Dawn was obscured by thick clouds of smoke hanging over the city from the hundreds of burning buildings. Portland was a wreck. The streets were littered with dead bodies and burning hulks of FATPO trucks and police cars; the Portland PB had either thrown down their weapons and fled or else was holed up in the Justice Center and their fortified substations. Overhead came the whuppa whuppa of helicopters, both military and media. At 6 a.m. Coyle received word that a battalion of the Third Marine Division had been flown in from San Diego and was landing at Portland Airport, accompanied by several C-130 cargo planes containing tanks and artillery. He sounded the recall. He picked up his cell phone, asked for a second dish of lasagna and told his Volunteers, “Comrades, you have my admiration and my congratulations on a job well done. We have avenged our fallen brothers, and we have given these ZOG bastards a preview of coming attractions. Now fade, comrades. Let it be as if we were never here.”
The United States government never released any exact casualty figures on what became known as the First Battle of Portland. Hundreds of FATPOs and police and at least a thousand civilians surely died, but no one knows for sure. Property damage was estimated at several billion dollars; the University of Portland alone was burned to the ground and was a complete write-off, and almost all of the city’s surviving black and Hispanic population finally fled, never to return. The NVA’s official losses for the engagement were 12 dead and 28 wounded. Within an hour there were no NVA left on the smoke-filled and corpse-littered streets, except for the participants in one last daring tickle.
* * *
Around three o’clock that morning, with the city still rattling and shaking to machine gun fire and explosions and glowing from the many fires that had been set, Captain Wayne Hill returned to the Sugar Shack after having asked for Jackson to meet him there. Jackson arrived along with Jimmy Wingo and Kicky McGee about forty-five minutes later. “How’s it going out there?” Hill asked.
“A night to remember,” said Jackson. “We’re turning them every which way but loose, although we won’t be able to keep it up. What have you got?”
“Maybe a way to wind up Operation Festival with a big bang, physically and psychologically,” said Hill. “Question: what is the one thing we’ve been trying to do for the past four years, but we haven’t been able to swing yet?”
“Get a package inside the Justice Center,” replied Jackson immediately.
“Right,” said Hill. “The closest we’ve ever been able to get is a few RPGs tossed at the main gate, and one truck bomb that didn’t do much more than scar the concrete on the Bremer walls. The problem is that we’ve never been able to get anybody inside the damned place, past all the security and checkpoints, at least not with a 50-50 chance of getting out again. Some of our spies in there have told me they’re willing to break bad if I ask it of them, but getting weapons or explosives in would still be a major problem, and it would be suicidal for whoever carried out an attack. There’s just no way out. Cameras clocking your every move, even in the johns. Razor wire, security posts on every floor, mines on the perimeter, concrete as high as an elephant’s eye. They’ve even got anti-aircraft guns on the roof in case anyone tries to do a 9/11 and crash an airplane into the place. With all those people packed into downtown like sardines on those short Portland blocks, it’s always been too risky to use mortars and rockets, because a miss might blow up some adolescent working in a Starbucks or somebody’s granny shopping for nick-nacks in a boutique, and the media would never let us hear the end of it. We’ve been able to hit a few of those armored vans and buses that take the bureaucrats and droids and contract workers in and out, and some airport convoys, which is one reason why they always use copters now, but we’ve never been able to get inside the Green Zone, for the simple reason that there’s only one way in and out.”
“Well, yeah, besides the Snitch Gate, which we can’t get into either,” said Jackson with a shrug. “So?” Hill smiled and drew a plain white plastic square from his shirt pocket, which he held up. “What’s that?”
“Swipe card for the Snitch Gate,” he said.
“You’re shitting me!” said Wingo, startled. “Sorry, you’re shitting me, sir.”
“How do you know that’s what it is?” asked Jackson, intrigued.
“I’m reasonably sure,” said Hill.
“Reasonably?”
