The Brigade

by H. A. Covington

  “Will we need to implement the evacuation plan, sir?” asked Lundgaard with concern.

  “I’m sorry to say yes, I think we may have to, but I don’t want to give the word until the last minute,” said Hatfield. “Len, how are we coming on the bomb shelters?”

  “We’ve got eight designated shelters fitted out around Astoria and Warrenton, mostly basements of public buildings,” said Ekstrom. “I really don’t know how they will hold up under a combined B-52 and F-16 strike.”

  “I saw those damned things at work in Iraq,” said Hatfield with a scowl. “An Arc Light doesn’t leave much behind. God damn Partman’s buzz-cut soul to hell for even thinking about turning them loose on white people here! Crack in on the evacuation plans in case we all have to beat feet in a hurry.”

  “You won’t have to worry about the B-52s, at any rate, General,” spoke up a voice from the doorway. Hatfield looked up and saw Eric Sellars entering the room, wearing muddy and stained coveralls. He was followed by Annette Ridgeway, who surprisingly was dressed in full United States Army fatigues including boots, headgear, and second lieutenant’s bars. Hatfield stared at her.

  “Comrade Becky, may I ask how the hell you got in here wearing that get-up without being shot?” he demanded.

  “Oscar brought us in, sir,” she replied, saluting him. “I’m afraid I didn’t have time to change. I used this ensemble to get into the secure area in Portland airport. Tom’s right about the B-52s. They’re gone.”

  “Burning rubble on the tarmac,” confirmed Eric with a grin. “The Red Baron racked up two more Allied aircraft last night. Blowed up real good!” There were cheers and applause around the room.

  “The F-16s and the copters?” asked Hatfield keenly.

  “They were moved to another part of the field,” said Eric, shaking his head. “They’re still operational. Just afterward we learned our safe house had been compromised and Oscar decided to do a long E & E out here. He has something he wants to talk to you about and he didn’t trust our communications.”

  Suddenly Colonel Wayne Hill, dressed in an incongruous sports jacket and tie, ran into the room. “Turn on the TV!” he shouted. “Now! There’s something happening in Longview!”

  Hatfield snapped the television set on. The picture came on to a large crowd scene in front of a building on extensive landscaped grounds, the Lewis and Clark Hotel in Longview. There was no sound, and Hatfield fiddled with the remote, thinking it was on mute, but then he realized that the silence was due to the fact that the entire crowd of at least ten thousand people standing around the hotel, spilling over onto the golf course, into the parking lot, and along the highway, was in fact dead quiet. The cameras were focused on the flagpole in front of the hotel, and the people in the conference room watched in growing shock and dawning joy as the Stars and Stripes was slowly lowered from the mast and folded by two men. “That’s General Frank Barrow, the head of our delegation, and General Brubaker from the U.S. Air Force. He’s the top American military rep at the conference,” said Hill in a low voice. Barrow handed the American flag to Brubaker, who clutched it to his chest, overcome with emotion. Then a woman stepped forward with a blue, white and green bundle in her hand. Her face even at this distance was seen to be scarred and peeled, the mark of long years of torture and abuse at the hands of the FBI and FATPO because of her refusal to betray her own husband. She was a legendary figure in the NVA. “That’s Cathy Frost,” said Hill. “I’d heard they brought her in up there to stir things up.” The woman hooked the Tricolor to the lanyard and slowly raised the flag of the Northwest Republic over the land. Not for the first time; the Tricolor had been flying in many parts of the Homeland for several months, since President Chelsea Clinton’s speech. From hidden speakers somewhere in the hotel there crashed forth the mighty orchestra and chorus of what sounded like a hymn.

  “What is that?” whispered Christina in wonder. “I know that song.”

  “You remember it from long ago in church, honey,” said her father, his hand on her shoulder. “It is A Mighty Fortress, a hymn written by Martin Luther.”

  “Ein Festem Burg Ist Unser Gött. They are singing in German,” said Sergeant Karl Vogler, Hatfield’s driver. Tears were streaming down his face.

  “So they are,” said Hill somberly. “1945 is avenged, korpsbrüder.”

