The Brigade

by H. A. Covington

  “That will work,” admitted Hill.

  “Right, how do we get into the hotel?” asked Charlie Randall.

  Hill scanned page after page of the stolen security document. “Damn! I thought about sneaking in early, disguised as a food or linen or toilet paper delivery or something, but they’re all on a schedule and there are cameras on the loading dock in this service alley behind the hotel, plus that leaves the issue of what to do about the real deliveries that are scheduled. Are all of these side doors alarmed in the security control room?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” said Brewer.

  “Okay, we’ll have to slip the assault team into the hotel one by one throughout the day, disguised as guests or reporters or assorted hangers-on,” decided Randall. “It’s going to be a big day, the hotel will be full of people and action, and it’s not like they’re going to make every single person coming in the front door sign in. All seven of us can find our way up to Miss Collingwood’s suite. But what about the guns and the other gear?”

  “I’ll tell Janey I’ll handle the party arrangements,” said Erica. “I’ll order up a whole bunch of extra costumes and masks and booze and cute napkins and balloons and such folderol, and ask for the stuff to be delivered early in the morning. I’ll check in the night before and let the management know I’m expecting multiple deliveries, so it will be on the schedule. I’ll be so anxious for my party to turn out right I’ll be down on the hotel receiving dock nice and early, so when a couple of you guys deliver some big boxes on handcarts, mixed in with all the other party junk I’ll be bringing in, I will be there and make sure you get in without any hassle. I’ll do my ditzy Valley Girl character from Encino High. Those Mexicans and niggers—God, it feels so good to be able to say nigger with you guys!—anyway, the dudes who work down there will all be so star-struck at my presence and busy looking at my tits that they won’t see your faces as you go into the service elevator. You get off at my floor, and go into my suite like delivery men. The cameras will see you coming in and they’ll see you coming out without your boxes, and your weapons are in the building. The actual hit squad wanders in casually over the day at, say, one-hour intervals. Make sure your people actually knock on the door and are let in; if security sees all these strange people using swipe cards they might get curious. At whatever time you decide to move the team into the Kodak, then you go out into the halls wearing evening dress and masks like you’re going up to the party. You’ll have to find some way to conceal your guns from the cameras, but is this an idea you can work from?”

  “You’re a bloody natural at this, Erica!” said Randall, impressed.

  “I left Seattle for Hollywood since I was fourteen,” she told him. “Intrigue and conspiracy are the air we breathe here. Beverly Hills High could have taught the Borgias a thing or two, let me tell you. I will have to be mainly up in the Presidential Suite pretending to party most of the day, but once I check in and get the key card to the Trap Door, we’ll have to arrange some way for me to get it to one of you guys to be copied.”

  “I’ll do that for you,” said Brewer. “I’m your agent, so people won’t think anything of seeing us together.”

  “What about the security discs in the control room?” asked Randall. “You know after the balloon goes up, it won’t take a bloody genius to figure out how we got in and out, and the FBI and Homeland Security will be going over the digital memory from those cameras with a fine-toothed comb. They’ll recognize at least a few of us from HFP, and they’ll want to know what we were doing in Erica Collingwood’s hotel suite.”

  “HFP?” asked Erica.

  “Holographic Facial Profiling,” said Hill. “The feds have got it down to a science as exact as fingerprinting. They can actually HFP and identify someone from a satellite photo taken from space, now, if the angle is right.” Hill drummed his fingers. “Okay, we’re going to have to either assemble a second team to stage an EOD attack on the Hollywood Royale security control room, or else you’ll have to do it yourselves, Mick, as you beat your retreat. Something powerful, Semtex or something that strong, to make sure the digital memory tracks on their machines are destroyed.”

  “Lot of possible collateral damage,” said Brewer. “Plus the bomb might not destroy the recordings we want.”

  “Or . . . hmmm,” Hill mused. “Barry, can you get some kind of schematic for that control room that would identify just what button we would have to push in order to release that graphite recording disc unit from the console, so we could simply steal the video files instead of leveling the building to try and destroy them, and maybe not succeeding at that?”

