A DISTANT THUNDER

by H. A. Covington

  “I’ve been cannon fodder before in Iraq, thank you,” sighed Greg.

  “Then why would you want to go for more of the same right here on your own doorstep?” asked Carter.

  “What, exactly, do you want?” asked Greg. I knew then we’d won.

  “Live and let live. You see us on the street, you look the other way. You don’t pick up your radios, and you don’t shoot at us. We see you on the street, we don’t shoot at you. We simply become invisible to one another. Above all, Greg, no cooperation with the Feds! As far as you are concerned, you are what you always were, police officers concerned with suppressing crime in the community. This is henceforth a private war and it doesn’t concern you.”

  “You know that is ridiculous and impossible!” said Greg in exasperation.

  “Maybe. I don’t suggest you try to sell it to the Feds. No need to mention anything to them at all, in fact.” Carter told him. “Just yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir, but when it comes to actually doing anything to assist them in the battle against evil domestic terrorism, all of a sudden you’re deaf, dumb, and blind. You kick us with the side of the shoe and not the toe. We will do unto you as you do unto us.”

  “It’s impossible!” wailed Greg again. “You know we’re going to have to show some kind of effort to put you guys away or the Fed bastards will figure it out and they’ll come down on us! “

  “Just kick us with the side of the shoe, not the toe, Greg,” Carter repeated. “That’s all I ask. Look, we’re realistic. We know full well this is going to be a hard kind of agreement to fulfill on both sides, and there will be rough spots. But nobody wants trouble between two groups of white men who are going to have to live together after all this is over. I don’t want to hurt you, Greg.”

  “I want to hurt you, Greg,” I suddenly spoke up, sticking his own police special 9-mil in his face and cocking back the hammer. “Your friend Sorels hurt me, and now I want to hurt you. And all your little cop friends. Do we understand each other?” I have no idea why I said what I said then and messed with Carter’s play. I just always had this instinct for making the right moves where the Wingfields were concerned. Apparently I can come on real psycho, or at least I could back then. Well, I was kind of psycho back then. Nowadays I’m just a senile old crank. Carter told me afterwards my timing was perfect.

  “Jesus, do you see what I have to deal with?” hissed Carter to the deputy. “You think I’m a bad guy, Greg? Some of these young kids the Party has coming up scare me silly! Do you want a dozen of these on your streets looking to get you off somewhere secluded and put a few slugs in you every time you go on shift? Or coming to visit you in the middle of the night? Or attaching new accessories to your car while you’re asleep? You don’t want what we can dish out, Greg, and we don’t want to dish it out because we have more important work to do and it doesn’t include screwing around with you local yokels! We have better things to do than waste our time wasting you guys. ZOG doesn’t care about you. To the FBI and those suits in Washington you’re as expendable as paper clips! Talk to the sheriff, Greg. Simple agreement, live and let live. We stay out of one another’s way and we each pretend the other doesn’t exist, and whenever one hand can wash the other, we wash. No political bullshit, no alliances or formalities, just every cop and every Northwest Volunteer in Lewis County agrees that from this point on we just don’t fuck with each other. That’s all. Otherwise from now on you all keep your shades drawn and you stay out of Burger Doodles. And by the way, in case you’re in any doubt, we’re going to win.”

  “And on the wild chance that the sheriff and the dozen or so municipal chiefs of police in this county agree.?” asked Greg.

  “A personal ad in the Dundee Advertiser saying ‘Thanks for a great time, lawnmower girl.’” Carter told him. Then we handcuffed the deputy to a radiator with his own cuffs and left.

  A few years ago I went into the Party history museum in Olympia out of curiosity to see what past bullshit they were digging up now. They had a big display case with a blown-up reproduction of the historic lawnmower girl personals ad that appeared in the Advertiser a week later, and when you pushed the button a voice narrator described that first live and let live arrangement between the NVA and local law enforcement in Washington’s Rebel County. Carter’s name was mentioned and mine wasn’t, and that’s as it should be. It was historic because it was the first time that the Party’s power to deal life and death was formally recognized by a Zionist authority and aceded to. What the Old Man referred to as the United States government’s loss of the credible monopoly of armed force began on the day that ad appeared. Carter’s little impromptu agreement became more or less the model for the Party’s pragmatic arrangements with hundreds of local police departments across the Northwest, because police were not soldiers, our own battle was not with the police, and neither side wanted what the other could dish out. I didn’t know it until after the war, but in the third year of the revolt Greg joined the NVA and he won an Iron Cross when he single-handedly cleaned a nest of Feds out of the Queen Anne post office in Seattle. I met him once at an Old NVA Reunion, bought him a beer, and since I was feeling particularly perverse that night, I didn’t remind him where we’d once met before. I chuckled about it all the way home.

