A Mighty Fortress

by H. A. Covington

  But much to everyone’s surprise, the NVA established itself in Seattle on the very day of the October 22nd uprising in Coeur d’Alene, when two Volunteers had machine-gunned a black police officer and his Asian female partner right on Pioneer Square. Ever since then, no matter how rough the going for the rebellion throughout the Northwest Homeland, the city’s streets had crackled with nighttime gunfire and the thud of bombs going off on a regular basis. The result was an increasingly unfriendly environment for perversions of both mind and body. As the NVA vise had slowly clamped down on the Northwest over the past five years, Capitol Hill had lost much of its left-wing cachet, as those artsy-fartsy habitués who were dusky of skin or sexually inverted either fled to more hospitable climes or got well and truly wasted, shot dead on the pavement by the NVA gunners. The rest of the pervs and the Third Worlders took the hint, and they got the hell out. The once eagerly-sought apartments and studios in the charming Victorian houses which had commanded a king’s ransom in rent were now fifty percent vacant and going for a song. It was hard to find a Chinese or Korean-operated bodega any more, anywhere in the city, never mind a Jamaican reggae bar or a Marxist bookstore or a shop specializing in homo sex toys. The city’s dwindling non-white population tended to keep off the streets, and the bugger boys were now cowering way back into the closet.

  Barrow rubbed his jaw in rumination. “Country Joe Krajewski, eh? Hmm. I lost track of the rock scene when I got over Pearl Jam as a kid, but yeah, the name rings a bell from my days in the blue. Yeah, I got him now. Ayatollah rock and roller. Long-haired greasy freak, covered with tattoos, big druggie. We rousted him a couple of times for crack and heroin and other such comestibles, but he could always hire the most expensive lawyers in town, and if memory serves we were never able to make anything stick. Jeez, is Joey still around? Thought by now he would have booked it down to L.A. or out to New York, once things got hot for his kind around here.”

  “He couldn’t make it outside Seattle,” Dortmunder responded. “His muse, such as it was, didn’t translate. Country Joe is an aging specimen of what used to be called grunge rock. At one stage he pretty much mastered the R & R scene here, lived out on Bainbridge Island in a big mansion, threw wild orgies, chartered jetloads of hangers-on to fly to Maui or Taos for a weekend, etc. Since the war began rock and roll has kind of gone downhill in Seattle, what with us greasing all the nigger bass players and drug pushers and other essential appurtenances of the scene. Country Joe lost his mansion and ended up in a seedy walk-up on Capitol Hill. He seems to be taking it personal. He was always a parlor pink like all of these people, and he and his Jew buddy and drug connection Jake Kaplan have got this idea of trying to revive Rock Against Racism.”

  “Kaplan, yeah, now him I remember. Coke dealer to the stars, used to be the retail representative on the street for the Colombians. Boy, that’s a blast from the past! Those assholes were among the first to go back after 10/22,” said Barrow. “In fact some of my own first hits were when we cacked the lead vocal in Ooze, and the drummer in Stomach Pump, plus a couple of Jew agent and impresario types. Those rock and roll antifa characters haven’t dared to so much as strum a chord in Seattle for years. What gives?”

  “Yeah, well, seems Country Joe is having a midlife crisis. He’s getting nostalgic for the good old days of sex and drugs and rock and roll, and he wants to try and trot out some of those golden moldies from Rock Against Racism. He has been in touch with Homeland Security and they like the idea for obvious propaganda reasons. They’re thinking of staging a big Rock Against Racism concert in Discovery Park.”

  “They think they can get away with that and not get hit in the head by the NVA?” asked Barrow in amazement.

  “Oh, they know the risk is too great for any real concert,” replied Dortmunder. “That could just get all kinds of embarrassing when the RPGs start flying. But this won’t be real. It will be a virtual concert.”

  “Huh?” asked Barrow.