  “I’ll get our guy on it,” said Barry.

  “We’ve got a brave little lady here, and I’d rather not do the deed and then run out on her leaving a big red arrow pointing right at her for ZOG,” said Randall.

  “Well, there’s a way to get around that and keep my ass covered,” said Erica. “You start shooting right about halfway through the awards ceremonies, at the moment when Marty Rudin and Nat Turner Thomas step up to the stage to collect the award for Best Screenplay.”

  “Uh, those are the two interracial bugger boys, are they not?” asked Randall.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Brewer. “They still brag about the fact that theirs was California’s first official gay marriage.”

  “Nice targets to start on, but why them?” asked Randall.

  “Because I’m the presenter for Best Screenplay,” said Erica. “This is at the behest of Sid Glick and Artie Bernstein, supposedly by way of acknowledging my beauty and my talent and all that crap, but as with everything else in this town, nothing is what it seems. I know damned well what those two hebes are saying to me, and they know I know it and they’re laughing up their sleeves about it. This uppity shiksa is never going to win an Oscar of her own, and this is their way of rubbing it in, by graciously allowing me on the stage to present an award I will never receive. It’s an old Hollywood way of twisting the knife, kind of an always a bridesmaid, never a bride kind of thing. Some poor actors and actresses who have blotted their copybooks with the studio Jews get asked back year after year as presenters, and the poor wretches accept year after year because they can’t stand being on the sidelines and excluded from the magic. Well, I may never win an Oscar on film, but damn if I won’t win one this year, onstage, and I’m going to cover my ass at the same time. After all, who would suspect the beautiful young ingénue who was standing right in the line of fire when the shooting started, and whose shock and horror will be replayed hundreds of thousands of times over the next month and forever after? I’m going to play this role live, before millions of people, and I’m going to appear on the news cameras afterwards with blood all over my Prada evening gown and deliver the performance of my life.”

  “But no one will ever know, Erica,” pointed out Barry Brewer gently. “Not until they write the history books many, many years from now.”

  “I will know,” she said with a smile. “That will be enough.”

  “Bugger that!” said Charlie Randall succinctly. “Truth is, you will be in the line of fire! Erica, there aren’t just going to be guns, there will be explosives as well, hand grenades, not to mention return fire from the rent-a-cops and the real cops and the private bodyguards as well. It’s going to be a madhouse, bullets will be whizzing around like popcorn in a popper, and none of us can guarantee your safety for a single second. The blood on that Prada evening gown you mentioned could be your own.”

  “I understand that,” she said evenly. “Look, guys, this is going to sound very strange, and I know the last thing I need is to convince you that I’m some kind of suicidal nut case. I’m not. But I see it like this: I am going to be in a large part responsible for what happens to all those people on that night. I am doing this because I feel in my very soul that it’s right, but what if I’m wrong? I need to accept responsibility for that decision, and be willing to take the consequences. That means I need to throw my name into the Grim Reaper
’s wheel of death along with theirs, and yours, and take at least some of the same chances that you are taking. I’m kind of surprised to learn that I’m capable of committing murder, but I do have a problem with hiding in some hotel room while you take all the risk, and in not being present when something I have helped to set in motion goes down. You might say I’m giving God a chance to let me know in no uncertain terms whether or not I’ve fucked up. Chase didn’t want to be where he was and he didn’t deserve what happened to him, but he drew the shitty end of the stick anyway. I’m putting myself where he was by my own choice, because one way or another, the scales need to be balanced on Oscar night. God, you probably think I’ve lost it!” she sighed.

  “No,” said Charlie Randall, shaking his head. “It makes sense, and it’s noble and honorable. Just not very sensible. Look, Erica, the best thing you can do for Chase and for yourself is to be a good soldier, and after the war is over build a Republic for our people that will be a home and a shield against the filth we’re going up against in a few nights’ time. A good soldier is brave, but not foolhardy or stupid. I think you’re crossing the line here.”

