A Mighty Fortress

by H. A. Covington

  A dazed Seattle police chief appeared on the screen at some kind of hastily organized press conference. “Yes, there has been extensive damage to property, including some arson, and there has been a lot of reported violence against citizens, and yes, it does appear to be carried out by Federal law enforcement officers. There is simply not much that the Seattle Police Department can do, in view of the fact that under the Patriot Act these people’s Federal mandate overrides our purely local jurisdiction. About all we can do is advise people to stay off the streets and hope that the Federal authorities will re-establish control over what I am sure is a very small minority of FATPO officers who are committing these acts. I can understand why they’re upset, in view of the President’s speech tonight…”

  “Beautiful!” said Dortmunder with a grin. “The so-called real cops are sitting on their hands trembling in terror, while a bunch of crazed niggers and Mexicans with American guns go berserk and slaughter and burn at will! If we can stop them tonight, or at least fight them, then we can start making a moral claim to run the country!”

  “Is it happening anywhere else, Joe?” asked Red Morehouse, sticking his head in the door.

  “No sir, so far it’s just Seattle,” replied Dortmunder.

  “Hmm…so it seems none of the other Fattie units are so indisciplined as ours, eh? Yeah, this is looking for and more like it’s a political demonstration.” One of the television station’s camera crews had worked up enough courage to approach one of the prowling FATPO trucks, and a screaming negroid face suddenly appeared on the screen.

  “We sendin’ out a message to Miss Chelsea Clinton and de Congress and every goddamned muthafukkin’ white supremist piece ob shit in de Northwest!” the FATPO raged. “Dey ain’t gone be no goddamned treaty with dese racist sons ob bitches, and they ain’t gone be no goddamned meeting in Longview or anywhere else! Every day we put our black and brown butts on the line out here fo’ dis gubmint, and we come back every night with dead bodies, and you fink we gone put up wid dis shit? Chelsea fink she gone give dese muthafukkas three states! Bullshit! She gone gib the black folks six or seven states in the South foist, and she gone gib us forty acres and a mule while she at it! I am telling all you muthafukkas now…” Dortmunder muted the set.

  By now there were more Volunteers in the house than Cody had ever seen in one place, almost seventy people. The house was crowded and there was inevitably some spillage onto the lawn. “Uh, sir, I think the neighbors are starting to notice all this activity around the house,” Bells reported to Barrow. “I’ve seen a number of them in the houses on the right and left and also across the street, peeping out the windows. Suppose they call the cops?”

  “Well, we probably would have had to abandon this safe house anyway after tonight,” decided Barrow. “Let’s go out with panache.” Barrow went to a closet and took out a long wooden flagpole from which he unfurled a blue, white and green Northwest Tricolor flag. He walked right out of the front of the house and stuck the flag into the bracket on the porch which had in the past been used by various owners and tenants of the mansion to display the American flag and also the silly seasonal yuppie flags with pumpkins for Halloween, bunnies for Easter, etc. Many of the armed Volunteers followed Barrow out of the house and raised a cheer as the Tricolor hung and then billowed in the light warm breeze, hoisting their Kalashnikovs in the air and firing a few shots in salute to the flag of the new nation.

  “Cease fire, you guys!” yelled Bobby Bells. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Hey, Captain, there’s a truce on, remember?” Barrow quipped. “We don’t have to worry about offensive operations from the enemy.” As if in mocking answer there was a burst of small arms and automatic weapons fire in the distance.

  “That’s been going on for a while, sir,” commented Bells. “Sounds like it’s coming from up around 148th Street.”

  “Well, the neighbors need to get used to the sound of gunfire and the flag,” said Barrow. “They will be seeing and hearing a lot more of both. As to calling the police, from what I see on the news, I think the boys in blue will have other things to do tonight than come out here.”

  A Volunteer came up to them on the lawn. “Sirs, Colonel Morehouse asks if you could step inside, please? Something’s come up.”

