A Mighty Fortress

by H. A. Covington

  Several of the men started speaking at once, and Nightshade took the opportunity to whisper under the cover of their voices, “That’s it!” She held the Bible up to her face to try and conceal her moving lips. “That’s the secret reason the America government has cracked, and they’re talking to the NVA! Israel is in trouble!”

  “Must be really big trouble,” added Cody.

  “And we will find that way, Brother Jesse,” said Pastor Leonard Sheldon, stepping firmly up to the podium. “All we need to know is that the Lord has called, and we must answer. Gentlemen, you all know me. I have served as your pastor for many years. I have known about the true nature of Brother Jesse’s mission within this tabernacle for some time, and I am proud and honored to be part of it. It is time for us to return to the good old days, brothers. Surely many of you recall how it was only a few short years ago, when we could share our worship in this church with people of many skin colors and national origins? You remember the wonderful and spirit-filled members of our congregation from Korea and the Philippines and Nigeria, who would sometimes fill our gospel hall to the point where the church was full to bursting? How long has it been since any of you have seen a full church?”

  “Or a full collection plate?” wondered Cody below his breath. Nightshade kicked him again.

  “You will also remember the overseas missions and the programs that our denomination and our church supported throughout the Third World, before The Trouble started and all of our friends of color were so badly terrorized and frightened away,” Sheldon went on. “Especially those wonderful Save A Child missions, where your contributions helped to bring thousands of beautiful little black and brown babies here to Amurrica? Those days will come again, my brothers!” Sheldon raised his arms in benediction. “Yea, shall they come again! We, the Lord’s anointed, will arise in defense of Amurrica and of holy Israel, and we will be joined by our brethren from all of the evangelical churches of the Northwest! Again let me speak from the Psalms: Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, and put your trust in the Lord!”

  Then the bugged Bible beeped.

  There was a sudden silence. The Bible beeped again.

  “What the hell is that?” asked Sheldon, startled into momentarily forgetting himself. But Cody’s eyes were on Regenthal, who was standing next to the pastor on the stage. He was convinced that the army captain suspected something about himself and Emily, or was at least on his guard about them, and when he saw Brother Jesse’s hand go for his gun, Cody didn’t hesitate. With a smooth motion he was up on the platform in a single leap, the folding chair in his hands, bellowing “Behold the Old Rugged Cross!” which was apropos of nothing and sounded ridiculous, but was the only thing he could think of to say that would let the NVA backup team know they were in trouble. He swung the chair at Regenthal and managed to knock the 9-millimeter aside before it fired, then swung again. Regenthal was fast. He grabbed the chair out of Cody’s hand and hurled it aside; the fight was looking more and more like a pro wrestling ham-it-up.

  He was two inches taller and a good forty pounds heavier than Cody, all of it muscle, he still had the pistol in his hand, and Cody knew he had one chance consisting of a fraction of a second, which he took without hesitation. He hurtled himself forward and head-butted Regenthal right in the groin with such force that they both went flying off the stage and onto the hard lino floor, Cody coming down on top of Brother Jesse, whose massive frame somewhat cushioned his fall. Cody knew better than to try and grab for the pistol and wrestle for it. The American was stronger than he was, and he would lose any such contest. Instead he leaped up and as Regenthal himself rolled up to his feet, Cody came down onto his back from the rear and gripped him in the wrestling hold known as the full Nelson, arms around his opponent’s chest and hands locked behind his neck, pressing forward on the spinal vertebrae. The hold allowed Cody to exercise a little bit of control as the two of them slipped and skittered over the highly polished floor. He was able to bash Regenthal’s head squarely into a concrete support pillar, which made him bellow with rage and fire off a wild shot from the pistol.

  Then Cody felt a series of blows on his own head as the soldier who had been guarding the rear door attacked him from behind, beating him brutally with the barrel of his automatic. Cody hung on grimly and tried to pull the struggling captain around and use him as a shield. As the three of them whirled around the floor, knocking the folding chairs aside, Cody saw that several of the men were trying to subdue Nightshade as well, without much success, as she seemed to have her teeth firmly together in the ear of one of her fellow congregants, who was screaming hysterically. There were spatters of blood flying onto the floor.