“You’re familiar with Baby Huey?” asked Hill. Baby Huey was Ray Ridgeway’s code name. “He put us onto a good tickle this evening. Some top legal beagles have been visiting the Justice Center, an Assistant U.S. Attorney General and his entourage. Apparently the military tribunals are becoming an embarrassment to Chelsea, or rather to her mom who still hides in the Oval Office closet while Chelsea does business. They’re bringing in what the British in Northern Ireland used to call Diplock Courts, which is basically just one single politically reliable hanging judge instead of a jury, but he’s a civilian. They figure it will look better in the media when some senile old ward heeler in a black robe orders an entire town deported to Nevada than when some nigger bird colonel does it. Just their usual re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic kind of thing. I think they know they’re whipped, they’re just refusing to admit it. Anyway, due to us restless natives, all the copters were tied up tonight. The AAG and his flunkies decided not to risk trying to make it to the airport for their flight back to La Cesspool Grande, and so they had to rough it for the evening in some luxury suites at the Vintage Plaza Hotel.”
“That place is almost as heavily fortified as the JC itself,” commented Jackson. “Blackwater goons coming out the wazoo. But let me guess. You got in?”
“Myself and one of my colleagues, yes, and we were able to finagle the cameras,” agreed Hill. “You’ll have to wait for my memoirs to find out how, since if we want to strike while the iron is hot here, we don’t have all night, or what’s left of the night. Long story short, a couple of hours ago me and my guy get into the Assistant AG’s hotel room with a couple of silenced pieces, we find him in bed with a woman lawyer and we shoot ’em both in the res ipsa loquitur.”
“How do you know she was a lawyer?” asked Wingo.
“We copped both their briefcases and her purse before we beat feet, then went through the stuff when we were safely away.” Hill pulled out several more cards, one on a clip, and a leather woman’s wallet from his jacket pocket. “Full set of ID. The woman was one Louise Richardson, Assistant United States Attorney for Portland. Don’t ask me what all these damned lawyers are doing to earn their salaries now that the military and the Fatties have taken over the judicial process, but the Justice Center is crawling with ’em, and that’s where she works. Driver’s license, Bar Association ID, Federal ID, interior key card, Justice Center ID badge, it’s all here. And this.” Hill held up the white plastic card. “I am convinced it’s the key card for the Snitch Gate. We’ve never been able to capture one, but I’ve heard them described to me, plain white, nothing on them except a name, which is here, as you see. Louise Richardson.”
“Uh, can I ask what’s the Snitch Gate, sir?” asked Kicky, uncomfortable memories stirring in her mind.
“Several years ago the Portland PB and FBI were making a full court press to try and recruit informers,” explained Jackson. “They wanted to get rats inside the NVA, of course, and some other places in the Homeland they’ve done so, although never here yet, thank God.”
“Mmmm, you know we kind of differ on that, sir,” said Hill in a sour voice.
“Yeah, I know,” said Jackson. “Oscar here is still convinced we had a mouse in the house about two years ago, in fact he thinks you guys were set up on Flanders Street that time you and Cat bopped your way out of that trap, but we never were able to prove anything one way or the other. Not for lack of his trying.”
“Oh, I’m still trying, sir,” Hill assured Jackson. He turned to Kicky. “ZOG decided that they needed secure premises wherein to meet this army of informants they were planning on recruiting. They fi
gured the rats wouldn’t want to be seen coming in the main gate of the Justice Center or the door of a police station, and meeting them in public places was too risky since they had sense enough to realize we have our own informers, and we’ve got them under surveillance. So what they did was they built a tunnel from the first floor of the Justice Center, under the street, and through a door in the concrete on the Second Avenue side. The actual door on Second Avenue is all rusty, flaky paint, and it has a big red sign on it saying no entrance, report to main gate. It’s half hidden by some concrete abutments. Anyone who sees it from the outside figures it’s sealed off. But it isn’t. There’s a discreet little swipe lock and key pad recessed into the wall to the right of the door. To cut to the chase, the great army of snitches that the Feds envisioned never materialized, although I am sure informants do use it from time to time. But over the past few years, the Snitch Gate has become a kind of convenience for high and medium-placed Justice Center employees who want to sneak in and out of work, or else they’re just lazy and they don’t want to have to go through the long lines getting in and out. If they have one of these swipe keys they can park their cars in the garage on the corner of Second and Main, which is fully secured and covered by the JC’s camera system and so reasonably safe, and they can just slip in the side door without having to wait in the line at the main gate. Possession of one of these swipe cards has become kind of a status symbol in the JC, a perk, an indication of privilege. Apparently the Richardson woman was privileged. Since she was screwing an Assistant Attorney General who presumably did not place the wedding ring we saw on her dead finger, I think we know how she got that way.”
