The Brigade

by H. A. Covington

  “That’s Rolly’s whole life,” said Sue with a shrug. “He’s always been out to prove that anything a white man can do, a black man can do better and Rolly Rollins can do better still. It’s gotten him re-elected for six terms in Chicago, until he resigned to take over FATPO. Now he wants to add anti-racist war hero to his resumé.”

  “This is not a war, Ms. Loomis,” Posner corrected her. “This is a law enforcement action against hatecriminals.”

  “Well, he is going to try and run for President,” commented Baker.

  “Rolly can dream on,” said Sue. “That seat in the Oval Office is Chelsea’s and the whole world knows it, and when Chelsea’s done we’ve got a couple more Bushes waiting in the wings. I don’t know why we even bother to have elections anymore, since the White House has become a kind of time-share for two families.”

  “Did anybody ever figure out what the hell happened to Dawson Zucchino?” asked Maxwell Zevon from Rolling Stone. “The son of a bitch had my stash!”

  “He probably smoked it all, or he was out getting drunk or laid or both and he slept in and missed the boat, literally,” replied Sue Loomis with a sigh. “Or he just got tired of being embedded. What do you want to bet that jackass drove down here by car from Portland, probably had a completely uneventful trip and stayed plastered all the way, and he’s going to meet us on the goddamned beach with a thermos of coffee and Jack Daniels? Jesus, I can’t wait to get this stupid photo-shoot over with! Once we get ashore I don’t care if I’m supposed to be embedded or not, I’m finding a Holiday Inn and I’m getting a nice hot shower!”

  “Of course, I could change my mind and share that shower with you,” leered Posner, leaning against the rail unsteadily.

  “Fuck off, Leonard,” said the Reuters woman mildly.

  On the bridge of the Higby, Captain Meryl Sandoval stood in flawless naval whites, watching the low dark coast go by on the starboard side through her binoculars. Beyond the low white rim of surf she could see occasional house lights on the bluffs and headlights of vehicles going up and down Highway 101. “Steady as she goes, helmsman!” There was no need for her to say that, since the trip had been completely uneventful and there wasn’t much of any way to go other than steady, but she was extremely conscious of her status as the Coast Guard’s senior Hispanic female captain, and she was resolved to present a professional image, sounding nautical and shipshape at all times.

  “Aye aye, ma’am!” replied the petty officer at the wheel, with just enough spit and polish to convey a smidgeon of contempt, she thought. She knew that her crew all hated her and were probably conspiring against her, and that the white males among her officers and NCOs were waiting for her to make a single misstep. Or she thought she knew that, and she acted accordingly. She prided herself on running a tight ship, charging her sailors and bringing them up on orders for the slightest infraction, and she was pleased to learn from her XO Lieutenant Hacker that she had a nickname among them: “Captain Queeg.” Hacker had assured her that it meant a stern but fair disciplinarian. Another subordinate had helpfully informed her that naval tradition held that the original Captain Queeg of legend, whoever he may have been, had made a habit of grinding two ball bearings in his hand, a practice she had adopted. Fortunately for the ship’s company, Meryl Sandoval didn’t watch many old movies on TV.

  Now Hacker appeared at her side. “Signal from Air Dog One,” he told her. “The choppers will rendezvous with us on schedule ma’am.”

  “Good,” she said. “Everything is going according to schedule. Carry on, Number One.” She had heard that term on one of the few old movies she ever had watched, and no one ever bothered to explain to her that it was a British naval expression, not an American one. But Hacker seemed disinclined to carry on. He was a lean and grizzled seaman who had come up from the ranks, with a face weather-beaten from many storms that he’d faced on deck, and not in an office or an electronic cubicle. It had taken him a while to make full lieutenant, since he had fought in Iraq for some years in the DNF (Detached Naval Force) when the government had run so short of infantry that it stripped Navy and Air Force units to turn them into grunts to patrol the streets of Baghdad and Ramadi. The draft had finally kicked in, endless cannon fodder had become available for the Ninth Crusade, and Hacker had eventually gotten back on board a ship, minus his left foot. But he retained his combat instincts, and in his mind red flags were out all over the place on this mission.

  “Ma’am, when we reach the LZ, before the FATPO copters arrive, may I suggest that we launch our own helicopter and do a recon of the landing area?” he asked respectfully.

