The Brigade

by H. A. Covington

  “I’ll make a point of it,” said Kicky dryly. “How do I start the timer?”

  “Push the locking tabs down,” instructed Kurtz. “You will then have twenty seconds to get the hell out of Dodge.”

  “Why not thirty?” asked Wingo.

  “Because in that extra ten seconds one of the Blackwater apes might twig to what’s going on when he sees a briefcase sliding toward them, grab it up, and toss it back out the door,” said Kicky. “Don’t worry, Jim, twenty seconds is enough. It’s a lifetime. As soon as I hit the timer and throw it, I’m losing these damned high heels and I’ll be back in the car before you know it. Just make sure you have my Reeboks in there ready for me.”

  “We better get going,” said Oscar. “Brigade just called. The Marines are landing and we want to get in and out before they arrive at the Justice Center.”

  The mission consisted of three vehicles, two scout cars and a stolen government Lexus with illegal (for civilians) tinted windows. “No one will be surprised at seeing a lawyer get out of this car,” chuckled Kicky. “They’ll see me coming in my fancy threads and my briefcase with my badge dangling from my lapel and they’ll think that Louise chick is a real workaholic, coming in the day after Jerry Reb blew up the town.”

  Dawn was coming up in the eastern sky; the day was going to be clear and cold. On their way downtown the interstate was deserted except for the odd burning car or burned-out FATPO truck, smoking on the shoulder or sometimes in middle of the center lane. Hill had to be careful not to hit any disabled vehicles. “God, I hope nobody blew any potholes in the road last night,” said Wingo. “I’d hate to jar that briefcase on your lap back there, Kick.”

  “Now which way did he say I wasn’t supposed to open this thing . . . ?” she mused. Oscar got on the cell phone and spoke with the other two vehicles that had driven on ahead of him.

  “Okay, Lavonne says downtown is deserted except for the wreckage of last night’s wild party,” he told them. “Brigade confirms the Fatties and cops have been ordered to stay in their holes. They’re waiting for the Marines. That’s good and bad at the same time. We won’t have to worry about traffic, but we’ll stand out more for being on the street. Kick, once you deliver the package, we pick you up on the wing, and we rendezvous at Ankeny Park. We dump this car, which will be on their security tapes and switch to the truck and the Buick. One vehicle departs across Burnside Bridge and the other up Front Avenue. Should be no problem unless they simply machine-gun us from the gatehouses the moment we stop to let you out.”

  “Thanks for the visual, sir,” said Kicky.

  “You are sure you know where the Snitch Gate is, Kick?” asked Wingo.

  “I’ve seen it before, just didn’t know what it was,” said Kicky.

  “I am convinced the door will open for you with #1111,” said Hill. “The only thing I’m worried about is that housekeeping or someone at the Plaza will have found the two bodies in that hotel room, someone put two and two together real quick, and Louise Richardson’s access code got canceled.”

  “Don’t fuck around trying to get the door open if it won’t open when you swipe your card and enter the code,” warned Wingo. “Just put the charge down by the door and run. I’ll cover you if there’s any activity from the gatehouses.” In his lap Wingo carried a Kalashnikov with a drum magazine, the stock folded up. Oscar had a sawed-off pump shotgun in the door compartment of the Lexus.

  “Okay, we’re coming in,” said Hill. “You know we don’t dare risk a turn around the Justice Center. They’ve got their cameras on over the whole exterior and going around the block will stand out like a cow in church. We drop you at the corner of Second and Main, wait like we’re watching to make sure you get inside all right, and then you deliver the package and we haul ass out of here.”

  “Got it.” The Lexus slowed. She adjusted her sunglasses, leaned over into the front seat and gave Jimmy a quick kiss on the cheek, and said “Back in a jiff.” Then she got out of the car and walked calmly across the street toward the apparently solid concrete berm wall, aiming for a small alcove between abutments where a rusted, paint-peeling door stood.

