"I can't stop thinking about the CS gas," says Timothy McVeigh. "It's not just tear gas, you know. It's a low-grade chemical weapon designed for the sole purpose of plunging its victims into spasms of coughing and nausea."
As your partner speaks, Mike absentmindedly drags a stick across the fire-red coals, stirring up the burning embers, the kindling back-talking to him in hisses and crackles.
"When we were at Fort Ben," Timothy McVeigh continues, "they locked ten recruits at a time into a tiny, enclosed room, where we were outfitted with gas masks. And then they pumped in the fumes. As part of the training exercise, you were ordered to remove your mask and scream out your name and Social Security number. Most of us tried to hold our breath as long as we could. I closed in on two minutes before I couldn't take it anymore — Mike here nearly made it to three," he adds, gesturing at the Third Wheel.
"But ultimately, you couldn't stop the dry, peppery gas from invading your lungs. You start to cough uncontrollably at first. Then the vomiting begins. Your nose runs, your eyes glue themselves shut, and your skin feels like it's about to burn clean off your body."
Mike nods, knowingly, while his old friend recounts the horrors of chemical-warfare training. "Sooner or later, you figure out the trick, which is quite simple, really," says Mike. "You have to stave off panic. Keep your wits about you. Don't lose control. It's easier said than done, of course, but it works. Eventually."
"But what if you were a child," intones Timothy McVeigh, "a child, say, at Mount Carmel, with the government blaring the sounds of hell at you all day and all night. And suddenly, this terrible, noxious gas is billowing into your living room — the place where you live. And you can't do anything about it. You didn't train with the other recruits back at Fort Ben," he continues. "You're just some kid in the Texas hill country, and the government you were taught to pledge allegiance to — one nation, under God, the whole bleeding thing — is trying to gas you out of existence."
"Could there be anything more horrible that you could experience?" wonders Timothy McVeigh. "That you could do to a child?"
As you gaze across the campfire at your partner, you glimpse the flames shooting up from the embers, as if they were licking and clawing at his face, which was transforming, slowly, into an orange, deadly visage.
"There's only one play, really, when faced with such tyranny," says Timothy McVeigh. "It's payback time. Dirty for dirty. You reap what you sow." He pauses for a moment. "And why not? Your aggressor doesn't speak any other language. So you need to communicate in the most blunt, unambiguous idiom possible — the language of violence and demolition. A wakeup call for the masses."
Point taken, you think to yourself, as Mike sighs, audibly to himself, across the campfire. Timothy McVeigh glares back at him with the eyes of living, unadulterated hatred.
The next morning, you climb into the Road Warrior for the long journey back to Arizona. As you prepare to depart Waco, Timothy McVeigh stops the vehicle at a filling station on Farm Road 2491, not too far from the gravelly entrance to Double-E Ranch Road.
"Do you get much traffic around here?" he asks the round-faced, bespectacled attendant. "Any Lookey-Loos coming out to take a gander at Mount Carmel? To see what happened way the heck out here?"
The attendant laughs quietly to himself, as he fills up the Road Warrior's tank. "Not that many people, really. You'd think there'd be a helluva lot more. If out of a sick sense of curiosity as much as anything else."
The nametag on the attendant's blue jumpsuit identifies him as BILLY.
"What bothers me is that this was a lot of fuss over nothing," he says. "Those people had been here for a long time and never bothered nobody."
"And now," Billy continues, "it's like they were never here at all. Like they been done swept off the face of the planet. How's a thing like that happen?" he asks, with a look of confusion washing over his hearty, uncertain face. "I still don't get it," he adds, shaking his head. "It doesn't compute."
"We're not going back to Kingman just yet," Timothy McVeigh exclaims. "We're heading north instead. There's something you've gotta see," he says, as he settles into the driver's seat.
With the Third Wheel holding up the rear, you climb into the Road Warrior. And with cold, steely vengeance in his heart — not to mention the fearsome Glock cradled inside his shoulder holster — Timothy McVeigh eases his trusty Chevy onto I-35.
Towards Oklahoma City.
Timothy McVeigh is guiding the Road Warrior down the Centennial Expressway off-ramp. The Oklahoma City skyline looms just ahead in the distance. A low-lying fog drifts among the office buildings, evoking the impression that the cityscape is floating in a sea of clouds.
Timothy McVeigh steers the vehicle along Harrison Avenue before turning, slightly, onto Northeast Sixth Street, past the old rail yards, across a parcel of vacant lots and nondescript concrete parking structures. Road-weary after years of toil on the nation's highways, the Road Warrior's frame creaks audibly as your partner negotiates the sharp left turn onto North Robinson Avenue. With relative finesse, he brings the car to a halt at the edge of a large, well-appointed courtyard that fronts Northwest Fourth Street.
It's lunchtime in workaday America, with the men and women in their business attire mixing freely with the denim-clad day-laborers. Eclipsing class-barriers for a relaxing repast on the park benches, they nestle among the courtyard's stately oak trees and expertly-manicured shrubbery, which the city has decked out with Christmas decorations — plastic candy canes, mostly, with a smattering of snowmen — for the rapidly encroaching holiday season.
And just to the north, a rectangular, nine-story office complex rises out of the plaza. At the building's center, a massive, protruding elevator shaft shoots skyward, poised like a multistage rocket waiting on its launching pad for further instructions from Mission Control.
"That shaft is gonna be a problem," says Timothy McVeigh to nobody in particular. "It's like a bulwark. Or an anchor." He shakes his head with concern.