  “Not unless General Rollins requests it,” said Sandoval. “This is his show and he says he wants to have the copters fly in overhead while he makes his own landing on the beach, for the TV cameras. I can understand that. Propaganda is just as important as military action in winning a counter-insurgency, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Hacker. “I don’t suggest we do anything to spoil General Rollins’ grand entrance. I mean just buzz the beach once or twice to make sure everything’s hunky-dory before we go in?”

  Sandoval laughed, genuinely amused. “Good grief, Lieutenant, it’s not like we’re landing on Iwo Jima or Omaha Beach! This is a photo op, for God’s sake, not a real military operation, although it does have a strategic purpose in that we’re inserting a paramilitary force to re-assert government control over part of the continental United States. These aren’t soldiers we’re fighting or even informal militias like in Iraq or Somalia. They’re just a bunch of punks who shoot unarmed Hispanic and black people in the back, and who murder movie actors and plant the occasional car bomb. They call themselves an army, but they’re not, they’re a bunch of inbred hillbilly peckerwoods with black teeth who used to work in Jiffy Lubes and wash dishes for minimum wage before they became terrorists. The toughest people they’ve got are former members of prison gangs, and they’re not good for anything other than shanking each other in the exercise yard. These people are not going to fight over a thousand armed federal officers and the United States Coast Guard!” she concluded with a snort.

  Hacker debated briefly whether to push it, and decided to change tack. “Uh, certainly, ma’am. But I wonder, has General Rollins considered that he is going to be landing at dawn, with the rising sun right in his eyes, and the eyes of his men? Would it be possible for him to maybe wait until the sun gets a bit higher in the sky, do you think?”

  “Lieutenant, did I not just explain to you that there is no need?” sighed Captain Sandoval with growing impatience.

  Hacker clenched his teeth, but decided to give it one more try. “May I at least order the crew to general quarters, ma’am, just prior to the landing? As a drill, if nothing else?”

  “Oh, all right, I suppose a drill wouldn’t be too out of order,” she said with a careless shrug. “It would keep the ship’s company on their toes.”

  “Aye aye, ma’am. And load live ammo for the Mark 75?” pressed Hacker.

  “Just who the hell do you think we’re going to be shelling on the beach, Lieutenant?” snapped Sandoval. “Little old men walking their dogs and kiddies looking for sea shells? Or do you think the Northwest Volunteer Navy is going to come around the point and attack us with Exocet missiles?”

  “I think, ma’am, that if they have Exocet missiles or anything like that, yes, they are quite capable of it,” replied Hacker calmly, wondering if his career was now circling the bowl.

  Sandoval was about to respond but then the radio crackled. “General Rollins on the horn for you from Ventura, ma’am,” said a commo rating, holding up the phone receiver. The captain gave Hacker a poisonous look, but turned away.

  “No live ammo for the gun,” she ordered over her shoulder.

  Lieutenant JG Charles Day leaned over and whispered, “Live ammo for the gun, sir?”

  “You bet your goddamned ass!” hissed Hacker.

  * * *

  At that moment Zack Hatfiel
d was crouched in a small trench or elongated foxhole dug into the ground. The hole was on the left edge of the cut in the sand dunes that gave vehicular access to Sunset Beach from the highway, and it had been camouflaged from observation with a pile of heaped-up sand into which hundreds of carefully clipped sea oats had been inserted standing up. It wasn’t the best camouflage in the world, and the ocean wind had already blown some of the sea oats down, but it provided a view of Sunset Beach and it would do for the brief use Zack intended for it. He had in his hand a small silver wireless phone. Charlie Washburn slid in beside him. A shadowy line of men hoisting picks and shovels over their backs filed past on Zack’s right, coming up from the beach. “Okay, Zack, Len’s got the whole enchilada armed and ready. Your basic daisy chain of Baghdad Bangers, six IEDs twenty yards apart and three feet deep, about 100 yards out. At high tide they should be under the surf. You hit speed dial on that phone, the main charge detonates. That’s the Semtex. The rest of the mines with the dynamite and C4 are wired, so in theory you should get one hell of a bang and do some damage. Unless of course they decide to land a mile up the beach or a mile down, in which case we just buried most of our battalion’s explosive ordnance in the ground for no reason, and we might not be able to get it back.”