  The street was empty, but then a second car came around the corner, a long black Oldsmobile, also with tinted windows, indicating a police vehicle of some kind. The occupants of the Olds didn’t notice the Lexus, but one of them noticed Kicky. “Mutha FUCK!” bellowed Detective Lieutenant Jamal Jarvis.

  “What?” yelled his partner Lieutenant Elena Martinez. Between the two of them they were the last survivors of Portland PB’s Hatecrimes Squad, and by now they were so well known to the NVA that they weren’t even allowed on the street. They had spent the past year going stir-crazy in the Justice Center, their boredom relieved only by interrogation duties, which had become more and more simply excuses for bloody torture and humiliation of any white suspects who were brought in. They got no valuable information, but no one seemed to care anymore. Their careers were on the skids.

  Lainie had failed in her continual efforts to screw her way into the FBI and be assigned somewhere out of the Northwest; Jarvis had in fact just picked her up from the Vintage Plaza hotel where she had found the latest in her long string of highly placed federal lovers, an Assistant Attorney General, in bed with his Portland colleague Louise Richardson. This hadn’t surprised Lainie since she was joining them for a threesome. The fact that they’d both been shot dead had surprised her, and the fact that she had just spent several hours trying to explain by phone to the investigating officer (who was afraid to come into the streets and examine at the scene) why she had been entering a hotel room in the wee hours of the morning had irked her. Now the NVA had trashed the city she was supposed to be responsible for, and her increasingly deranged partner Jarvis was cursing before breakfast. “What?” she demanded of him.

  “Dat’s de bitch!” hissed Jarvis, his eyes popping. “Dat’s de fucking muthafuckin goddamn Kicky McGee bitch, right dere! Right dere, goddammit! See?” He pointed. “I know it’s her! I always know a white ho’ from behind when she swing her ass! Dat’s de bitch!”

  Lainie’s eyes narrowed. “Madre de dios, I think you’re right, Jamal! Why the hell is she dressed like that?”

  “She goin’ in de Snitch Hole,” said Jarvis.

  Lainie was tired and sufficiently off her game so her first reaction was to assume that Kicky was now snitching for some FBI agent. “Goddamit, she’s ours!” she shouted. “Grab her!” Jarvis whirled the Oldsmobile around, flew up beside Kicky just as she stepped up onto the sidewalk beside the Justice Center, and brought the car to a screeching halt. Both Jarvis and Martinez leaped out of the car; Kicky turned and screamed as Jarvis grabbed her by her hair and Martinez by her arms, opening the back door of the Oldsmobile and hurling her bodily inside. Then Lainie slammed the door on her.

  “Shit!” cursed Jimmy in the Lexus. “I know them! That’s the Mami and the Monkey! I’ve got to get her out of there!” He jumped out of the Lexus, unfolded the Kalashnikov’s stock and jacked a round into the chamber.

  Oscar didn’t bother to point out that Wingo was now in full view of the security cameras and the manned machine-gun nests in the two main gatehouses, standing openly in the street with a weapon in his hand. He simply assumed that this was it, that his race was run due to plain and simple bad luck. Damn, he said to himself softly as he got out, chambering a shell into the shotgun. Well, nothing like a short life and a merry one. Wingo began advancing across the street on the Oldsmobile.

  “Where de fuck you been, bitch?” bellowed Jarvis, turning around from the driver’s seat, reaching out and slapping Kicky with his open hand, her face, her head, punching at her with his fist. Lainie grabbed Kicky’s hair and shook her head back and forth as if she were trying to snap Kicky’s neck.

  “Who the fuck do you think you are, you gringo whore?” she screamed. “Didn’t I tell you once that you control nothing, you decide nothing, that you are nothing? This isn’t your country anymore, gringo bitch! It bel
ongs to us, to La Raza, you got that, puta blanca?” Kicky twisted her head, and through the window she saw Jimmy and Oscar moving toward the car, weapons at the ready.