  “It would be an ideal cover if the feds come sniffing around her,” Brewer had to concede, reluctance in his voice. “Everybody would at least know exactly where she was and what she was doing when all hell broke loose.”

  “The awards ceremonies run on a closer timetable than any railroad,” said Erica quietly. “The ceremonies start at 5:30, and Best Screenplay is scheduled for 6:48 to 6:53 P.M. Have your men in place at 6:48 and pull the damned trigger, and let’s just hope those two faggots don’t decide to show up in drag, so you can at least tell your gunners not to shoot anybody on stage who’s wearing an evening gown.”

  XX

  Setting The Scene

  The king himself is rode forth to view their battle.

  King Henry V—Act IV, Scene 3

  “Can she stand up?” asked Hill as they drove away from Erica Collingwood’s apartment. “If there’s any doubt in your mind, Barry, now is the time to talk about it.”

  “I think so,” said Brewer. “In any case, she’s the only hope we have of pulling this off from the inside. I can do some of it myself, but you have to realize that I’m a marginal player in the industry. My clients mostly end up doing bit parts on soaps and sitcoms, and my clout barely registers as a burp on the Hollywood Richter scale. I could probably cop that crucial key card to the Trap Door if I had to. Enough money to one of the Royale’s staff should do the trick. But in the subsequent investigation my presence on the scene would stand out like a cow in church to anyone familiar with the pecking order, and you can bet the FBI and the LAPD will be giving this a full court press. Nor could I get seven armed people into the hotel and conceal them for some hours until it’s time to move. We’ve got to have Erica’s help.”

  “Until we get some indication otherwise, we’ll have to assume that Erica will hold up her end,” said Randall practically. “We still have to work out the exact details of getting our team out of her hotel suite and into their firing positions undetected. I’m worried about all those security cameras in the Kodak, since we have to assume that all the monitors in the security control room will be manned and there will be multiple observers keeping track of everything that goes on in every corridor and accessible area during the ceremonies. Like you said earlier, we most likely won’t be the only people trying to sneak in and crash the Oscars on the night. We need to find some way to take out the camera system for at least a minute or two while our people get into the building, make their way up to those projection booths, get inside and get covered down on the target area. We don’t want the shooting to start prematurely before we actually have the glitterati themselves in sight.”

  “I’ve got Volunteer Kellerman working on the info we’ve been able to get on the security console set-up and the wiring in the control room, but he hasn’t been able to come up with anything yet,” said Hill.

  “Looking at floor plans and diagrams is all very well and good, but I need to see where the tickle’s going to go down,” said Randall decisively. “There’s no other way. I’ve got to get into that theater at night and have a prowl ’round. Preferably in the wee hours of the morning when there’s no one about. I think Cat-Eyes needs to come with me as well, so he can eyeball the firing positions and the kill zone. That chintzy guided tour the theater management gives the tourists won’t cut it. I also need to meet that Centurion guard who’s going to be our man on the inside so at least one of us who will be inside on the night knows who the hell he is and what he looks like, we can sort out what he’ll be doing on the night, and hopefully we won’t shoot our own bloke. You need to set that up for me, Rip. We can go in as maintenance men or cleaning crew or something like that.”

  “It will take a couple of days to get you fake badges and swipe cards made,” said Brewer.

  “Yeah, and we’re cutting it fine as it is,” said Randall. “All the more need for speed.”

  “I’ll try to set it up for tomorrow night, but it might have to be the night after,” said Brewer. “Our guy’s only a sergeant, and he has to be really careful in what he does and what he accesses. Centurion spies on their own people to make sure they’re not being naughty.”