  “A century of tyranny, oppression, and murder is avenged,” said Hatfield. Annette and Eric hugged one another, their eyes glued to the scene on the television. For a long moment they all simply stared at the screen, unable to take it all in, a long moment that stunned the entire world. But it lasted only for a short while for Third Brigade. Immediately the cell phones of almost every officer in the room started bleeping, and Hatfield snapped off the TV. “Comrades, on the day that General Order Number Ten is lifted, whenever that may be, I want you all to join me for a champagne toast to our new independent nation, followed by a rip-roaring blast of the best Northwest micro-brew we can scrounge up. Until then we have work to do.”

  “The first thing you need to do is clean out that Coast Guard station in Warrenton,” said Hill soberly. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Zack. We know there’s been a series of top-secret coded communications between the headquarters in Portland and the station across the water there. I don’t know what they’re saying to one another, but it can’t be good. You know that buzz-cut birdbrain Delmar Partman will be sending his remaining aircraft to destroy the two Highway 101 bridges here. You can’t have a nest of enemy military in your back yard anymore, Zack, to act as spotters or disrupt our military and civil defense during an attack. You need to move on that place now.”

  “F-16s are mainly fighters as I recall,” said Zack. “They can be rigged with bombs, but mostly they rely on missiles and chain guns. They’ll have to get in a bit lower than the B-52s would have, and their bomb loads won’t be as potent, but they can still get the job done, and we don’t even have any radar to let us know when they’re coming.”

  “Should we close off the bridges to traffic now?” asked Len Ekstrom. “If they get hit with cars still going across them, civilian casualties will be bad.”

  Hatfield shook his head. “Not yet. Those bridges are crucial to the normal supply and functioning of this whole part of Oregon, never mind the Washington side as well. I want to keep them open as long as possible, not to mention avoid getting the Columbia estuary blocked to shipping with rubble and bomb debris. Oscar, is there any way we can get any kind of warning as to when the aerial assault is coming?”

  “We’ve got people watching PDX and they’ll call us the minute they see any of the Marine F-16s or helicopters take off,” said Hill. “That might give you a few minutes’ warning. It’s about ninety miles from PDX to here, which is just a short hop for an F-16. Longview is closer so they will most likely be hit first. Don’t be too downbeat, though. There’s still a chance we can find some way to get through the airport perimeter, and destroy the warplanes on the ground. I just hope Partman doesn’t get any support from other Air Force units around the country who might send him more aircraft.”

  “We’re willing to go back and take another stab at it, sir,” said Eric.

  “We don’t know how much time we’ve got,” said Hatfield. “We need to get hold of that Coast Guard installation now. I’ve developed something of a rapport with Ratcliff over the past few months, but he’s still an enemy commander and he might decide to try some bad acts during an air raid. I sure wish we still had Don Hacker up here to talk to him. You know, that officer who swam ashore at Sunset Beach, and Sherry’s kids picked him up? But he’s up in Seattle now trying to sort out our new Navy.”

  Hatfield pulled out his cell phone and dialed. After a while he spoke. “Commander Ratcliff? General Hatfield here. I’m sure you can guess why I’m calling. You saw what happened at Longview?” He listened to Ratcliff for a bit. “I can understand your feelings, sir. I’m not sure which of us is more surprised, but it looks like the deed is
done. That leaves us with a problem. I have it on good authority that U.S. Marine General Partman in Portland intends to mutiny and to launch his own private little war, to be kicked off with an air attack on Astoria and Longview to destroy the bridges across the Columbia River, and possibly with a ground attack as well against this part of the Republic. Things here are about to get a lot more complicated, and I’m afraid I must insist on immediately assuming command of your installation rather than waiting on whatever formal arrangements are being worked out. I will be at your front gate in an hour’s time, under a flag of truce. Please speak with me before you do anything rash, but I need to tell you up front that this time, I’m going to have more than my driver with me. I hope you will surrender and spare our new nation a shedding of blood on this great day, but if you resist then it is my duty to proceed against you. See you in a bit.”

  “Should you have warned him you were coming?” asked Len Ekstrom.