  He is coming for me, she thought hysterically. The Sword of Damocles over her head had fallen, and her life was now at an end. He loves me, and now he’s going to die for my worthless sake. If he lives it will be worse, because they will tell him. He will finally know me for what I am. He will look at me. I can’t bear that. Kicky pulled the briefcase onto her knees and placed her thumbs on the lock releases. Jarvis saw, and he had one final flash of realization, and time to utter one final terror-screamed obscenity.

  There was a blinding flash of light.

  Through some odd quirk of kinetic energy the blast blew out the bottom of the Oldsmobile and hurled most of its force upward, as well as the car. It flew almost thirty feet high in the air, crashed down, and broke up into separate heaps of flaming, melting metal. Even as close as they had been to the car, miraculously Wingo and Hill were only knocked off their feet, bruised where they hit the asphalt, and creased by several white-hot fragments, but otherwise unhurt. Wingo staggered upright, snatched up the Kalashnikov in a daze and looked around wildly for something to shoot. Then his eyes focused on the burning wreck before him. “SWEET JESUS GOD NO!” he screamed at the top of his lungs.

  There was a popping sound; the FATPOs in the gate houses were firing at them now, although the smoke from the burning Oldsmobile obscured their aim. Wingo bellowed mindlessly, raised the AK to his shoulder and emptied his drum on full auto, right at the gatehouse. Hill ran up to him and shook him, shouting into his face.

  “Jimmy, she’s gone!” he yelled. “She’s gone, Jim! We’ve got to get out of here! She wouldn’t want you to die! She would want you to live and help us beat the bastards! Come on, Jim! We’ve got to go!” Wingo finally seemed to notice that people were shooting at him, and he let Hill stuff him back into the passenger side of the Lexus. As Hill floored the accelerator and the car fled the area, the sun tipped over the concrete skyline to the east and flooded Second Avenue with the golden light of a new day.

  XXIX

  “We Won!”

  King Henry: I tell thee truly, herald,

  I know not if the day be ours or no;

  For yet a many of your horsemen peer

  And gallop o’er the field.

  Montjoy: The day is yours.

  King Henry V.—Act IV, Scene 7

  On a warm summer evening, a special meeting was convened in a private home in Clatskanie, Oregon. The house had belonged to a prominent local businessman, a Unionist sympathizer who left the area abruptly some years before after a heart to heart talk with some of the Boys. Since he hadn’t returned to reclaim or inspect his property, Zack Hatfield assumed he had no further use for it. He installed as caretakers a middle-aged white couple from Eugene who had in turn been accused of Nationalist sympathies and accordingly been made homeless by FATPO bulldozers, and afterward he used the house as a way station and supply point, as well as for occasional conferences. Tonight Zack was playing host to a number of NVA officers who had gathered there on orders to watch a special nationwide television broadcast by President Chelsea Clinton.

  “I have no idea what the hell is going on,” Hatfield told anyone who asked. “Orders from up top, everybody who can get to a TV set needs to watch Chelsea’s speech tonight. I just hope the feds don’t decide to drop a Cruise missile or an assassination drone on this house tonight.”

  “You know the rumors are flying like bats out of a cave,” said Lennart Ekstrom. “Operations Applesmash and Pigkill have been tearing ZOG a new one.” Ekstrom referred to two long-range, long-term operations that the NVA had begun with the objective of disabling the two primary East Coast centers of Zionist rule, New York City and Washington, D.C.

  “Yeah, and they need to stop flying,” said Zack sourly. “I’ve heard the buzz. I know what everybody’s thinking, and I’m worried that we’re getting our hopes up prematurely. There seems to be something going on, true, but my guess is it’s going to turn out to be something nasty for us. I know our guys on the road tour have been turning a performance as good as Cat and the Boys from Portland did down in Hollywood. I especially like what they’ve done with the New York Stock Exchange.”

  “What Stock Exchange?” asked Ekstrom with a hearty chuckle.