  “I know it’s just a guess that this will be the spot, Charlie,” said Hatfield. “But it’s an educated guess. We know they’re bringing vehicles, and the vehicles can’t all be dune buggies. There will be some heavy trucks and APCs, maybe Strykers, heavy enough to risk getting stuck. They’ll probably lay down steel grating to offload the larger vehicles, but they’ll still need to get onto a paved road as soon as possible and not go floundering around up and down the beach, and Sunset Avenue is the only access down onto the beach from the asphalt. I assume they either have someone with local knowledge, or more likely they can simply do an internet map search. If our information is correct and they’re headed for Sunset Beach, then they’ve pretty much got to land right here.”

  “Maybe they’ve got wind that we’re onto them and they’ve changed the landing site?” suggested Charlie.

  “It’s not dawn yet. Give ’em time. Besides, why haven’t we seen a single copter floating around upstairs in the past two days? My guess is they still think they have the element of surprise. If they knew they’d lost it, we’d have whirlybirds flying around like a swarm of bees trying to find us, including gunships, and probably some kind of air insertion in here to secure the landing zone. But we’ve seen zip. No, those assholes have no idea we know they’re coming.” Zack made it a point to sound a lot more confident than he felt. “I’m more worried about air and satellite reconnaissance. I remember the U.S. Army, Charlie. They don’t even go to the latrine without air cover and recon, period, end of story, since air superiority is what always makes the difference and wins wars for America. The ones they still win, anyway.”

  19 year-old Lieutenant Ricky Parmenter of C Company, Third Battalion appeared out of the dim gloom and squatted down by the trench. He was a slim and intense young man, blond and baby-faced, wearing jeans and a black cowboy hat and carrying an M-16. “Cap, Ragnar just got a call from the spotter he left up on the roof of that hotel at Seaside. The guy with the infrared night vision binoculars.”

  “And?” asked Hatfield.

  “They’re coming. Pretty certain to be them, anyway. He saw the lights of four large vessels sailing together and looks like some smaller ones as well. They’re making about twelve or thirteen knots, so they’ll be here in about forty minutes, give or take.”

  “Coming in just at dawn,” said Washburn. “Damn, I almost forgot to tell you! Washington Threesec contacted brigade intelligence, and they just passed it along. A lot of copters left Fort Lewis about fifteen minutes ago, heading south.”

  “They’re coming here to rendezvous with the naval force. I wondered when they were going to show up. Come on.” Hatfield and Washburn climbed up out of the trench, and the three of them walked back up the dirt road to an open Humvee parked on the side of the road, in the back of which was mounted a belt-fed Browning M2 .50-caliber machine gun. This was Zack’s personal command vehicle, which the Volunteers called the “War Wagon.” Standing beside the War Wagon was a tall and powerfully built auburn-haired man in denim with a beard and a braided ponytail, his chest crossed with two bandoliers of pouches containing loaded FAN rifle magazines. This was the Swedish fighter known as Ragnar Redbeard, real name Captain Dan Dalen of the Nordland Flying Column, whose normal sector was the Oregon coastline from Tillamook on down to North Bend. Behind Dalen stood an even taller and more ferociously bearded man, who in addition to his bandolier of ammunition and grenades carried a large double-edged logger’s axe across his back in a sheath. This was Big Nick, another Swede. Nick didn’t say much; he tended to let his axe do the talking.

  “Okay, Dan, thanks for the assist,” said Hatfield. “I especially appreciate the loan of your explosives. We’ll greet our uninvited guests with a hell of a bang. You still gonna stick around?”

  “We come to fight, we fight,” said Dalen.

  “Well, pick a couple of your guys and get the rest on their way,” said Hatfield. “Charlie, our chosen men get here yet?”

  “Up the road,” said Washburn.

  “Okay, I need to brief them.”

  They all walked up to the dirt road to where the pavement began, to a small parking lot on the right side of the notch. This was the entrance to a tiny mini-park on the north side of the road, the starting point of a hiking trail along the sand dunes, a long winding pathway green with scrub-like conifers and ferns. It was still pretty dark, but Zack was astounded to see that the small lot was filled with cars and trucks and SUVs. Along the roadside scores of armed men were standing or sitting in the sand. The rising gray light of dawn revealed a motley combination of dress and headgear and weapons. The men and a few women were wearing jeans, work clothes, surplus camouflage fatigues from half a dozen armies, even jogging sweats, along with headgear ranging from slouch hats to baseball caps to military fatigue caps. Around their waists were heavy web belts and in some cases they bore packs on their backs. They were carrying every kind of long arm from M-16s to Kalashnikovs to hunting rifles, as well as at least one pistol on each belt, and a few were armed with heavy .50-caliber sniper’s rifles and belt-fed light machine guns of both Russian and American manufacture, long ammo belts draped over their shoulders or rolled into assault bags. A small handful carried the Third Battalion’s carefully hoarded collection of RPGs.

