Reign in Hell

by William Diehl

  A small drawer slid out of the wall, and the guard, a shadowy figure behind the dark glass, said in an abrupt voice amplified by a loudspeaker, “IDs, gentlemen, please.” Firestone and Vail dropped their cards in the drawer.

  “Mr. Vail, would you please step out of the car for a moment?” the loudspeaker ordered.

  “Christ, now what?” Vail growled.

  “Video identification,” Firestone said. “Camera sends a signal to the main house, they run a comp scan against your photo.”

  “And where the hell did they get my photo?” Vail asked as he got out.

  “Driver’s license from Illinois Motor Vehicles.”

  “Christ, Big Brother’s everywhere,” he snapped.

  “Matter of public record, Mr. Vail.”

  Vail saw the camera, mounted on a corner of the guard house. He stared up at it and smiled.

  “Keep a straight face please, sir,” the loudspeaker told him.

  The entranceway was a tunnel of iron and wire, with steel gates operated by electric eyes every fifty yards. As a car passed through one gate, it closed behind the vehicle and the next gate opened. Any vehicle entering the main prison had to pass three of these traps.

  Nobody had ever escaped the prison confines, although two South American drug lords serving life without parole once tried to break out of the quarry. The guards casually watched them as they struggled across the desert floor. When they finally collapsed from heat and thirst, a helicopter swept down and hovered over them, blasting them from above for ten minutes. The sand, whipped to a fury, shredded their clothes from their bodies. They were returned naked and bleeding to the prison. Their sentence: no mail, no visitors, no contact with the outside world for six months, lights on in their cells for ninety days, twenty-four hours a day.

  “Place is manned by Marines,” Firestone said. “Duty’s for one year. They get combat pay.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No joke.”

  “What in God’s name are we doing out here?” Vail asked.

  “You’re gonna get the other side of the coin,” Firestone answered. “Jordan’s a card-carrying member of the Sanctuary, very close to Engstrom. He’ll be Silent Sam for a bit, but you keep talking, if he thinks the General’s on the griddle, that might loosen up his tongue. Anyway, he’ll join the conversation just to stay out of the quarry for an hour or so. Won’t give away anything. Whatever he tells you, we already know.”

  “So why didn’t you tell me and save us this god-awful trip?”

  “Horse’s mouth.” Firestone fell silent for a moment, and then, almost as an afterthought, added: “For the purposes of this visit, you might say you are with the A.G.’s office. Just say it that way, ‘I’m with the A.G.’s office.’ No need to elaborate.”

  “I think I can handle that,” Vail answered as they proceeded through the tunnel of barbed and electrified wire and steel-girded razor blades. He looked around and said, “This place must’ve set the taxpayers back a pretty penny.”

  “Actually, it’s cost effective. Totally self-sufficient, holds twenty-five hundred hard-core felons—minimum sentence, five years. They grow their own vegetables, some fruit. No parole from here. Anybody gets the Grave is in for the duration.”

  “What’s the suicide rate?”

  “Never asked.”

  Once inside the main prison, Firestone and Vail were ushered to a small waiting room. The presence of the Marines was evident everywhere. The halls and rooms were spotlessly clean, metal surfaces glistened, desktops were polished to mirrors. Twenty-five hundred prisoners were hermetically sealed in the air-conditioned cell blocks of the Grave, one to a cell. On weekends they had two hours in the yard. No television, no radios, no pumping iron. Reading material could be ordered from a list each morning and was delivered to the individuals at night. They had two hours to read, write letters, or just stare at the ceiling.

  A Marine was waiting when they entered the waiting room, a stern-faced youth in a starched uniform standing at parade rest. He snapped to attention when they entered and nodded curtly.

  “Gentlemen,” he said. “Welcome to the Coyote Flats Internment Center.” He stood in front of Vail, looked at his name tag.

  “Mr. Vail, sir? Come with me please.”

  Vail turned to Firestone. “You coming?” he asked.

  Firestone shook his head. “I just deliver them, Mr. Vail, I don’t talk to them.”