“Wait a minute!” exclaimed Wingo. “You mean to tell me that the mighty FBI made a secret entrance into their main fortress, and it’s guarded only by a magnetic lock and a key pad?”
“Oh, no,” said Hill. “The enemy is evil, Lieutenant, but they’re not stupid. Inside the door there is a fully manned guard station, metal detector, X-ray machine, sniffer dog team, search personnel, you name it. Once you get past that you go down a corridor and you go through the same procedure at the end on the first floor exit. Plus the usual cameras and alarms, and of course you have to swipe your card and key in your access code at the other end again to get into the Justice Center building itself. It’s just as tightly sealed up as the main gate.”
“So what good is all this stuff, then?” asked Wingo, gesturing at the dead attorney’s ID.
“Until now, we haven’t even been able to get that first door open,” said Hill.
“We can’t get it open now unless we know this white card is the Richardson woman’s Snitch Gate swipe key,” said Jackson irritably. “And if it is, we still don’t know her pass code.”
Hill pulled out a black address book from his pocket and opened it. “I think we might,” he said. “Apparently Ms. Richardson didn’t trust her memory. On one page here she neatly wrote out all her PIN numbers and computer passwords. Including this one, #1111. Simple enough.”
“And we know that’s her Snitch Gate access code, how?” asked Jackson.
“Because it’s marked Secret Entrance,” replied Hill, showing him the page in the book.
“No way. That’s too easy,” said Jackson with a scowl. “Surely a lawyer wouldn’t be stupid enough to write all her personal information in a book that could be stolen. This broad couldn’t have been that dumb! You sure this isn’t a set-up?”
“I suppose it’s possible she carried this dummied-up address book around with her in her purse in case one of us did get hold of it somehow, but that seems rather Byzantine to me,” said Hill. “I rather doubt she planned on our bursting into her hotel room and shooting her in the ass on the downstroke, just to lend realism to our finding this book. I think she was just methodical and full of American arrogance, never thinking when she wrote those numbers that it could ever come back to bite her. After all, she was a high-powered attorney, and we’re just redneck pump jockeys and dishwashers and janitors, right? How could us peasants ever dare to harm Her Ladyship? We’re supposed to be shuffling and tugging the forelock. Plain old American hubris. Gets ’em every time.”
“So we can get the door open, maybe,” said Jackson dubiously. “And there’s how many Fatties or Blackwater goons or whoever waiting there for us?”
“Blackwater. At least six or eight, plus a dog,” said Hill.
“The dog we can throw a stick and tell him go fetch. What about the gun thugs?” asked Jackson. “And once we get past them, we have to get past the second security post at the end of the corridor—what, exactly is it that you want to do, Oscar?”
“Nothing elaborate,” said Hill. “Get the door open, toss in a really big package to take out the whole post and maybe even get a pressure burst that will blow out the other door at the end of the hall, and then beat feet. The thing is we will actually have gotten inside and killed inside the JC, for the first time. We can also make them seal up that entrance, and you know there are conceivably conditions where it might be convenient for us for there to be only one way in and out of that place. The charge will have a timer that can be set. If the pass code works, I open the door and throw the bomb inside, then slam the door and run. If the pass code doesn’t work, I’ll hit the timer, set it down against the door and run. Piece of cake.”
“You’ll deliver the package yourself?” asked Jackson.
“My private tribute to Comrade Jesse Lockhart,” said Hill soberly. “It still bothers me that he and the others were killed after I pulled them off a routine run. I know that’s not reasonable, but there it is. I figure I need to put my own ass on the line by way of atonement, if you want to put it that way.”
“Which you’ve already done once tonight,” pointed out Jackson. “Never mind. What exactly have you got in mind?”
“I’ve already taken the liberty of borrowing the Red Baron’s services,” said Hill. “He’s downstairs rigging something up.”
“Since we’re not all sitting on the moon right now, I presume he’s doing so successfully,” said Jackson.