  “Jesus Christ!” Zack yelped. “Charlie, what the fuck is this? I told you to ask for three volunteers from each company to cover my E & E after I pop the top, and for a couple of good .50-caliber men to take out any targets of opportunity that might offer. I didn’t say bring everybody and his dog! Just enough to make a gesture, no more than twenty men! Who the hell are all these people?”

  “You asked for volunteers,” said Washburn. “Everybody volunteered.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud!” shouted Hatfield. “We can’t fight a pitched battle against a thousand Federal paramilitaries with naval and air support! This is insane! What, do you think we’re going to charge them on the beach like a bunch of crazy hadjis screaming for Allah? I was in Iraq, God damn it all, and I’ve seen what happens when anybody tries that shit! We’re guerrillas, remember? If we go head on against the Americans we’ll be wiped out and lose everything we’ve spent years building here! We’re trying to free our people and create a new country, not go to Paradise with seventy virgins, and not play Rambo!”

  “I tried to tell them that, but I’m afraid we’ve been doing our work too well,” explained Washburn. “The Volunteers here in Clatsop have gotten a taste of what freedom is like in these past couple of years, Zack, a taste for not seeing faces the color of shit everywhere they look and hearing the gabble of foreign languages that don’t belong here, and they like it. These bastards coming here to try and send us back to what was before have got them reall
y, really pissed off. If I’d told some of these guys they couldn’t come, I would have had a riot on my hands.”

  “This is our land now, Zack,” said Lennart Ekstrom, who had come up and joined the conversation. “We’re not giving it back to them. We want to let them know that. We don’t just need to make a gesture. We need to send that message to that bitch in D.C., loud and clear.”

  Young Parmenter spoke up. “With all due respect sir, none of us gonna be known as the guys who hid back and left Zack Hatfield to face a thousand Fatties all alone. Don’t worry, we’re not fools. One good long Mad Minute and then we hook up and book. That’s fine. That makes sense. But this is an important day, and we all want a shot. All of us.”

  “We come to fight, we fight, not run away,” repeated Dalen.

  Hatfield was angered and upset, certain he was looking at a major catastrophe in the making, but he understood intuitively that the Northwest Volunteers, for all the fact that they called themselves an army, were not an army in the true sense, and that straightforward military discipline was sometimes impossible. These men and women fought from their hearts, and sometimes their hearts had to be given precedence over tactical advantage and maybe even common sense. “How many?” he asked Washburn.

  “By my count, including Comrade Ragnar’s boys from down Newport way, 185 men. Or 160 men and 25 women, to be exact. The same number Colonel Travis had at the Alamo, if you’re into historical trivia.”

  “That’s a cheerful thought,” muttered Zack. He thought for a few moments. “All right, but we have an immediate problem. We’ve had word their air cover is on the way down from Fort Lewis, and I don’t see any way we can disguise or conceal all these vehicles from the air. One sweep over this area and they’re going to know there’s a lot of bodies on the ground. Charlie, Len, we’ve got less than an hour, maybe a lot less. I want you to get one driver from each vehicle, the one they came in, and try and disperse them as best you can. Park them up and down the roadside, move them up into Sunset itself and park them on the street, pull them off the road and cover them with brush, anything you can think of. If you can’t conceal the transport, at least disperse them so it will be harder for the gunships to destroy them from the air. Ricky, get together with Chas and Gill and Sherry. You company commanders are going to have to sort out the arrangements for a quick E&E. One driver per team who knows where the vehicle is parked, and he or she stays with that team and guides them back to the vehicle when we disperse, which we’ll have to do fast, because we’re going to have helicopter gunships chasing us. God damn, this is going to be a mess! Anyone loses their vehicle or gets separated from their crew, you’re going to have to un-ass the area as best you can.”