Chicago, Now
I had found my faith in the days since the Church of the Sacred Heart, long enough ago that the days when I didn’t believe felt as ancient as Dracula’s teeth. But it had been a long, long time since I’d been to a service. Church services didn’t do much for me.
Dallas Bader Pearson’s people were all getting ready for a service of their own. I watched their figures flit through the darkness, all headed in the same direction.
Inez and I sat in a vegan food market and café across from their compound. From this far away, and under the sick orange glow of light pollution, the compound looked like even more of a prison than in the daytime. Nothing lit the footpaths between its buildings. All we saw were a few desultory window lights and exhausted-looking silhouettes shuffling between them – all broken up by the bars of the fence that surrounded them.
The reflection of the café’s fluorescent lights framed our view. A vegan café hadn’t been my first choice of stakeout campsites, but there hadn’t been much else open at this hour and on this side of the street. Just this and a chain coffee shop. And I’d much rather spend money at a local business than a chain.
I’d expected Inez to throw a fit. Usually she thrived – positively traded – on her roughneck stereotype. She just sauntered right up to the counter and ordered a black bean quinoa wrap (with tempeh bacon) like she’d been in places like this a hundred times before. Huh. Hidden depths.
My understanding of her couldn’t take that much shaking right now. The entire time she ate her wrap, she looked at me, playfully daring me to say something.
I didn’t take the bait. Some mysteries better left unsolved, et cetera.
I picked up my headset, slipped it over my hair, and levered the mic into place.
“Rachel, go,” I said.
“Finally,” Rachel’s voice answered.
“Hey,” Inez said. “We’re not staying for dessert?”
“You and sugar? Right before an operation?”
“Exactly. Me and sugar – right before an operation.”
I wasn’t being picky about vegan food when I hadn’t ordered. Some of the rage and nausea the earlier part of the day had stirred up were still swilling around inside me. I knew it would only get worse inside Pearson’s compound. I was doing, I thought, a good job of hiding my anxiety from Inez. The last thing I needed when we finally got in was to be so sick with anger that I felt like throwing up more than I did fighting.
Outside, the skyline turned a brighter, sicklier shade of orange. Then violet. Half a second later, the first detonation rattled the cafe’s windows.
The fluorescent lights’ reflection quavered. The barista and cook at work behind the counter flinched.
“Order dessert if you like,” I told Inez, gesturing to the counter.
The second detonation, even closer and louder than the first, rattled in my ribs. Inez pursed her lips. She was seriously considering it.
“Only if you split it with me,” she countered.
“We’d like that pan of peanut-butter-chocolate bars in your front cooler,” I told the startled cook. “The whole thing.” The sky outside turned azure. The flash was followed by the sharp report of a third explosion. “We’ll be back to pick it up.”
I tucked a twenty underneath Inez’s plate. Always tip well, kids.
The café’s staff had been plenty helpful, too. They’d told us all kinds of things they’d seen at Pearson’s compound. We wouldn’t have been able to put the final touches on our plan without their help.
Inez and I stepped outside just in time for the next explosion. The sound popped in my lungs. A brilliant bright blue-and-violet firework detonated over the suburban skyline. Azure sparks sleeted down upon the roofs of distant houses, vanishing just before they would have touched. The colors made the place look almost pretty.
The cold bit into me, sharp as thorns. I immediately cupped my hands together, blew into them. Inez, of course, didn’t look bothered at all.
The next firework was an elaborate one. A crimson sphere of sparks blasted outward from the center of the detonation, framing a blue diamond. Figured Rachel would find some way to work in her diamond motif. She could be a show-off. Rachel’s favorite explosives were the diamond-shaped grenades she always carried with her. But, like any good incendiaries expert, she had more than one trick up her costume’s sleeves.
She had taken up a position on a warehouse rooftop five blocks away. The fireworks were close enough to the compound to daze Pearson’s people, but far enough away to look like they had nothing to do with them. There should have been a Chicago Bears playoff game finishing up around then, and, though the Bears had been losing the last time I’d checked the radio, I doubted Pearson knew that.
