The Brigade

by H. A. Covington

  “Never mind that,” said Rabang. “Turn around and head back for Portland. I’m officially Mommy-tracked and that means I can take personal time any time I want, and if you have any questions about it I will be glad to have SAIC Weinstein sit down with you and explain it all to you in words of one syllable.” For Pangborn that was definitive. The whole office knew Elliott Weinstein was banging her—the white male agents even referred to it as Ra-banging in the cafeteria and the club bar, after the obligatory glance over their shoulder to see if anyone was listening. What the hell, he thought. I thought I was an FBI agent, but I draw the same pay as a taxi driver for this bitch, so why not?

  Besides, there was something else, a sixth sense left over from Pangborn’s own time in Iraq. The sheriff’s talk about Lockhart’s sniper skills had bothered him at some deep level, and now he glanced over at the apartment building behind him. The roof, all those windows. In Baghdad he and his men would never have gotten anywhere near a building like that until it was cleared and secured with artillery or an air strike, or by dumb Marines who were adrenalin junkies in love with death and who liked nothing more than kicking in doors to see if anything went bang. Suddenly leaving here didn’t seem like such a bad idea. If the SAIC griped he would simply tell him about Rabang’s Mommy track, which she actually had quite right, Bureau-wise. “Fine,” said Pangborn, backing the SUV around and driving slowly back off the pier and out onto 39th Street. “Home again, home again, jiggety-jig.” Behind them the deputies stared at one another in astonishment.

  “What in the name of the devil? They’re leaving!” hissed Hatfield.

  “They were tipped off somehow,” said Lockhart.

  “I can’t believe it!”

  “Do we abort, sir?” asked Lockhart.

  Zack took a deep breath. “Like hell we do! Maybe they’ve been tipped, maybe they just got spooked, maybe they got called back, who knows? But I can see them, God damn it, and they’re not getting away from right under our noses! No matter what, we’re taking those bastards down today! Let’s go!” Hatfield quickly pulled out his wallet, pulled out all the cash he had on him, and laid it on the table. “Mr. Englehardt, this is all I’ve got. I’ll try to send more from time to time. Feed yourself and make sure you live long enough to die in the free, white Northwest Republic. Hang in there, old timer. The cavalry’s coming over the hill one day.”

  “Git ’em, boys!” cried the old man in joyous excitement, waving his cane in the air as they ran out of the apartment. They pelted down the hall and down the outside stairwell, and they were in the front seat of the Yukon, Cat’s rifle between his knees, and Zack was firing up the engine in twenty-eight seconds. Zack pulled onto 39th Street just in time to see the green SUV turn left onto Leif Erickson Drive. “Looks like they’re going back to Portland for some reason,” said Hatfield.

  “Or luring us into a trap,” suggested Lockhart.

  “If it was an ambush they would have either hit us in the apartment building or at least outside in the parking lot,” said Hatfield. “Feds always try to surround and contain. They never let their targets get mobile if they can help it. No, for some reason those two must have got spooked, and they’re trying to make it back to their nest. Roll up your mask,” he said, suiting the action to the word. “Don’t want people to see two masked men driving down the road, after last night.” After a little speeding Zack now had the Chrysler in sight. They were doing the speed limit of thirty-five miles per hour on the winding road out of Astoria. There was another vehicle between them. Zack took out his phone and hit the speed dial for Charlie Washburn’s phone. It rang and Charlie answered. “Praise Jesus!” he shouted.

  “Sorry about the call, Reverend,” said Hatfield, “But I don’t see any other way to do this. You know we were all gonna gather at the river, the beautiful, the beautiful river, but we got a couple of sinners here who done backslid and have turned their faces against salvation. They’re headed in your direction, ETA maybe ninety seconds, green Chrysler Aspen, fully tinted windows, which I can’t think of any way to say Scripturally. Could you please show them the error of their ways and await our second coming, that we may smite them with a rod of iron?”

  “Verily, we shall vouchsafe unto them the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.”

  “Uh, Reverend, that’s not the Bible. That’s Monty Python,” said Hatfield in exasperation.

  “Just keep far enough back so you don’t go to your own heavenly reward. And always look on the bright side of life, my son.” Charlie hung up.