  The gun crashed into his skull and Cody blacked out for a moment. When he came to he was lying on the floor on his back, and Regenthal was jamming the muzzle of the nine-millimeter into his neck. Emily was being held up by her arms by two of the men, bleeding from her nose and mouth, while several others attempted to stop the flow of blood from the mangled ear of the one who had tackled her. Leonard Sheldon had Nightshade’s Bible, and he had clawed out the black circuit chip. “What kind of blasphemy is this, woman?” he was shouting at Emily. “Have you brought the devil’s works into this house of worship?” In response Nightshade put her full weight onto the shoulders of the men holding her, pulled both feet off the ground and kicked Sheldon in the face, crushing his nose. “Christ’s bleeding balls!” the preacher screamed as he staggered back into one of the chairs, holding his spurting visage.

  “Like it says in Scripture, ‘Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!’” Regenthal snarled at Cody.

  “That’s Sir Walter Scott, you idiot!” mumbled Cody through his aching jaw. Regenthal lashed the barrel of the gun across Cody’s face.

  “Now, son, do you really want to appear before your Maker with silly mockery on your lips?” he asked gently. Sheldon was back up on his feet now, and he was knocking Emily’s head back and forth again and again with his right hand, while trying to stop the blood from his nose with a handkerchief held in his left. As he beat her he ranted and raved in a scattered pastiche of mis-matched verses from Genesis: “And the Lord said unto the woman, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow, because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life!”

  Suddenly there was a crash and a shout, and a single shot rang out from the doorway of the fellowship hall, followed by a man’s voice as strong and as Southern as a rebel yell. “NVA! You gone quote the Word, quote it right, you hog-jawed doodoo bird!” roared the newcomer. “How’s this? And all the churches shall know that I am He who searcheth the reins and hearts: and I shall give unto every one of you according to your works! Now every damned one of you blaspheming sons of bitches get down on your knees and get your hands in the air!”

  There were some more shots and a short burst of automatic weapons fire, and Regenthal looked up from where he crouched over Cody, distracted just long enough for Cody to grab the nine-millimeter with his right hand and shove the muzzle away, and with his left fist clenched hook an extended middle knuckle up into Regenthal’s left eyeball. Brother Jesse screamed in sudden agony and Cody brought his knees up to try and knock him over, twisting the pistol away with his right hand, mindful of how Farmer Brown had been shot in similar circumstances the night before. There was another brief tussle between them, then a shadow fell over the two of them and something slammed into Regenthal and sent him flying into the air. It was a boot, and Cody looked up and saw a lean man in late middle age wearing a billed green cap with an eagle and swastika emblem on it and a tiger-striped camouflaged fatigue shirt, rolled up to the biceps and displaying the prison-tattooed cross on one forearm and Confederate flag on the other. He was leveling a Heckler and Koch submachine gun at Regenthal. “Take him alive!” he shouted to someone Cody couldn’t see. The man reached down and pulled Cody to his fee
t with a strong arm. The black tabs on his collar read “NDF” on the right and on the left were two matching Germanic runes. SS.

  It had been a swift and brutally efficient operation which would have done Otto Skorzeny proud. Two more SS men with AK-74s were now standing over Regenthal who lay on the floor. One of them had a boot on his gun hand and was leaning on it while Regenthal shrieked. Nearby lay the dead body of the soldier who had been on guard at the rear of the fellowship hall, slumped against the side of the speaker’s platform, staring into space, his gun lying by his side. Cody looked across the hall and saw the second sentry lying still on the floor, a pool of blood beneath his head. The NVA troops had cleared a space and had all of the would-be vigilantes lying flat on the floor, their hands behind their back. In addition to the Volunteers from Cody’s own brigade, there were a dozen SS men in the fellowship hall, every one of whom seemed to be of gigantic stature and bearded, and many of whom had arms covered with tattoos. They all wore the camouflage jacket and the heavy engineer’s boots, and most had the Alpine ski caps, but some were still wearing jeans and there were other sartorial discrepancies. Apparently there hadn’t been a complete uniform issue yet even among the Party’s élite corps. Cody saw the eagle and swastika patches over each right shirt pocket and he was thrilled to the very core of his being. At last! he thought joyously to himself. We are BACK, Jewboys!

