by Don Winslow
Cal hit the dirt and kept his head down as debris flew and the secondary explosions from ammunition belts, grenades, and mortar shells turned the compound into a junkyard. So the bombs were in the batteries of the detonator boxes. And now that lunatic preacher had the override switches and was clicking them oft one by one. Cal buried his head in his arm and waited it out.
Craig Vetter lay in the snow. He took aim at the truck’s rear tires, said a quick prayer that his weapon wasn’t one of the sabotaged ones, and shot.
Neal felt the truck sink on its flat tires. He grabbed Jory by the collar, opened the door, and rolled out. Bullets smacked into the truck above him.
Ed jumped out, crouched behind the front of the truck, and scrambled over to the passenger side. He pulled Graham out and slung him back over his shoulder.
“Neal! Get ready to move!” he yelled.
Carter watched the world turn into a whirling chaos. Flames were everywhere, sulphur burned his eyes and his nose, screams filled his ears as the truck full of devils drove away even though he was madly flipping the switches. Another watchtower buckled and crumpled to the ground. Yahweh’s haven was falling apart around him. He ripped the detonator box off the post and gripped it next to his chest. He shook it angrily.
Then he flipped the last switch.
A second later, all of the mines around the compound perimeter went off, sending up blasts of earth, snow, and smoke.
Craig dove for the ground and covered up.
Neal crawled over to Ed. “There’s a ranch two miles north of here. It’s the only house. I’ll meet you there.”
Ed nodded, hefted Graham, and started toward the main road at a trot. Neal crawled back to Jory.
“How can we get to this place?”
“I usually ride there.”
Neal thought about it for a second. The corral was a good hundred yards south. They could make it if they started now, while the explosions were still keeping heads down.
“Let s go!”
They sprang to their feet and sprinted toward the corral.
A few minutes later Cal Strekker got up and went to inspect what was left of the compound. There wasn’t much-three towers were down, the ammunition bunker was destroyed with its $200,000 of new weapons, the main bunker was intact but inundated with tear gas. His troops weren’t in such good shape either. Most of Carter’s brownshirt bodyguards were on their hands and knees, coughing, choking, or vomiting. He had two badly wounded-the machine gunner with his seared eyes and the man in the tower who was missing three ringers.
Worse yet, he knew he wasn’t going to get the time to rebuild the compound or the company. ZOG had infiltrated the organization and laid a heavy hit on it. Next would come the official police with warrants and all the legalities. And there were three men running around out there who could testify.
He yelled around the compound until he had his own men assembled. Carter could take care of those useless LA neo-Nazis by himself.
Hansen came up beside him.
“Have you seen my son?” he yelled. “Have you seen lory?”
Cal looked around the compound. He didn’t see the boy. He looked out across the sagebrush flats and saw a horse with two riders in the moonlight.
“I don’t know,” he said to Hansen. He pointed at the horse and riders galloping toward the mountains. “Is that him?”
Hansen peered into the night and recognized his son. But who the hell was with him?
Dave Bekke limped up to Hansen. “There’s something you ought to know, sir.”
“Right now I think there’s a whole lot I ought to know.”
“I heard Jory tell Neal that he didn’t kill that little boy,” Bekke said. “Now maybe he just said that because Neal had a knife to his throat, but…”
“But what?” Hansen yelled.
“Jory also said something about the boy being the Savior, the Son of God. Said that he took him and hid him in ‘the Place of the Beginning.’”
Carter pushed into the center of the circle and asked, “He used those words? The Place of the Beginning?”
“Yeah, he said he hid him in the Place of the Beginning and the End.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Hansen said. “How do you expect a two-year-old child to survive out in the wilderness on its own?”
“I don’t, sir. That’s just what Jory said.”
Cal said, “I’ll bet that’s where he’s headed and I’ll bet that’s Neal Carey with him.”
Vetter added, “Jory spends a lot of time around those caves up the mountain.”