  Inside, Morehouse told them “We just heard that the Fatties have taken over the Eastgate shopping mall in Bellevue. They apparently have taken a number of people hostage and are abusing them in various ways, making them dance by shooting at their feet like drunken cowboys, maybe working themselves up to murder them. We can’t wait for the SS. We need to get some people over there and see what we can do.”

  “I’ll go, sir,” said Bells.

  “Very good, Captain. Pick a team and see what the hell is going on over there. If you can put the kibosh on the situation without getting wiped out yourself, do it. I will give you the cell number of one of Jock Graham’s kids who is at the mall now, hiding and observing the situation. He’s got his phone on vibrate so you can call him without the phone ringing and tipping the enemy. Ironic, isn’t it? You get to open the above-ground phase of the Northwest Revolution by defending the ultimate Amurrican temple of Mammon, a shopping mall.”

  Bells took his own personal crew with him. This consisted of Cody, Nightshade, Jumping Jack Flash, Thumper, Eddie Hagen, Farmer Brown, and seven other Volunteers from A. Company. He also took the four Russians, along with the PKM machine gun and several thousand rounds of ammunition. He described the situation they would be going into to them in the kitchen. “Sir, I used to work at the Eastgate Mall,” spoke up Jumping Jack Flash. “At the Rule Britannia Fish and Chips. Our nosh came frozen in packets, the potatoes where from Idaho and the fish were from some company in Japan, but they still wanted that English accent up front. The trouble is, I had to pretend I was a Cockney. You Yanks have been watching too much BBC. Someone needs to tell you that not everyone in the U.K. was born within the sound of Bow Bells or on Coronation Street. Anyway, there is an employee’s entrance at the very back of the mall, in the sub-level parking, which I doubt the Fatties know about and which I’m pretty sure we could use to gain entry, depending on how many sentries the enemy has posted.”

  “What about the mall security cameras?” asked Bells.

  “This door and staircase aren’t covered by the cameras for some reason, sir,” replied the Englishman. “Don’t know why. Perhaps the contractors who built the place cut some corners on equipment. It was an open secret among the employees that when one came in late or wanted to slip out early or go and smoke something, that was the entrance and exit to use. There’s a staircase inside and it should get us up onto the mezzanine level of the mall, where we can get a dekko at the situation.”

  “Okay, you come with me in the Caddy and show me where. Also Cody and Nightshade.” Rapidly Bells assigned other vehicles. They took several cars and a pickup truck with four Kalashnikov-toting Volunteers in the back, a Tricolor flag flying defiantly from the truck. The mall was only a few minutes away from the NVA base house in Medina. They drove carefully and slowly through the back streets in the gathering twilight gloom, on the lookout for any Federal presence or anything that might indicate an ambuscade. Several passing motorists saw the truck with the Tricolor and the armed men in the back, and turned away in flight with screeching tires. The Volunteers made it to Eastgate mall and into the lowest ground-level parking area without running into any FATPO patrols, although as they came in they could see the Federals’ armored trucks and Humvees pulled up in a circle around the mall’s main entrance. “That door to the employees’ back stairs is just behind a concrete column,” said Jack. They pulled around the corner and ran headlong into a Bellevue police cruiser, sitting parked, its blue lights silently flashing. “Bloody hell!” exclaimed Jack. “It’s the Old Bill!”

  Two cops were sitting in the car and they got out quickly, hands on their pistols. Bells braked the vehicle and said, “Get out of the car, slowl
y. Don’t pull down on them, don’t do nothing until I say or they do something first.” He opened his door and stepped out, his glowing White Owl clenched in his teeth.

  “Shit! That’s Bobby Bells!” Cody heard one of the cops gasp to another.

  “The name is DiBella, actually,” called Bells. “Keep ‘em in the holster, guys. I just want a word, okay?” The two policemen had already taken in the cars behind the caddy and they saw the Volunteers jumping out of the back of the pickup with their AKs, and the four large men getting out of their van with the machine gun. Bells asked them, “What the hell are you guys doing skulking out here? There’s people you’re supposed to serve and protect getting hurt inside.”

