by Larry Bond
It was not a fair fight. The American was motivated by honest conviction and limited by logic. Halovic, whose only goal was to widely air a racist philosophy, used or abandoned logic as he chose. Always friendly, always convincing, he manufactured facts and statistics, the more outrageous the better. And in the end, after almost an hour of intense discussion, the other man stormed out, thoroughly disgusted.
Inside, Halovic smiled. He’d watched the others in the bar while he’d argued with Dickerson. Most had at least been aware of the conversation. Some had tuned in surreptitiously, listening to the verbal cut and thrust with interest.
Nobody else seemed immediately eager to take up the racial gauntlet he’d thrown down, so he sat alone quietly, watching television while he waited again for his efforts to bear fruit.
A little after seven, two men entered the bar. Halovic, who reflexively kept one eye on the door, only noticed their arrival among the after-dinner crowd because one of the pair gestured in his direction and said something to his companion.
Both came over to him right away. The first offered his hand and said, “I’m Tony McGowan. We talked yesterday.”
Halovic took it, remembering the tall, black-haired man. He hadn’t said much, but he’d always been nearby, in easy earshot.
The other man was older, in his fifties, with rougher features and brown hair cropped almost as short as Halovic’s. He was built like a wrestler gone to seed, bulging muscles gone slack or turned to fat. He also extended his hand. “Name’s Jim Burke. I hear you’re looking to do a little shooting.”
Halovic nodded. “Ja. I shot some today—at your gun club here.” He allowed his disappointment to show on his face and in his voice.
Burke smiled thinly. “Pretty tame, isn’t it? Nothing much exciting to shoot at out there. A few regulation targets and some old cans and bottles.”
McGowan chimed in. “Real little-old-lady stuff.”
Halovic nodded cautiously.
Burke took the barstool next to him and signaled the bartender for three more beers. He leaned closer. “A few of us have a range we’ve set up on some private property. We can cut loose a little more out there than they do at the gun club. Anyway, we were wondering if you’d like to join us out there tomorrow. Say, around noon.”
Halovic thought fast.
Were these men what they claimed to be, friendly locals simply looking for a chance to show off their weapons and skills to a foreign visitor? Unlikely, he decided. Tomorrow was a weekday, a workday for most of these people.
Or were they provocateurs, law officers of some type on the prowl for potential troublemakers? That was doubtful too, he realized. Walker’s Landing seemed too small and isolated to warrant much attention from the authorities.
Halovic felt a sudden thrill—the same kind of thrill he always experienced when his crosshairs first settled on his chosen target. It was far more likely that Burke and McGowan were two of the very men he had come hunting. He smiled slowly at the man sitting beside him. “Thank you, yes. I would like to shoot with you very much. It would be an honor.”
AUGUST 20
(D MINUS 117)
The red Blazer that picked up Sefer Halovic in the morning held three men: Burke, McGowan, and another man, much younger and in excellent physical condition, behind the wheel. He introduced himself as Dave Keller.
Halovic climbed into the backseat beside McGowan. He was already starting to sense the hierarchy involved here. Burke was clearly the leader and the man he must convince. The others would look to him.
Their shooting range was a fifteen-minute drive south of Walker’s Landing, well off Route 250 down a narrow, wooded private road. Frequent signs warned trespassers to stay out. Those closest to the highway threatened legal action against anyone caught violating private property. The notices further down the road carried more ominous warnings.
Halovic shifted slightly in his seat. He had been right. Whatever else they were up to, these men were not just being friendly to a foreign tourist. The shape of the pistol he carried concealed in the small of his back was suddenly reassuring.
Keller wheeled the Blazer off the road and into a long, narrow clearing separating dense woods on either side. More trees at the far end closed off the clearing entirely. The four of them piled out and began pulling their gear out of the back.
