The Snake

Eighteen

Operation Pillar of Fire had begun at the first tick of midnight; thus, the night had technically become "tomorrow," and none would be able to accuse the Reverend Sanctus Milanese of having borne false witness.

Approximately sixty Puries took part in Operation Pillar of Fire. They were divided into eight squads of equal size and a larger ninth. The eight "diversionary" squads were designated by consecutive letters of the alphabet, A through H. The ninth went by the letter S for Serpent. There was at least one young woman in each of the eight squads A to H, but none in squad S. All, men and women alike, were dressed uniformly in black trousers or slacks, black polo shirts, and black socks and shoes. Squads A to H carried three five-gallon drams of gasoline. Squad S carried five drums, and was armed with shovels, axes, hoes, rakes, baseball bats, and roughly hewn forked sticks; many of the axes, shovels, hoes, and rakes were so recently purchased that they still bore the manufacturers' bright labels on their hafts.

Because they were aware of the police surveillance of the Tabernacle and the Reverend's mansion, the members of Operation Pillar of Fire assembled at widely dispersed points. They entered in cars (one each for squads A to H, two for squad S) through nine different gates, ranging the length and width of the park. Several of them passed patrolling police cars, but there were no incidents; they were indistinguishable from any other cars driving through the park. The squads were dropped off as near as possible to their assigned destinations, after which the cars drove away.

The "diversionary" sites were spread throughout the park, and away from the prime target area. The two southernmost locations were slightly to the west of the menagerie and along the Bridle Path near the Dalehead Arch. The northernmost sites were located in the Conservatory Garden to the east, near the Vanderbilt Gate, and on the Great Hill, almost directly across the width of the park to the west. One group penetrated to a wild area among the twining paths of the Ramble, another was on the opposite side of the Lake from the Ramble at Cherry Hill. A seventh group was at the King Jagiello monument a slight way from the 79th Street transverse, and an eighth in the center of the East Meadow.

Later, many people were to express astonishment that a plan of such detail and complexity could have been mounted in the four hours since the Reverend had returned from the East Side Hospital. But that was not at all the case.

The operation, in a different form, had already been drilled meticulously for the past three days. At its inception, without prior knowledge of the actual hiding place of the black mamba, Operation Pillar of Fire had been a scattershot affair, in which more than twenty-five of the most promising wild areas of the park were to be set on fire, in the hope that the snake would be driven from cover. It was to have involved almost two hundred Puries.

Although he had given his sanction to the plan, and authorized intensive training of personnel, the Reverend Milanese had been aware-, of its quixotic, hit-and-miss nature, and might never have allowed it to become operational. But when Graham Black had pinpointed on a Parks Department map the precise location of the snake, everything changed. Immediately, eight of the original squads were activated as diversionary units, and a ninth formed around a nucleus of Christ's Cohorts.

Operation Pillar of Fire was under the overall command of its architect and field general, Buckley (Buck) Pell, a former Marine Corps sergeant and veteran of the fighting in Southeast Asia. After his expulsion from the Corps with a less-than-honourable discharge for, in the words of his commanding officer, "undue savagery," Buck Pell had undergone a sea change, repented of his massively godless past, and joined the Church of the Purification. He became one of the organizers and leaders of Christ's Cohorts.

Buck Pell had trained his squads to concert pitch, and their performance was exemplary. Each squad, A to H, arrived at its target area no later than five minutes past midnight. They proceeded without delay to saturate the ground, the bushes, and the lower branches of trees with gasoline. The leader of the squad, meanwhile, had laid a trailer, a ten foot length of fast-burning fuse leading outward from the target area.

With the exception of the leader, the squad then withdrew approximately fifty feet from the critical area. At exactly 12:15, the leader and each of the other leaders of squads A to H-lit the end of the trailer fuse.

Although there had been extensive safety drills, a few minor accidents occurred, mostly when squad members stumbled on rough ground or collided with each other in the darkness. There was one serious incident. It involved a Purie girl whose clothing, carelessly wetted by gasoline, had caught fire. Although the press was later to speak of her as becoming "a human torch," in the event she had been quickly rescued by her companions, who rolled her in a blanket and extinguished the flames. She suffered only minor burns.

After they piled out of the cab, the driver yelled, "Hey, who's gonna pay?" and Eastman knew that he was elected. Partially because he was an honest cop, but mostly because he was the only one left. Converse had taken off like a shot, with Holly right behind him.

He yelled after Converse, knowing that he wouldn't pay any heed, even supposing he could hear him over the racket of sirens and bells and hooters. He tossed some bills into the cabbie's lap and started running.

But he knew he would never catch up.

Twenty years ago, maybe, but not now. Still, he ran, favouring his bad knee.

The street intersections were a mess. There were cops and squad cars at every comer, frantically trying to shunt passenger cars off Central Park West and into the side streets. To Eastman's experienced eye, it looked hopeless. All over the park, orange flames were shooting up, enveloped in thick black smoke boiling upward to the soiled sky.

He tried to keep Converse's angular running figure in sight, but it was already becoming complicated. From nowhere, with their infallible talent for smelling out trouble, people were pouring onto the scene of the disaster, eternally hopeful of a cleansing tragedy that would reinforce their doting belief in the surpassing wickedness of their city.

The two cars holding the ten men comprising squad S pulled off the East Drive at the point where it intersected with the Police Department connecting road to the West Drive. The squad members piled out of the cars, and formed on Buck Pell. The cars drove off at once.