  That’s when it first dawned on us how easy this might turn out to be. This wasn’t a TV show where the big blue shield always triumphs over us evildoers in swaggering cop-vengeance just before the cut to the last commercial. The cops on those TV shows who talked so big and bad about defending Amurrica and triumphing over evil racism and did in the big bad Nazis with kung fu weren’t cops, they were actors. This was the real world. These were real cops in a part of the country that the government considered to be a small rural backwater, even more underpaid and overworked than usual. We shot them and they bled just like anybody else. We faced them down and they ran. We hurt them and they ran. Most of them weren’t exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer to begin with, a lot of them had gone into the police right out of the military because it was the only job they could get, and they weren’t completely blind to the injustice white people suffered under the laws they enforced. In fact, depending on what kind of affirmative action program their department had and where they served, a lot of them knew that injustice at first hand better than most. They weren’t all Sorels’ warped type, and a good many cops were capable of living in the real world even if they didn’t like it. Don’t get me wrong, NVA-local police relations were always tricky at best, and when they were more or less herded against us at gunpoint by the Feds a lot of them made a fight of it, hurt our people, and we had to hurt back. But in Lewis County, we soon found that we were usually able at least to go to the grocery store in safety.

  Usually.

  * * *

  A few weeks later in mid-January, our team was back in Dundee, squatting in what used to be the old overnight crews’ quarters at the railway yard. I was sent out on a grocery run with John Pilafski and two of our people who were down from Seattle after a bit of night-riding, and who needed to cool off a bit, but who wanted to stretch their legs. They were a guy named Sully and his girlfriend, a short but voluptuous lass with black hair and lovely green eyes named Jonesy. I presumed from these nicks that their actual names were Sullivan and Jones, although as always one didn’t ask.

  Grocery runs were fairly frequent affairs, because at any given time we were feeding at least two dozen people and sometimes more, in five or six multiple locations or more, since we tried to avoid congregating in one base camp. It wasn’t a good idea for any of us to walk into a store alone, buy up five shopping carts full of food and pay cash. That was the kind of thing sharp-eyed clerks with itchy telephone fingers noticed. Despite the great Dundee pizza hijack of 10/22, neither were we in a Woody Allen movie where we could go to a fast food restaurant and march away with wheelbarrows full of burgers and onion rings being pushed by waiters at gunpoint. The practical result was that any time we were out and about, doing
anything that didn’t involve general mayhem, we had all kinds of routine maintenance errands we had to do, prominent among them buying groceries. We were given cash by Ma or Red Morehouse and we stopped all along the way at multiple markets, buying a bagful of canned goods here, non-perishable cereal like oatmeal there, the staples like coffee and tea and rice, vitamins, cigarettes by the carton for those who smoked—only one carton at a time as large tobacco purchases of multiple brands would also have caused comment—so forth and so on. But sometimes the cupboard still went bare and we had to make special runs.

  Supply runs followed the same rules as all tickles. Two vehicles, four people. Two went into the market with a list, got what was needed and got out. One vehicle parked in the lot with the driver as a lookout and another cruised a wider area, both on guard against any potential problems, cell phones open. In the event of problems the two on foot would try to get to the nearer vehicle first, but if that wasn’t possible there was a designated pickup point if anyone had to make a fast break on foot, which in our case on that fateful day we went shopping at Fulton’s Market we decided would be the corner of Second and Magnolia, a block down. We had developed a lot of these techniques in the pre-revolutionary years doing illegal leaflet distributions, sticker raids, flag actions, and other things that should have come under the old First Amendment if ZOG had allowed free speech to remain in force; another price they paid for introducing the concept of hatecrime for white people who criticized multiculturalism. If we’d just been allowed to stand up in public and say what was on our minds without retaliation in the generation before the war, who knows how things would have turned out? But Red was right. Eventually the Jews always overdo it.