  “Yeah, and about fifty crazy niggers and spics with machine guns,” said the older of the cops. “We called for backup an hour ago. Nobody came.”

  “We came,” said Bells. “You guys hear the President tonight?”

  “We heard,” said the older cop.

  “Then you know what it means,” DiBella told them. “It ain’t all settled yet, that’s gonna have to wait for the big sitdown in Longview, but tonight the President of the United States raised the white flag. 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. Right now it means that we also get to go in there and do your jobs for you. As of tonight those Federal goons in there showing their butts aren’t law enforcement officers any more. They’re the criminals now. Hell, they always were. You want to sit this one out, fine by me. But I want your word that you will do for us what you’ve been doing for the Fatties for the past hour. Nothing. Come on, guys, it’s almost over and you’ve almost made it. Don’t pick tonight of all nights to end up on a slab.”

  The two cops looked at one another. The older man threw up his hands. “Sure, knock yourselves out,” he said. Bells turned away from them, already forgotten, and dialed the cell phone.

  “We’re down at the door, but it’s locked,” he told the person on the other end. “You gotta come down and let us in. Can you make it without being seen?”

  One of the policemen stepped forward. “This is our beat, so we have a master key,” he said. He pulled a ring of keys off his belt and opened the steel door. It gave into a staircase.

  “Never mind, we’re in,” said Bells into his phone. “Meet us at the top of the stairs. What are you wearing? McDonalds? Well, you deserve a break today, so we’ll try and not shoot you.”

  The two cops were talking among themselves. The older man said, “Hey, Bells, mind if we tag along? I mean, it is supposed to be our job, right?”

  “Yeah, sure, the more the merrier,” DiBella replied. The cops opened their trunk and pulled out flak vests and shotguns, and a grenade launcher with several tear gas rounds. “CS gas,” one of them said. “It might come in handy.”

  “I think it’s gonna take more than gas,” said DiBella, jerking his cigar towards the door. “It sounds like Soul Train on a bad night in there.” Through the open door the Volunteers could hear a cacophony of noise, including several gunshots, a blaring gangsta rap song, and the raving sound of drunken negroid voices. The Volunteers and their police escort climbed the stairs slowly in a line, their gun muzzles pointed upward to cover the staircase. The Russians brought up the rear, Ivan Ivanovich hefting the machine gun and the other three toting AK-74s and an extra assault box of ammo for the PKM apiece. One of the cops looked at Emily in sudden surprise.

  “Hey, you’re a girl!” he said.

  Emily turned to Cody. “See! I told you!”

  Just inside the upstairs door a teenaged boy with blond hair in a slightly long and unkempt cut appeared. He was wearing a brown and yellow service shirt and a paper McDonald’s hat. “Hi, guys! I’m Ted from B Company, Number Two Brigade. You the famous Bobby Bells?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’m the famous fuckin’ Bells, Volunteer,” said DiBella in an irritated voice. “Jesus, with all that racket we don’t even need to whisper! What the hell is going on up there? How many of them are there? And why the hell did they come here in the first place?”

  “There’s about fifty of them, near as I can count,” said Ted. “The reason they came in here was that WKPR-FM radio was doing a live radio broadcast from the main floor, in front of Dorfmann’s Menswear, some advertising thing. They took over the show. They’re making the disc jockey spin hate-whitey rap songs and funky monkey music, and in between they get on the mike and rant and rave, babbling about how there will be no treaty in Longview, no surrender to wicked racism, dey gone kill all us racist honky muthafukkas, hey NVA here we is why don’t you come out and get you pale asses capped, you get the idea. They’ve got about twenty white people hostage, and they say if anybody at the radio station cuts them off the air they’re going to start killing people. They keep wandering around stealing and breaking stuff, and going in and out, so there could be a Fattie anywhere. They grabbed a bunch of people including the radio crew, and they’re holding them hostage, beating on them. I think they’ve raped some women. General negritude.”