  “I tell you, if that was recorded and played back in court, we could plead insanity,” said Hatfield. “They’re going to try and use their pipe bomb blow the feds off the road at Tongue Point. As soon as their vehicle stops, we take them. Somehow.”

  “I’ll get up on the roof and fire from there,” said Lockhart.

  The funny feeling in the back of Brian Pangborn’s mind hadn’t gone away. Rabang had gotten back onto his own allegedly racist comment, and she was jabbering on and on about how she was astounded that Paleolithic attitudes such as his hadn’t been rooted out in the Bureau, when Pangborn glanced in his rear view mirror and saw the car behind him turning off into a driveway. Behind that car came a battered OD green Yukon SUV. It was coming up a little too fast for his liking. He interrupted Rabang. “The witnesses in the restaurant said the shooters were two men who fled the scene in a dark colored SUV, right?”

  “Yes,” said Rabang. “Why?”

  “That’s a Yukon behind us,” he said. “There seem to be two men in it.”

  Rabang twisted around to look back. “It could be anybody,” she said.

  “See the way he speeds up a bit and then slows?” pointed out Pangborn. “He’s trying to keep a set distance between us, a bit too much distance, like he’s hanging back for some reason. On this winding road at thirty-five, if he’s a local yahoo he should be getting in closer. It’s just a feeling, but I don’t like it.” They passed the point where Leif Erickson drive transmuted into Highway 30, and the speed limit went up to forty-five. “See? I’m speeding up now, and so is he, but he’s still keeping about seventy yards between us.”

  At Tongue Point Charlie Washburn had turned the black Toyota Camry around and pointed it into the highway. “We gonna ram ’em?” asked Lee.

  “Not unless we have to,” said Charlie. “I’d like to get this car back to Jerry Lundgaard in one piece, since he was nice enough to let us borrow it. I’m going to pull out and see if we can force them off the road into that ditch there. You get into the left rear seat, behind me, so when we un-ass the car we’ll both have it between us and the feds’ guns. I’ll hit them with the Uzi and you get ready to flick your Bic, light that fuse, and see if you can blow an axle off, and not endanger Zack and Cat who will be coming up behind them. God, I hope traffic stays this light and no one else comes driving along right into the middle of this! Masks on!”

  In the Chrysler, Rabang Miller pulled out her pistol and jacked a round into the chamber. “Be careful with that!” snapped Pangborn, looking for a place to pull over so he could let the Yukon pass, or not as the case might be. He saw a possible pulling off spot right at the intersection of Tongue Point Road and Emerald Drive, and so he was actually slowing down and veering right when all of a sudden the Camry roared out of Tongue Point Road and stopped right beneath the blinking yellow light hanging over the intersection. Pangborn saw two men in ski masks leap out of the car. He heard the stuttering of the Uzi, saw the muzzle flash and heard the pop pop pop as the 9-mm slugs slammed into the windshield. The polycarbonate glass held, but big ugly white splotches blossomed on the windshield before him. “It’s them!” screamed Rabang in terror. “Fuck the car behind us, you asshole! They’re in front of us!”

  Pangborn decided to try for a right turn up onto Emerald Drive, but he briefly saw a black cylindrical sailing through the air toward him. It banged against the windshield, bounced off, and just as he yelled “Bomb!” the pipe bomb exploded in the air ab
out four feet in front of the FBI agents, with a weird crushing sound rather like a cross between a crump! and a clink! The Chrysler’s armor still held, but the front bumper was ripped almost entirely off and flapped up onto the windshield, and the force of the explosion crumpled the front end and caused all kinds of hissing and steaming fluid leaks and electrical shorts within. Pangborn lost control and the Chrysler slid into the ditch. The Uzi was still pattering bullets against the armored body.

  A mere 50 yards behind them, the Yukon rolled to a stop. Hatfield got out and covered down on the disabled FBI vehicle with his submachine gun, leaning over the Yukon’s hood, waiting for a target. Cat-Eyes Lockhart was out the other door and he slithered up onto the roof with the agility of a serpent, spreading himself prone and sighting the rifle. “If they don’t come out I’ll move in with our bomb. Get ready to cover me!” called out Hatfield.

