CHAPTER TWENTY

Do the math,” I tell L.D.

The crumbling estate that the late Whitney Charles owned is no more than three miles from Zion Crossroads, where some sharp-eyed farmer thinks he saw some of the Purifiers. They knew where the house was, according to Randall Heil. They knew, duh, that nobody was living there at present.

The chief concedes that there’s at least an even chance that I’m right in pinpointing the whereabouts of Heil and the other Purifiers.

It doesn’t take long for L.D. to spread the word to the various state and federal folks still sucking each other’s dicks over preventing massive carnage and architectural desecration.

The chief came up here to Charlottesville by himself. He reluctantly agrees to let Cindy and me ride with him out to Whit Charles’s place. I figure we’ll have a better chance of getting close to the action if we’re in the company of the Richmond police chief.

“Don’t get used to this,” L.D. says. “It’s not like you’re my goddamn buddy or something.”

He apologizes to Cindy for the foul language.

“Jesus, L.D.,” she says, “I’m married to a journalist.”

By the time we get there, it’s a three-ring circus.

The place is just across the Louisa County line. The feds have already determined that at least one of the cars they can see from their vantage point a quarter of a mile away matches one that was part of the Purity entourage last Friday night.

The state police, ever on the cutting edge of technology, have deployed a drone to survey the property from a safe distance, and it’s been determined that a couple of guys who seem to be packing shit into a van match the descriptions of two of the Purifiers.

“We figure by now they know that their little plan has backfired,” a state cop tells me. “It looks like they’re getting ready to clear out, or at least they were.”

Yeah, if we can see them, they can see us.

But apparently they didn’t act fast enough once they discovered that their bomb didn’t go off. As far as I can see, there’s only one way out of the late Whit Charles’s place, and we’re right in the middle of it.

I don’t know if the state guy knows I’m a working journalist or not, but I’m not disabusing him. Hitching a ride with L.D. is looking like a smooth move, since the authorities have shut off all traffic a mile back on the humpbacked country road leading here.

In the aftermath of 9/11, it seems like every law-enforcement entity in the United States has been gifted with the kind of high-tech shit that gives civil libertarians nightmares. It can come in handy though. If the good guys don’t win this one, it won’t be because they don’t have enough firepower. I see all kinds of war-worthy rifles and grenade launchers being set up. There are plenty of mean-looking guys with body armor that would have stood them well in Iraq or Afghanistan. Don’t know how they got here so goddamn fast.

A little after two in the afternoon, the good guys are ready to make their move.

“Here we go,” says L.D. He directs Cindy and me to get behind one of the monster vehicles that have been rolling in here over the last hour.

Some kind of armored monstrosity is making its way across the open field facing the house, chewing up the red clay with its treads. L.D. says he thinks it belongs to the National Guard. There are a half-dozen heavily armed men jogging along behind it, using it for cover.

The chief looks like he’d like to have one of those big-boy toys for his own cops.

This thing, which looks like a tank, stops maybe halfway between us and the house.

And then the loudspeakers kick in.

“Randall Heil,” the voice booms out across the countryside, “we know you’re in there. Come out and nobody will get hurt.”

The message is repeated a couple more times. And then, having given the bad guys warning enough, the tank is ordered to move forward.

A few seconds later, we hear gunfire. We assume it came from the house, because we can see the six guys behind the armored vehicle, and I can’t argue with the subsequent claims by the feds that they were fired on first.

However it happened, the guys in the armored vests return fire with a vengeance. Having never served in the military, I never really had an appreciation of the fire-power of your basic assault rifle until a couple of rounds fired from Whit Charles’s house hit the side of the truck we were crouched behind. They sounded as if they would have ruined somebody’s day if they had hit flesh instead of metal.

I am not so eager to watch the proceedings after that, only peeking out whenever the firing ceases for a few seconds.

“If you wait to hear a shot before you duck,” L.D. advises, “you’ll be dead before you hear it.”

I think I knew that.

The fireworks go on for another ten minutes. And then another behemoth comes rolling down the hill toward the house.

By this time, we’ve learned that one of the FBI guys has been hit. They’re not sure what’s going on in the house, having gotten nothing from their demand to surrender except the proverbial hail of gunfire.

The guy on the loudspeaker again offers to let the Purifiers come out, promising no harm.

By this time, though, I can kind of figure where this is going for Purity: South.

They’ve wounded, if not killed, a federal agent. The cops don’t know how many people are holed up in the house, which is now a bit worse for wear after being used as target practice by guys with military-grade firepower. To the best of their knowledge, though, there are no women or children inside, so there is not an overload of concern about whether the Purifiers come out hands up or feet first.

In other words, it won’t look like Waco. Killing these fuckers won’t be a PR disaster for anybody.

And making an unhappy ending even more likely for them is this: They know, if they have brains, that they are in such deep shit by now that many of them will die in prison once they surrender.

So one side has the green light and the other has nothing to lose.

The lead vehicle gets even closer, and then I start hearing these loud explosions, louder than the gunfire.

“Grenade launchers,” says L.D.

And then I can see flames coming from the roof on one side of the house. Then you can see fire through one of the windows.

We keep waiting for somebody or somebodies to come out the front door, but nothing happens. Then I hear a voice over one of the radios saying something about “going around back.”

Behind Whit Charles’s house, it turns out, there’s a marshy area leading to a big creek, a tributary of the South Anna. While we were holed up behind a truck watching the frontal assault, the FBI had a few of its men loop around behind the house, wisely deducing that the place also had a back door.

We hear another burst of gunfire, now coming from farther away.

“They’re running,” I hear over the radio.

Apparently most of the Purifiers were gunned down as they tried to either make their last stand or head for the creek.

Randall Heil didn’t go down easy.

He got as far as the creek, was in the middle of it, according to the agent I talk with later.

“And then we cut him in half,” he says.

I ask if he was firing back.

“I’m pretty sure he was,” the guy says. “Or at least he was about to. He definitely was thinking about it.”

Close enough, as far as I’m concerned.

It takes another hour to patch the story together, based on what I can glean from the feds, state cops, and L.D. By the time the chief gives us a ride back to our car in Charlottesville, the sun is almost down behind the Blue Ridge, turning everything purple and gold.

Cindy says she’s starving.

I call the newsroom and tell Sarah what’s transpired. She knows some of the story already, but nobody but yours truly was within a country mile of the Purifiers’ last stand.

“When can you write it?” she asks.

I tell her that I’ll put something on the website in forty-five minutes and then send the rest later.

I sit on the concrete curb in the university parking garage beside the Honda and write something for the Internet freeloaders. Cindy has found a vending machine and brought us some Nabs and Cokes.

“Willie,” she says, “I don’t think I can make it back to Richmond without something other than goddamn crackers in my stomach.”

The tendency is to tell her, again, that she volunteered—nay, insisted—on going on this little adventure.

But, fuck it, I’m starving too.

And so I produce the first draft of this little tidbit of history for our print readers sitting at a table at the Riverside, intermittently writing and munching down on the state’s best hamburger.