New York City had finally been declared unfit for human habitation three years before. The last of the white and Jewish super-rich had been evacuated to their mansions on Long Island, and then a massive wall had been built along the Sunken Meadow and Sagtikos Parkways, severing the island from the abomination. The rest of the five boroughs were sealed off with minefields, Bremer walls and hundreds of miles of razor wire, guarded by the New York Containment Corps of mostly European mercenaries, the most highly paid and professional soldiers on the planet, with only one mission: whatever was in New York, stayed in New York. The Big Apple had simply been abandoned as a gangrened limb that had to be amputated. Most of its polyglot, half-insane inhabitants had been sealed in, like locking the doors of a lunatic asylum, walking away, and leaving it to the inmates. When a foreign journalist had timidly asked an officer of the NYCC what the people inside the city would eat when the grocery stores and restaurants were all picked clean, he told her brutally, “What the fuck do you think? They’ll eat each other!” The occasional sounds detected by sensors from within the city were sinister and chilling, and hinted at horrors in the empty concrete canyons and dumps and residential wastelands. Sometimes observers in the watchtowers saw dark forms loping in packs amid the ruins in the distance.
There were a few exceptions to the destruction of the cities. The greater Boston and Cambridge area and the states of Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire had been transformed into a tightly-controlled security zone called the New England Union, so that the remnants of America’s left-wing, liberal and Jewish ruling élite could continue to exist in some kind of physical safety, protected from the horror and chaos they had spent the past century creating. Maine established a number of trade and legal agreements with New Brunswick and the Ottawa régime, which made it more or less part of the Canadian Maritimes, although the RCMP officers stationed in Bangor and Portland wore local uniforms out of courtesy and diplomacy.
Another exception to the destruction was Washington, D.C.; the Americans had stubbornly held on to their ancient capital and maintained the Green Zone established by Hunter Wallace. The effective government of what remained of the United States, basically all the government departments that actually did anything and therefore needed to be maintained, had been transferred recently to Burlington. But the anachronism of Congress and a shadow government still existed in D.C., and each incoming President was required by law to spend at least one night in the White House every year. (In the residence; the West Wing had never been completely repaired after Vince Cardinale and Duke had dropped mortar bombs on it. The roof was still open in places, so there was a lot of water and snow damage every year.) Private automobiles had been banned from the streets of the District to “save the environment,” although it was actually due to the difficulty of obtaining fuel. So each day bureaucrats rode trolley cars and bicycles in to their offices, held long meetings where nothing was ever decided, and pounded on computer keyboards as if anything they did really mattered outside the few scattered enclaves that still maintained a tenuous allegiance to the old régime. In the crumbling Capitol a few ageing congressmen and senators still sat in their dusty seats, met in committee, deliberated and made speeches to the empty galleries, like ghosts about to vanish at cockcrow.
America was finally dying, not in blood and fire, but slowly drifting away into the fog of institutional Alzheimer’s.
In the meantime, the huge expanse of the American countryside, largely emptied of its non-white population, was slowly beginning to heal, now that the federal monkey was finally more or less off the backs of what white people remained. Ironically, most government in the stable white areas of the country was now state and local, which was exactly what the framers of the Constitution had originally stipulated; the ghost of Abraham Lincoln and the all-powerful tyranny in Washington, D.C., had finally been laid to rest, although at a shattering cost. That suited the Northwesters fine, especially the ones who were responsible for the border sectors. At least the Montana and Canadian borders were white and quiet. Aztlan was a different story.
* * *
When the Republic consolidated the entire 400-mile Montana border with the U.S.A. into a single military and civilian administrative unit, the NAR built a new firehouse and loaded up the station’s three professionals from the national fire prevention service and the local volunteer fire company who made up the rest of the crew with all the equipment they’d never been able to afford under the Americans. It seemed a good trade for their crumbling old firehouse. The Republic extended the rear of the firehouse, burrowing into the side of a small hill; a good two thirds of the local Civil Guard post was now buried underground, a helpful thing in the event of shelling or some kind of aerial attack, although the Americans could no longer maintain much in the way of their once-mighty fleet of drones and Cruise missiles.
Bobby Campbell and Corporal Mike Sweeney stepped out the front door of the station and walked three doors down the street to a large, pre-fabricated hangar-like structure. Inside were parked a number of levitational vehicles, including three from the men who were waiting for the incoming load from the U.S.—the revenue officer’s government car, a small enclosed pickup truck for the Health Service rep, and a large panel truck from the Nordstroms department store chain, or rather the department store chain of that name that still did business in the NAR under local ownership and management, despite four decades of horrified screaming from the Jewish corporate interests who had made the mistake of buying up the chain and the name just before the War of Independence broke out. The Selkirks’ own flyers were also parked in the hangar, which the boys had left before departing on their run.
