A Mighty Fortress

by H. A. Covington

  “How do I get into this SS?” asked Cody eagerly.

  Morehouse chuckled. “Well, right now, I’m not sure. The only individual officer I know besides Carter who’s in it is Lieutenant Bill Vitale. They’re hand-picking the heaviest hitters we’ve got for his team, and with all due respect, Cody, I don’t think you’re quite in that category yet. But don’t worry. I suspect we will have more than enough rough and tumble coming for you to prove your mettle, if that’s what you decide you want. As much as I hate to say it, one way or the other our new country is probably going to be almost a military dictatorship for the first few years of our existence. Don’t worry, you’ll be right at ground zero for history in the making, at Longview.”

  “Yes, sir, I meant to ask that. Why, exactly, do you want me to come with you to Longview?”

  “Joe has explained your personal situation to me, Volunteer Brock,” said Barrow. “He tells me you speak Yiddish. Is that true?”

  “Uh, regrettably, sir, I do,” said Cody with a sigh. “I was not only taught the language in a classroom for three years, but my It Takes A Village family had Yiddishe Tages where we spoke nothing else among ourselves or around the house, as well as Hebrew days.”

  “Hebrew always looks to me like a cockroach fell into a pot of ink and he staggered across a sheet of paper trying to escape. Can you actually read those squiggles?” asked Barrow.

  “Yes, sir,” Cody told him.

  “Well, then, it should be obvious why we need you there,” said Red Morehouse. “We have information that some of the American negotiation team will think it’s cute to natter among themselves in Jewspeak, and they may be so confident that none of us can understand them that they slip up and say things that will be of interest to the delegation of the Republic. We want you to go to Longview with us as an aide-de-camp or something of the kind. You will stick close to General Barrow, carry his briefcase, light his cigar, keep your mouth shut, and your ears open.”

  “Got it, sir!” said Cody happily.

  “What about this ceasefire, sir?” asked Bobby Bells. “How exactly does that work? We just sit on our asses while they bullshit with each other down in Longview?”

  “Hardly,” said Morehouse with a thin smile. “What do you think that Special Service unit is being set up for? While General Barrow and his team are down in Longview finalizing our independence, the rest of us will be out and about the Homeland grabbing everything that isn’t nailed down. But we have to keep the gunplay to an absolute minimum. We’re going to stage a coup, but it has to be bloodless.”

  “All strangling?” asked Bells.

  “I like the way you think, Captain DiBella,” chuckled Morehouse.

  “Someone seems to have neglected to explain the concept of a ceasefire to the enemy, sir,” spoke up Morehouse’s bodyguard Dexter from the doorway to the rec room.

  “What?” exclaimed Morehouse.

  Dex held out a cell phone. “Commandant Graham from Number Two Seattle Brigade on the horn for you and for General Barrow,” he said. “Immediately after the President finished her speech, FATPO units all over the city left their barracks and started going berserk. Looks like they knew what was coming, and they were all gassed up and ready to go. They’re setting fire to buildings, setting up roadblocks where they stop cars and beat the drivers, occupying malls and public places and shaking everybody down, roaring through residential neighborhoods and firing into people’s homes, all kinds of crap like that. They’ve already killed some people.”

  Morehouse grabbed the phone. “Yes, Jock?” he said. He listened for several minutes and then he said, quietly but firmly so everyone in the room could hear him. “I will stand for the Army Council tonight until they can get in touch and be apprised of the situation. Get your men out on the streets, Commandant, all of them, and hit FATPO troops wherever you find them. Chase those plague rats back into their holes, and make sure they stay there until they leave for good under the terms of the settlement. As of the end of President Clinton’s speech tonight, this is now our country. We will defend it, and we will let everyone see us defending it. America ended tonight. It’s time we let the world know that the boss man is back, and we ain’t putting up with any more shit from uppity niggers. Get out there and cut those bastards down!”

  IV.

  “We’ve won. We’re the law now, and we’re gonna be signing the paychecks, so from now on you do what we tell you.” – Bobby Bells to the police.

  Morehouse folded up the phone to cheers and applause from the group around him, and turned to them. “Bold words,” he said. “Let’s make them good, comrades.”

