CHAPTER 25

SATURDAY MORNING, A BREEZE blew off Shell Creek and across the compound, rustling the cottonwood leaves above Hansen’s head.  He sat at a rough-hewn table with his cup of tea, his Bible, and his Triple Combination containing the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price.  A yellow legal pad lay next to the books.

Hansen loved the compound.  He had personally and carefully overseen the construction of every building within the fenced perimeter, first drawing detailed plans in spiral notebooks.  In recent years he had transferred all those plans to computer files.  Every electrical and water line, every architectural rendering of every building, the location of every tree and shrub was depicted in the files which he fetched from the off-site computers via microwave and printed out on a large-format printer.  Often he would spend hours going through the printouts, penciling in changes and additions which he passed on to construction workers and grounds keepers to implement.

Today as he inspected the compound, he wondered how long it would stand.  The last thing he wanted was to oversee its destruction.  In fact, his hesitancy to move to South America was due in large part to his inability to consider leaving the compound behind.  But, of course, there was no way he could let it fall into the hands of federal agents—or any gentiles for that matter.  And he sensed that day drawing near.

Recently, he had begun to feel closed-in.  The ultimate insult was the discovery of the new antenna on his Medicine Wheel tower.  How stupid do my enemies think I am?  How little they understood his attention to detail.  He had spotted the antenna the first time he went to the cabin.

Of course, Bill Campbell had not noticed the antenna.  Not only that, Hansen suspected that it had been placed there on Campbell’s watch.  But what would account for such carelessness on Campbell’s part?  What distraction had softened him?  Hansen wondered if Melissa had gotten to Bill.  Possible.  Bill had never been able to conceal his feelings for Melissa.  That was why she was still alive, a reality that enraged the Prophet.  Bill had been unable to kill her.  He left her alive.  Now, Hansen supposed, she had come back to haunt him.

It made little difference.  Campbell would follow Hansen to South America.  In spite of his flaws, Campbell was still Hansen’s strongest player.

In the meantime, however, the Prophet realized it was time to prepare the church for instant flight. He gathered his notebook, books, and cup and walked to his office.

Once there, he carefully returned the books to their rightful places.  On the back wall of the office, he unlocked a door to a small room.  Inside, on a long table against the far wall, sat a two-line telephone and several pieces of electronic equipment.  The Prophet pulled up a chair and picked up a cell phone from the table.  He dialed a number.  On the table, an answering machine picked up, and a message—in his own voice–said, “Dial the access code.”  He punched in a seven-digit number, and a yellow light ignited in a panel on a black box on the table.

The light meant that the box was “armed.”  If he or anyone else dialed a second phone number within thirty minutes, a red light on the box would light.  The Prophet dialed the second number and smiled when the red light glowed.

Hansen had thought and rethought this security arrangement.  It seemed sufficient.  The advantage to this simple system was that he could—from almost anywhere on the face of the earth—light the red bulb on the box.

Now he unlocked another box on the same table, fed a cable through a hole in its side, and jacked the cable into the back of the first box.  At that moment, he possessed the ability to destroy the compound with two phone calls.  When he lit the red light, a signal would detonate more than fifty ammonium-nitrate bombs with a TNT equivalency greater than what Timothy McVeigh used on the Murrah Federal Building.

One other plan was forming in his mind.  Before he left for South America, he would, of necessity, destroy the compound.  But he now realized he must use that opportunity to purify the membership.  Not everyone would go to the new location.  When the time came, his wives, children, and selected others would be shuttled safely outside the compound and sent to South America.  He would send the rest to the celestial kingdom.  To his surviving clan, he would blame the explosion on either the ATF or a rival group.  Of course, if he were backed into a corner he would send everyone beyond the veil.

He left the room, locked the door, and headed to the temple to sanctify himself for his trip to Jackson and the work he had to do there.

***

Melissa walked numbly through the Medicine Wheel cabin. She poured herself a cup of coffee and walked out onto the porch.  She looked up at the antennas on the tower.  She looked out across the meadow to the crest of Medicine Wheel Mountain.  The air was warmer and sweeter than she ever remembered it to be.  A chipmunk stood on tiny hind legs and regarded her expectantly.

“I have nothing for you, little man,” she said.

She had come to the Medicine Wheel cabin before noon that morning—Saturday morning.  Campbell had been surprised to see her, but he had tried to conceal that.  She had suggested playing the game he liked to play with the handcuffs.  But this time it did not take him where he thought it would.  This time she had cuffed both his hands and feet to the bedposts.

The chipmunk, apparently impatient, scurried off.  Melissa finished her coffee, stood up, and drew her eyes along the mountain ridge.  Wildflowers danced in the breeze and little animals scurried among the grasses and sedges.  A hawk seemed paused in flight, doubtless focusing on some potential prey.  She heard a helicopter in the valley ten miles away, the sound of its rotors carrying clearly through the mountain air.  She looked at the Big Horn Mountains for the last time and went into the cabin.

She sat down at the table and opened a notebook. She refused to look at the thing in the bed.  She took out a pen and wrote a note to Monster.  When she finished it she folded it and paper-clipped it to a letter addressed to her mother.  Then she picked up the 25-caliber pistol on the table.