The United States still had not been able to put together levitating transport on any serious scale, outside a few experimental lanes in the New England Union, which were used only by the super-rich who could afford the incredibly expensive Chinese-made flying cars which were the only ones sold in the remaining United States. The Selkirks had gone on their trip east driving American ground cars, with a selection of license plates from East Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota; in the Republic, vehicles didn’t have license plates or any brackets to mount them on, so runners always had to use American gasoline or diesel vehicles to get in and out of the United States. Now Bobby Campbell heard the rumble of those gasoline engines coming down the street toward him. The Americans had some alcohol and methane and even a few electric ground cars, but they still had never quite managed to break away from petroleum completely. The multinational energy corporations still had too much of a stranglehold on the Western world for that.
Corporal Sweeney slapped a large blue button and the hangar door began to rumble upwards. In a few moments a low, sleek sports car pulled in, followed by a large panel truck. The door to the sports car flipped up and a slim, good-looking young man with light brown hair clambered out. “Hey, Johnny,” called Sweeney with a wave. John Selkirk’s older brother, Hatcher Selkirk, climbed down from the cab of the truck. “Hey, Hatch,” added Sweeney.
Johnny Selkirk was twenty years old, just out of the army, clean-shaven and lean and devilishly handsome. He was wearing a plaid shirt, a cowboy hat, and denim jeans along with durable boots Bobby recognized as custom-made streetfighter’s footwear of the kind often worn by WPB operatives; they were light enough to wind-sprint in, tough enough to walk through acid, and had light but hard steel toes and heel insets in case somebody needed kicking. Hatcher was some years older, bearded, married with two children and another on the way. He was attired in simple and nondescript coveralls that would not attract notice on either side of the line. Bobby understood that Hatch was in the process of building his family their own home on land the boys’ rancher father had deeded to him and his wife, and his cut of this smuggling run would take care of all the supplies and materials he needed to do the electrical wiring and the plumbing and pave a quarter-mile driveway up to the house. No one seemed to know where John’s money went, but it went somewhere, and he
would probably try another smuggling run in a few months.
“Afternoon, boys,” said Bobby. He stepped forward to shake their hands. “Welcome Home. I figured it was time we met. I’m Robert Campbell, the new Guard lieutenant over at the station.”
“Yeah, we heard you were coming to Basin for a spell,” said Johnny with a friendly grin and a strong grip. Bobby knew perfectly well that was bulldust. What they’d heard was that the cop who was married to the Daughter of the Nation was coming, but he was used to it and had long since accepted that part of the price of having Ally in his life was to be known unofficially as Mr. Allura Myers.
“Yeah, we heard,” said Hatch, also shaking Bobby’s hand. “Uh, your wife here with you?”
Bobby chuckled ruefully. “Yeah, the whole family came along. Ally took some leave from her job at UM; she could have done a long commute every morning and evening, but we thought it would be good for the kids to see some more of the Homeland besides Daly Avenue and the University, while they’re young. A tour of duty in cattle country looks like just the thing. We want them to learn to ride and do ranch and farm work while we’re out here, get closer to the land and all. White kids shouldn’t grow up only in the city, if it can be helped.”
“Lotta land out here to get close to,” agreed Hatcher Selkirk.
“Allura’s going to be teaching history at Cataract High School this year,” Bobby continued. “She wanted to do primary school because she loves small children, but that would mean that she’d have two of our three in the same school where she was a teacher. It might confuse Cathy, our little girl who’s seven, and our twelve-year-old son Clancy made it clear he would find it excruciatingly embarrassing to have his mom watching over him in school, so she approached the high school and they gave her a temporary certificate. It’s not just the Daughter of the Nation thing. Allura’s got a doctorate in archaeology, even though nobody else in the world will recognize it. She was project manager for the Lost Creek site for a couple of years, so she can tell her students all about North American prehistory, and she knows every other aspect of our people’s past inside-out.”
“There he is!” called out a voice. The three out-of-town visitors had heard the American engines approaching and they had ambled over to the hangar from the local diner. They were all middle-aged men, wearing Northwest city togs that looked a little out of place in rural Montana, but which would have marked them as oddball anachronisms anywhere in the United States, East Canada, or Europe. After a great deal of discussion and debate, some public on the floor of Parliament and a good deal of it in private conferences within the Ministry of Culture, Northwest sartorial fashion had by now come to rest somewhere in the Edwardian era. All three men wore three-piece suits with sack coats (the Nordstroms buyer carried his coat over his shoulder due to the heat), waistcoats, cuffed trousers, pocket watches with chains, patent leather shoes, and wing-collar shirts with loosened ties and cravats. The Nordstroms buyer wore a straw boater hat, the Health Service driver a gray felt Homburg, and the Revenue Commissioner a black bowler.
“Excuse us, Lieutenant,” said John Selkirk. “We need to settle up with these gents. Could you stick around for a bit?”
“Sure,” said Bobby.
It took about fifteen minutes for the National Health Service man to load several cases of badly needed medicines and serums into the back of his van, along with several more large boxes, spare parts for various medical machinery and equipment needed in hospitals around the Northwest. He left first; some of those hospitals along his route needed the medicines and spare parts quite urgently. Every year the NAR manufactured more and more of its own hi-tech medical gear and pharmaceuticals, but there were always little bits and pieces that had to be imported and slipped past the sanctions, which were technically still in force even if they were mostly a dead letter in the real world. The Selkirks had picked up this load from a WPB subcontractor in St Paul, an asset who specialized in acquiring and expediting healthcare contraband. The Health Service courier did not offer the Selkirk brothers any money, nor did they ask for any. There was an unwritten code among blockade runners that medical freight for white children always rode free.