  In the past couple of months we’d already had a couple of close calls, and so we followed the drill when we pulled into the lot at Fulton’s Market on Second Street about two in the afternoon on a clear and sunny day, although it was quite cold. Sullivan and Jones went into the store, I back-in parked at the far end of the lot with the engine turned off (an alert cop always knows to take a second look at anyone sitting in a car with the engine running) and I put my baseball cap on backwards while I held a computer game conspicuously in my hand, which I pretended to be playing while I scanned the lot. Johnny circled the area in a wide, leisurely patrol pattern about six blocks around. Maybe five minutes had gone by since the two Volunteers went into the store, I figured they’d be in the checkout line by now, and I was watching the doors for them to emerge when I saw the Washington State Patrol cruiser slide into the lot. Then another. Then a third unit rolled in at the far entrance to the lot down on my right. No blue lights, no sirens. This looked bad. We were well inside the city limits, it was DPD jurisdiction and the state troopers shouldn’t even be here. I dropped down below the wheel of my own Taurus as one of the squad cars went by, and after a few seconds I peeped over the dashboard. They were moving into place to block both entrances and exits near the frontage of the supermarket, and I saw a huge figure get out of one of the patrol cars wearing a Smokey the Bear hat. Even at a distance I could tell it was my old buddy Sergeant Leon Sorels. Journeys end in lovers meeting, I thought madly to myself, knowing that I was within seconds of watching two of my comrades die.

  Now it was my time. The moment when I would decide what kind of man I was and what kind of man I would be. I understood this, and at the same time I was damned near crapping in my pants, I thanked God for giving me the awareness of that moment, for it is granted to few human beings to know when it happens. Usually we don’t recognize our defining moment until it’s long past, no matter how we handle it. But I’d been thinking about it a lot over the past few months, and I knew. We had all been briefed on General Order Number Eight, the “feets don’t fail me now” order which stated that whenever we were confronted with overwhelming force we were to un-ass the area pronto and live to fight another day. By now I counted four patrol cars in the lot, two troopers per car opening their doors and stepping out, some with riot helmets and shotguns and flak jackets, and I had to assume that more were coming, which I am sure fit anyone’s reasonable definition of overwhelming force. I had a good rep with the crew as a cool and steady hand, I had General Order Number Eight to cover my ass, and while Sully and Jonesy were comrades they were not from our particular unit, strangers in a sense, barely on speaking terms. I recalled Red’s little pep talk the night we whacked Officer Des Farrow about how my purpose was not to be a hero engaging in private duels with the enemy, I was a political soldier trying to achieve a political objective, the mission came first, and the media’s schoolyard taunts of cowardice were neither here nor there.

  There was just one problem with that. Running away and leaving your comrades alone and on foot to face down an enemy ambush on their own happens really to be cowardice.

  I was sure the Wingfields would be so glad to get me back in one piece that no one would judge me if I yelled a number eight into the cell phone, abandoned the Taurus and had Johnny pick me up a few blocks away. But how would I myself judge the face I saw in the mirror every day? I had already decided in my own mind that my brave talk at Chowder Society meetings and under the trees behind the Wingfield house with Rooney about being willing to give up my own life for my new country wasn’t going to be just talk to impress her. I meant it in my heart. I was sure I meant it when I said it, anyway, and I knew I’d damned well better prove to Rooney that I meant it. Well, now my bluff was being called, and I had about five more seconds to do something that would give that boy and girl in the store some kind of fighting chance, and which would inevitably turn the attention of eight well trained and heavily armed mercenaries right on me. No cover of night, no catching them off guard, just me and them with our respective weapons in our hands. Oh, crap.

  Before I could even make a conscious decision, I was just doing it. I picked up the cell phone and spoke, “Hey, Albert. I got three orders coming up off the grill and I’ll pull them if I can, but I may need you to pull three.”