  The Marine guard led Vail down a hallway, unlocked a steel door, and pushed it open.

  “Do you smoke, sir?” he asked Vail.

  “Yeah,” Vail said. “I’ve been quitting for three years.”

  The guard handed him a small metal ashtray. “I’ll bring the prisoner down,” he said. “Don’t let him get ahold of this ashtray—they can be shaped into a pretty effective shiv.”

  “I’ll remember that. What’s your name?”

  “Corporal Becker, sir.”

  “Okay, Corporal Becker, thanks.”

  The small room seemed familiar to him, interrogation rooms were all alike: a linoleum-covered table, two hard-backed chairs, a small, barred window near the ceiling, a garish light recessed in the ceiling and shielded by wire, the vague odor of Lysol. He sat down and lit a cigarette and waited for five minutes until the doorknob turned and the heavy door opened again.

  The man stood in the doorway, his feet locked in irons separated by a six-inch chain that caused him to shuffle when he walked. He kept his shackled hands at his waist. He was an inch or two under six feet, his body as hard as the quarry in which he worked six days a week, his skin leathery and deeply tanned, his brown hair clipped an inch above the scalp. Two years in the Grave had hardened the lines in his face and around his mouth, but he had alert eyes which scanned every inch of Vail’s face.

  “Corporal Becker, you can remove the irons,” Vail said.

  “Gotta stay on, sir. Prison rules.”

  Vail stood and said, “Well, I’m with the Attorney General’s office and I say take them off.”

  Becker stared at Vail for several seconds, then unlocked the cuffs and removed them from Jordan’s wrists.

  “We’ll split the difference, sir. The leg irons stay.”

  Vail thought for a moment and shrugged. “Fair enough,” he said, and held out his hand to Jordan. “I’m Martin Vail,” he said.

  Jordan ignored Vail’s hand. “Gary Jordan,” he said in a voice as hard as a ball bearing.

  Vail nodded toward the table and chairs. “Grab a chair,” he said to Jordan, and to Becker, “I’ll knock when I’m through.”

  “I’m supposed to—”

  “I’ll knock when I’m through, Corporal,” Vail repeated without looking at the guard, and sat down opposite Jordan.

  “Yes sir…” Becker muttered, and left, locking the door behind him.

  Jordan laughed. “There’s four remote-controlled steel doors between here and the yard. Then about fifty yards of wide open nothin’, then a fifteen-foot wall with electric wire on top. And you saw what’s outside the wall. But he keeps the leg chains on.”

  Vail threw his cigarette pack on the table. “Have a smoke,” he said.

  Jordan ignored the offer. “You come a long way for nothin’.” He had the gruff, drawling voice of a hard-dirt farmer.

  “How do you know where I came from?”

  “Hell, everyplace is a long way from here,” Jordan said. “I thought I’d talked to everybody in the A.G.’s office by now.”

  “I’m new.”

  “Well, I hope the trip was pleasant, ’cause it was a waste of your time.”

  “How do you know what I want?”

  “I been asked everything there is to ask. I can cover it all with one answer.” He leaned across the table toward Vail. “I… don’t… know.”

  “You’re a member of the Sanctuary of the Lord and the Wrath of God,” Vail said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Been so long I don’t remember.”

  Vail looke
d across the table at Jordan, felt a sense of sympathy and compassion for him. Still unsure why he was interviewing the tax dodger, he decided to play one of his old tricks from his Chicago DA days.

  “What do you miss most?” he asked casually.

  The question intrigued Jordan. He looked toward the window and seemed lost in thought. “What do you want, poetry? The smell of rain when it first starts comin’ down and the hay in the barn at the end of the season, hearin’ my little girl laugh, the horses snortin’ early on a winter’s mornin’….” He stopped and looked at Vail, and his voice turned to flint again. “I don’t miss nothin’. It’ll all be there when I get out.”

  “Gary… okay if I call you Gary? Good. I came here with an offer.”

  “What’re you gonna do, propose?”

  Vail smiled. “I suppose you heard about the arms heist.”