“We have to find that child!” Carter commanded.
Hansen took over. “Cal, we’ll take some men with us and track Jory up to those caves. Dave, you take a squad and track down that Mackinnon, or whoever the hell he is. You might start by heading toward that Jew’s house. I wouldn’t be surprised if he set this whole thing up. Go on now, get moving!”
Carter pulled Hansen aside.
“This is very exciting, Robert,” he said.
Hansen shook his head. “It’s over here, Reverend. ZOG will be swarming all over this place by tomorrow. Our only chance is to find these people, kill them, and go into hiding ourselves.”
Hansen felt the full bitterness of his own words. His dreams for this valley, this haven, this white bastion were shattered.
“You don’t understand, Robert!” urged Carter. “This may be it! Maybe Jory was inspired to take the child! Maybe he has found the Place of the Beginning and the End, the sacred home of the lost tribe!”
“I don’t understand, Reverend.”
“I don’t think Jory took the boy, I think the boy took Jory. The boy led him to the sacred place. This may be the child. You remember Revelation 12:5: ‘And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up in God, and to his throne.’ But the dragon fought for the man child, Robert. And the man child was hidden while the battle raged. And the dragon was slain by the angels. ZOG is the dragon, we are the angels! The battle is on! It’s here, Robert! It’s here!”
Hansen looked around at the wreckage of his dream.
“What’s here?” he asked.
Carter’s eyes gleamed. “The End Time!”
Shoshoko crawled to the mouth of the cave when he heard the wind come up. Clouds rolled across the moon and suddenly it started to snow as the sky changed from shimmering black to dull gray to shining white.
Shoshoko knew that the snow had been sent to ease his spirit, to soften his walk to the other side. The child would go down from the mountain just as the snow came down from the sky.
He was sad to leave the earth, but all men did. He was sad to leave the boy, but that was their fate. He sat down at the edge of the cave and started to sing his death song.
It was the End Time.
12
Neal held on tightly as Midnight picked his way up the narrow path. Cedar boughs swung back and threw snow across his arms as the horse pushed through. More snow was falling on his head and back, blowing in his face.
He felt the horse stagger up to level ground and then heard what sounded like a chant coming from somewhere up above. It was a sad but oddly tranquil song in the voice of an old angel floating on a cloud.
I wonder if this is what it’s like to die, Neal thought. A slow ride in a tunnel of whiteness with an angel singing you home.
Midnight found his way between two rock walls and they descended down a draw. Then the horse turned sharply right and then left, and suddenly Neal could see.
They were in a box canyon of red rock cliffs with sparse cedars clinging to narrow shelves. The north cliff face blocked the wind and most of the snow. They were isolated from the rest of the mountains and the valley below. They might as well have been in another world.
Now Neal realized that the chanting came from the cliff on the north side. He looked up and saw a small circle of light about fifty feet up on the rocks, and the voice seemed to come from that gl
owing orb. This is getting really spooky, he thought.
“What am I hearing?” he asked Jory. He pointed to the circle of light that seemed to float on the sheer cliff. “What the hell is that?”
“That’s the angel,” Jory said calmly. “The guardian.”
“Is he guarding Cody?” Neal asked.
“Always.” Jory stopped the horse. “I usually walk from here, but we might need your horse this time. I think we can walk him most of the way up there.”
Neal swung down as Jory hopped off. Jory took the reins and led Midnight as they hiked to the base of the cliff. They jagged west for a few hundred feet and then Neal saw that there was a narrow shelf of rock that led like a ramp up to the light. He got scared as they made their way up the shelf. It seemed like one slip would send him plunging down the sheer rock cliff.
One foot at a time, he told himself. Just think about placing one foot at a time.
Even Midnight seemed edgy, carefully placing his hooves down on the slippery rock. Only Jory didn’t seem concerned. He had his head down and just plodded up the ramp toward the light.