  “Exactly,” agreed Zack with a nod. “Kind of hard to trade stocks in a hole in the ground. But if anything, the offensive we’re carrying out right in the belly of the Beast may bring on some kind of especially horrible retaliation here in the Homeland, although I’ve no idea what they can feasibly do that they’re not already doing here. But there’s no way ZOG is going to just throw in the towel and finally give us our freedom, Len. We’re going to have to physically drive them out, every last soldier and bureaucrat and Jew, and then drive stakes through their hearts before they’ll let us go. They can’t afford to give in. Once they concede that the actual territory of the United States is divisible by race, then everybody’s going to want a piece of the pie. The Mexicans are going to demand the Southwest for this Aztlan they’ve been hablamosing about for years, the niggers will want the South for New Africa, the Cubans and Haitians will demand Florida, the bugger boys may ask for some kind of Faggotstan somewhere, the French might start getting stroppy up in Quebec again, who knows where it will end? Every other continent is composed of multiple small nations, so why not this one? If we go then the whole empire goes, eventually. The power structure doesn’t dare give in to us, or they’re done and their power is finished, and they know it.”

  “Even Axis Erica isn’t giving us any clues,” said Lieutenant Rick Parmenter with a chuckle, nodding over to a computer in the corner that was tuned to the nightly Radio Free Northwest internet broadcast.

  “I’m not sure it’s polite for us to use the enemy’s propaganda name for a comrade,” said Lieutenant Sherry Tomczak primly.

  “She has a notable sense of humor. I don’t think she’d mind,” said Hatfield.

  On the computer screen a sultry Erica Collingwood was sitting at a table with a microphone in front of her and a large Tricolor flag behind her. “And that’s the RFN news, the real news the Jews won’t allow you to hear,” she said in her mellifluous voice. “Now here’s a few quick messages for some of the Boys out there, before we all tune in to hear what the Brat has to say. Here’s one for all you Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers: Fat Freddie’s cat had a flea bath and he’s ready to go home, so Phineas needs to get that organized. A message for Kenneth: the frequency is ninety-nine balloons. I’ve also been asked to say that armadillos are the only animals besides man who get leprosy; somebody out there knows why, and you know who you are. Oh, and Mom: Timmy needs some more of your apple pie.”

  “How come we never get any coded messages like that from Axis Erica?” asked Ekstrom. “Uh, we don’t, do we?”

  “No,” chuckled Zack. “I once suggested to Red that we use a code like that from her for something we were doing, and he clued me in on a little secret. Those messages of Erica’s don’t mean a damned thing. It’s all gibberish, but it drives the enemy code-breakers and intelligence analysts batshit trying to figure out what the hell she’s talking about. They waste their time trying to make sense out of that crap, time they might otherwise use in doing us harm.”

  “So no idea at all what’s coming tonight, Zack?” asked Lieutenant Christina Ekstrom, who was sitting on the sofa in front of the TV.

  Hatfield shook his head. “No, but Oscar and both our Portland brigade commandants are in the next room chewing something over. Oscar and Tommy Coyle just got back from some big pow-wow the Army Council threw up in Seattle. Something big is stirring, all right. Hell, maybe Chelsea’s going to announce the federal government’s decision to deport the entire White population of the Northwest and give it all back to the buffalo as a nature preserve.”

  “You know, there are loony environmentalists who have suggested that very
thing?” commented Wayne Hill as he and Jackson and Coyle came out of the next room. “It’s time, guys. Turn the computer off and let’s go from the beauty to the Beast.”

  “Can you give us any idea at all, Oscar?” asked Hatfield.

  “Frankly, Captain, before I say anything I want to make absolutely sure that what we have been told is going to happen does, in fact, happen,” said Hill soberly. “A lot of people, myself included, don’t trust these bastards in Washington, D.C. any farther than we can throw them. This may turn out to be some kind of trick or double cross. If it’s not, then I have a series of orders from the Army Council for the Portland and coastal Volunteer forces, but let’s wait and see if the Brat says what she’s supposed to.”