  “I’m not one hundred per cent on the technology, but apparently there is a way for the rockers to get up on a stage and actually do their gig in Discovery Park, presumably under massive guard from FATPO and the military, and then have the government computer tech people add in a big crowd at the central broadcast point. To those who watch the concert on TV, it will look like they’ve got the park packed with thousands of cheering, boogying fans. The idea is to broadcast the concert worldwide, make it look like the people of Seattle came out for it by the hundred thousand, and by appearing to hold this gig with impunity, show the world that the NVA is a paper tiger, the battle for democracy and diversity is being won in spite of all the dead Feds in restaurants, so forth and so on.”

  “And needless to say the world media will go along with this hoax?” asked Barrow in disgust.

  “Does a bear shit in the woods?”

  “Okay, we need to nip this one in the bud,” said Barrow decisively. “Country Joe seems to have forgotten his manners. He needs a ticket to that great crash pad in the sky. What exactly have you got on this little project and where did you get it?”

  “Nightshade again,” said Dortmunder.

  “Nightshade is diamond,” agreed Barrow. “Damn, that chick is on top of it! Has Third Section got her spying on rock degenerates now?”

  “This was kind of serendipitous,” Joe told him. “She’s been sleazing around Capitol Hill in Ghoul, trying to set up Fatties. A lot of them sneak out of barracks when they’re off duty to do the clubs and score some drugs and pussy for the male officers. Drugs and pussy for the female officers as well.”

  “Ghoul—that’s the Morticia Addams look, right?” asked Barrow.

  “Yeah. Kind of decayed Goth with a touch of Elvira, but not as classy. You make your bones by making your bones, literally. You dig up a grave and…”

  “Yeah, I get the idea,” said Barrow, waving it away queasily. “God, every time I think America can’t sink any lower…go on.”

  “Anyway, she started hanging with some punk rockers meeting in those sleazy clubs off Broadway on Capitol Hill, and she hooked up with Krajewski and Kappy. They’re meeting with some character from Homeland Security tonight in the Eclectic Strawberry Veggie Bar, at ten o’clock. If we get on it quick we can not only whack a couple of degenerates but a Federal suit as well. The Fed might be a very nice little bonus. Homeland Security generally stays far away from the Homeland, so to speak.”

  “You read my mind. What do you say? Should we give Sammy Feet a tickle tinkle?”

  “He’d love it, but no, I’d say give this one to Bobby Bells,” advised Dortmunder. “He and his people know that Broadway area like the back of their hands. Remember that Take Back the Streets for Love crap?”

  Back in the early spring, the tattered remains of the local gays and lefties who hadn’t been killed or run out of town had decided on one last attempt to restore their previously paramount profile within Seattle and recover their chic. They had joined with the city government and an approving liberal media, and with great fanfare they had declared the Capitol Hill district to be a “Hate Free Zone.” In order to enforce this, they had declared so-called Walk for Love areas where homosexuals and race-mixers would parade around holding hands and otherwise getting tactile with their multifarious same-sex and/or different-race significant others, snogging on the sidewalks, and generally showing a high profile. This was not quite as hare-brained an idea as it might appear at first glance, since before they ventured out to do this, the whole area was heavily infiltrated with plainclothes FATPO and Seattle PD teams, waiting to pounce on any rebels who tried to do anything about the displays of degeneracy. The idea from the Federals’ point of view was to use the same-sex and racially mixed couples as a kind of live bait to lure the NVA out, and indeed the FATPOs themselves obligingly provided a number of mixed decoy teams of every conceivable race and gender combination, concealed weapons at the ready to jump up and start blasting in mid-snog at the slightest manifestation of evil racism and homophobia. It
was a measure of how desperate the Federals were for targets, and how deficient was their intelligence in every sense of the word. They couldn’t figure out any other way to draw the NVA out.

