'They gonna see us. I.D. my car.'
Boyd loved times like these he could show how cool he was under fire, so to speak. 'You worried about your car, huh?'
'They's people right up the block, watching. Boyd, you see 'em? They watching us.'
Even if this Jared wasn't a snitch, which could be, he sure as hell wasn't commando material. 'Fuck 'em,' Boyd said. 'We're about to raise a whole lot of hell.'
He had the RPG just about put together. He'd screwed the propellant cylinder to the back of the missile grenade and slipped it into the tube, sticking out now like a fat spear. Next, he removed the nose cap from it. Shit, he could do this in the dark drinking from a jar of shine. He pulled out the pin, the safety, and called to Jared to get ready.
Now Boyd dropped the tailgate and slipped out to the street with his rocket gun, hefted it to his shoulder, flipped the sight up and took aim. He called out to no one in particular, 'Fire in the hole!' Squeezed the trigger and that Temple of the Cool and Beautiful J.C. blew up before his eyes.
III.
Boyd got rid of the RPG crossing the Ohio River south, stuck his head and shoulders out the back end of the vehicle and flung the weapon out into the night. He told Jared to look for 275. That took them over to the airport, where he got Jared to follow the signs to long-term parking and find a spot a good ways from the terminal. 'Over there toward the fence,' Boyd said, still crouched down in the back end.
Once they were parked, Jared said, 'Now what?' sounding like all his energy had drained out of him.
Boyd didn't answer. He had one of the Chink AK-47s unwrapped and armed with a magazine. He heard in his mind the familiar words lock and load and was ready for business.
Jared said to the rearview mirror, 'What're you doing?'
Boyd could see just the top of his head above the cushion on the front seat.
'How'd you know where we was going?'
'What?'
'You heard me.' It was quiet in here, neither of them moving.
'How'd you know we's going to the federal building?'
Now Jared's voice in the dark said, 'Was your brother told me. Him and Devil.'
'You mean you heard 'em talking?'
'Uh-unh, Bowman told me and then Devil goes, 'But don't let on you know.' '
'I think you spied on 'em.'
'No sir - you can ask 'em.'
'I think you listen in on things you shouldn't, and then report it to who you work for. Is that what you are, a snitch for the feds?'
Jared had his head raised to the rearview mirror.
'Boyd, you got no reason to say that, none.'
'I saw how you acted, I'm setting up to blow out that nigger church. You didn't want no parts of it.'
'They was people around, watching us.'
Sounding like he was starting to panic again. Boyd asked himself, You want to argue with him or get 'er done?
He laid the barrel of the assault rifle on the backrest of the seat close in front of him and bam, shot Jared through the headrest of the driver's seat - the round going through the fat cushion, through Jared, through the windshield, through the rear window of the car in front of the Blazer and through its windshield - Boyd discovering this once he was outside and took a look.
From the terminal he called Devil Ellis at the Sukey Ridge church to tell him he'd arrive at the London-Corbin airport on the late shuttle. Devil was full of questions on the phone, but Boyd managed to satisfy him with, 'Yeah, I had to let Jared go. I'll tell you about it when you get me.'
Now in Devil's pickup, trailing its headlights along pitch-dark roads toward Sukey Ridge, Boyd filled him in: how he'd knocked out the nigger church - Devil letting out a Rebel yell - and then how, not taking any chances, he shot Jared, wiped down the Blazer pretty good where he'd sat, and stashed the rifles and extra RPG loads and parts along that cyclone fence there separating the lot from the airfield? They'd send one of the skins, see if he could pick 'em up.
Boyd sipped from a jar Devil kept in his truck, then looked over at him with his dark beard and black cowpuncher hat Boyd allowed, the look being the man's style, Devil's devilish, go-to-hell image.
'Jared said you told him where we's going.'
'Yeah, me and Bowman.'
Boyd took another sip of the shine. 'Even thinking he was a snitch?'
'Bowman figured Jared'd fuck up and you'd see he knew more'n he was supposed to and you'd get on him about it.'
Boyd said, 'Yeah . . . ?'
'Jared'd say it was us told him and you wouldn't believe it.'
Boyd said, 'Then what?'
'We figured you'd work on him in your way and get him to confess.'
Boyd said, 'That he's a traitorous snitch.'
'Yeah, in the pay of the govermint.'
'But he didn't tell me nothing like that.'
'You work on him?'
'I started in but, hell, I knew he'd lie to me.'
'I know what you mean - those people. So you put him down. I'd have done the same.'
Boyd didn't say anything to that. They drove through the dark in silence till Devil said, 'You know how he was always talking about the Murrah Building, saying he was there like a minute after she blew? Me and Bowman don't believe he was anywheres near it. Saw it on TV like everybody else.'
Boyd said, 'Was it you didn't trust him or you just didn't like him much?'
Devil said after a moment, 'I guess both.'
They were coming to the church now, way up there where that speck of electric light showed on the ridge. Across the front of the property, coming down to the dirt road they followed, was a pasture, a good five acres of cleared land and no road leading up. It was around the next bend where the pickup slowed to turn into the trees past the sign that said PRIVATE PROPERTY - TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT.
Boyd said, 'You watching for claymores?'
'You think you're funny,' Ellis said. 'If I believed you planted any I'd move clear to Tennessee.'
They followed switchbacks up through the trees finally to top a rise and coast into the barnlot back of the old church, not used for services since Ike was President. Boyd had bought it cheap, had it painted and turned into a dormitory for when his skinheads were here. Anybody complained it looked like a prison dorm, Boyd would tell 'em to go sleep in the barn - with a mean rat-eating owl lived there. He got out of the truck stiff, tired from riding.
Three skins watched him from the back porch where a kerosene lamp sat on top the fridge. The two fat boys were locals Boyd called the Pork brothers. The one without a shirt this cool evening, his dyed-blond hair spiked, was a boy named Dewey Crowe from Lake Okeechobee in Florida. He wore a necklace of alligator teeth along with the word HEIL tattooed on one tit and HITLER on the other, part of the Fuhrer's name in the boy's armpit.
Walking toward them Boyd said, 'What's going on?'
It was Dewey Crowe who spoke up. 'Your brother got shot.'
The words came at Boyd cold, without any note of sympathy, so he took it to mean Bowman wasn't shot any place'd kill him.
But then Dewey said, 'He's dead,' in that same flat tone of voice.