With a show like this, Rachel would bring the police down on her in minutes. But a couple minutes of distraction was all Inez and I would need.
For a few glorious seconds, the next firework’s light even overwhelmed the city’s light pollution. We could see the shape of the suburban skyline, the low-altitude gray clouds overhead. This wasn’t the busiest street, but it still had some foot traffic. People all around us were stopping to stare. The gate guards by Pearson’s compound were watching too.
Inez and I kept our eyes down. We would need our night vision. The compound’s guards, though, were dazzled. They stared directly at the fireworks.
These weren’t hardened paramilitaries. If they’d had any training or experience, they would have known to protect their night vision right away. They were civilians, dressed up by Pearson, pretending to be enforcers. It might seem like that would make this job easier. On the contrary – it made things much more difficult. If they spotted us now I felt it was incumbent on me to avoid hurting them. Going full-out on them would have been just as cruel, and unsportsmanlike, as punching a child. They just weren’t on our level. Worse, they were most likely just as much Pearson’s victims as anyone else inside.
Inez and I strolled along the side of the compound. Heavy black steel fencing separated the compound yard from the street.
“Fox and spider,” I said. “You’re up.”
White Fox had recruited Black Widow into her part of the plan with the prospect of some pleasantly cathartic overacting. I’ve always suspected that a drama nerd lurks inside every spy’s or costumed super hero’s heart. A good spy plays a lot of roles.
On cue, a cacophony of car horns split the air, followed by a tremendous metallic crunch.
I could not see the collision from here. We’d staged the crash to happen near the compound’s main entrance, around the corner from Inez and me. The chilly night carried the sound well. A moment after the crash, we heard a car door slam shut.
White Fox’s voice was loud enough to cross the distance. Black Widow’s joined her only a few seconds later, doing her best impression of aghast and shocked.41 Between the two, Black Widow was better at cursing. Lot of words that, when I was younger, I would have covered with ampersands and asterisks.
White Fox was trying very hard to sound like an aggrieved American. “Why didn’t you watch where you were going, you… you cow!”
“I couldn’t see with all those fireworks! You pulled out of that parking spot like someone lit your butt on fire!”
Since the crash blocked the compound’s main entryway, Pearson’s guards couldn’t ignore it. The guards closest to Inez’s and my side of the fence started to jog toward the commotion. It was easy to pick out the guards. They, men and women both, were distinguished from Pearson’s other followers by their (sometimes-ill-fitting) brown coveralls. A uniform that attempted to not look too threatening, but a uniform nonetheless.
The trick here had always been getting in without arousing Pearson’s suspicions. I didn’t need to know Pearson personally to know he was paranoid. He’d come to this place, with its prebuilt fencing and prison-like layout, for a reason. If we used conventional diversion tactics, like a power outage, he’d immediately assume the whole thing was about him anyway. His whole compound had turtled up like he expected the hammer of the US government to come down at any moment.
The wages of megalomania were a sense that everything in the world revolved around you. It must have been an exhausting way to live. But it meant we had to step extremely carefully. If he locked down his compound, we were never going to be able to finish our job without hurting somebody.
Inez and I walked as far as a used vinyl record store. It was closed for the night, so we wouldn’t be silhouetted by lights behind us. Then we crossed the street. The fence’s iron bars looked a lot thicker up close. Climbing over them would take too long, and leave us visible against the skyline. As usual in this business, the best way around an obstacle was through it.
Inez grabbed the bars and pulled. With a harsh cracking sound – coinciding with a firework blast – the bars snapped loose just above the ground. Inez bent both bars inward and stepped back, like she was holding a door open for me.
“After you, sugar,” she said, all cherubic politeness.
I wouldn’t trade my abilities for anything, but sometimes I do really envy super-strength.
I double-checked to make sure none of the guards had noticed. They were still too preoccupied with the car crash, or razzle-dazzled by the fireworks. I hustled through the gap. Inez followed, bending the bars back into place.