  Barrow spoke up. “That includes Number Three Brigade as well,” he said, quickly re-assuming his old command. “Our first requirement is intelligence. We need to know where the Fatties are and what they’re doing.”

  “Jock’s got scout cars out and he will be giving me regular reports,” said Morehouse. “Number One Brigade will handle everything from Bothell on north. The other two brigades will need to secure the East Side and downtown. The most important thing he mentioned is that this seemingly spontaneous police riot looks organized. I agree. I don’t think it’s just some drunken Federal hoodlums out on a spree. It has a political purpose. Somebody in D. C. must have tipped the FATPO off as to what was coming down, and apparently they intend to convey their displeasure to Miss Chelsea by hijacking the peace process. If these Federal goons allowed to just run berserk and make it clear to everybody that they are not bound by and will ignore any ceasefire, then that’s the whole Longview conference scuppered right there, before it even begins. They’re trying to strangle the Republic in the cradle. We have to slap them down, and that’s going to be hard, because they’re not only better armed than we are, but there’s a hell of a lot more of them. We don’t have the manpower to go storming through Seattle like a Panzer division, but we can move and strike in the dark and inflict as much damage on the enemy as possible. We can make it equally clear to a watching world that we consider ourselves to be in a position of authority now, and we will exert that authority.”

  “The disparity in numbers is not insurmountable, sir,” said Cody stoutly. “I’m no military strategist, but I remember reading in Clausewitz that successful attack takes about four times as much in manpower and supplies as defense. Somehow we need to make them attack us.”

  Morehouse smiled at him. “I don’t think this is exactly Waterloo, son, and we sure as hell don’t have Marshall Blücher coming up on our flanks to pull our chestnuts out of the fire like Wellington did,” he said with a chuckle. “But I see your point, and I believe that the maxim still holds true. Defense does still require less, especially when it’s fought on what’s called interior lines, which is one of the reasons that Israel was always able to withstand massive attacks from poorly trained, poorly equipped, and poorly led Arab armies. That and a blank check from the United States, of course. Okay, let’s see if we can set up some interior lines within the East Side of Seattle, and work out tactical situations where they walk into our traps.” Morehouse called for his briefcase from Dex, and he pulled out a map of Seattle. He studied it while he rubbed his chin. “I think we need to deploy by sectors, to catch the Fatties in transit when they move through each sector. The regular NVA companies need to set up ambushes on the main streets and approaches to the bridges, to hit the Fatties when they move through those areas. Let the SS do the actual search and destroy.”

  “Okay, and where would the SS be, sir?” asked Bells.

  “When we went on nationwide alert early this morning, Colonel Wingfield got his men together in two action groups, as we’ve temporarily designated them,” said Morehouse. “One of them is to the south, somewhere down around Lake Tapps. The second is to the east of here, near Issaquah I believe, and if they’re not already coming into the city, they will be as soon as I can get hold of Carter. The Issaquah action group can move into the East Side and give us a hand here.”

  “Okay, I think I g
et you, Red,” said Barrow, looking over Morehouse’s shoulder at the map. “Captain DiBella, you need to get all your A Company people in here, Sammy Feet’s crew and Charley Wingate. Joe, get on the horn to Sanderson and get C Company to rendezvous here as well. Oh, and those Russian muscle men whose names I can never pronounce. I think they were some kind of weight-lifting team back in the Motherland. We use them for specialty jobs requiring a heavy hand,” he explained to Morehouse.

  “We just call them Alex and the Droogs,” said Dortmunder “You know, like in Clockwork Orange?”

  “They’re definitely ultra-violent,” agreed Barrow. “Speaking of things Russian, where has the Brigade Quartermaster stashed those AK-74s that we were issued from that big shipload?”

  “Here, sir, and also a big cache at the Black Hole of Calcutta, plus smaller stashes of a few weapons and some ammo with Volunteers at various other places around town,” said Dortmunder.

