“Run!” someone yelled.
People started running for their cars and vans, covering their mouths.
Some ran to the opposite side of the road – anything to try to get away from the smelly mist.
Lee could hear a lot of swearing before he jumped back into the car and slammed the door shut.
Harper and his staff hid in their vehicles along with most of the media.
After the smoke settled and then began to dissipate they ventured out again.
But the television folks had no interest in the press event.
They just broke down their equipment and loaded it up, in a hurry to get away.
“What a mess,” said Lee, looking around at his co-workers in the car.
They passed around a box of Kleenex and were doing their best to wipe off their hair, faces, and exposed skin. “Where to now?”
The consensus was to head back to Salinas, find a motel, and do their best to get whatever nasty stuff was on them off as soon as possible.
Maybe it was just smoke but who knew?
They could take showers, even buy new clothes downtown if they wanted.
Lee started the car and pulled out of the lot.
As they passed the van with Harper and his staff, he could see them watching the television vans and other cars pulling out one by one.
They looked defeated and he couldn’t help feeling sorry for them.
He assumed they’d be able to identify the pilot and sic the authorities on him.
He’d probably not be up in the air again for a while.
But the damage to the campaign had been done.
“What a disaster,” he thought as he pulled out onto the highway.
* * *
It was after 9 pm and everyone else in the main office of Soldiers of Christ Ministry had gone home.
Daggart knew that it was illusory – and possibly a bit dangerous – to think of privacy in old-fashioned terms.
But even in the age of computers he stilled preferred to join the community of individuals who visited his Divine Fury website when the office was empty.
When they began showing up in emails and discussion threads as the television ministry took off, Daggart wasn’t sure what to do with them.
At first, he viewed them as simply hatemongers, vigilantes, anti-government militants or people who were simply a bit – or a lot – unhinged.
But he finally couldn’t resist joining in their conversations.
He signed his posts “Angry” and found it almost intoxicating to abandon his usual restraint behind the pseudonym.
This evening, he perused some of the more active discussion threads to see what topics were hot.
He weighed in when he felt the urge.
In one heated exchange centering on the murder of an abortion clinic doctor in Pennsylvania, killed in his kitchen by a bullet from a hunting rifle, Daggart commented:
“Why are we wasting time bemoaning this killer’s death?
Justice is ‘an eye for an eye.’
There is no doubt that he took hundreds of lives.
That is not even a question.”
Responding to an angry thread about Jews’ domination of the financial and entertainment industries,
Daggart observed, “Jews face eternal damnation.
They will ROT IN HELL.
So what if they have been skillful at making money.
Would you trade a handful of shekels for HELL?”
He waded into a discussion about unwed pregnant teenagers getting welfare benefits by saying, “What?
Sluts who open their c—ts to anyone and we pay them?
They should be punished.
Where is the SHAME?
Their pictures should be posted around their homes under the name ‘WHORE’.”
But Daggart had other work to do on the website.
He took a minute to compose himself.
With a smile, he imagined wrapping himself in a cleric’s robe and donning some kind of head gear – maybe a bishop’s miter.
That would fit the on-line persona he used that was known on the website simply as “Deacon.”
Daggart had seen that within the rants and the vitriol, like hard pebbles sitting at the bottom of a muddy stream, were people truly intent on taking action.
They were not the most bombastic.
They were the militants and he knew their acts, however criminal or reprehensible they might be, would help shape the political and religious landscape to come.
He understood the frustration that these people felt and their sense of abandonment in the face of change.
Daggart knew that he himself clung to religion as an anchor against the slide of morality and the onslaught of greed, materialism, hedonism and the cult of self.
It was not a surprise that others felt the same need.
They came to Divine Fury for reassurance and guidance.
Daggart provided both.
He saw that by redirecting their rage – sometimes only a gentle nudge was needed – he might also better advance his own agenda.
Daggart opened the special in-box and saw that three emails had arrived since the previous evening.
He dealt with each one.
Dear Deacon,
I went to the Planed Parent Hood as I said I would.
I went after lunch as I figured the sinners wood be in side for a while.
They park the cars at the end to make room for all the woman coming to have the babys killed.
So, I took my knife – it is more like a bayonet like you find in the army – and I cut all the tires. Well. Juts the ones – I mean the tires – where they wont see me.
I said a prayer for the unborn each time.
Like you said, I felt God watch me.
Each time I thought he put his hand on me.
It made my hair stand up.
I thought it was his hand on mine pushing. You know how your daddy helps you when you are little to turn a pan cake or some thing like that? It was like that. Not me. God.
So, like you said.
I will wait a week or maybe 2.
I hate to think of all the babys being killed ever day
I wait.
It would be easy to take some gas, pour it out and light it.
I think they need to feel the ‘terrible swift vengeance’ or it won’t stop the murders.
Blessings,
Roy N.
Daggart replied:
Dear Roy,
The war with the sinners is long and God’s soldiers must be patient and careful.
I know you are doing that so you can serve in his army a long time.
You truly are doing God’s work and I know He is watching over you and telling you what to do.
Continue to listen to Him.
With His Love,
Deacon
Dear Deacon,
I know now that the city has given up on the drug houses.
I have watched them on the cameras I set up and they drive by several times every night.
I know people are inside doing crack or heroin and nothing happens.
Nothing.
As I said, it is the poorest part of town and they don’t care about it or if people are killed here or our children become addicted too.
The good thing about it is they don’t care if the houses are burned down.
Two down and only one left.
I have told the children it is God’s will.
He is casting out the sinners like what he did to Sodom.
I make sure no one gets hurt but they have to go away.
I pray every day.
I think it is His will.
Why else would this be so easy and no one cares.
No one.
Thomas
Dear Thomas,
There is God’s law and man’s law.
Man’s law changes and is often imperfect.
God’s law never changes and is never wrong.
It is obedience to God’s law that matters and He will watch over you if you are acting for Him.
All things are possible if you trust in Him.
With His Love,
Deacon
Dear Deacon,
If I were to die today, I feel ready.
My life ended when the Army let my friend die and let me be injured and then threw me out.
The Army did nothing for me and the country has done nothing for me.
It is all about letting communists and homosexuals and minorities have everything and nothing for us, except take things away like our guns that are a threat or our freedom to live the way we want.
We have seen the FBI and government kill people when they are a threat – even just to live their own way according to God.
So, I don’t care what happens to me.
I will die for my country and God even though I know people will not understand it . Maybe some others will understand and will see what I see.
That the government and the people running it are pushing us too far.
It won’t stop until we FIGHT.
I live in Bliss and it is a joke.
It should be called Torture.
Because that is what is like here.
I will be in touch when I am on the way.
The Army will wish it never taught me what it did.
– S.W.
Dear S.W.,
God be with you.
With His Love,
Deacon
Chapter 15
GEN. ARTHUR WAINWRIGHT looked across the table at Joe’s Stone Crab in Miami Beach and snarled at the Terminator in his short-sleeved tropical shirt, white trousers and $200 Italian sandals.
Wainwright was wearing the same clothes he’d worn playing a mediocre round of golf at the Doral Country Club earlier in the day with two fellow overweight, retired generals – tan slacks, yellow golf shirt and loafers.
Between them sat the remains of the late lunch the threesome had been eating 15 minutes earlier – a mound of shattered orange and white stone crab claws, eviscerated baked potatoes and the brown crumbs from three pieces of key lime pie.