The Brigade

by H. A. Covington

  “My God,” said Fields in a low voice. “You’re one of them now, Len?”

  “Yes.”

  “There are others? Here in Astoria?” asked Fields.

  “Yes, and no, I won’t tell you who they are.”

  “I had no intention of asking,” Fields told him. He walked to his window and looked out into the winter darkness outside. “Do you believe in the hand of God, Len? I mean something of God that manifests itself in the affairs of men at just the right time?”

  “I seem to perceive something of the kind in operation recently, yes,” Ekstrom answered.

  “This morning I got a call from Pat Franklin, my attorney in Portland,” Fields told him. “Pat’s pretty well connected down at the federal courthouse, and he learned something he felt he should pass on to me. Within the next week or so, the BATFE is going to rock up on my doorstep here with a large truck and a piece of paper, all nice and legal and signed by a federal judge in Portland, ordering the confiscation of all my firearms under some obscure Homeland Security legislation I never heard of, some secret clause those yea-saying leeches in Congress snuck into an appropriations bill or something. We’ve had total gun control in this country for many years, it’s just the BATFE hasn’t bothered to exercise it up until now. The fact that this act of theirs is in direct violation of the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States apparently doesn’t enter into the proceedings anywhere. The Second Amendment no longer exists except as a few meaningless lines on an old yellowed parchment behind a glass case in some museum. None of the Bill of Rights exists anymore. I’m surprised it’s taken them this long to get around to me, after what happened in Coeur d’Alene. They’ve been after my collection for a long time. After I heard from Pat this morning, and before you arrived here tonight, I had already resigned myself to spending most of the remaining years of my life and most of my personal fortune paying attorneys astronomical legal fees to try and fight this monstrous violation of my rights in court, and try to get my guns back before I die. That was to be my last remaining goal in life. I was already wrestling in my mind with the virtual certainty that I would never see any of them again. Now you come along tonight, and you tell me you want a favor from me. I have loved firearms all my life. Don’t know why. Some people are just born to certain things, I guess. I spent my whole adult life building up that collection, Len. Starting with the old single-barreled shotgun my father gave me on my 16th birthday. In all this time, I have never fired a single shot in anger at another human being. Not even in the Navy when I was in a war zone. I know in my heart that I wouldn’t do it even when those sons of bitches in their silk suits come to take my guns away. I’m just too old a dog to teach new tricks.”

  “They’re gone, Bert,” said Lennart. “One way or the other, you can’t keep them anymore. That’s just the way it’s played out. You have two choices. Let the federal goons steal your property and ruin yourself and Mary Lou bleating about it in court, begging and pleading for these tyrants to be so kind as to grant you a right that you were born with. Or you can give them to us freely, and know that at long last they won’t be just sitting on a shelf or in a display case somewhere, but they will be doing what they were made to do, firing bullets at evildoers in defense of freedom and justice.”

  “How do you know I won’t agree with everything you’re saying, and then pick up the phone and call the FBI as soon as you’ve left tonight?” asked Fields.

  “I don’t,” said Ekstrom. “We’re going to change the world, Bert, and that can’t be done without risk. I drew the short straw, and if I’ve judged you wrongly then I pay the price.”

  Fields stared out into the dark night beyond the window. “Dear God, I am so sickened and ashamed by what this country has become!” He walked over to his desk and tore out a sheet of paper from a notepad, and picking up a pen he scribbled something on it. He handed it to Ekstrom. “The first one is the code to open the automatic gate to the driveway. The second one is the code for the main door to the hangar, and the third is for the safe inside which has a few toys in it that you and your friends will find useful. Try to make it look like you broke in, smash the keypads or something. The BATFE will suspect I connived with you, but fuck ’em. They’ve pushed me once too often. I’ll leave all the padlocks on the cases and the racks open.”

  “No, we’ll cut those off with bolt cutters to make it look good,” said Ekstrom. “I know the layout inside there, and I know where we can get a panel truck. It will take us a couple of hours to get everything loaded, but no one can see the hangar from the street. If we’re fast and quiet there shouldn’t be any problem.”