Then came the examination and checking-off of a wide list of items from Gucci loafers and handbags to several crates of fine cognac and champagne to small items of jewelry, Swiss watches, and several cases of rolled Havana cigars. Johnny Selkirk pulled a box of 50 out of one case and handed it to Bobby. “You take bribes, Lieutenant?” he asked.
“If he doesn’t, I do,” said Corporal Sweeney. Bobby chuckled and tossed him the box. It wasn’t actually a bribe, since none of this was illegal, although technically Guards weren’t supposed to accept gifts of any kind, for anything. The NCG had slightly more success in suppressing this practice than other cop-shops around the world, but not much more. Actually, absent Jews, real bribes in the Northwest Republic to either police or politicians were almost unheard-of. There wasn’t that much spare wealth to squabble over and misappropriate, and with taxes so low the frugal government’s accountants and bookkeepers kept track of every dime from the time it went into the Treasury until the time it was spent and returned to the economy. It was not only less dangerous but simply easier to be honest. There was, however, a kind of tradition that a runner coming in from a successful venture shared a little of the loot with the local Guards, almost as a last vestige of times past, when real and poisonous corruption had pervaded every aspect of American life from top to bottom. Bobby had already picked up on the fact that such gratuities were expected to be shared among the Guardsmen at the station, and declining to honor the custom was not calculated to improve his standing among the men.
“Just don’t tell my dad if he comes around on a surprise inspection tour,” said Bobby. “He’s old-school. As far as he’s concerned a Guard doesn’t so much as take a sandwich or an apple from a civilian.”
“We won’t,” Sweeney assured him, and meant it. Just as Allura’s story was known to the entire Republic, so was Robert Campbell Junior’s. Operation Belladonna was a legend now, and no one wanted to cross a legend. It was yet another thing that made Bobby Three more determined to prove himself and come up to his father’s mark, but on his own merits.
Once all the goods from Nordstroms were loaded into the department store’s van, the buyer pulled out his checkbook and wrote three checks. The first, after some haggling, was given to the Revenue Commissioners’ man to pay for the import taxes on the luxury goods the boys had brought into the country. The second and third were written to John and Hatcher Selkirk respectively, an even split of the remaining amount due for the merchandise. “Old man Ray Selkirk’s idea,” Corporal Sweeney told Bobby sotto voce. “The grandfather. Saves them from arguing over the split.”
After the Nordstroms vehicle and the tax man had departed, the Selkirks walked over to Bobby. “Okay, we’re all yours,” said Johnny cheerfully. “You want anything in writing?”
“No, I imagine you’ve done this often enough to know what we want,” Bobby told him. “Kill anybody? Anything happen that might have repercussions later on down the road? Anything you saw over there that might be of interest to BOSS or CMI or the Political Bureau? You know the drill. Plus in my case I’d just like to know if you felt anything in the general vibe. I don’t know how the hell those people exist Out There. First off, any encounters with the American authorities, such as they are?”
“Nope, this one was a milk run, except a couple of cops pulled us over outside St. Paul,” John said.
“St. Paul cops? Tony Solano’s crew?” asked Bobby. “I thought they were all paid off? The intel briefing I got said so, anyway.”
“Yeah,” said Hatcher Selkirk. “Tony has the St. Paul cops and they’re squared, and the Circus squared Tony. His police ignore our interstate commerce and Tony gets to keep on breathing.”
“Plus these days they have to spend all their time holding down the lid on the new Minneapolis DUZ,” put in John. “The Minnesot
a governor is screaming like a scalded dog to Burlington, by the way. Wants them to send some mercenaries to seal off Minnie completely. That’s no secret, it was on all the screens. It’s pretty bad. The wall’s not finished, they ran out of budget money and too many workers were getting killed and wounded trying to get the fences up. Niggers get out every night and attack white neighborhoods and shopping areas. There’s some Somali warlord who’s taken over the downtown area, he’s fighting off the Vietnamese and the American homeboys, and he’s promised to pay his top gunmen in white female slaves. No, we never have any problems from the St. Paul blues. This was Minnesota State Patrol. They actually stopped Hatch, wanted to see what was in the truck.”
“What happened?”
“I saw Hatch get pulled over so I swung around, got as close as I could, and snuck back with my gun out, but they were just talking,” Johnny told him. “Turned out it was a couple of rookie kids from the north woods who had been pulled down to help with the mess in Minneapolis. They didn’t care what we were taking out of the state, just wanted to make sure we weren’t bringing in anything to Kamal Mohammed in Minneapolis. The state government is backing an American monkoid named Trayvon Jones or something over Kamal for Head Nigger In Charge, once the DUZ gets formally recognized, and they’re trying to cut off the Somalis’ supply lines, hence the increase in over-the-wall raids. Anyway, these two guys are about ready to say to hell with Minnesota and Come Home.”
“They’ll have to do army training, but after that they could probably get into the Guards,” said Bobby. “Anything else?”
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