The Bosnian finished loading his rifle and straightened up. He looked down the clearing with interest. Burke and his companions had accumulated a wide variety of potential targets for their private shooting gallery. There were old oil drums, rusting refrigerators, and even a couple of abandoned cars scattered at varying distances all the way back to the distant woods. Most of them were shot full of ragged holes.
Keller nodded toward the optical scope Halovic had fixed to his rifle. “You got that zeroed in yet?”
He shook his head. “No, I would like to do that now.”
Keller pointed toward an oil drum someone had painted red. “That’s two hundred yards. Give or take a foot or two.” He grinned mirthlessly.
“Danke.” Halovic dropped into a relaxed kneeling posture and chambered a round. This would be an easy shot. There was no appreciable wind, and he knew the precise range to his target. He took a breath, let it out, took another, sighted, and then gently squeezed the trigger.
A puff of dirt appeared six inches in front of the barrel and a few inches to one side. After making a minute adjustment to the sight, he fired again.
This time the barrel rocked slightly—punched clean through the center.
“Damned good shooting,” Burke remarked casually from beside his ear.
“Ja. Well, I was in the Army,” Halovic lied.
“What did you do?”
“I was a sniper.” That much at least was true.
Burke smiled. “A sniper, eh? That’s interesting.” He glanced at the others briefly and then turned back to Halovic. “See the crooked tree just past that old Dodge? The black willow? Now take a good look just to the left.”
Halovic swung the rifle left slowly, hunting through the scope for the spot the older man had indicated. He stopped as a figure dressed in camouflage fatigues and hunched beside the tree trunk leaped into focus.
He took his eye away from the scope in surprise and glanced at Burke. “There is a man out there!”
The older man grinned. “Not really.” He nodded downrange. “That’s just a dummy we dressed up. Adds a little kick to the target practice.”
Halovic nodded slowly. “I understand.” Then he allowed a smile to form on his face. “That is much better than shooting at old metal!”
McGowan slapped him on the shoulder. “You got it, Karl!” He tapped the Remington rifle in Halovic’s hands. “That .30-06 is nice, but how about handling something with a little more kick? You know, some real rock-and-roll?”
“Rock-and-roll?” Halovic didn’t have to pretend any confusion this time.
“Yeah. Something that can go off on full auto. Something like this baby.” McGowan held out an assault rifle—a weapon the Bosnian recognized as a Chinese-made variant of the old Russian AK-47.
Halovic laid down his .30-06 and took the assault rifle McGowan offered. Although thousands had been sold in the U.S. as semiautomatic weapons, someone had reconfigured this one to allow full-automatic fire. He looked up. “This rifle … isn’t it against your American gun control laws?”
Burke shrugged. “Maybe. But this is private property, Karl. And we’re a long way down the road. So what we do here is our own damned business. Nobody interferes with us. Understand?”
Halovic nodded firmly. “I understand.”
“So let her rip.”
“As you wish.” With the ease born of long practice, the Bosnian flipped the safety off and began shredding a series of targets, walking his fire from right to left as he pumped short bursts into each. In seconds, he’d emptied the thirty-round magazine. He turned to the other men with a broad grin on his face, slapped the AK’s stock with
one hand, and exclaimed: “Ausge-zeichnet! Very good! A beautiful weapon!”
Burke, McGowan, and Keller were staring openmouthed down the range.
Finally the older man spoke for them all. “Goddamn, Karl! That was some beautiful shooting.” He looked at the row of mangled barrels and torn-up refrigerators again and shook his head in admiration. “Now, that calls for a drink! And for something to eat, by God.”
Galvanized by their leader’s decision, McGowan and Keller hurried to the Blazer and brought back a cooler containing a couple of six-packs, a loaf of bread, condiments, and an assortment of lunch meats. The four of them found shade under a nearby tree and sat back at ease, swapping sandwich fixings and cans of ice-cold beer.
Burke broke the companionable silence first. The burly man brushed the crumbs off his lap, drained his beer can, crumpled it, and tossed it casually aside. “Tony tells me you’ve got some pretty strong views on race problems, Karl. Is that a fact?”