As they got closer Neal saw that the light wasn’t mysterious at all. It came from the mouth of a cave. As they got closer still he recognized the flicker of a small fire.
Jory stopped and listened to the chanting. When he heard a pause he made a sound like a bird.
The singing stopped and a similar birdcall came back.
Jory pressed on until they came to a large fissure that split the rock diagonally. “This is far as we can go with the horse,” he said.
Neal watched as Jory led Midnight about twenty feet into the fissure and tied the reins to a scraggly cedar bow. He came back out and led Neal another thirty yards up the shelf until they came to the cave mouth.
It was a shallow indentation in the rock, maybe four feet high, ten feet wide, and a couple of feet deep.
Neal saw a tiny man sitting perfectly still, backlit by the fire that seemed to be burning from inside the rock. But there was no smoke. The man certainly could be no more than five feet tall, if that, and he looked ancient. He was wrapped in what looked like rabbit skins. His silver hair was long and matted.
Jory pointed behind the old man and then pointed to himself.
The small man shook his head. Then he pointed at Neal.
Then the man got up into a crouch and Neal saw the light burning behind him. The man crawled into the light. Jory followed, and both men suddenly disappeared. Neal got on all fours and crawled into the biggest part of the light.
It was a hole, a small, round tunnel entrance. Neal crawled for about ten feet in total darkness and then he saw the cave.
A fire was burning. Lying beside the small fire, wrapped in wild sheepskin, looking dirty and thin but peacefully asleep, was a small child. His face was turned to the warmth of the fire and his eyes were closed. His thin lips were open slightly and Neal could see them purse as he breathed.
Neal could stand up now-easily, for the chamber was twelve feet high in the center. The air was clear because the smoke from the small, efficient fire was drafting out the back of the cave.
Neal walked to where the child was lying and gently pulled the sheepskin blanket from the boy’s head. He looked at the dirty blond hair and whispered, “Hello, Cody. It’s nice to meet you.”
He pulled the cover back over the boy and looked to Jory for an explanation. Jory just pointed at the cave walls.
Neal looked around him then and suddenly understood.
There was no telling how old the paintings were, but even in the faint, flickering firelight Neal could see that they were beyond ancient. They told stories of a time when men hunted giant animals on foot, and women gathered seeds and roots, and thunder and lightning were the music of God. They spoke of an age when men battled lions, and women hid their children in the safety of the cave, and when God sometimes took the children anyway, took them to the heavens.
And seeing them, Neal understood. Understood how poor, sick Jory, who had been taught what he had been taught and who had seen the horrors he had seen, could come to this prehistoric spot and think he had found the place where the lost tribe of Israel, the Aryan ancestors, had settled in the promised land.
For on those figures where some color survived and faces could be clearly discerned, the color on those faces was immutably, unmistakably, white. Especially on the smallest figure, clearly a child, who was depicted reaching his arms up to the sky toward a large figure that was not quite human but had a head formed by three concentric ovals. The child’s hair was yellow.
“White people,” Jory said. “The sons of Seth, the sons of Jacob. This proves that we were here long before the Indians. The old man here even says so.”
The old man nodded and pointed to the cave paintings. In a combination of his own tongue and sign language he tried to tell Neal his people’s legend about the race of white giants who once walked the earth. They were men of strength and courage, men who had knowledge. And the Sun loved them, so he gave them hair the color of dawn and dusk and eyes the color of the sky. For he meant them to join him in the heavens, and indeed, one day the white giants disappeared. But the legends said they would come again at the end of time, come again to rule the earth, to save it from the new whites, the ones who were everywhere but not quite men. For the new whites had come with their machines and guns and diseases and ruined the earth and most of the people died. The rest ran away and hid in the mountains, found the canyons and the caves, and waited for the white giants to return, waited for the foretold child of the Sun to come back to the sacred place. And the ones who were everywhere but not quite men would try to kill the child, and there would be a terrible battle between the good spirits and the bad, and many would die. But the child of the Sun would live, and the people would be reborn and rise from the earth, which would be clean again. And the child of the Sun would rule and all would be peaceful, as in the days when the white giants strode the earth.