  Steam, smoke and the smell of burning began to fill the passenger compartment of the Chrysler through the vents from the damaged engine. “We’re on fire!” shrieked Special Agent Miller. She tore her door open and bailed out of the car.

  “No, wait!” yelled Pangborn. Rabang had thrown down her gun and she was running up the embankment, screaming hysterically in pure terror. She was completely open to the Uzi and Pangborn jerked open his own door and leaped out, crouching behind it with his handgun at the ready, planning on using the armored panels as cover to fire at the Toyota and the Uzi gunner, make them keep their heads down so Rabang might have a chance to get down or into the woods. He was convinced that the two men in the Toyota were the killers of Jacob and Irene Goldman, and the simple fact was that he had completely forgotten about the green Yukon that had been following them.

  Nor did Pangborn have any more time to remember. Lockhart’s first armor-piercing bullet entered the base of his skull from behind and decapitated him; he never even heard the shot. One second later, Lockhart’s second shot snapped the fleeing Rabang Miller’s spine, tore through her heart and sternum, and sent her spinning to the ground as bleeding rag that twitched and kicked and scrambled and then lay still. Cat-Eyes leaped down off the Yukon, ran up to the smoking Chrysler’s open driver’s door, leaned down and inserted a Jack of Diamonds from a Bicycle playing deck into the dead hand of Brian Pangborn. He snagged Pangborn’s piece and stuck it his back pocket, ran up the hill to where Rabang Miller lay with her dead face staring at the sky, and stuck a second Jack into her mouth. He then ran back to the Yukon. Hatfield waved off the Washburns, who got into the Toyota and pulled off down Highway 30 toward John Day. The Yukon followed. From the moment the Toyota pulled out into the road until both NVA vehicles left the scene, the elapsed time was thirty-four seconds.

  Cat-Eyes Lockhart turned to Zack Hatfield. “That’s it?” he exclaimed in amazement. “That’s the big, bad FBI? The rough tough G-Men that we’ve all been so afraid of for seventy years? Jesus, I’ve shot rabbits that put up more of a fight!”

  Hatfield chuckled. “I think they’ve always been scared of this,” he said. “Scared that one day we’d find out just how easy it is.”

  * * *

  Late that night, when Sheriff Ted Lear finally got back to his office, he sat down in the swivel chair behind his desk and buried his face in his hands in sheer exhaustion and utter depression. It had been a madhouse all day, first the Goldman murders, and now two FBI agents killed in his county. The Bureau had helicoptered in a heavily armed SWAT force over 50 strong, as well as full CSI teams and many grim, angry and arrogant men and women in suits. They had contemptuously shoved him and his people aside while they lashed out in all directions. Lear didn’t even know how the investigation was going, only that federal agents were swarming all over Clatsop County kicking in doors and waving guns in the air, and that it would only get worse. But the worst thing of all was his certainty that Rabang Miller had been right. The madness was no longer far away on TV, it was here now, in Astoria, in Seaside, in his world. His sense of duty told him irresistibly that he was going to have to do something about it, and he would probably die trying. What in God’s name would happen to his wife and children when he was gone?

  He sighed and picked up his phone, and began dialing a series of telephone numbers. There was no answer at the first three. He dug out an old address book from his desk drawer and found one last number to try, a cell phone. On the fourth ring Zack Hatfield’s voice answered. “We need to talk,” Lear said without preamble. “Midnight. You know where.”

  “We both come alone,” said Hatfield. “I see so much as a hint of anyone else around, we both go. I mean it, Ted.”

  “Don’t you trust me?” asked Lear.

  “Should I?” asked Hatfield.

  “I’ll be there at midnight. Alone. Come or don’t come, your call.” Lear hung up.

