John Godey - The Snake

The operation, in a different form, had already been drilled meticulously for the past three days. At its inception, without prior knowledge of the actual hiding place of the black mamba, Operation Pillar of Fire had been a scattershot affair, in which more than twenty-five of the most promising wild areas of the park were to be set on fire, in the hope that the snake would be driven from cover. It was to have involved almost two hundred Puries.

Although he had given his sanction to the plan, and authorized intensive training of personnel, the Reverend Milanese had been aware-, of its quixotic, hit-and-miss nature, and might never have allowed it to become operational. But when Graham Black had pinpointed on a Parks Department map the precise location of the snake, everything changed. Immediately, eight of the original squads were activated as diversionary units, and a ninth formed around a nucleus of Christ's Cohorts.

Operation Pillar of Fire was under the overall command of its architect and field general, Buckley (Buck) Pell, a former Marine Corps sergeant and veteran of the fighting in Southeast Asia. After his expulsion from the Corps with a less-than-honourable discharge for, in the words of his commanding officer, "undue savagery," Buck Pell had undergone a sea change, repented of his massively godless past, and joined the Church of the Purification. He became one of the organizers and leaders of Christ's Cohorts.

Buck Pell had trained his squads to concert pitch, and their performance was exemplary. Each squad, A to H, arrived at its target area no later than five minutes past midnight. They proceeded without delay to saturate the ground, the bushes, and the lower branches of trees with gasoline. The leader of the squad, meanwhile, had laid a trailer, a ten foot length of fast-burning fuse leading outward from the target area.

With the exception of the leader, the squad then withdrew approximately fifty feet from the critical area. At exactly 12:15, the leader and each of the other leaders of squads A to H-lit the end of the trailer fuse.

Although there had been extensive safety drills, a few minor accidents occurred, mostly when squad members stumbled on rough ground or collided with each other in the darkness. There was one serious incident. It involved a Purie girl whose clothing, carelessly wetted by gasoline, had caught fire. Although the press was later to speak of her as becoming "a human torch," in the event she had been quickly rescued by her companions, who rolled her in a blanket and extinguished the flames. She suffered only minor burns.

After they piled out of the cab, the driver yelled, "Hey, who's gonna pay?" and Eastman knew that he was elected. Partially because he was an honest cop, but mostly because he was the only one left. Converse had taken off like a shot, with Holly right behind him.

He yelled after Converse, knowing that he wouldn't pay any heed, even supposing he could hear him over the racket of sirens and bells and hooters. He tossed some bills into the cabbie's lap and started running.

But he knew he would never catch up.

Twenty years ago, maybe, but not now. Still, he ran, favouring his bad knee.

The street intersections were a mess. There were cops and squad cars at every comer, frantically trying to shunt passenger cars off Central Park West and into the side streets. To Eastman's experienced eye, it looked hopeless. All over the park, orange flames were shooting up, enveloped in thick black smoke boiling upward to the soiled sky.

He tried to keep Converse's angular running figure in sight, but it was already becoming complicated. From nowhere, with their infallible talent for smelling out trouble, people were pouring onto the scene of the disaster, eternally hopeful of a cleansing tragedy that would reinforce their doting belief in the surpassing wickedness of their city.

The two cars holding the ten men comprising squad S pulled off the East Drive at the point where it intersected with the Police Department connecting road to the West Drive. The squad members piled out of the cars, and formed on Buck Pell. The cars drove off at once.

Buck Pell gave a hand signal, and began to run. The squad followed his long-legged stride on the double, awkward with their burden of gasoline drums, shovels, axes. Buck Pell led them quickly into brush, where they were hidden from the road. They stopped only once in response to a hand signal. Crouching low to the ground, Buck Pell shone a tiny flashlight on the map Graham Black had marked for the Reverend Milanese, studied it briefly and ran on again. He led the squad through heavy brush to the landmark rock that overlooked the hollow where Graham Black had been bitten. He pointed down into the hollow, and in a whisper warned his men to be on the alert, to move slowly, to check out exactly where their foot was going to land, to make sure they didn't spill any of the gasoline on their clothing.

He led the way into the hollow, carrying one of the gasoline drums himself.

As he ran, Converse began to attract followers, people who, seeing someone run, were sure he had inside information and would lead them to the scene of action. But they dropped off after a block or two, either because they lacked stamina, or were diverted by something else, or simply because he was taking too long to get someplace.

But Holly wasn't giving up. By now he recognized the sound of her footsteps, smooth and regular, and although she didn't seem able to catch up with him, she was holding her own. He felt a surge of possessive pride-beautiful girl, beguiling smiles, and a good runner, too! But he didn't slow up for her. He pounded on, awkward but tireless. He had always been able to run, from boyhood on, it was his one athletic skill. He was almost unaware of the clamour of police cars and fire engines roaring by, and of the flame and smoke that kept heaving upward all over the park.

When he turned his head for a glance at Holly, he was surprised to see Eastman behind her, head down, running doggedly. He felt sorry for Eastman, he was too old and heavy for the pace. But he couldn't wait for him. The Boys Gate was just a few hundred yards away now. When he looked behind him again, Eastman was still well back, but Holly was no longer in sight. He felt a pang of regret, followed at once by a sense of relief. He wouldn't have to worry about her now, he could concentrate a hundred percent on trying to catch the black mamba before it could be destroyed by a pack of maniacs.

After he had emptied his own gasoline drum, Buck Pell supervised the activities of the members of squad S, keeping a sharp eye on their movements. A few of his troops were gagging from the concentrated stink of the gasoline in the still air, and he grinned. So far as he was concerned, gasoline smelled beautiful, and what it did was even better.

When he had first broached Operation Pillar of Fire, a few people had protested that green vegetation wouldn't bum. It was a common fallacy, and nobody knew it better than he did. Every time he had torched a hootch in Nam, all the green stuff in the neighbourhood went up too, a nice little bonus of defoliation. The reason was that gasoline made the hottest of all fires, and the heat would almost immediately parch out the foliage around it, and the green stuff wasn't green anymore and it would burn like tinder. Look at the way the diversionary fires were blazing all over the park-that was green stuff, and it was burning real good.

When the gasoline drums bad been emptied, Buck Pell chased his squad all the way back to the big rock. He would have liked to push them even further, he had that much respect for the range of gasoline fire, but then they wouldn't be able to see much. Once they were on their way he laid his trailer fuse. It would have been fun to use twisted toilet paper-he had once set a whole village on fire with a toilet paper trailer-but timing was important and toilet paper wasn't all that dependable.