In his new world order, the ills of society were all caused by those good old standbys: the blacks, the Jews and the fags. On top of that he threw in wetbacks sneaking over the border to steal jobs, and just about anyone who spoke a foreign language. Not surprisingly, it worked like a charm.
There wasn't a single black family in Arkham, nor a Hispanic one. If there were any gays they weren't talking, and the nearest synagogue was three hundred miles away. DeJean's original screed sheet, The Eagle's Voice, had secret subscriptions from about a hundred people in the area, and DeJean, no slouch, was an early user of the Internet. His Web site drew in even more subscriptions.
Within a year after 9/11, subscriptions to the renamed Eagle of Truth had jumped to more than ten thousand, giving the sixty-six-year-old DeJean a comfortable enough living and enough funds to start bringing the old Boy Scout camp back to life.
By 2003 DeJean was having regular rallies at the old camp, drawing people from all over Maine. By 2006 he was having three summer sessions a year, with people coming to the camp from all over the country.
By 2008 DeJean had recruited twenty-three full-time "Patriots," none over the age of thirty. Several of them were ex-military and had done tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Four others had done time in various penal facilities, and each and every one of them enthusiastically shared DeJean's hatred of just about every minority you could name.
There had been very little in the news cycle about militia groups for some time, the Oklahoma City bombing having been trumped by the destruction of the World Trade Center. Ruby Ridge was a distant memory, and the Branch Davidians an embarrassing stain on the reputations of both the ATF and the FBI. America had a new enemy now, and Al-Qaeda and the Taliban were stealing DeJean's thunder. As the news media shifted their focus to other stories, subscriptions, income and interest began to drift away.
Senator Sinclair's strident warnings about the enemy within and the potential threat of domestic terrorism helped somewhat, especially with young Muslims sneaking off to Pakistan on spring break to be all that they could be for Osama, and blanket bombs on flights to Detroit, but it wasn't enough. The sudden appearance of Billy Tritt and his two suitcases at the Eagle's Nest, as it was now called, was a godsend.
It was also a bit of an anticlimax. As Tritt approached the camp entrance along the dusty, aptly named Eagle Road, he saw that DeJean had never bothered to take down the rustic Camp O-Pem-I-Gon wooden archway over the entrance, simply replacing the Boy Scout fleurde-lis in the center with a red, black and yellow plywood rendition of his screaming eagle and swastika symbol.
Security consisted of an overweight and pimple-faced man in his late twenties dozing on a stump with a cigarette drooping out of the corner of his mouth. He was wearing jeans and a down coat, which bore the screaming eagle logo. He had what appeared to be a Kalashnikov AK-47 across his lap, but as Tritt pulled the truck to a stop and the pimple-faced idiot stood up, he saw that it was a.22-caliber German knockoff. In Pimple Face's big hands it looked like a toy, which was, effectively, what it was.
"Outa the truck," said Pimple Face, gesturing with the rifle, stepping forward. He was wearing scuffed high-tops. Some uniform. Tritt could see the long lever safety was blocking the breech. It would take the oafish young man a good second to thumb it off and then charge the weapon by pulling back the bolt.
"Put it away," said Tritt, pulling the big Desert Eagle out from under his Windbreaker.
Pimple Face stared at the gleaming handgun and fumbled with the safety on the baby AK. From the driver's seat, Tritt shot him in the foot, blowing off the front of one of the old, floppy sneakers. The young man screamed, his howl lost in the booming echo of the big automatic as it rumbled around the surrounding cedar-clad hills. Pimple Face dropped to the ground, screaming, blood pumping out of his ruined foot. Tears poured down his fat cheeks. The blood from his foot congealed in the snow like cat crap in a litter box.
"You shooted me!" moaned the fat young man, writhing in the dirt.
"No, I shot you," said Tritt, staring down at him from the truck. "And I'll shoot you in the other foot unless you tell me where DeJean is within the next ten seconds."
"Up to the communications center," groaned the young man, his teeth gritted with pain. The blood still poured into the snow. He was losing a lot of blood and he was going pale. Tritt recognized the signs of shock.
"Where's that?" Tritt asked.
"Up ta the lodge. By the tennis courts," grunted Pimple Face. He was looking nauseated now, flop sweat running down his jawline.
"You're going to pass out in a second. You might puke, so make sure you're on your side. Don't worry. I'll send someone down to patch you up when I find DeJean."
"You bastid, you shooted me," whispered Pimple Face, snot streaming from his nostrils in two gleaming snail trails. His eyes rolled back and he faded out. He was rolled into a fetal ball, his back against the stump. The blood kept coming. He'd need a hospital soon or he'd lose the foot. Fortunes of war, thought Tritt. He put the big black truck into drive and rolled slowly up the road.
There was an old tumbledown log building on the crest of a low rise on his left and an open field with what looked like a giant plywood tepee in the center of the clearing. The tepee was stained and weathered, tilting slightly to the right, painted Indian symbols almost completely faded away by time and the elements. The field was snow covered, but Tritt could still see the raised wooden tent platforms. He passed an old gravel parking area. There were half a dozen vehicles, mostly trucks, mostly old and all American made, parked.
Standing on its own as though the other vehicles didn't want to chance scratching the paint was a bright red army surplus Humvee. Driving past, Tritt read the license plate on the back of the brutal-looking vehicle: PATRIOT. Not difficult to figure out who owned it. Beyond the parking lot on a ridge overlooking the lake was a large, rough log structure with a snowy roof. There were two flags on the wooden pole in front of the lodge: DeJean's screaming eagle riding above Maine's moose and pine tree.
Tritt parked the big truck in front of the building, putting the Desert Eagle back in the vertical sling holster under his nylon Windbreaker. He walked up a rickety flight of steps onto the wide, covered porch and rapped on the flimsy wooden door. A few seconds later the door was opened by a man wearing civilian clothes and a screaming eagle armband.
His hands were grimy, the nails thickly rimmed with grease, and there were long grease stains on his work pants. He was wearing heavy construction boots. He looked to be in his early twenties. A car mechanic, perhaps, or somebody who worked with machinery.
Behind him half a dozen people sat around a long, ersatz conference table made from two sheets of plywood supported on wooden trestles. The plywood had been covered with dark green oilcloth. There were six men of various sizes and ages standing around the roughly made conference table. Tritt was reminded of von Stauffenberg and the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Hitler was in the room, too, in the form of a large, framed portrait over the mantel of a big fieldstone fireplace at the far end. Unlike any conference room of Hitler's, however, the room was thick with smoke, clouds of it rolling up to the rough-log ceiling beams.
"Who are you?" The man at the door said. "Whadda you want here? This is private property." He scowled. "Why didn't Skinny stop you like he's supposed to?"
"Skinny, wearing one of those screaming eagle coats? Fat, lots of zits?"
"Yeah."
"He's down at the gate, lying on the ground with half his foot blown off."
"Shit," said the man at the door.
"Yeah, maybe that, too," said Tritt.
Another voice spoke up. This time it came from a short man standing at the head of the table. He was dressed in full desert camo and wearing a Fidel Castro-style green, flattop cap with two stars on it. Like the man at the door he was wearing a screaming eagle armband. There was a huge screaming eagle banner on the wall to one side of the table that bore Maine's Right Arm's motto: THE RIGHT ARM IS GOD'S ARM.