  “If I can’t have them, I know you’ll give them a good home and use them well, Len,” said Fields with a sigh. “Len, if I was even twenty years younger, I think I might beg to join you. But I can’t. I’m just too old and weary, and I can’t risk leaving Mary Lou alone at our time of life, at least no sooner than nature intends. But this much I can do. You’re right. It’s time those guns did something besides sit on a shelf and gather dust. You’d better act fast. I don’t know for sure when those BATFE goons are going to show up here. I’ll make sure Mary Lou and I are in Portland tomorrow night. Make your move then. Now you’d better leave, Len. I don’t want Mary Lou to come home and see you here. What she doesn’t know, she can’t spill. Besides, after you leave I’m going to take this bottle of cognac and a glass out back for a while. I’m going to say goodbye to my babies.” Ekstrom saw there was a tear glistening in one of the old man’s eyes.

  * * *

  Len Ekstrom was able to get all kinds of useful information out of the key file in his hardware store, including making a set of keys to a small waterfront warehouse unit long owned by the Portland branch of a Hong Kong based company that had gone out of business. The warehouse was technically part of some Chapter 11 proceeding in some far-off courtroom and no one seemed to remember that it existed. They hadn’t even bothered to turn the power off. It became one of the D Company Trouble Trio’s alternate meeting places, and the one they elected to use to receive out-of-state visitors along with the Kiwanis Club beach shack on the Washington side of the river. The three of them were gathered there on the night after Christmas. “One of the brigade adjutants is coming to see us in an hour or so,” Hatfield told them as they sat in the small warehouse office on folding metal chairs around a folding table in a corner. Len had brought in a coffeemaker and an old space heater from his shop. The heater was rumbling away in a corner, but it was just barely beginning to take some of the chill off the freezing little room.

  “A whosit?” asked Washburn.

  “Brigade actually has a staff, of sorts,” explained Hatfield. “This guy’s Volunteer name is Larry Donner. That may even be his real name, for all I know. I met him briefly when I was up in Portland, after they brought me back from our little road trip around the city. Larry will be our liaison and primary communications with brigade command. By the way, he doesn’t know our real names, and he doesn’t need to. When he’s here we address one another by job title. I’m lieutenant, Len is quartermaster, and Charlie’s XO. That way if he’s captured, he can’t tell anyone who we really are even under pressure. That’s one reason I set this meet up here instead of at your store, Len. We don’t want anyone, even our own people, associating your name with anything NVA, unless they need to know. When we have to refer to one another in public, on the phone or in an e-mail with anyone in Brigade or with each other, we will use code names. They’ve come up with a kind of a Reservoir Dogs thing for that purpose. The CO is White, quartermaster is Black, and the XO is Green, and since we’re D Company, our first names will all begin with D. I’m Dan White.”

  “Easy on the Twinkies, there, Dan,” said Washburn.

  “Yeah, I’m glad to carry the moniker of a famous queer-killer,” said Hatfield with a chuckle. “Len, you’re David Black, and Charlie is Donald Green. That way when somebody has a message for Dave Black on the phone, it’s for the D Com
pany quartermaster, so forth and so on. That’s a simple system and easy for us to remember for the time being, but eventually the feds will figure it out. We’ll be switching code names every few months at least, so we’re going to have to be able to remember who we are at all times and not get it mixed up. Brigade adjutants are gofers, couriers between units. Larry’s kind of a circuit rider. He does the rounds of some of the companies, not all of them, and briefs them on what they need to know from the brigade level and higher up, and he takes back to brigade staff what they need to know about each company, what they’ve been up to, their capabilities, and any problems they’re running into. He will be one of our official contacts with Brigade. I have the other, i.e. the commandant himself. I’m sorry you guys haven’t met him yet, because he’s an impressive man and he inspires confidence, but once again it’s need to know. Get used to it. You’re going to hear that a lot. Larry is coming here to assess our progress toward Operational Ready status. Let’s go over what we should tell him. First, how’s our manpower situation? Charlie, how are your prospects shaping?”