Kicky McGee spoke up. “Sir, there are cameras all up and down Second Avenue and in the JC itself. Do you know if there is a camera on the outside of the Snitch Gate itself?”
“I’d be surprised if there weren’t,” said Hill. “I don’t plan on staying around long enough to be identified.”
“Yeah, but will you be able to get close enough to get to the door and open it?” asked Kicky. “Let me do this, sir. Remember what we’ve been doing tonight, really shaking ZOG up. They’re going to be doubly on edge down there at the Justice Center, and my guess is you won’t be able to get close without getting stopped and searched. All this ID is for Louise Richardson. You don’t look much like a Louise to me, sir, unless you want to go in drag.” She picked up the Justice Center pass and squinted at it. “Okay, she’s about ten years older than me, but if I lay on the lipstick and eye shadow and brush my hair back straight like she’s got it in this picture, I can pass unless someone leans down and looks close. When she had to do the Resurrection Shuffle, Comrade Becky gave us female comrades some of her clothes, and I have a kind of lawyer-looking suit in my kit out in the truck I’ve been carrying in case I ever need to dress up, and it will cover all my tats. Let me put on that suit and paint up my face, put on that badge, and have the Baron put the bomb in a briefcase. Her briefcase, if you’ve still got it. When I go up to that door and swipe it, I’ll find the camera and I’ll fumble with my purse or something, look down, so they don’t see my face. They’ll think they see a woman who’s been coming in and out of their little rabbit hole for a long time, and if the access code doesn’t work, maybe they’ll even buzz me in.”
“That works,” said Jackson with a nod. “Better than Oscar trying to sneak up and pry the door open with a woman’s swipe card and a sack or a gym bag in his hand.” Wingo wasn’t happy, and his face showed it. He never was when Kicky was in danger, but it was understood that female Volunteers h
ad to carry their weight and their share of the risk, and personal relationships took a back seat to the cause of racial victory, so he stood by the code and said nothing. “Oscar, I hope driving is enough risk to salve your conscience. Jim, you go with them.”
An hour later they assembled in the basement in front of a work table behind which stood a slender young man with long auburn hair, wire-rimmed spectacles and the sensitive face of a concert pianist. This was Lieutenant Paul Kurtz, the famous Red Baron, possibly the foremost bomb-maker in the NVA. Top five, for sure. Kicky was wearing her dress-for-success lawyer suit; it was a pleasant beige, but she hated the high heels that naturally went with it. “Oscar says you want a big blast,” Kurtz said to them. “Six pounds of Semtex should completely decimate an enclosed space of the kind that has been described to me. Make sure you close the door firmly after you throw the ordnance, comrade,” he said, nodding to Kicky. “If the door is open a lot of the blast force will be dispersed. Then leave the area as rapidly as possible. With any luck we might be able to bring down a retaining wall and do some serious structural damage to the Justice Center. There is the charge, which I will load into the case just now.”
Kurtz nodded to a block of material wrapped in black duct tape and with a circuit board and a battery taped to the top, from which protruded several wires. Inserted into a hole bored in the center of the block was a silver tube, the mercury fulminate detonator. “We weren’t able to use the lawyer’s original briefcase, so I am giving you this one, which has one of my tamper-proof detonation mechanisms. I have installed a double switch and separate AAA battery just behind the two locking devices.” A small wire with a U-fork on the end protruded from just behind the handle and lay on the lining inside the empty case. Two match heads rested on each tine of the fork. “Once the charge is inside and the case is closed, there is no reason I can think of why you would wish to open it, but one never knows,” Kurtz said to Kicky. He closed the case. “If for any reason you do have to open the case, push the locking tabs up, like this.” He demonstrated, and the briefcase opened smoothly. He closed it again. “When you push the tabs sideways, as 99 out of 100 people instinctively do . . .” Kurtz did so, and as he opened the case there was a pop and an electric spark from the forked end of the wire, with a small puff of smoke as the match heads flared up. “The charge will detonate, blowing whoever opens the case to kingdom come, along with anyone else nearby. I suggest that before you allow anyone to take the case away from you and mess with it, comrade, you arrange to be either dead or elsewhere.”
The Brigade Page 93