  It was in fact two nights later at eight o’clock in the evening that Charlie Randall and Cat-Eyes Lockhart appeared at the rear alley service entrance to the Kodak Theater. They were driving a stolen and sanitized van that had been re-sprayed with the logo of California Cool, a legitimate heating and air conditioning company in the Valley, and they were dressed in greasy coveralls marked “The Cool Dudes” with filthy baseball caps on their heads. They carried long, battered metal tool boxes, each containing a top tray of tools and electrical fixtures, with Uzi submachine guns and extra magazines stowed in the bottom of each box, as well as light handguns concealed in the tool belts around their waists. From their shirt pocket flaps dangled official-looking Kodak Theater contractor badges and around their necks hung working contractor key swipe cards, all false but which hopefully they wouldn’t actually have to use, lest the computer in the control room detect something hinky about them.

  They were admitted at the service entrance door by Centurion shift sergeant Sterling Farrell, a thickset man in his early forties in the white shirt, visored cap, and black trousers of the company. Farrell bore a tattoo on his muscular right forearm of a bayonet piercing a turbaned serpent with the beard of an imam. The bayonet was wielded in the talons of an American bald eagle with wings rampant and the number “101” over the whole design. The greetings were short. Lockhart looked at the tattoo. “101st Airborne?” he asked.

  “Screaming Eagles, hoo-rah!” Farrell confirmed. “Sterling Farrell, ex-staff sergeant. Baghdad, Tikrit, Shiraz, Tehran, Cairo and Gaza. Are you Dundee or Jones tonight? Not that there’s any point in your using a handle, since your picture’s all over Fox News every week.”

  “Guess not. Jesse Lockhart,” said Cat, holding out his hand. “Baghdad, Tikrit, Ramadi, Shiraz, Damascus and Khartoum.”

  “Yeah, I know,” said Farrell, shaking his hand. “You wouldn’t remember me, but I saw you work once in Tikrit.”

  “This is Crocodile Dundee,” said Lockhart. “You’ll know why we call him that when he opens his mouth.”

  “How much time have we got, mate?” asked Randall.

  “I’m officially on lunch now,” said Farrell. “That’s half an hour, but I can stretch it out a bit before I have to get back to checking in on my rounds.”

  “We took the day tour,” said Randall. “We saw the lobby and all the movie junk, and the inside of the theater itself, and they let us up on stage briefly, and that’s about it. Tonight we want to scope the backstage areas and the upper levels and corridors, and get as close to the security control room as we dare.” From upstairs they could hear the sound of voices, mostly Spanish, as well as banging and thumping and hammering and the sound of a radio or CD deck playing salsa mus
ic. “Sounds like you’ve got a full house tonight,” commented Randall.

  “Yeah, that’s why I suggested to Ripley that you come on second shift and not at two in the morning,” said Farrell. “You’re more likely to go unnoticed when there’s a lot of workmen and set-up crew in the building. They knock off at eleven, and in the early hours you’d be out of place. There are cameras everywhere. I’ll point them out to you as we go. The control room only has two officers in it right now. One of them’s a Sheba who spends all her time yakking on her cell phone when she thinks I’m not around, and the other one’s a big Indio from down in Yucatan who seems to barely speak English. He may be smarter than he looks, but if he is, he hides it well. They’ll see us, but they will just assume I’m escorting some contractors around the building while you work on the ventilation or something. After the big night, though, the FBI and DHS will go over all the digitals with a microscope, and they’ll spot us together, which is why I need to do a Houdini act ASAP after the blowout.”

  “Don’t worry, mate, we’ll have you on your way to Portland before the smoke clears away,” Randall promised him. “What exactly are they building out there in the theater?”

  “They’re knocking together the pre-fab platform at the rear of the seating area that will hold all the television cameras and crew and gear for the live coverage, and also the side platforms that will hold additional cameras, boom mikes, and so on. Let’s go, then,” said Farrell. “We’ll be taking the stairs. There are cameras in all the elevators, and they might get a close-up that might interest somebody. What, exactly, do you want to see?” he asked as they mounted one flight and came out behind the stage. The banging and sawing was louder now, coming from the theater outside.