  The NVA had countered Walk for Love with an operation called Springtime for Hitler. The commanding officer of the Third Brigade’s A Company, Lieutenant Robert DiBella, aka Bobby Bells, had been assigned the task of preventing this public relations embarrassment for the NVA, and he had developed a full court press offensive that cleaned it up in two days. Bells was a natural-born street fighter, an instinctive tactician like some untrumpeted Patton of the asphalt. He knew that it was suicidal to get up close and personal with the couples scattered all along Broadway, because there was an armed enemy lying in ambush behind every window and lamppost just waiting for the Volunteers. So he decided to use an indirect multiplier effect to shut the project down by sucking all the propaganda vitality out of it. The unit was able to obtain a number of heavy weapons, some RPGs and proper mortars, but also things like sticks of dynamite and military-issue white phosphorus grenades that were attached to sticks of wooden dowling, which were then inserted into single-shot 16-gauge shotguns which were loaded with shells from which the buckshot had been removed, thus making a ballastite cartridge. By pulling the pins on the grenades and firing the shotguns into the air, they was able to create a primitive mortar which burst high on the rooftops or in the middle of the street, showering everything around with a snowfall of white, burning fragments that immediately set multiple fires. This plus several quick hit-and-runs with the RPGs and the mortars fired from the back of pickup trucks caused all manner of damage and set more fires, at a distance. The arrival of the fire trucks inevitably disrupted all the interracial and homosexual love-walking, the crowds and confusion not only diverting and snarling the target couples and their plainclothes escorts but making it fairly obvious to keen-eyed observers who was who on the street.

  On several occasions running gun battles broke out between teams of NVA shooters and the FATPOs, with casualties on both sides, but the news at ten that night was about flying bullets and burning things on Broadway, not loving interracial and gay couples standing tall and proud for diversity while canoodling and grazing in the grass. On the second night of the Walk for Love, a daring NVA pilot hijacked a small private airplane from the King County Airport, aimed it dead center in the middle of Broadway, and bailed out at the last second, making a big hole and an unholy mess in the street. The lesson was clear: the Northwest Volunteer Army had no intention of coming out in person to attack the individual couples and their heavily armed escorts, but the rebels would continue to steal the liberals’ propaganda thunder and create such disruption that the government’s PR purpose was not being served. The undercover Fatties were hard put to it to defend themselves, never mind protect the bait, and what is worse, it was clear from people who were watching the news coverage that this was the case. FATPO were being made to look like incompetents. The result was the collapse of the Capitol Hill liberal and gay scene, which was why Barrow was surprised to learn that this Country Joe Krajewski character would even try to revive a dead horse. “Yeah, Bobby knows the lay of the land around Broadway, but isn’t he a bit short on triggers right now, since we took Slim Jim and those others to form E Company?” he asked.

  “He’s got some new people he wants to break in,” replied Dortmunder. “That’s another reason I suggested him. He’s got a couple of kids who are just itching to make their bones, and Bobby thinks they’ve got the stuff.”

  “Okay, give Bells a bell and set it up.”

  “One red flag, though. There’s a good chance that Nightshade herself is going to be with Country Joe and Kappy when it goes down. She’s been playing groupie and she had to really feign an interest in this Rock Against Racism project in order to gain entrée. And get Krajewski interested in her.”

  Barrow pointedly avoided asking how far Krajewki’s interest had gotten him. It was irrelevant so long as the intelligence was good. “Can’t she find some excuse to do a fade just before it goes down?” asked Barrow.

  “Maybe. But she also wants to maintain her cover on the Hill, and cops and Fatties aren’t stupid. Any time there’s a hit they know there’s a finger somewhere, and somebody who disappears just before the bullets start flying is an obvious suspect.”

  Barrow scowled. “I know those Third Section ops have got balls the size of grapefruits, male or female, but we can’t risk her getting shot by one of our own, and let’s face it, sometimes the boys do get a bit trigger-happy. You or I will have to go along and make sure both Nightshade and her cover survive the evening, although I’m not happy with anyone who doesn’t need to know finding out what she looks like. It won’t just be Auburn if she’s caught. The Feds are starting to give Third Section people secret military tribunals and needles in the arm.”

  “What about Mr. Chips?” asked Dortmunder.