  “Okay, Joe, get D and E Companies to muster at the Black Hole and have the quartermaster tool them up,” Barrow ordered. “Break out all the long-arms and ammo. Also RPGs, grenades, machine guns, LAWS rockets and everything else we’ve got. Tell everybody that tonight we get to play with our toys. Anything goes.” He took the map from Morehouse and studied it. “The Fatties will be coming and going into the East Side in a north-south line from their barracks on Northeast 132nd Street, plus we’ll be dealing with that bunch that took over the main police station in Redmond a while back, and also from their barracks in Renton. I presume they’ll be using their usual APVs, Strykers and Humvees, but there may be helicopters as well. Damn, I wish we had some Stingers or SAMs! I’d love to bring down some choppers tonight! We need to move into these areas as soon as it gets completely dark, here and here and here.” He circled some places on the map. “We set up ambushes on any overpass or area overlooking the freeways where we can pot at any Feds that go by and also as many of the exits and on-ramps as we can. Make sure there’s at least a couple of RPGs with all the teams who are assigned to freeway access ramps, because coming or going, their vehicles will have to slow down and we can hit them. Any extra men we have, we lay out ambushes at likely places where FATPOs will pass. We’re going to be spread really thin.”

  “Do we go out in combat wearing this get-up, sir?” asked Cody, indicating his uniform.

  “And me wearing a dress?” asked Emily. “I mean, not that this new outfit isn’t just trés chic and all, but it might be hard to dry-clean if it gets all bloody and full of bullet holes.”

  “Uh, no,” decided Barrow. “Sorry to deny you kids a historic first, but you need to wear something a little more practical. You guys go change.”

  “I’m lucky my clothes are upstairs,” Cody told Emily. “I wouldn’t want to go running and crawling through the dirt in cut-off jeans.”

  “You’re a remarkably slim youth, not to say girly-boy,” she said. “Any chance you got some long jeans I can borrow? I don’t want to skin my knobby knees, beautiful as they may be in the eye of some beholders.”

  “Sure,” said Cody. When they came back down they were both wearing jeans, running shoes, and long-sleeved winter lumberjack shirts Cody had dug out of his limited wardrobe. “It may get chilly out there tonight,” he had explained when he handed Emily the shirt and a pullover sweater.

  “You two go out and see Eddie in the garage,” ordered Bells. “Since it looks like we’re gonna have a real blow-out tonight, he’s got some more stuff for you.” They buckled on their field belts they had already received from Hagen that afternoon. In addition to his canteen, Cody had four 35-round magazines for his AK-74 in canvas pouches, and several twenty-round magazines as well, manufactured especially for the Russian assault rifle by an NVA quartermaster. He also carried the Makarov pistol in a holster and several extra clips for it in his shirt pocket. Nightshade had almost 400 rounds for her M-16 in similar pouches. They went out to the garage where Eddie Hagen, who was acting quartermaster since the previous man had been arrested, had pushed several folding tables together to serve as an armory bench.

  “Here,” he told them, handing them two wool balaclavas. “The boss says that despite all this truce shit we might as well stick to procedure. You may get into a sitch out there tonight where you two don’t want to get recognized. Put ‘em on your heads and you can pull them down if you think you need to. Secondly, everybody gets two of these beauties.” He stooped to a case on the floor and handed them two hand grenades apiece, U.S. Army military issue in cylindrical cases of heavy cardboard with a metal clip on the side. “These cardboard carrying canisters clip onto your web belt like this,” Hagen said, showing them how to wear them. “If you want to use one, just pull the top off the canister and pull it out with a firm grip on the detonating mechanism. Do not be a dumb-ass and try to tug them out of the canister by the ring on the pin. Once you pull the pin, throw the damned thing immediately. None of this popping the spoon and counting to three and a half shit. Always carry them one to each side, or behind you on your hip. These things should be safe until you pull the pins, but you still don’t want to be crawling around in the prone position with them under your body. A final word of advice: you guys be sure to fill those canteens,” Hagen told them. “You may think you won’t need water in the middle of a city. That’s what we thought in Tehran. Take my word for it, fill the canteens.”

  By this time other Volunteers from A and C Companies were beginning to arrive, including a group of four huge, square-built, muscle-bound men with bullet heads who were muttering among themselves in Russian. Hagen leaned out of the garage and yelled at them, “Hey, tovarich! Come here. I got something for you guys.” When the four of them crowded into the garage Hagen plunked down one of the company’s three carefully-hoarded belt-fed light machine guns. “You guys are from Mother Russia, right? Did you ever use one of these?” he asked.