  “Okay, Carl,” replied Pilafski. John later told me my voice was calm. I must be a calm hysteric, then, because I was half out of my mind with fear and pumping adrenalin. I felt down into a gym bag on the seat beside me, beneath the sweaty shorts and socks and towels my hand came on the cold metal of my gun for the day. I pulled out a stainless steel .357 Magnum revolver with a six inch barrel and a plastic black Pachmayr grip that through some perverse destiny fit nice and solidly into my small palm. It was John Hunt’s old Colt, thank God, not that chintzy Brazilian Taurus, and I knew it was loaded with some of Carter’s hand-made devastator rounds with a cap in the tip of each slug, so there was a chance I could pierce the state troopers’ Kevlar. The gun was heavy and yet it hefted well. I had one cylindrical speedloader with another six cartridges and some loose rounds in my shirt pocket; I could see one of the troopers leaning over the roof of his squad car with a 40-mm grenade launcher ready to fire tear gas or even a shot round, and another had an M-16 out. This ambush looked a bit impromptu. Probably somebody in the store had gotten suspicious and called 911 and the state police responded, since I’m sure word had already gotten around that the Dundee cops had been compromised by me and Carter’s little heart-to-heart talk with Greg on New Year’s Eve.

  I was about to dial Sully’s cell number to warn them, when I saw the two of them pass in front of the window of the market, their arms full of brown paper bags of groceries. Ma always asked us to bring her the paper bags instead of the plastic ones because they made good garbage bags. There was no more time. The two Volunteers would be walking through the door in about three seconds. There was only one thing for me to do. Through some miracle the cops didn’t know that Shane Ryan was around, but it was time for me to introduce ‘em to the boy. I slid out of the car, snuck around to the right passenger side of the Taurus where I’d have a little bit more metal and upholstery between myself and incoming bullets. I crouched down and leveled a two-handed firing stance on the hood, keeping as low a profile as I could, and
I aimed the .357 right at Leon Sorels’ broad back about thirty yards away where he stood in a similar position with his own weapon pointed at the automatic door of the supermarket. The doors opened and Comrade Sullivan and Comrade Jones stepped out and froze when they saw the reception committee. On this occasion at least, possibly because there were potential witnesses around, Sergeant Sorels went through the procedural motions by bellowing “Police!

  Drop your..!” at which point I shot him in the back, as unchivalrously as Red Morehouse could have wished.

  And missed.

  Okay, so I was scared pea green and I wasn’t exactly Davy Crockett. But I sure as hell startled Sorels. My bullet plowed into the top doorjamb of his squad car with a pop and a spark and must have showered him with some debris, because he bellowed something I sure wouldn’t want to go down as my last mortal words on earth, and his hand jerked up as he fired his 9-mil automatic. One of the other cops yelled “They’re behind us!” and damned if I didn’t hear fear in his voice as well, and that broke the spell. Okay, everybody’s got guns and everybody is scared, so let’s take it from there. I can deal with that. Sorels whirled and I put my next bullet square in his chest. Rather to my amazement I was firing single-action, actually cocking the weapon and aiming rather than closing my eyes and blasting away on double-action. Carter Wingfield proved himself to be a damned good arms instructor on that cold winter afternoon. Sorels was wearing one of the newest super-vests with that odd woven-steel fabric in it. I had one myself later on and they feel like you’re wearing a snakeskin. They’re light and flexible and impenetrable to anything short of a 50-cal. exploder, and they can even stop those from about four hundred yards out. At a hundred feet or so that vest stopped a .357 Magnum devastator, but the kinetic force of it slammed Sorels back into his own car and sent him sliding unconscious to the ground. The other cops whirled about, confused and looking to see where the shots were coming from, and I was able to get off a third shot at a ducking trooper before they started shooting back at me, shattering the windshield of the Taurus and spraying powdered glass up in my face. By then Sully was down behind a stack of firewood for sale pumping shots out of a .45 automatic, and I saw Jonesy leaning down like she was trying to pick something up off the ground. But she wasn’t trying to pick something up; she was rolling something. I jumped back behind another car and fired again, trying to keep count of six in my mind of, and then there was a mighty bang and a state patrol car did the hootchy-kootchy and exploded into flames.