Glenn Beck - The Eye of Moloch

“But I don’t know.”

“Speak another lie,” Pierce snapped, “and see what it gets you.”

“She’s no threat to you,” Ben Church said. “She never was. Molly Ross is no leader; her mother was a leader, but she’s not. She’s young and weak, now she’s blinded, and she’s got no idea what to do next. It was all we could manage just trying to stay a step ahead of that army they’d sent after us. We were just trying to stay alive, that’s what it got down to in the end. You don’t need to kill her. She’s no threat to you at all.”

“I’ll ask you once again,” Pierce said, and he gave a nod to the men who’d been in charge of the prisoner before. “Where is Molly Ross?”

“I don’t know.” It was obvious that he could hear the heavy footsteps approaching but he kept on pleading as the men came for him. “She wouldn’t tell any of us where we were going, none of us knew, not even the ones she trusted more than me—”

The words were cut off sharply by a bare-knuckled blow to his rib cage. His knees gave out and he would have fallen but a second man held him up from behind.

It went on that way for a time, the same question asked, the wrong answer given, and the punishment applied. This unappreciated art of controlled savagery can take years to properly refine. Considerable skill is involved in beating a man to the very edge of his endurance and yet keeping him conscious all the while so the pain can do its patient work.

“We were shown an image of the place she’s run to,” Pierce said. “A large house with many outbuildings, acreage fenced for livestock. It must be somewhere less than a day’s drive from the nearest road they could have reached on foot. That much we know. Now where is she?”

Ben Church’s head lolled so loosely to the side it nearly came to rest on his shoulder. He was bleeding freely from the mouth and when he spoke next the words were largely drowned in fluid and slur. A sharp twist of his arm snapped him bolt upright and forced him alert enough to say it again, but clearly. “I don’t know.”

George Pierce approached the wretched man, whose handlers held him straight in the event that their leader might wish to strike him personally.

“Very well, then,” Pierce said quietly. “We’ll take you at your word.”

Not much of Ben Church’s face retained the capacity for expression, but still, he managed to look bewildered.

“The last we saw,” Pierce continued, “she was headin’ north up the foothills out there. If I was you I’d hurry up and take off that same way. Maybe you can catch up to them.”

“I can go?” Church whispered.

“I’ve got no use here for a man like you. Go on, now, before I change my mind. A couple of you men”—he pointed them out—“you see Mr. Church safe out the door and get him walking off in the right direction.”

When they’d left, with Ben Church half dragged between his escorts, Pierce walked over to the long canvas bag on the table, unzipped the length of it, and took out the long rifle that had been replaced there.

“Now if you fellows will accompany me to the portico, I want to show you something,” Pierce said, as he opened the bolt, pulled a box of ammunition from the bag, and began pressing cartridges into the well. “That underhanded rat bastard Thom Hollis is about to claim the first of many innocent victims on his nationwide rampage.”

The men filed behind him as he walked through his office and out onto the balcony beyond. His crew had worked around the clock and the damage from the fire was mostly erased already. Some valuables had been lost, but nothing irreplaceable.

On the other hand, as he’d told them, so much had been gained. From this high vantage point he could see the extent of the bounty of arms and supplies that his new alliance had already rendered. It had taken years to accumulate the few advanced weapons they’d expended in an hour at Gannett Peak, and many dealings with characters every bit as unsavory as Warren Landers.

But now, arrayed there before him was an arsenal he wouldn’t have dared to dream of holding only a week before. Stacks of crated Stinger missiles, factory-built RPGs, cases of advanced explosives and high-tech detonators, a truckload of untraceable guns and banned ammo—all that, and a free pass for under-the-radar transport to any target, any city, any time. Tomorrow, at long last, was when it all would begin. The possibilities might boggle the mind of a general less prepared for action.

But George Pierce had spent his life imagining such power at his command, dreaming of the glorious ends and only lacking the means to reach them. And here, from the midst of failure, those means had fallen right into his hands. The old saw was true: when God closes a door, somewhere else he opens up a window.

Down below, about fifty yards distant, the men had set him loose and Ben Church was stumbling and limping his way toward the far-off woods.

“Stop me if you’ve heard this story before, boys,” Pierce said. “When I was a little kid, just knee-high to a duck, my daddy introduced me to the man who killed John Kennedy. Now a couple of people shot him, understand, I’m talking about the man who killed him. He was a Frenchie, his name was Lucien Sarti, they call him the badge-man in that one old picture of the grassy knoll.

“But let’s consider, just for grins, that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone. In ’79 even the dopes in the U.S. Congress had to admit that there had to be another shooter, but let’s just say that he acted alone. Now what’s the best reason you know of that would cause you to disbelieve that?”

“Three good shots in seven seconds,” a nearby man offered. “One man couldna’ fired that fast and hit what he aimed for, not unless he was a whole lot better with a gun than Oswald ever was.”

“That’s what they say, isn’t it?” Pierce asked. “All those damned conspiracy theorists. Well, sir, I’m here to tell you those skeptics are right about a lot, but they’re wrong about that.” Ben Church had picked up his pace somewhat, having adjusted his stride to accommodate his injuries. “The range is about right now, though he’s moving a little slower than a top-down limousine. I’ve got me a better rifle here than Oswald had, but then I’m no Marine sharpshooter, either, so I’d say we’re even enough. Let’s give it a whirl.”

Pierce worked the bolt twice to eject two cartridges and leave three, and to check the action—it was smooth as butter. “The first shot was a miss,” he said. “Whoever’s got a second hand on their watch, when you hear that shot that’s when you start the time.” He brought the stock to his shoulder and the scope near his eye. “Number two’s what they call the magic bullet. I’ve gotta put it clean through his neck or it don’t count. And the third, that’s the money shot.”

George Pierce took in a deep breath and held it, sighted down, and squeezed the trigger.

At the first loud report the fleeing man nearly fell as he reacted, though the bullet missed intentionally wide. He’d no sooner straightened up when the second shot struck him just below the base of his skull, and his hands clutched at his throat as though giving a sign that he was choking. He took a faltering step, and then another. Almost simultaneous with the crack of the final shot, the top of his skull exploded in a pink spray of blood and tissue, what remained of his head jerked back and to the left, and he folded like a rag doll to the ground.

The timekeeper called it at 6.5 seconds and with that the hoots and loud applause of the men nearly raised the rafters. Pierce let them go on for a while before quieting them with a raised hand, and then he motioned Olin Simmons to step forward, close to him, and passed him the empty rifle.