  “Oh, crap!” swore Barrow. “Damn, that’s right! If he wasn’t Army Council I’d send a message to re-schedule, but I got the definite impression that this is something serious and we need to take the meeting. Look, Bobby’s a cool hand and he keeps his boys on a tight rein. You tell him just don’t shoot any females. Make sure he understands that! That little girl has got the right stuff, the old iron in her. If she has to die in all this, I don’t want it to be in some stupid accident. We’re all going to have enough on our karma for what we’ve done intentionally during this war without adding something like that. You tell DiBella, no women tonight.”

  “God, to think there was a time when something like that wouldn’t even have come up,” sighed Dortmunder. “It’s bad enough that men do things like this. Now that women are doing it too, you wonder if there’s any hope left for the human race.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s why we’re doing this, Joe,” said Barrow. “So that one day a girl like Nightshade can grow up in the world of Jane Austen again, instead of Clockwork Orange. When you’re lost in a swamp and up to your ass in alligators, you know you’ve made a wrong turn somewhere. The only way is to quit blundering deeper and deeper into the darkness, turn your ass around, struggle back to where you made the wrong turn, and make the right choice this time. And try to leave as few boys and girls as possible lying dead in the swamp being eaten by the slimy things.”

  * * *

  Out in suburban Bellevue, in the bright morning air, Kelly Shipman and Molly Bergstrom were having an exuberant tennis workout on the high school court, with Kelly winning three sets and Molly two. The girls had an audience. Sitting on a bench and watching them volley from behind the wire fence, or more specifically watching Kelly play, was a quiet young man of her own age with brown hair slightly brushing his collar. His eyes never left the lithe, graceful blonde girl on the green tarmac for an instant.

  Cody Brock was wearing a dark navy blue shirt that had come from the Salvation Army store, faded jeans, a baseball cap and cheap knock-off running shoes from Wal-Mart. He was a newcomer who had entered Hillside just that autumn as a senior, ostensibly transferring in from a high school in Ellensburg. In point of fact, his transcript from the Ellensburg school was a work of fiction equal to anything taught in the English department, and the gruff middle-aged gentleman who appeared at Hillside High whenever he was required for parent-teacher conferences was not Cody’s father, but a man known to his friends and to Federal law enforcement as Farmer Brown.

  Cody’s mother had been killed an auto accident when Cody was three; he barely remembered her. Cody’s biological father was a lumberjack and sawmill turner who was serving a life sentence in Walla Walla penitentiary for a drunken bar fight in which he had stabbed a black man. He had received five years for the assault with grievous bodily harm, and a mandatory life sentence for using the word “nigger” during the affray. When Jared Brock went to prison, Cody had been eight years old and his sister Gwendolyn had been twelve. Cody and his sister had been immediately seized by It Takes A Village and sold. Gwen he had never seen
again after the Federals came and took her away. He had no idea where she was and had difficulty remembering what she looked like, although he knew she was a grown woman now and probably fairly comfortable, since It Takes A Village only sold confiscated children to those who could afford the costly adoption bond. For some reason he had never fully understood, attorney Larry Sapirstein had paid $300,000 for him.

  Cody had run away from his own horrendous foster family when he was sixteen, after assaulting his Jewish stepfather with murderous intent. He had made his way from San Francisco back to Centralia, but the town was too small to conceal a runaway and there was nothing left there of his old life anyway, so he had drifted on to Seattle. After a period of living rough on the streets, most of which he spent in the public library self-completing what education he thought he needed, Cody had taken to hanging out at a soup kitchen run by a Christian youth group. One of the counselors, a trendy priest with a beard and a turtleneck, had made a quiet practice of rescuing young white people from life on the street, the drugs, and so forth, in a rather unorthodox manner. After a period of assessment, Father Andrew would take white street boys and girls off somewhere private and urge them to put their hand in the hand of the man from Germany. Sometimes he even sang it while strumming his guitar. He forwarded dozens of white kids to the NVA in this way, until one of the kids ratted him out in exchange for drugs. One snowy day Special Agent Bruce Goldberg of the FBI and a team of FATPO officers came into the mission, crucified Father Andrew with a nail gun onto one of the dining room tables, and poured a powerful drain cleaner down his throat.