  “Any of ‘em up on the mezzanine level?” asked Bells.

  “Not at the moment, no,” said Ted. “When they first came storming in, they went up there and smashed up some stuff, shot out windows, looted the boutiques and jewelry stores, and generally made a mess. Plus they cleaned out all the fried chicken and the Taco Bell, and they made me give them all the burgers we had up. Now they’re all back down on the main floor again. That’s where the booze is. The Rite Aid has a beer and wine cooler, and they’ve gotten into that and helped themselves, so they’re all drunk and partying now. There’s a bunch of customers trapped in places around the mall, including about a dozen people in the food court where this staircase comes out, hiding behind the counters, and they’ll panic and start running around and get in the line of fire if you’re not careful, plus the hostages.”

  “Okay, now the million-dollar question. What about the security cameras?” demanded Bells.

  “The whole place is crawling with them,” said the kid. “They pan everywhere. I got here by watching the camera in the food court and waiting until it was panning the other way. This door is a blind spot.”

  “Yeah, we got a guy that used to work here who told us that,” affirmed Bells. “Used to dish up the fish at the Rule Britannia.”

  “Yuk!” said Ted, “I’d prefer Mickey D’s to that grease trap!”

  “So would I, old chap,” spoke up Jack Flash from behind them.

  Ted chuckled. “Well, getting back to the cameras, the minute you step out the door you’ll be visible to whoever is in the security control room, unless you stay one step ahead of their sweep like I did, but that was just a few short steps from behind the counter at Mickey D’s to over here, and I was able to dodge it. It’s impossible for a bunch of guys like this to go unnoticed to whoever is watching the monitors.”

  “Do we know who’s in the control room?” asked Bells in a worried voice.

  “Maybe the regular security guys, Glenn and Randy, and maybe the Fatties,” said Ted. “I didn’t see if any of them went in there or not. I was too busy hiding under the bun rack from those apes. We got one bit of luck, in that the control room is up here on the second floor. It’s down a little hallway across the food court from here, just past the rest rooms.”

  “Okay, let’s sneak a peek,” said Bells. He opened the door a short crack out onto the mezzanine floor of the shopping mall carefully. In the glittering neon and flourescent light he could see the wide expanse of the mall’s food court with all its junk food restaurants, Chinese and fish and chips, McDonald’s and vegetarian, sub sandwiches and fried chicken. The tables and chairs weren’t affixed to the floor in this food court, so they had been smashed and upended, and the floor was covered with trays and the remnants of meals, hamburgers and salads and all kinds of goo. Bells and Cody could see about a dozen white customers cowering behind the tables and under the counters. The racket from the main floor of the
mall was thunderous. “We gotta check out that control room and make sure no one is going to warn them,” decided Bells. “I need a couple of droogs. Pass it down, Anton and Grigori, get up here!” The two huge Russians climbed the stairs to the top landing, slipping past the rest as they waited along the staircase. “You guys peep out here and take a look at that security camera. You see it? See how it’s going back and forth?”

  “Da,” said one of them. “I see it.”

  “You guys are supposed to be good at hand to hand. We’ll see how good you are. See that sign over there that says rest rooms? You’re going to have to get there while avoiding the security camera, then down that little hallway there and into the control room, take out any Fatties in there, and do it with no shooting or noise.”

  “Da da,” replied the Russian. “We shall be as quiet as falling snow on winter night in Novosibirsk.”

  “I assume that means very quiet. Ted, is there a camera on the door of the security room itself?”

  Ted thought hard. “No,” he said. “There were cameras on the outside of the rest room doors to try make sure nobody conceals merchandise or sells drugs or anything, but some faggots complained about it, because they were using the men’s room as part of their lifestyle, as they put it, and so the mall management took them out. This is an older mall, built before 10/22 and maybe even before 9/11, and the purpose of the closed circuit system is to catch shoplifters and vandals, not fight off a commando attack.”