Ah. Now it begins, Halovic thought. He nodded firmly. “That is a fact, Jim.” Then he shrugged. “I know these views are not popular in America, but truth is the truth. The white races all over the world are being buried by a sea of inferiors—of blacks, of Jews, of Arabs …”
He was heartened by the other men’s reactions as he continued his often-rehearsed tirade. Burke and McGowan both smiled and nodded as he made his points, clearly pleased by what they were hearing. Even Keller seemed to relax slightly.
Burke nodded sharply again when the Bosnian wound up his peroration with the assertion that “time is short. We must act soon and in force before we are drowned—and our race with us.”
The older man pursed his lips. “You’ve sure got that right, Karl.” He scowled. “God only knows the niggers and the rest are getting uppity as hell in this country.”
That brought rumbles of assent from both Keller and McGowan.
Burke took another beer out of the cooler, drank deeply, and began outlining his own extremist views. Not surprisingly, they paralleled those Halovic had just laid out in every significant detail. He seemed delighted to find a kindred spirit from overseas—especially from Germany. His two followers chimed in occasionally, but they always deferred to the older man.
They are sheep, Halovic thought with contempt, all the while smiling and nodding himself. They go wherever they are led.
“Are there many others like you over there in Germany, Karl? Men who’re willing to stand up for the white race?” Burke asked at last.
“Yes. Many.” Halovic paused significantly to make sure he had their full attention. “And not just in Germany. There are others like us all over Europe.”
He stabbed at the grass with his finger as he continued. “We are organizing. Mobilizing. Arming! We are strong and growing stronger. The moment of truth is drawing near. Soon we shall strike. First in my homeland. And then in the other nations of Europe.”
“Outstanding!” Burke’s enthusiasm, unlike Halovic’s, was wholly unfeigned. He turned to McGowan and Keller. “What’d I tell you boys? We’re not alone in this fight. See, all we’ve got to do is provide some goddamned leadership and the pure whites will rise up to join us!”
Halovic took a deep breath. “So you have organizations such as mine here in America?” he asked carefully.
“Hell, yes, Karl!” Burke grinned proudly. “You’re looking at the leader of one of the biggest!”
The Bosnian listened with hidden disdain and open admiration as the older man outlined his plans to “retake” America from its racial and genetic enemies. His wild-eyed schemes—a linked series of attacks and assassinations—were intended to spark a nationwide rising of the white race. To fire a revolt that Burke believed would be spearheaded by his own fanatical group—the “Aryan Sword.”
Madness, Halovic thought coldly. But perhaps he could make it a madness tinged with a tiny grain of truth.
“We don’t have the numbers I’d like. Not yet,” the older American admitted. “But we’re recruiting pretty fast. People around here are waking up to what’s going on.”
“That’s true!” McGowan asserted loyally, backing up his leader. “With the Ramseys, we’ve got fifty-two members—counting the kids who’re old enough to carry a gun.”
Halovic tried hard to look impressed. In truth, those numbers were somewhat larger than he’d expected. Under all his drunken bluster, this man Burke must have the charisma needed to draw ignorant and gullible people together under a banner of hate.
He leaned closer to the older man. It was time to make his move. “That is wonderful news. Great news. I had hoped to find a movement of courage here in America. You see, I am here to build an alliance across the seas. The war begins soon and we must fight together—side by side against the Jews and the blacks and the rest.”
The Bosnian pulled a crumpled pamphlet out of his shirt pocket and handed it to Burke. Titled “The Jewish Plan,” it had been picked up months ago at a white supremacist rally in Maryland by an Iranian agent posing as a journalist. “This was my guide.”
“Jesus! That’s Harry’s pamphlet. I helped him run it off,” McGowan exclaimed in surprise.