  “Sure,” said one of the Russians. “Is PKM. I carry one in Chechnya. Is good gun.”

  “Okay, well, I’ll give you this one. What’s your name?”

  “Ivan Ivanovich,” said the Russian in a deep, melodious voice.

  “I hadda ask. Okay, I don’t know if there’s supposed to be a spare barrel for this weapon. I don’t have a manual, at least not one I can read. We didn’t get a spare with it, if there is one, so be careful not to overheat it.”

  “No extra barrel,” said Ivan. “Barrel of PKM is line with titanium alloy, so weapon does not overheat unless soldier play silly buggers and fire thousand-round belt all at once no pause. Few seconds between bursts keep cool enough so gun keep on shoot. You have calibration key?”

  “It’s taped to the butt,” said Hagen, pointing.

  “Is good gun but every ten, twelve thousand rounds must re-set firing pin gap. You have belts and assault boxes?”

  “Right here,” said Hagen, hoisting a couple of light metal boxes up into the table. “250-round boxes plus here’s a stack of 100-round belts. We asked some of our sources to get us these PKMs specifically because M-60s were getting hard to come by, and these weapons chamber 7.62 NATO rounds, which is ammunition we can get easily.”

  Ivanovich hoisted the weapon expertly, dropped the strap over his left shoulder, pulled back and locked the bolt, and clipped on the assault box. He drew forth the tip of the belt, hooked it into place, and released the bolt. “Karasho. We go kill gendarmes now.”

  Cody spoke up curiously. “Uh, comrade, if you don’t mind my asking, someone said you guys were part of a weight-lifting team back in Russia?” Ivanovich spoke briefly to the others in Russian and they laughed.

  “Not weight-lift,” he explained. “Wrestling. We come to America to do professional wrestle for WWU. Two tag teams. My brother Boris, who is this man, along with myself, we are the Crazy Cossacks. Anton Semyonevich and Grigori Pavelovich are the Russian Bear and Rasputin, Mad Monk, because he have beard. We stay to make revolution against Jews. Is only fair, since Jews make revolution against Russia in 1917.”

  “Hey, w
ho says all immigration is bad?” asked Hagen.

  Cody and Emily went back inside to the rec room where the television was still on, monitoring the news broadcasts. “How’s everyone taking the President’s announcement, sir?” he asked Joe Dortmunder.

  “The talking heads are screaming to high heaven,” replied Dortmunder. “Chelsea really pissed in the punch bowl. It didn’t do the poor woman much good to wrap the pill in all that waffle. The media élite knows surrender when they see it, or think they see it.”

  He turned up the volume. A CBS news anchor, a white man with a reputation for sterling political correctness, was almost spluttering in outrage. He was speaking to a panel of equally appalled liberals, blacks, and Jews. “There simply isn’t any way that this astounding development tonight can be regarded as anything other than giving in to terrorism!” he ranted. “Not just giving in to terrorism, but actually…I mean, what agenda is the President going in there with? What in God’s name does she think is going to be discussed at any such conference? The NVA will be demanding that we sit back and allow them to carve off a big chunk of the United States of America to form some bizarre Fourth Reich ruled by some cartoonish super-villain as Führer or whatever the hell…I know the President will deny that there is any chance of that happening and it’s just being done to stop the violence, but the mere fact that such a meeting could take place and such a thing even be discussed…well, words just fail me!” They continued to fail him for another five minutes, until Dortmunder got bored and changed the channel.

  The screen now showed several burning buildings in downtown Seattle. The voiceover was a woman. “The office of the governor of Washington State, and the Director of Public Safety for Seattle, have confirmed that a number of officers of the Federal Anti-Terrorist Police Organization seem to have gone on a kind of vandalism and violence spree which is believed to have resulted in several deaths and a number of injuries. This is apparently a spontaneous protest on the part of the officers against the President’s startling speech tonight wherein she stated that she was ordering the FATPO and all other United States military and law enforcement bodies to cease offensive operations against domestic terrorism in the Pacific Northwest, as a prelude to what appears to be some kind of peace conference scheduled to begin in Longview, Washington on August 1st, at which the outlawed Northwest Volunteer Army will be a participant.”