Buck Pell gave a hand signal, and began to run. The squad followed his long-legged stride on the double, awkward with their burden of gasoline drums, shovels, axes. Buck Pell led them quickly into brush, where they were hidden from the road. They stopped only once in response to a hand signal. Crouching low to the ground, Buck Pell shone a tiny flashlight on the map Graham Black had marked for the Reverend Milanese, studied it briefly and ran on again. He led the squad through heavy brush to the landmark rock that overlooked the hollow where Graham Black had been bitten. He pointed down into the hollow, and in a whisper warned his men to be on the alert, to move slowly, to check out exactly where their foot was going to land, to make sure they didn't spill any of the gasoline on their clothing.

He led the way into the hollow, carrying one of the gasoline drums himself.

As he ran, Converse began to attract followers, people who, seeing someone run, were sure he had inside information and would lead them to the scene of action. But they dropped off after a block or two, either because they lacked stamina, or were diverted by something else, or simply because he was taking too long to get someplace.

But Holly wasn't giving up. By now he recognized the sound of her footsteps, smooth and regular, and although she didn't seem able to catch up with him, she was holding her own. He felt a surge of possessive pride-beautiful girl, beguiling smiles, and a good runner, too! But he didn't slow up for her. He pounded on, awkward but tireless. He had always been able to run, from boyhood on, it was his one athletic skill. He was almost unaware of the clamour of police cars and fire engines roaring by, and of the flame and smoke that kept heaving upward all over the park.

When he turned his head for a glance at Holly, he was surprised to see Eastman behind her, head down, running doggedly. He felt sorry for Eastman, he was too old and heavy for the pace. But he couldn't wait for him. The Boys Gate was just a few hundred yards away now. When he looked behind him again, Eastman was still well back, but Holly was no longer in sight. He felt a pang of regret, followed at once by a sense of relief. He wouldn't have to worry about her now, he could concentrate a hundred percent on trying to catch the black mamba before it could be destroyed by a pack of maniacs.

After he had emptied his own gasoline drum, Buck Pell supervised the activities of the members of squad S, keeping a sharp eye on their movements. A few of his troops were gagging from the concentrated stink of the gasoline in the still air, and he grinned. So far as he was concerned, gasoline smelled beautiful, and what it did was even better.

When he had first broached Operation Pillar of Fire, a few people had protested that green vegetation wouldn't bum. It was a common fallacy, and nobody knew it better than he did. Every time he had torched a hootch in Nam, all the green stuff in the neighbourhood went up too, a nice little bonus of defoliation. The reason was that gasoline made the hottest of all fires, and the heat would almost immediately parch out the foliage around it, and the green stuff wasn't green anymore and it would burn like tinder. Look at the way the diversionary fires were blazing all over the park-that was green stuff, and it was burning real good.

When the gasoline drums bad been emptied, Buck Pell chased his squad all the way back to the big rock. He would have liked to push them even further, he had that much respect for the range of gasoline fire, but then they wouldn't be able to see much. Once they were on their way he laid his trailer fuse. It would have been fun to use twisted toilet paper-he had once set a whole village on fire with a toilet paper trailer-but timing was important and toilet paper wasn't all that dependable.

When he noticed that one or two of his men were a little slow getting back to the rock, he sang out with some of the old Marine Corps zip.

Minus profanity, of course, which he had given up when he joined the Church of the Purification.

"Move it, move it, you Puries there. Move it, you hear!" He watched the laggards light out for the rock on the double. "Okay, now. I'm gonna touch it off. Arid when the fuse burns down to the gasoline, she's gonna blow. If the snake is in there, it's gonna get burned up good, but we wanna know about it. I want every eye peeled on the fire. She's gonna burn real bright, so if the snake is in there, you'll see it. Make sure you check out the trees. Look sharp, you Puries, look sharp. And if you see it, I want you to sing out, and I want to hear you sing out. Any questions?"

They shook their heads, or said "No," and one or two of them, like old grunts, sang out a crisp "No questions, sir." Grinning, Buck Pell crouched over the fuse end and cupped his hand around his lighter.

Deep in its burrow, the snake felt the vibrations of footsteps. They moved around for a long time, very close to the burrow. The smell was heavy and rich and alien, and the snake was alarmed. It was the disturbing smell, after the footsteps had receded, that made the snake glide upward toward the second hole of the burrow and stick its head out.

It saw the shadowy figures standing on the rock. Another figure was running in the direction of the rock. Nearby, on the ground, a bright sputtering flame was approaching. The snake slid out of the burrow, and, for the moment, watching the brightness crawling toward it, did nothing.

As soon as the fuse was lit, Buck Pell turned and ran for the rock in long, rangy, ground-covering strides. Someone put a hand out and hauled him up. Seconds later, with a puff, there was a blinding burst of flame.

"Look sharp, you Puries," Buck Pell shouted. "Peel them eyes."

The squad members were leaning forward, peering intently, shading their eyes with their fingers. Suddenly, one of them screamed, "There it goes."

Buck Pell caught a glimpse of the snake, behind the flames, and it was moving so fast that he knew it was not burned or injured.

"Okay," Buck Pell shouted, "let's go get him!"

He had to restrain some of his squad, who, in their eagerness, seemed intent on going straight forward into the burning hollow.

"No, goddamn," Buck Pell shouted, "around it, around it. Forgive me, Lord, for cussing. Let's go." He headed off in a wide are to his left, his troops streaming after him. "Move it," he shouted over his shoulder,

"get the lead out, you Puries!"