The End Is Near?

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

David Koresh must be the only author ever to have the FBI waiting to distribute his manuscript. As soon as the cult leader has finished decoding the symbolism of the seven seals in the Book of Revelation, FBI agents surrounding the compound near Waco, Texas, where Koresh and his Branch Davidian cult are holed up, will pick up the longhand manuscript and convey it to Koresh's lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, who will present it to two noted biblical experts for evaluation. Then, Koresh promises, he and 95 followers will finally surrender to federal authorities. That would end a siege that, as of Saturday night, had lasted 49 days -- five days longer than the Gulf War.

Alas, Koresh took four days to finish 30 handwritten pages about the first seal, and they still await editing by his top lieutenant, Steve Schneider. So, FBI men sourly note, a surrender may be months off, even if Koresh keeps his word -- and he has reneged on three previous promises to give up. "No one at our place is holding his breath," says FBI special agent Dick Swensen. Instead the FBI is continuing its psychological warfare. At all hours, agents blast harrowing noises out of loudspeakers -- the squeals of rabbits being slaughtered, the whine of a dentist's drill, the thunder of locomotives -- presumably in the hope that the Davidians might yield just to get some peace and quiet.

Both the FBI and the cultists' lawyers are making detailed preparations for a surrender. Koresh, accompanied by DeGuerin, would come out first and be whisked away, perhaps by helicopter. Others will walk up a dirt road about 100 yards, pass through metal detectors to make sure they are not carrying weapons, then board buses for a ride of several miles to a processing center already set up inside a cavernous airplane hangar on the grounds of Texas State Technical College. There they will be stripped, dressed in prison garb, photographed and sent to local jails.

DeGuerin and other lawyers meanwhile have begun planning a defense strategy for the ensuing trials. They will probably claim the protection of the First and Second Amendments for the Davidians' rights to practice even a bizarre religion and to bear even an arsenal of arms. Defense lawyers will also claim the Davidians fired only in self-defense when federal authorities stormed the compound. Four feds and, by Koresh's count, six cultists died.

The principal reason for thinking Koresh really might surrender soon is that for the first time, he says, he has received the "message" he was awaiting from God concerning the seven seals. Phillip Arnold, one of the experts in apocalyptic theology whom Koresh wants to examine his manuscript, and Koresh himself have provided some clues to his interpretation. In the Book of Revelation, also called the Apocalypse, the breaking of the first four seals by the Lamb of God (which Koresh now calls himself) unlooses the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: conquest, war, famine and death. Arnold thinks Koresh relates them to events in his leadership of the Davidian cult. The opening of the fifth seal discloses "the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God," which to Koresh might seem an obvious reference to the Feb. 28 gun battle. The breaking of the sixth seal produces an earthquake, and Koresh has predicted one soon in the Waco area. Behind the seventh seal are seven angels who blow successively on trumpets, signaling all manner of calamities: a rain of hail, fire and blood; locusts arising from a bottomless pit to bite men, who wish for death to end their torment. Koresh, in a letter dictated to DeGuerin last Wednesday, said his writing "will cause the winds of God's wrath to be held back a little longer."

But will a ninth-grade dropout who plainly relishes the glare of world publicity relinquish it all to lead his followers into prison? "Koresh is blowing smoke," says Wayman Mullins, a criminal-justice professor and hostage-negotiations trainer at Southwest Texas State University. "It's notoriety and grandstanding."

Increasingly frustrated, federal authorities are talking of forcible ways to end the siege. They are believed to be considering using tear gas and other nonlethal chemicals, trying to shoot Koresh by sniper fire through a window, or crumbling a corner of the building by ramming tanks or other armored vehicles into it. But they worry about harming the 17 children thought to be inside. In practice, any use of force would have to be approved by the White House, which has let it be known that it is watching closely and hopes for a nonviolent solution. So the feds probably will continue waiting out the Davidians -- for how long, nobody knows. At Satellite City, the press encampment out near the compound, mailboxes have gone up, garbage is regularly collected, an Easter service was held, and there is an unelected mayor. The latest gag among a press corps going quietly mad with boredom is that Waco has become an acronym for We Ain't Coming Out.

With reporting by Michael Riley and Richard Woodbury/Waco