Chapter Twenty-Four
Three hundred miles to the north, a plan was being set in motion. Far from the cabin where Dave and Elena were huddled together, a small group of the Warriors of Mary was preparing to move. They were all cops; although they could not be referred to as New York’s finest.
The New York City Police Department is larger than some countries’ armies, employing some thirty-five thousand uniformed officers. It is also one of the oldest police departments in the United States, dating back to either the Dutch in 1625, when it was New Amsterdam, or the City of New York, when the current department was created in 1845. Both dates are used, depending on the argument being made. The department has been an avenue to the middle-class for generations of families. Irish, Italians, Latin-Americans, African-Americans and other groups working their way out of the tenements have found the department to be a welcoming way to a steady paycheck.
A great number—at times a majority—of the officers, men and women, were raised in the Roman Catholic Church, which had been a part of the fabric of the culture of the countries of their ancestors who came to America looking for a better life. The exceptions mostly being the African-Americans, whose ancestors did not come here by choice.
Catholicism and the veneration of the Virgin had a long tradition within the department, at least on the surface. The Archdiocese of New York and the NYPD have a history together. At one time nearly half of the officers on the force were Irish Catholics. It is not unusual to see officers with ashes on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday at the beginning of Lent.
And so there was nothing unusual about a group of white police officers gathered in a small union hall in Queens to say the Rosary together. They had arranged their folding chairs in a circle and were being led by an elderly priest whose red face bespoke his Irish heritage and his fondness for strong drink. He wheezed as he recited the prayers, adding a slight distraction to the contemplation being sought by others. Finally, he led the group in the concluding prayer, “Hail, holy Queen, Mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope…” to its end, “Pray for us O Holy Mother of God.” And the group responded “That we may be worthy of the promises of Christ.” The priest kissed the crucifix on his Rosary and sat back, closing his eyes in a private prayer.
A beefy detective named James Byrne assumed control of the group. “Thank you, Father.” The priest understood that his role in the evening’s events was over and he excused himself, taking a sugar cookie from a small table against the wall near the door as he exited. Byrne and the others waited until the priest had left before anyone spoke. Byrne stood and raised his arms in what could have been interpreted as a benediction. “This meeting of the Posse Maria of the Warriors of Mary will come to order.”
The others had the sad, serious look of Mafia soldiers on the eve of war. There were murmurs from a few of the men.
“We have a situation that must be dealt with and we don’t have much time.” Byrne explained what was happening in Virginia. “I need some members to do what needs to be done. We can’t let this go on. We have him in the trap. All we have to do is spring it. Are we in agreement?”
All of the men nodded and looked at one another.
“We’ll be getting cooperation from our friends at SWAT. We’ll draw weapons in one hour.”
Special Weapons and Tactical armories were familiar with the Warriors of Mary even though there were no active members in the armory at the moment. It was no trouble to set aside weapons and gear to be logged out “for ongoing training”. That is how Byrne and his men picked up their night vision equipment, an M-14 rifle for long distance shots, a Minnelli M1 shotgun, 9 millimeter handguns, and an M4 combat rifle. They did not take body armor on the assumption that they would not need it.
The men climbed aboard a nine-passenger van that bore the name of a charity and, with Byrne at the wheel, headed south on I-95 for the five-hour drive to their destination. By dawn they were sleeping in two rooms at a chain motel in Warrenton, where they would spend the day preparing for what was to come. Byrne arranged to meet with Frank at a fast food joint to review the property on the farm and set fire lanes for the possibility, or likelihood, that shooting would break out. No one wanted to shoot a friend by mistake.
By sunset the sky was clear and the warmth that the winter sun had brought quickly gave way to a frosty night with a full moon. The day’s melt was quickly freezing. Byrne and his men drove to the farm and positioned themselves in what they believed were the natural approaches to the cabin, spreading in an arc from high ground to low. Byrne would act in much the way a platoon leader led an infantry unit, going from position to position, checking the men and receiving reports.
Frank stationed himself between his house and the cabin, armed with a Colt 38-40 single action revolver. The gun was over a hundred years old and had been handed down in his family from father to son. The old gun had left the colt factory in the 1890s with bluing and a five and a half inch barrel but a gunsmith in Oregon had turned it into a chromed beauty with a seven and a half inch barrel, making the weapon heavier and somewhat more accurate at distance. It was no match for modern handguns but in Frank’s mind it was a perfect gun to dispatch a lunatic and so he wore it proudly on a pistol belt and holster fashioned from water buffalo hide by a Vietnamese scout near Phu Bai in 1968, where it had last drawn blood.
Inside the cabin Dave and Elena were dozing, exhausted by the emotions of the day. Dave’s sleep was fitful while Elena had fallen into a deep slumber after a long period of weeping onto Dave’s shoulder. Dave heard muffled voices near the cabin and knew that something was taking place and that Frank’s friends had arrived to protect him and Elena and to kill or capture the priest killer. He imagined doing it himself with his grandfather’s 10 gauge shotgun, a monster with a barrel as round as his thumb. Loaded properly it would blow through a barn. The antique over his grandfather’s fireplace would probably explode if fired, but in his fantasy the priest killer was suitably dispatched to threaten no more.
He admitted to himself that he wished he were out with the men who were setting the trap. He could imagine being in an ambush, hidden under leaves and brush, waiting for his prey, like the times of his teenage years in Tennessee, waiting for his first buck. He had come to despise the priest killer and he felt his fear of the man melting away as his desire to kill him rose inside his chest. He found that he was breathing hard and he had an urge to leave Elena and ask Frank for a weapon, but he controlled his desire to be a part of the kill team. He lay next to her and stroked her hair, acknowledging to himself that in moments like this he was more drawn to the excitement of the hunt than to a desire to be safe. It was not fair to her, he knew, but he had no idea how to separate his conflicting inner lives. The cabin drew dark and chilled so he got up from the bed to stoke the fire and add some wood. He used the poker and saw that it was sharp on the end with a thick, pointed hook about four inches up from the tip. It was built with a solid metal handle and he saw it as a potential lethal weapon, either as a spear or a club. With it in his hand he felt armed and confident. He sat by the fire and allowed his mind to rest. He had a moment of peace and watched Elena sleep, her chest rising and falling with the rhythm of a child at rest.