Chapter 14
Russ had sent Knox back with a message to speed up the exfiltration as much as possible, and as he mounted the unheated stairway to the plaza, he wished he’d asked her to bring his parka.
On the other hand, showing up in nothing but his jeans and flannel shirt would make it easy for anyone to see he wasn’t armed.
Not having a convenient flag of truce, he cracked one of the glass doors and waved a white tissue. His gesture wasn’t answered with gunfire, so he slowly opened the door and stepped outside, hands raised.
“I’m Russ Van Alstyne.” He made his voice as big as possible to carry across the plaza. “If you were at the encampment, you know who I am.”
No response.
“I’m unarmed.” He slowly turned in a circle, pulled off his empty pancake holster and tossed it away.
“Can we talk?” He squinted toward the top of the crane.
He was dead sure—bad phrase—there were at least two men up there; one with the rifle and one doing the PR.
Plus, maybe one in the cab. He wondered what their getaway plan was.
It could be a murder/suicide, of course, but that didn’t seem like a strategy the militia would embrace.
Live men held for trial would generate a lot more publicity than a few more bodies.
“Glad to see you made it off the mountain, Van Alstyne.” The voice was electronically amplified. So they had come prepared to negotiate.
“Captain? Is that you?”
“We don’t have anything against you personally, Van Alstyne. We respect your years of service in the military and in law enforcement.”
“Really?” Russ pointed to the stony surface of the plaza, where Paul Terrance’s blood was turning brownish-black.
“Because the man you shot was also an officer of the law. And he wasn’t the first one.
You murdered Ranger Pierre Laduc. He protected the people and the wildlife in the Adirondacks for thirty years. ”
Silence. Somewhere nearby, cars whizzed down a street, unseen and unseeing.
“But they were Mohawks, instead of a white guy with a Dutch name, so it doesn’t count, right?”
Silence. The wind picked up, making him shiver involuntarily.
“What about the folks down there? Did you know one of them is a World War Two vet? He went ashore on Omaha Beach. Not really respecting his service, are you?”
That got a response. “I can train a dog to attack the enemy. It doesn’t make him a human being.”
“You wouldn’t trap sixty dogs in a building and blow them up. And if you did, even people who sympathized with your cause would be disgusted.” He spit for emphasis. “You have the sloppiest goddamn thinking I’ve ever seen, and I trained eighteen-year-olds fresh from boot.”
“Fine. They’re humans. Enemy humans. They’ve infiltrated our society, gained control of the levers of power, and made themselves untouchable.
We’re going to show them they can be touched, they can be pulled down from their high places, that the white Christians who founded this nation will rise up and sweep them from the face of our beloved country. ”
He definitely hadn’t ordered the second guy to stop filming.
Russ ostentatiously slow-clapped. “Wow, somebody’s been rewatching Triumph of the Will.
There’ve been twelve or fourteen violent anti-Semitic acts in the past several years.
Remind me how many inspired Christians to rise up and sweep, etcetera, etcetera? ” He cupped his hand to his ear.
He heard the crack of the rifle and the sharp shattering of stone as the bullet gouged a furrow in the plaza surface.
He managed to stay still, in part because it was over before he’d fully processed it, in part because where would he go?
He had gambled everything on being here, unarmed, coatless, defenseless.
“Okay, so I can’t just be white, be a vet, be a cop, hell, come from a family that’s been in this country since the 1600s.
I’m still not ‘pure’ enough. So lemme ask those people you’re streaming to: How do they know they’re pure enough?
How many of these white people you say you’re trying to save aren’t good enough for your standards, Captain? ”
The rifle fired again, this time on the other side. Russ could feel stone chips pinging against his jeans. “Oh, fuck you!” he yelled. “Tough guy up in a crane with a rifle. Come down here and fight me, you limp prick!”
The captain, oh, yeah, it was him, laughed. “Nice try.” He wasn’t using the megaphone now. “And I had the stream stopped after I spoke, so I’m afraid none of your noble speechifying is going to be heard by the audience on our website.”
“You gonna shoot me and turn it back on? What are all your Nazi fanboys going to think when they see me lying here?”
“I’m going to tell them it’s sad that our natural allies can be so deluded by the Jew-controlled media they make themselves our enemies. Then I’m going to make a call and blow up every Jew—”
The rifle shots this time were different; sharp, high, three clustered together in a deadly dut, dut, dut.
Russ flung himself onto the plaza surface and covered his head.
Out of the silence and the distant street sounds he heard barked orders, running boots, and suddenly the plaza was filled with blazing spotlights and noise and the flashing strobe of cop cars.
He got to his feet, slowly, arms high above his head. Two Albany cops in full tactical advanced on him, AR-15s at the ready.
“Stop, stop, stop, for Christ’s sake.” Vince Patten bustled across the plaza, looking, compared to the battle-ready uniforms around him, like someone’s uncle who sold insurance.
“He’s with me. They’re all with me.” He slapped Russ on the back, nearly knocking him over.
“That was a beautiful piece of distraction there, Van Alstyne. The sharpshooters got up to the top of the museum without any trouble.”
“I, uh, wasn’t really trying to distract him. I mean, I was, but I didn’t know…”
“Let me through, let me through!” Russ could hear Clare’s voice coming from past the mob of law enforcement gathering around the crane. At least one of them was trying to deliberately block her, because she unleashed her killer argument: “I’m a priest!”
He was still laughing when she flung herself into his arms. “Oh my God, Russ!” She pulled away and thumped his chest. “Moving IEDs wasn’t dangerous enough? You had to come up here and taunt that, that asshole fascist?!?”
Patten’s eyebrows went up.
He hugged her hard. “Is everyone okay?”
The Albany commander answered for her. “Your wife and your people got almost everyone out. That elevator idea was smart, by the way. We brought a hydraulic cutter and pithed those door handles right out, jammed locks and all.” He made a deeply satisfied gesture that made Russ think Patten was a man who liked his power tools. “Everyone left exited that way.”
“Paul Terrance?”
“They should be loading him in an ambulance right about now.”
“How did you put all this together? So fast?”
Patten gave him a look. “I realize we’re not exactly the Millers Kill Police Department, but I promise you, the five hundred men and women of the Albany force can manage an operation like this.
” He held up his hands. “I give credit to Kevin Flynn for hitting everything we needed to know real fast. Smart kid.”
“Yeah. Yeah, he is.” He looked down at Clare and caught the overwhelming pulse of gratitude that she was here, and they were safe, and now—“Do you need us for anything? Can we go home?”
“Since none of you are in any way officially here, no, I don’t need you. I’ll want statements later, but, yeah. Go home.” He raised his hand and smiled cheerfully. “And if I don’t talk to you before then, Merry Christmas!”