  “Ya hear about robberies every day in here.”

  “You know the one I mean.”

  Jordan stared at Vail. “When did it happen?”

  “Last night.”

  “Mr. Vail, we’ll know about that when it’s on the radio.”

  “An arms convoy was heisted in Montana. Ten soldiers were killed. There’s a move afoot to hang it on the General.”

  “Engstrom?”

  Vail nodded.

  “Shiiit. No way.”

  “How would you know? It happened last night, and you’ve been sealed up in here for two years.”

  Jordan glared at the cigarette pack but did not take one. “You are new at this.”

  “I’ve been a prosecutor for twelve years. Nothing much is new to me. I might be able to get a couple of years knocked off your sentence. You could be out of here in six, seven months, if I get you moved to a country club like Panama City while you do the rest of your time.” Jordan leaned across the table, and when Vail leaned toward him, whispered in his hoarse voice: “I ain’t got a thing to tell you.”

  “You seem pretty sure Engstrom wasn’t involved. Don’t you give a shit about him?”

  The question jarred Jordan. He leaned back in his chair and started to cross his legs, then remembered they were shackled. He thought for almost a minute, his eyes narrowing occasionally, as if he were having an argument with himself.

  “Okay, pay attention,” Jordan finally said. “I’ll say this once. One time. I may or may not know some of those who took part in it. Wouldn’t be no good to you anyways—be all hearsay and guesswork on my part. But I can tell you this, General was in no ways involved in killing American soldiers. Unless…” He stopped for a minute, his eyes narrowing as if he was deep in thought.

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless they’re casualties of war.”

  “You think the Sanctuary declared war on the U.S. last night, like the Order did back in the eighties?”

  “Now how the hell would I know that?”

  “Maybe it was because three of the murdered soldiers were black.”

  “I’ll tell you something, mister, the General ain’t no race hater. And he rides that Bible of his real hard.”

  “Does he believe in the Bible in a literal sense? You know, word for word?”

  “Pretty much so, although he does sometimes put his own spin on it.”

  “How does he spin that garbage about the Canaanites and the Jews that the Klan preaches? They quote the Bible. Does he buy that?”

  “The General’s a logical man, Mr. Vail. He knows the difference between chickenshit and chicken salad.”

  “You think that, Gary? That it’s chickenshit?”

  “I believe you can make of it what you want. That nut case, Abraham, shit, that son-bitch can make black outta white, turn night into day. He gets onto the radio and starts wilding, he’s got his Bible thumpers buck-jumpin’ and babblin’ from the Ozarks to the Canadian border. Been rattler-bit so many times he’s got a snake for a tongue and venom on the brain. I’ll tell you what, if he’s a preacher, I’m a Belgianfuckinwaffle.”

  “Who is Abraham?”

  Jordan shook his head. “Man, you are a cherry. The voice of the Patriots, man. Blind as justice and crazier than a dancing bear. He raises Cain outta Hell six times a week on about fifty radio stations, preaching damnation to the government and all who don’t ride on the back of his hay wagon.”

  “I take it you’re not a believer.”

  “He gives me the crawlers.”

  “The General supports the show.”

  “The General does what he has to. When it serves his purpose. I told you, he’s a logical man.”

  “Uh-huh. So he has no problem lying down with dogs.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You know, bank robbers, back-shooters, skinheads who go out on weekends and beat people to death because they’re niggers or fags or kikes. That your idea of justice and democracy, Gary?”

  “I told you, the General ain’t no damn racist. He believes in freedom. Believes in justice. He just wants more of it—for all of us. And he can quote you that from the Good Book ten times over.”

  “I can quote it back at him from the Constitution. Unfortunately for him, the Bible isn’t the law.”

  “It is out here.”

  “Look, this situation could get fragile very quickly. Suppose they decide to charge Engstrom and arrest him?”

  “Praise the Lord, there’ll be hell to pay.”

  “C’mon, that’s a losing battle and you know it,” Vail said, shaking his head at the thought. “Hell, nobody’s crazy enough to take on the whole United States.”