  “I took a chance and I flat out pitched Lee,” said Charlie, referring to his younger brother. “He’s in. No hesitation and all enthusiasm. You know in high school he was really sweet on Sally Wheatley.”

  “The cheerleader girl who was stalked, raped and murdered by the Mexican?” asked Len. “I remember that.”

  “Yah, one of their minority fellow students,” said Charlie in disgust. “We heard last year the beaner had been paroled after doing less than 10 years. The local paper didn’t even figure it was worth a mention; the only way Lee heard about it was from Sally’s father when he ran into him on the street. Lee’s the kind of guy who just files stuff like that away in his mind, but I could tell he was quietly coming to the boiling point, and if something didn’t come along soon he was going into a McDonald’s or someplace with a gun and start blasting every spic he saw. I can vouch for him as much as I could ever vouch for any man. I know my brother. He’s made his decision and he’s with us, rock solid till the end.”

  “Good,” said Hatfield. “That’s going to be one of our hidden strengths. It’s reached the point where every white American has a Sally Wheatley somewhere in their past, someone they knew about or cared about who’s been victimized. People don’t forget these things. Okay, how about Al Wicker?”

  “He talks a good racist rap, and he’s politically knowledgeable,” said Charlie. “He knows about the Jews. He got badly burned by the Republicans. Al had political ambitions once, but he came on too strong and got bounced for political incorrectness and taking Israel’s name in vain.”

  “I recall that he had some contact with the Party but we could never get him to commit,” said Zack. “Was that caution or flakiness, you think? You know him better than I do.”

  “Mmmm, not sure, and we need to be sure. To be honest, Zack, I think it may be kind of early days on Al. I think he’ll be with us, but only once he sees that we’re likely to win. Also, when I was talking with him in his den I was drinking Diet Coke and so was he, but he knocked back almost half a bottle of rum in the cokes during the course of the evening.”

  “You know the rule. No boozers,” said Zack. “One drunk can get us all killed or buried alive. Think he could give it up and stay thirsty for the duration of the revolution?”

  “I say put him on the back burner for now,” said Charlie. “He’s got a nice big house, a good job still, although you never know how long it will last these days, and he’s got something to lose. That worries me. When the heat comes on, guys with something to lose will start getting nervous and thinking deal and Witness Protection Program. We need to start with white men who have nothing to lose. God knows there are enough of them around nowadays.”

  “Okay, let’s just put Al on file for later as a maybe. You didn’t let him know what we were up to, did you?”

  “No, just the usual middle-aged white guy grousing. I let him do most of the talking.”

  “That’s the way to do it. We can’t let anyone know who we are or what we’re doing until we’re as certain of them as it’s possible to be,” said Zack. “How about Tony Campisi?”

  “Coming along,” said Washburn. “I think he’ll throw in with us, but he’s a strong family man and he’s worried sick about his kids, what’s going to become of them. That can cut either way. I’ll say this, with Tony it will be straight up, yes or no. If it’s yes, he’s with us all the way. If it’s no, it’s no, but he won’t rat us out. I’d stake my life on it.”

  “We are,” said Zack dryly. “Len? How’s your brother in-law coming?”

  “Where do you think we got some of our new transportation?” replied Len with a grin.

  “Did you tell him everything?”

  “I didn’t have to. I simply went over to Lundgaard Chevrolet and talked to him in his office. I told him I needed access to as many older-model used cars as he could supply, day or night. I told him some of them might come back to his lot and some might not, and he should ask no questions and be ready to cover the vehicles with paperwork. If he didn’t want to do it, he had my word the subject would never be mentioned again. He looked at me and said okay, just let him know what was needed. He said, ‘Only one question, Len. Does Eva know?’ I told him yes, but there was no need to discuss anything. ‘I won’t,’ he said. ‘She’ll be worried enough. Call me when you need me.’ Jerry’s another one of those quiet types who go to work, and come home, and live their lives, who’s never made a political statement in his life, but he’s like that character in one of the Shakespeare plays who says the less but thinks the more. He’s just so sick unto death in his soul at what’s been going on that he’s ready. We can count him in.”