  General Frank Barrow strode over to him. “Are you all right, Volunteer Brock?” he asked urgently.

  “I’m fine, sir,” he said, although his head hurt terribly and his ears were ringing.

  “You don’t look fine to me,” said Barrow. “They split the back of your head open.”

  “We have a medic with us. Smith!” shouted the SS officer. The SS corpsman came forward with a canvas bag on a strap that bore a red cross.

  “Check out Nightshade first,” said Cody. “That bastard preacher beat her!”

  Barrow looked over to where Pastor Sheldon had been forced down onto his knees on the floor, his hands cuffed behind his back and his broken nose bleeding. Nightshade was behind him, cursing him and kicking him repeatedly in the seat of his pants. “I think she’s okay. Is this one Regenthal?”

  “Yes, sir,” replied Cody. “Sir, were you receiving our transmission? Did you hear what he was saying about there being two factions in the U. S. government and this whole thing being an argument over something to do with Israel?”

  “Yes, I heard,” said Barrow. “He’s all yours, Colonel Wingfield.”

  Standing by Carter Wingfield was a Volunteer in civilian clothes that Cody had never seen before, a lean and mean-looking sandy-haired young man in jeans and a brown work shirt and a denim jacket and an incongruous tweed pork-pie cap on his head. He was holding a revolver of beautiful, deadly and archaic lines. As the SS medic sat Cody down in a chair and started swabbing his head with alcohol pads, to distract himself from the pain he asked, “What’s that you’re packing there, comrade?”

  “British Webley Mark Six,” replied the young man proudly. “.455 caliber, guaranteed to knock down a charging Zulu at fifty yards. This piece is World War One officer’s issue. A hundred years old and it’s still in as good a firing condition as the day it went into battle at the Somme. It was a present from Carter after a good tickle we had down in Dundee a few years ago. Goes well with the hat, huh? I call this my Michael Collins outfit.” Regenthal had by now been handcuffed and dragged to one of the chairs and he stared around him wild-eyed. The SS officer stepped up to him and looked him up and down contemptuously.

  “Let me guess,” Carter Wingfield said. “Oklahoma? Georgia?”

  “Bessemer City, Alabama,” muttered Regenthal.

  “Yeah, that sounded like Alabama ignorance I heard. Nice and thick. I’m from Roper’s Crossroads, South Carolina, down in the Low Country. We’re both Southerners, I’m ashamed to say, but I’m glad to say that’s all we have in common.”

  “True,” snarled Regenthal, “I am saved, and you are in the devil’s darkness.” Without a word the young man raised the Webley and fired a single shot into Regenthal’s right kneecap. He screamed like an animal. It seemed to Cody that he heard the bone snap.

  “For the love of God, why did you shoot me?” Regenthal howled.

  “Because I don’t like you,” replied the Volunteer.

  “Shane just got out of Auburn a little while ago, where he spent some time enjoying your Zionist hospitality,” explained Wingfield coldly. “He’s a little crabby. Although truth to tell, I don’t like you very much either. You’re a ridge-running bush ape with nothing but pork fat between your ears. You’re a disgrace to the South. You personify everything people find stupid and arrogant and ignorant in us. And you don’t know your Scriptures worth a damn, or you would know that Christ said Think not that I am come to bring peace upon the earth. I came not to bring peace but a sword. And you know those Jews you love so much? In John 8:44 Jesus said of them, Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. I kind of doubt He would have spoken thus about any group of people his Daddy had chosen for His own. It was Caiphas and the Jews in the Sanhedrin who demanded Christ’s death, even after Pontius Pilate said I find no evil in this man, and it was the Jews in the Jerusalem mob who cried Give us Barabbas, and it was Ahasuerus the Jew who struck Christ and spat on Him and reviled Him as he walked to Calvary bearing His cross, thereby bringing the curse of God upon all of his tribe and condemning them to wander the earth in shame and revulsion forever. I am really, really getting tired of bird-brained morons like you and that half-assed preacher over there defiling the Christian faith and teaching these Jew lies in place of the genuine Word. Theologically speaking, you don’t know shit from shinola. You’re just pigs slopping at the trough of the Jews.”