The atmosphere changed abruptly. Burke’s face was suddenly a mask, unreadable. Halovic noted that Keller’s hand now rested on the barrel of his rifle. He fought the temptation to reach for his own concealed pistol. He had known that this would be a moment of crisis. By their nature, hate groups like the Aryan Sword were run by secretive, paranoid men. They would not like the notion of a stranger actively searching for them.
He pointed toward the pamphlet still clutched in the older man’s hand. “This was passed to us in Leipzig,” he lied. “We knew that there were centers of resistance here in America, so I was sent to find them. But I am not alone. Others are looking too—in other parts of your country.”
Burke shook his head in evident disbelief, but Halovic could see the excitement bubbling up beneath the older man’s inbred suspicion.
He allowed himself to relax—however minutely. Everything was as the mission planners in Tehran had foreseen. People like Burke often talked in grandiose terms of forging an army, of leading a revolution, of blood and fire and sword. But they never seemed completely prepared to see their ideas taken seriously. The idea that someone might actually begin the race war they had predicted had them off balance.
The silence stretched.
McGowan reacted first. “This is bullshit!” he exploded. He stood up, pacing stiffly over to Burke. “What’s this guy talking about? Even assuming he’s telling the truth, what do we care about Europe?”
Halovic checked Keller, who had not moved. The younger man’s hand still rested on his rifle.
“Tony had a good point, Karl,” Burke said carefully. “Why should we stick our necks out for you? What do we have to gain?”
“Arms. Sophisticated weapons.”
McGowan snorted, but Burke held up a hand to silence him and only said mildly, “We’re pretty well fixed for guns, Karl. As you should know.”
“Small arms, yes. But I can get you automatic grenade launchers, antitank rockets, mortars, land mines, even antiaircraft missiles. Ammunition, explosives, and detonators too. Do you have these things?”
“No.” The older man looked more interested. “At what price?”
Halovic shrugged. “Well below the price on the black market. Just enough to cover our own costs and shipping.”
“Sure,” McGowan sneered. “Now it comes out. This bastard’s a con artist. I say we let him walk back from here.” He nodded angrily toward the dark woods around them. “Or maybe we just make sure he doesn’t go back at all.”
A grim-faced Keller nodded slowly in agreement.
Halovic tensed.
“Sit down, Tony,” Burke snapped. He turned back to the Bosnian. “You’re talking pretty big, Karl. You’d better be able to back up what you say. Now, how the hell did you lay your hands on mortars and the rest? And what makes you think you can get that kind of hardware
over here without the feds going apeshit?”
He had them, Halovic realized. He shrugged. “When the two Germanys merged, there was much confusion. The old communist Army built hidden arms bunkers all over East Germany. Their record-keeping was very poor.” He smiled coldly. “My comrades and I found it easy to make some of those bunkers disappear from the files.
“As for transport …” He shrugged again. “That is simplicity itself. We have friends like you in position in ports like Hamburg and Rotterdam. And more friends in Canada who will handle transshipment for us.”
Halovic fixed his gaze on Burke. “I say we can get you the arms you want. The arms you will need. I tell you again most solemnly, the war of blood and race you have foretold is upon us all.”
The older man licked his lips, clearly tempted but still uncertain. He glanced swiftly at McGowan and Keller as though seeking their silent counsel. At last, he shook his head and stood up. “I’ve got to think more on this, Karl.”
Halovic and the others stood up with him.
Burke looked at Keller. “You take him back to his motel for now, Dave.” Then he turned back to Halovic. “And you be waiting outside your motel room at nine tomorrow morning. We’ll talk more then. Clear?”
The Bosnian nodded silently, satisfied. He would let their greed and ambition war with their cowardice and caution through the night. He was over the first hurdle.
AUGUST 21
(D MINUS 116)
Wearing a light jacket over an open-necked shirt, Sefer Halovic stood waiting outside his motel room early the next morning. He didn’t have to wait long. A rusty blue sedan—an old Chevrolet—turned off the road and roared straight across the gravel lot toward him at high speed. He forced himself to stand still as the car squealed to a stop right beside him.