The compound’s lawns had once been meticulously cared for. There were artfully placed shrubs, several empty cement blocks that – in that newspaper photo – had once supported a flower garden. Even before winter had settled in, the place had gone to seed. I felt the crack of dead tall grass under the snow. Half of the shrubs were poorly trimmed. The other half were dead. Not a good sign. From all accounts, Pearson’s church had plenty of money for upkeep. He had probably forbidden his followers from coming out to work on it. That would reduce the amount of time they had to look at the outside world.
The café staff had said the compound had always been buttoned down tight, but that things had gotten worse after the exposé. Dallas Bader Pearson ran his compound like a military camp. Regular guard rotations, watchers up at all hours, and less and less contact with the outside world. Guards were always posted in pairs. When Inez and I had watched, we’d never seen any of the cultists travel about except in pairs. Even going between buildings in their own compound, Pearson’s people always had a partner. Traveling in pairs would make it that much harder for dissenters to escape. The guards at the gate were watching inward as much as outward.
Pearson was terrified of people leaving him. And he had enough loyal followers to play along with him. Also not a good sign. Even if Rose and Joseph wanted to leave, it looked more and more like we would have our hands full just getting them out of here.
Somewhere in the distance, White Fox and Black Widow were still burying themselves in the part. White Fox shouted, “Your car has enough dents and scratches that you can’t see it! Look at what you did to mine!”
The car was nothing special, a rental Civic.42 But somehow Black Widow sounded genuinely aggrieved. “The only thing wrong with my car is that it stopped before it flattened you!”
By habit, I checked and double-checked my sidearms. I had two with me. The first: a silenced Beretta 92FS. I wasn’t planning on shooting anybody, but you never knew. I never felt safe without, at the very least, a loaded 9mm. The second was a grappling hook pistol with a three-pronged anchor. One of many tools that’s less useful in real life than it is in movies and comic books, but my knack for making lucky shots and strikes balances things in my favor.
Inez carried no weapons, but that didn’t mean she was unarmed. I’d seen her punches shatter stone pillars.
We darted through the shadows, past a route I’d seen Pearson’s guards walk. I stepped lightly across the snow. I hated to leave footprints, but there were plenty of others all around us, and ours shouldn’t have looked remarkable. We made it as far as one of the two wooden storage sheds at the edge of the compound’s central, open lot. We hunched against the wall. We were right next door to one of the buildings Pearson was using as a dormitory. A pair of walkers had just left from the main doors, and were coming around the side of the building facing us. We had to wait for them to pass.
“Funny time to ask,” Inez said, “but are you sure I’m the right person to come along on this part of the job?”
“‘Funny time to ask’ is right, lady.”
Inez said, “I was hoping we’d be doing a bit more punching than sneaking around.” She pulled her hat up, scratched her head. “Thought for sure you’d think I was too bullheaded for this part.”
I’d been afraid of her asking just this question, and had been rehearsing lies to answer her. Only now my mind was buzzing too much to remember any of them.
So. The truth. “You absolutely are bullheaded,” I said. “That’s why you’re going to keep me level.”
The figures turned the corner. I checked around for more, and stood before Inez could answer.
Infiltration jobs gave me a chance to play with toys in my arsenal that, on most other jobs, went neglected. Several ovoid cameras dangled from my belt. Each of them was black, about the size of a grape. They were shaped like eggs so that, when they landed, the wide-angle cameras on each end wouldn’t end up facing straight up or down. They were Wakandan technology, a gift from Shoon’kwa. They were just trinkets to her. They were also some of the most smartly designed surveillance tech I had ever seen. Multispectral imaging, from infrared to ultraviolet, with built-in facial and threat recognition. When they were no longer needed, they could vaporize themselves with a tiny pop and a flash of light.
I threw two around the side of the next building, each in different directions.
“Getting your camera feeds,” Rachel’s voice said in my ear, a moment later.
Somewhere in the farther distance, I heard police sirens. They were coming after that firework display. “You gonna get yourself somewhere safe?” I asked.
“Darling.” I couldn’t tell if she was just playing offended, or genuinely was. “I’m already in our van, half a mile away. Like I couldn’t set timer fuses on a handful of fireworks.”