  “That ain’t how we see it. We figure the military’s gonna take us on.”

  “There’ll never be another Ruby Ridge. Or Waco. That won’t happen again.”

  Jordan laughed. “Know what I think? I think maybe you’re playing in a hornet’s nest and you think all that buzzin’ is houseflies.”

  “That from the Bible?”

  Jordan finally shook a cigarette from Vail’s pack, held it up, and stared at it for a few moments. “Brother Jordan’s Words of Wisdom. Got a light?”

  Vail lit the cigarette and Jordan dragged deeply on it, holding the smoke in his lungs for several seconds, then blowing it out slowly, watching the thin stream of gray smoke as it danced through the harsh sun streaming through the window.

  “Yeeahhh,” he sighed, closing his eyes. He sat with his legs stretched out, his head back, his eyes closed, and smoked awhile before he spoke again.

  “Racism is for the Klan, the CSA, the Posse, the Aryans. That’s their thing. The Sanctuary is mostly separatists. We want to get out from under the government. The General believes there’s a Jewish conspiracy to take over the economy, but he don’t hold that against all Jews. Me? I’d rather not have a Hebe with me on the line. Or a chocolate bar. But mostly it’s the government we’re scared of.”

  “How many are in the Sanctuary?”

  “Hell, I dunno. There’s four separate armies, that ain’t no secret. They operate pretty much on their own, except they train together and they look to the General as their spiritual leader. Maybe as many as a thousand or two in each unit plus another five hundred or so in the base unit.”

  “Four, five thousand, more or less?”

  He shrugged. “And a lotta sympathizers.”

  “And the General’s outfit is called the Sanctuary?”

  “The Sanctuary includes them all. The General calls his unit Fort Yahweh.”

  “So, a couple of thousand men are going to take on the whole United States government?”

  “They will defend themselves if necessary.”

  “Against the United States?”

  “These ain’t weekend warrior types,” he said, and looked sideways at Vail. “These are men and women who train constantly. Constantly. Focused, real focused. Zealots is what we are.” He took another drag, let it out slowly, and smiled. “There’s a word I like. Zealots. Survival-ists, guerrilla-trained in every kind of weapon you can imagine. Some was in Desert Storm,
some like me even go back as far as Vietnam and Nicaragua. Hell, we—they—could disappear up in the Cabinets or over in the Bitterroot Range. Ten years from now you’d still be hunting us down. We’ll be sniper-strikin’, hittin’ armories, robbin’ banks, taking down buildings… no rules, Mr. Vail. Guerrilla warfare. The new revolution.”

  “Terrorism.”

  “Call it whatever you want. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty. You’re gonna have the Posse Comitatus, the Covenant of the Sword down in the Ozarks, the New Christian Crusade Church, the American Patriots, the Aryan Nations—all joining in once it starts. Does the IRA in Ireland ring any bells? It’ll be kill and run. Buildings, bars, airliners, synogogues. And snakes will fall from the skies and water shalt turn to fire and trees to rocks and the earth shall open up and turn to dust and vanish into the Heavens. The American people can’t handle that kind of shit.”

  “You were in Desert Storm?”

  “Oh yeah, picked me up a piece of Arab shrapnel. An inferior bun-cha whinin’, goat-eatin’ belly crawlers. Yeah, I done my share of bleeding so that pussy, Bush, could back off just when we had ’em by the gonies, bringing everybody home so he could have a parade and win the election. All’s he did, shot himself in his own foot. Hell, we didn’t win the war, we gave it afuckinway. Bastards’ll be gassin’ us all, next thing ya know.”

  “You were an officer in the Sanctuary, weren’t you?” Vail guessed.

  “I was at Yahweh, aide to the General. But anybody who’s done time in a federal lockup is gonna be treated with a certain amount of suspect back there when they get out.”

  “They think you’ll roll over on them?”

  “Look around you. Everybody here’s doin’ the hardest time there is. Anybody in the Movement, ends up in a federal joint, does hard time here.”

  “You evaded your taxes for seven years and you assaulted a federal officer, Gary.”