Neal looked at Cody McCall sleeping by the fire and tried to figure out how to get him to safety. He could make a sling from his jacket, perhaps, and tie it in front of him like one of those baby carriers he had seen women wear. It might work.
“The Book of Revelation talks about the same thing, Neal,” Jory said. “It talks about the infant who comes again, and the serpent tries to kill it, and the angels battle the serpent, and…”
“And the child lives and rules the earth with a rod of iron,” Neal interrupted. He’d read Revelation while studying the white supremacist movement.
“And this is the child,” Jory said. “So when they were going to kill him, I knew it was a terrible mistake. So I took him here, to the sacred place, the Place of the Beginning and the End.”
Neal debated what to do. He could wait the storm out in the cave and go in the morning, but that would mean moving in daylight, and who knew where the SOS boys would be. Or he could move now under cover of darkness, but that would mean exposing the child to a dangerous trip at night through a snowstorm.
Just then the old man cocked his head toward the cave mouth. Then he mimed the trotting of horses.
Neal couldn’t hear a thing.
The old man scrambled to the cave mouth and came back moments later. He counted to six on his fingers. Then he stepped over to the fire, wafted his hands through the smoke, and pointed to the ceiling.
Great, Neal thought. They’re coming with guns and this guy’s going to do magic tricks.
The old man reached into the pile of blankets and pulled out a contraption made of sticks, rabbit skin, and strips of hide. He motioned for Neal to turn around and tied it onto his shoulders. Neal realized that it was a backpack for the boy.
The old man picked up Cody and held him to his chest, whispering soft cooing sounds in the boy’s ear. Then he lifted him up and set him into the sack formed by the rabbit skins.
Cody woke up and started to cry.
The old man made shooshing sounds, but Cody kept crying and
lifted his arms to the old man. The child was terrified to be on the shoulders of this stranger, and the words he was crying out in his fear were in a language Neal didn’t recognize.
The old man spoke back to him, quietly but firmly, and Cody settled into a miserable whimpering but sat back in his seat. The old man covered him with a sheepskin and tucked it into the seat. Then he picked up his small bow and quiver of arrows and motioned for Neal to follow him.
“I’ll stay here and hold them off,” Jory said.
“Don’t be an idiot, Jory,” Neal answered. “Come on.”
Jory leaned over, pulled the sheepskin aside, and kissed Cody on the cheek. Then he turned his back and crawled into the tunnel toward the cave mouth.
The old man turned around and waved his hand forward impatiently, as if to say, “Come on.” He pointed to his nose and made a show of sniffing the air.
Neal followed the old man deeper into the cave. The old man disappeared into the rocks and Neal found the crack that led into another chamber. It was pitch-black.
Now what? Neal asked himself. I can’t see a damn thing. Ahead of him he could just make out the sound of the old man sniffing the air.
Of course, Neal thought. The smoke must be ventilating out a draft. There was another way out. He reached behind him and put his hands under the backpack to lift it higher on his shoulders. Cody seemed calmer, as if he sensed they were following the old man.
Neal listened to the man’s footsteps and sniffed the air for the scent of smoke.
Ed Levine leaned forward and adjusted Graham’s weight on his shoulders. He was carrying him piggyback now, and Graham had enough strength to hold on with his one good hand.
It was the frigging cold that was the problem. That and the snow that was blowing in their faces and blinding them.
But Ed figured that wasn’t all bad. It was also blinding the guys who were looking for them, and as long as he had his nose pointed into the freezing wind, he knew he was headed north. So the wind was like a sadistic compass, keeping them pointed toward the Mills place. Ed only hoped he could see the house when he got near.