  The rain had stopped and the night had become clear and starry by the time Lear pulled his personal unmarked car into the parking lot of the athletic field at Astoria High School. He had changed into civilian clothes in the station locker room, making sure he had his service automatic in a shoulder holster and his smaller holdout in his ankle holster. I wonder if he’d really kill me? wondered Lear. Shit, it’s Zack. Of course he would. The cold had temporarily let up as well due to some warm vagary of the ocean current far off shore, and it was mildly cool, almost spring-like out. Lear got out of the car and walked up to the bleachers. The grass was still marked in lime with yard lines for the previous year’s football season, and the goal posts were still up; the custodians hadn’t yet gotten around to setting up the field for springtime soccer. He saw a movement in the shadows below the bleachers, which he ignored. He mounted the bleachers and sat down. “You gonna come up here or talk from down there?” he called out.

  Hatfield climbed up from below the bleachers and sat down on the same row, to Lear’s left, although not within reach. Lear saw that he was wearing a broad-brimmed felt hat that he vaguely associated with the now outlawed Party of the revolution. “Nice hat.”

  “Thanks. You strapped?” asked Hatfield.

  “Of course,” answered Lear. “I’m dealing with a killer. You?”

  “Of course,” said Hatfield. “I was pretty sure this was where you meant. Our first fond memory together.”

  “I was defending my sister’s honor,” replied Lear huffily.

  “Yeah, you slugged me and then Julia slugged you,” said Zack, chuckling reminiscently. “You thought I’d dragged her under the bleachers by force. You ever hear from Julia anymore?”

  “Yeah, every couple of months she gives me a call.”

  “She’s still down there in Tinsel Town working with all the movie stars?” asked Hatfield.

  “Still in Burbank, yes.”

  “She ever marry that actor?” inquired Hatfield.

  “Almost, but she finally had to give him a flat out choice between her and his cocaine. The cocaine won, and she broke it off,” Lear told him.

  “She’s got good sense,” said Hatfield approvingly. “She always did. Hell, she had the good sense not to marry me.”

  “In view of recent events, thank God for that,” said Lear. “Zack, what in the name of God? Have you completely lost your mind? What the fuck do you think you’re going to accomplish with all this?”

  “I’m going to change the world, or die in the attempt,” said Hatfield levelly. “Most likely die in the attempt, but that’s the way I want it, Ted.”

  “Yah, and that’s the way you’ll get it!” snapped Lear.

  “From you?”

  “Jesus, Zack, what the hell do you think?” cried Lear. “You know damned well that next time we meet, I’m going to have to bring you in.”

  “Then you know what I’ll have to do, Ted. Think you can take me? Never mind, this isn’t a pissing contest. Maybe you can. Maybe we’ll find out. Fair warning, is all I’m saying. But it doesn’t have to be like that.”

  “You trying to recruit me for your little terrorist club, Zack?” asked Lear wearily. “Come on, now, you
know me better than that!”

  “No, I’m not,” said Hatfield. “Ted, I’m going to tell you how things are going to be around here from now on.”

  “You’re going to tell me?” returned Lear skeptically.

  “Yah, because that’s how things are now in the Northwest,” replied Hatfield in a calm yet authoritative voice. “The United States government and the Oregon state government and the goddamned county commissioners no longer rule in this land. We do. The Northwest American Republic came into being on October 22nd in Coeur d’Alene, and the Army Council is now the legitimate government under a state of emergency declared by the provisional government of that Republic.”

  “Bullshit!” spat Lear. “You’re a rag-bag gang of marauding psychopaths who are running around shooting and bombing anybody with a dark skin!”

  “That’s how we’ll go down in history if we lose, yes,” agreed Hatfield affably. “As far as our running around killing everybody with a dark skin, I wish it were that simple. Just kill off X number of wogs and beaners and then we can all go home and plop down on the sofa in front of the TV again. But it isn’t that simple. Our goal is not to kill people, it’s to free people, our people, white people, from a government and a society that have become absolutely intolerable and morally indefensible, and to build something new and better in its place. What this will turn into, what it’s already turning into, will be a civil war between white people, maybe as bad as the one in 1861. But we’re going to win. Don’t ask me how I know that, Ted, but I do. The way I look at it, God wouldn’t have let us get this far if He meant for the white race to disappear from the earth. Anyway, I won’t argue the point. In the final analysis all law and right and government is based on organized violence. All the rest is window dressing. I happen to think our side will turn out to be better at organizing it than yours, but we’ll see.”