. We’ll be on our way unless you give us a problem. We mean you no harm, and we are not carryi
ng weapons.”

  “What property?” Pearl blustered. “I don’t have anything that belongs to you. You can’t just come aboard here and tell me what to do. These young girls need medical assistance. I’m taking them to…”

  “No, you see, ma’am, that’s where you’re wrong, you are not taking these young ladies anywhere. These young ladies belong to me and these gentlemen behind me. They belong to us because they are our wives.”

  Pearl could feel her blood start to boil. “Stop with the nonsense, these are just young unwed pregnant women. They’re not old enough to be married. If you take them, you are kidnapping them. I’ll have to alert the authorities.”

  “No, you won’t do that because you just crossed the state line from Utah into Idaho and our wives live in Utah. I’ll be the one doing the calling, and I will press charges if you don’t release these women to me right now.”

  “Let them go, let them go,” the Sisters hissed. “Let them go and get out of there, Pearl, before those stupid goons make good on their threat.”

  Pearl knew when she was beaten. She nodded. “At least tell me where you’re taking them. I want to know they’ll be safe.”

  The big man, the spokesman of the four-man group, smiled. “Why, ma’am, I’m taking them to Heaven on Earth, where we all live a satisfying, righteous, happy life.”

  The big man turned to the girls and shouted loud enough to be heard into the next county, “Come along, darlings, Daddy is taking you home. Say good-bye to the nice lady, and let’s be on our way.”