  “Great,” said Zack. “And now my own pièce de résistance. I pitched Cat-Eyes Lockhart last night, and he’s in.”

  “We have a Medal of Honor winner as a Northwest Volunteer?” exclaimed Washburn.

  “You have no idea how many white men came back from Iraq burning with rage at the bastards who sent us over there,” said Zack. “We have a Medal of Honor winner who can’t be a fisherman anymore because his ancestral waters have now been reserved for an Indian tribe that no longer exists except for a handful of alcoholic half-breeds who never touch a net and who spend their time drinking up their welfare checks. We have a Medal of Honor winner who can’t be a logger anymore since half the forests have been gobbled up by the Parks because of the damned spotted owls and pine weasels, in order to let Halliburton make billions by importing Siberian paper pulp. We have a Medal of Honor winner who hasn’t known a single decent paycheck or had any medical insurance or had any future at all since he left the military. We have a Medal of Honor winner whose wife ran off to the city with a damned Indian-Polynesian half-breed who flashed a big wad of cash and a big stash of coke, and took their kids. We have a man who can no longer get or hold any job at all because he keeps punching out his Mexican foremen and asshole bosses, and only his military record and some sympathetic cops and judges have kept him out of jail on a hatecrime charge. He knows his luck won’t hold forever, and he was preparing to go out in a blaze of glory, until I came along and showed him how he could maybe have a second shot at a new life, and if not, he could make his death count for something. He is so in!”

  “The deadliest American sniper in Iraq!” said Washburn with satisfaction.

  “Yep. Cat racked up 104 confirmed kills. Not just hits, kills. He’s a weapon we have to have. We’ve got a very dangerous man on our hands, guys. I honestly don’t know if he’s entirely sane, but I know he wants in on the NVA so bad he can taste it. I was a bit worried about the no-drinking rule and I gave it to him straight. I told him that any damned fool can drink himself to death, but he’d have to choose between the NVA and the bottle. He said, ‘I’m always dry when I work,’ and I believe him. We need to give him work, though, and soon. You’d better let me deal with him at first until he gets used to you. We’ve been in the same desert s
hitholes together. I speak his language. But once we turn him loose with a decent weapon in his hands, there is not a single Unionist or non-white in Oregon who will be safe. Cat will be a body count all on his own. Speaking of weapons, Len, how did old Fields’s collection turn out?”

  “Amazing,” said Ekstrom, shaking his head. “50 years’ worth, hundreds of weapons! A lot of them I had never even seen before!”

  “Brigade’s going to want some,” said Hatfield.

  “Fine, we’ve got more than we’ll be using for a long time,” said Ekstrom. “The only problem is ammunition, especially for some of his older pieces, and I’m not sure some of the collection will be usable at all, like his selection of Japanese and Italian weapons from World War Two, most of which were shit guns when they first came off the assembly line and they’re still pieces of shit. But picking through all that stuff, I was in seventh heaven! Winchesters, Remingtons, .22s, bolt actions and semi-autos, Model 98 Mausers, for which we can still get 8-mm ammo. At least two dozen fine hunting rifles with scopes, .30-06 and .30-30 and .243 and .440 calibers. Over 40 shotguns, 12 gauge, 16-gauge, 20-gauge, .410s, everything from a $20,000 Purdy His Lordship shoots grouse with in Scotland, to police-model pumps and Sicilian lupara style double-barrels! And the pistols! Good God! Glocks and Brownings and almost every other 9-mm made, Berettas and Walthers, Rugers and Charters and Smiths and Colts of every description, .45s and .38s and .44s, old Police Specials, derringers, Russian Makarovs and Nagants, I don’t even know where to begin!”

  “Easy there!” chuckled Zack. “Now for the icing on the cake. What about his full auto?”