  “For God’s sake, I need a doctor for my leg!” screamed Regenthal wildly.

  “What you need is about nine feet of good strong rope, but before you settle up your bill you and me are going off somewhere and we’re going to have a quiet word of prayer about some things you’ve been doing which you hadn’t oughta,” said Wingfield. “And Shane will come too. We found a chair of yours down in Renton he wants you to sit down in for a spell. But right now, you’re going to give me and the General here a name. I want to know who is behind this evangelical death squad idea you were babbling about in here just now, and I don’t want to hear any bushwah about factions in government. Who sent you here? Who is behind this?”

  “Regenthal, Jesse C, Captain, United States Army, 270-135-0987,” moaned the man in the chair.

  “Take the other knee, Shane.” The young man cocked back the hammer on the Webley.

  “Weintraub! It was Howard Weintraub!” howled Regenthal in terror.

  “The Secretary of Homeland Security, and slated to be one of the lead Federal negotiators at the Longview conference,” said Barrow. “Yeah, that sounds about right. I wonder if Walter Stanhope knows his partner at the table is doing everything he can to undercut his position?”

  “I’m sure you can find the time to inform him of the fact once you get down there, General,” laughed Wingfield. He gestured to his two men. “Get his ass out of here. We’re going to our new house in Renton. Wrap a towel around that leg or something so he doesn’t bleed to death.” They dragged the blubbering Regenthal away. “That preacher too,” Wingfield called out. “I think he needs some dental work. Hold the rest of these turkeys aside. I’ll talk to them myself and try and sort the fools from the rogues.”

  The medic was shaving away most of the blood-soaked hair on the back of Cody’s head with a disposable razor. “A few stitches, but it’s not as bad as it looks, troop,” he told Cody cheerfully. “Most of the blows seem to have been glancing ones, more on your neck and the lower part of the skull. Nothing seems to be fractured, from what I can feel. I guess you were moving around while you were being hit, right? Scalp wounds bleed like stuck pigs, but as long as there’s no concussion you should be okay. You don’t feel
sleepy or about to pass out, do you?”

  “No,” replied Cody. “Just like somebody peeled my head like an onion.”

  “You’ll need a few stitches, but you’ll live.” Nightshade came over to Cody and laid her hand on his shoulder. “Miss, you need to stay with him for a while. If he shows any signs of grogginess, staggering, anything like that, you get him to a proper doctor and hospital ASAP.”

  “Cody’s personal physician lives over on Mercer Island,” she said. “I’m sure he’d relish another house call.”

  “And how are you doing?” the medic asked her. “Looks like you went a few rounds yourself.”

  “My spiritual adviser knocked one of my teeth out, but I’ll make it,” she said with a shrug.

  “Bullshit. You’re hurt. Sit down. As soon as I finish sewing him up, I want to look at you,” said Comrade Smith. “Is that an ice machine over there in the corner? Outstanding. Hey, Chris, could you find a bowl or a bucket or something and bring me some of that ice?”

  “What the hell made that chip in the Bible start beeping, sir?” Emily asked Barrow. “Do you know?”

  “Yes. It was Movement Three Stooges time again. You remember Doc Doom said he got that little circuit out of a videophone at the Radio Shack?” Barrow reminded her.

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “Well, apparently that phone was already activated and had a number assigned to it,” said Barrow in some exasperation. “We were listening to Captain America hoot and holler on the laptop in the van, and I was about to order the group to move in anyway, when all of a sudden the damned phone in the laptop rings twice, which must have been the beep you heard on your chip, and then it gets call-forwarded to the computer’s speaker. It was a telemarketer for a new drug to enhance my male organ, as he put it.”