Inez set a hand on my shoulder. “You all right? You’ve been worrywarting all over.”
Rather than answer, I grabbed one of three slender canister-shaped smoke grenades off my belt clip.
Rachel had located her fireworks display very carefully. We were downwind. The smoke was starting to reach the compound. Great big gray clouds of it scudded overhead. An extra cloud or two would not look out of place. Even the smell of smoke would blend in.
With a careful underhand toss, I rolled the smoke grenade against the side of the dormitory building. Waited to hear the hiss. Then I stepped out around the shed, grappling hook pistol raised.
There’s little in life quite so satisfying as a grappling hook pistol. From the solid, wrenching kick to my wrist, to the clink at the end. They need perfect aim, a perfect eye for the distances involved, and some just plain lucky bouncing to catch on the right obstacle. I had the aim and the eye for distance. As for the rest – I gave the rope a good tug, and the hook caught just right on the lip of the building’s roof.
There was no way Inez and I could amble through the center of the compound and not get caught. There were just too many people. Pearson didn’t need complex security when he had hundreds of pairs of eyeballs.
So Inez and I were going to take a route nobody trafficked: the rooftops.
I was already halfway up the building’s brick wall before the smoke grenade even stopped hissing. Inez was right behind me. I couldn’t see her in the smoke, but I felt her weight on the cable.
We made it just in time. As soon as my boot touched the rough surface of the roof, the dormitory’s door opened. I looked down. Another pair of cultists had stepped out. These ones were holding hands, and had a six-to-seven year-old child trailing after them.
The kid plainly wanted to stop and stare at the fireworks, but one of the adults yanked her along. Spoilsports.
When he reached our smoke, the adult dragging the kid along muttered something that he shouldn’t have said in hearing range of a child. They didn’t stop. The kid coughed plaintively as she was pulled through the smoke, but the adults were on a mission. One of them, a woman, said, “Come on! Dad will know if we’re late.”
One thing you learn sneaking around: people rarely, if ever, look up. Inez and I got clear of the edge of the building as quick as we could, though. Just in case.
“‘Dad?’” Inez mouthed.
I shrugged. Cults like Pearson’s operated on myths of paternalism, father figures. It was a sign of how far these people had fallen into their own little world that they could call him that without realizing how weird that was.
From up here, we had a clear view of the whole compound. The place was shaped like a bracket. Dormitory buildings on each side. Church and reception hall at the center. And, at the “corners,” ancillary buildings that used to hold classrooms. Damned if I knew what they had now. Food storage, maybe. Pearson’s people so rarely left their compound that they had to be keeping the necessities of life somewhere.
The café staff had told Inez and me that, more than once, as they were closing up, they’d seen unmarked trucks pull into the compound’s central lot. Arms, I was willing to bet. And, while none of the guards I’d seen were packing, I didn’t doubt that the gatehouse was loaded with weapons, or that the guards could arm themselves with a minute’s notice.
Cults like Pearson’s get stars in their eyes when they think of Waco and the Branch Davidians. Nothing would justify their faith and fervor more than an apocalyptic firefight with the US government. In truth, the US government was probably barely aware of their existence.43 But if Pearson’s people believed they were being persecuted and hunted, Pearson would be able to keep them close. Cults like his thrived on a sense of persecution, on having an enemy.
The exposé and sexual harassment allegations would have only made it easier for Pearson to convince his followers that the rest of the world was out to get them.
I was starting to understand why Rebecca Munoz had been so intent on getting her twins out of there. The place was a powder keg.
I carefully rewound the grappling hook pistol44, and studied the compound. I was surprised that Pearson hadn’t turned one of these buildings into his own personal residence. His type usually liked to live large, no matter the conditions his followers lived in. By all accounts, after the exposé, he never left the compound. He had to have quarters somewhere.
In the back of my head, I was already planning an assassination mission.
Rachel’s firework show ended with one big, farewell blast. A diamond-shaped burst of sparks showered the sky, lasting as long as the echo rolled around the horizon. Then we were left with curling clouds of acrid smoke and the distant wail of sirens. And a long, hard job ahead.