Shifting the Road Warrior back into gear, your partner wheels the vehicle around the North Harvey Avenue side of the plaza, making a hard right turn onto Northwest Fifth Street, where he idles along the front curb.
From this vantage point, you can no longer see the elevator shaft imposing itself upon the building. Instead, you are treated to a spectacular view of the reinforced concrete structure — seven stories of dark tinted glass rising straight up out of a dramatic two-story recess in front of the entryway.
ALFRED P. MURRAH FEDERAL BUILDING, reads the plaque affixed to the concrete edifice. The midday sun collides with the windows, creating a black, impenetrable glare. Across the street, lunchtime patrons stroll into the four-story redbrick building that houses the Athenian Restaurant.
Who was Murrah? you ask Timothy McVeigh.
"A federal judge," he answers.
"Appointed by whom?" Mike inquires. Has the Third Wheel suddenly become a junior political scientist? you wonder to yourself.
"FDR," says Timothy McVeigh.
How do you know this? you ask.
"Leafing through the Encyclopedia Britannica at the Mojave Branch of the Kingman Public Library," answers your partner. "Any more questions?" he asks, with the bile clearly rising in his voice.
"Why are we casing this building?" Mike inquires, squirming in the backseat.
"Because it's a federal office complex," Timothy McVeigh responds. "But more importantly, because there are field offices for the ATF and the FBI on the premises. Rumor has it that the orders for Waco were delivered — if not hammered out and designed — on this very spot."
Alright then, you think. The paranoia has returned. And with a vengeance.
Your driver gestures towards the commercial drop-off zone in front of the Murrah Building. "I wonder if you could fit a truck in there," he says, cryptically.
"You could probably fit three trucks in that space," says Mike, who continues fidgeting, rather conspicuously, in the backseat. All this talk about Waco and casing federal office buildings clearly has him flummoxed.
"This is officially a black-bag operation," says Timothy McVeigh. "You're either with us or against us."
A black-bag operation? How are you possibly involved in black-ops? You don't have a decoder ring, a poison pen, or elaborate sleeping powders at your disposal. Heck, you don't even own a cellular phone.
"And with any luck," Timothy McVeigh adds, "it will set off a general uprising in the United States — the opportunity to knock some people off of the fence and urge them to take some action of their own against the federal government."
You can hear Mike sighing loudly from the rear. Timothy McVeigh pulls the Road Warrior away from the curb, crossing in front of the Murrah Building and stopping, briefly, for the red light at North Robinson. When the traffic clears, your partner accelerates through the intersection.
A giant inflatable Santa Claus marks the entrance to an alleyway that bisects the buildings fronting North Robinson — the location of the city's old, multi-story YMCA facility — and North Broadway. The 12-foot, plasticine Kris Kringle is waving at passersby with an absurd smile frozen upon his face. With his swollen bag full of goodies dangling over his shoulder.
He was chubby and plump, you think to yourself, automatically. A right jolly old elf.
Without warning, Timothy McVeigh suddenly hits the gas, shooting the Road Warrior down the alley at an unholy pace. Only slightly wider than the Chevy itself, the narrow alleyway echoes with the roar of the vehicle's turbo-charged engine. At one point, your driver clips a pair of vinyl trash receptacles, sending their contents — pizza boxes, beer cans, and discarded fast-food cartons of all shapes and sizes — bounding in your wake. Meanwhile, the Third Wheel is screaming bloody murder in the backseat, while you brace yourself against the dashboard, clinging for dear life.
Timothy McVeigh halts the Road Warrior, briefly, at the edge of Northwest Sixth Street. As soon as the traffic clears, your partner tears down the alley once again — and the insanity begins anew. With the Third Wheel bouncing around the backseat, spewing derision, not to mention a slew of clever expletives, in your driver's direction. With pedestrians narrowly avoiding certain death as they duck in and out of the alleyway, Timothy McVeigh's silver shuttle rockets by their feet.
Up ahead, where the alley intersects Northwest Seventh Street, a rusty green pickup truck rolls into your path. But suddenly, without warning, your partner peels off to the right, through a vacant lot and across a driveway onto North Broadway. After hightailing it for a few more blocks to the north — with yet more pedestrians shucking and jiving to stave off their slaughter — Timothy McVeigh brings the Road Warrior in for a landing next to an unkempt city parking lot, overgrown with weeds, that signals the end of your breakneck journey from the Murrah Building.
"WHAT — THE — FUCK — WAS — THAT?" snarls Mike.
"That was my escape route," answers Timothy McVeigh, calmly. "Every caper has an escape route. And that was mine."
We're calling this a caper now? you think to yourself.
"How do you think you're going to stash a getaway car down here if you're busy ferrying a bomb around the streets of Oklahoma City?" Mike asks, curtly.
A bomb? What bomb?
"That's simple," your partner replies.
"How's that now, Slick?" answers Mike, still seething from Mr. McVeigh's Wild Ride.
"The way I see it," your driver explains, "is that there are two possibilities. On the one hand, Terry and JD could follow me down here in the Honda a couple of days earlier, and I could park the Road Warrior right here." He gestures towards a remote corner of the parking lot. "When zero hour arrives, I can hop right into the car and disappear into the thin air of the American interstate-highway system."
"On the other hand," he continues, "Terry and JD could follow me in the Road Warrior, and we could make this parking lot our rendezvous point. Either way," he adds, "we get the hell outta Dodge before the cavalry comes."
The Third Wheel nods slowly to himself. "You've obviously got it all figured out," says Mike. "I gotta admit I'm impressed."