  “I may be wrong, but I get the impression Ratcliff has his own private reservations about the society and the government he’s been serving all his life,” said Hatfield. “I want to give him a chance to make the right decision, and save him as much face as I can if he decides to take the bloodless way out. Hopefully he’ll just use that hour to skedaddle. If not, I’ll try to talk him out. Tony, scramble First Battalion and any of Second you can find, and let’s get over there. All the mortars and as many .50-calibers as you can find, and the EOD guys with their whizz-bangs. Oh, and bring our secret weapon.”

  “What secret weapon?” asked Hill.

  The secret weapon turned out to be the old seven-pounder fieldpiece from World War One, which had once decorated the front of the courthouse in corroded glory. The old cannon had been commandeered, cleaned of rust and verdigris, sanded and polished and repainted a convincing gunmetal gray. A blue, white and green roundel had been painted on the battered armor shield plate in front of the breech. “You’re not really going to try to fire this thing, are you?” said Hill, looking over the relic. “Do you even have any shells for it? Zack, there are cracks in the barrel, for God’s sake! It’s over a hundred years old! It would blow up in your gunners’ faces!”

  “Ratcliff and his people don’t know that,” said Hatfield. “We unfroze and rebuilt the breech block so we can open and close the breech nice and flashy, and we’ve got some guys who worked out a routine of loading dummy shells Len made up in his basement. Ever hear of Quaker guns? Same principle. It might concentrate Ratcliff’s mind if he thinks we’ve got an artillery piece.”

  “How many real rockets and mortars have you got?” asked Hill as they rolled in convoy across Youngs Bay on one of the threatened bridges, a convoy of troop trucks strung out behind them. Hatfield looked skyward, hoping that none of Partman’s Marine attack helicopters or jets chose this moment to show up.

  “Four mortars that I’m using for this attack, if it turns out to be an attack,” he said. “Plus the EOD people have built some Stalin’s Organs they want to try out, racks of 16 solid-fuel rockets mounted on flatbed trucks. The rocket fuselages are made of PVC pipe, of all things, and the fins are plastic, but each one carries a 100-pound warhead of assorted HE and shrapnel, and the racks are reloadable. They’ve been test-fired out on our little proving range, and by now the crews can more or less hit the broad side of a barn with them, drop a pattern over about a 200 square yard area up to two miles away. I don’t want to use them in a populated area like Warrenton unless I have to. We have a plan worked out in case we have to assault the base, in battalion strength. Mortar and automatic weapons fire to keep them pinned down inside while we use good old-fashioned scaling ladders to get over this one section of the fence we’ve spotted that looks vulnerable. Failing that, we’ve got a plan B involving ramming a truck bomb through the main gate and blowing it, but I really don’t want to fight the Coast Guard. They’re not combat troops, they’re life-savers and medics and genuine good guys, most of ’em. I’m hoping Ratcliff will see reason.”

  By the time Hatfield pulled up in front of the main gatehouse, Ratcliff had seen more than that through his binoculars. From his watch tower he had seen hundreds of NDF soldiers, some in their new tiger-striped camouflage fatigues, some still in civilian clothes, moving through the surrounding streets and clearing the inhabitants out of houses that were in the line of fire. He had seen the Stalin’s Organs being set up and brought to elevation, hundreds of yards away to the east and north of his base. He had seen the 81-millimeter mortars being lugged in between houses and behind fences on his perimeter. He knew he was surrounded and outnumbered by a force that included many combat veterans from the insurrection and also from America’s imperial wars in the Middle East, including some of the men and women who had decimated his own service and sank a Coast Guard warship at Sunset Beach. While his men had the edge in formal training, and they were holding fortified positions, the attackers would have the advantage in numbers and on this day, having seen their new nation born before their eyes, their morale would be stratospheric. Finally, he saw an antique cannon pulled behind a Toyota Tundra being unlimbered and set up in the road 150 yards in front of the base, the muzzle leveled dead center at his front gate. The crew opened the breech and rammed a shell into it.

  Zack Hatfield rode up to within about thirty yards of the gate in his War Wagon, followed by a Jeep Cherokee. “Who’s that?” he demanded of Oscar, pointing at the Jeep. Two women and a man, all in NDF tiger-stripe fatigues got out of the Cherokee. The man began setting up a tripod and a camera. “What the hell?” said Zack. He walked up to them. “Julia?”

  “Hi, honey,” she said, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek.

  “Need I ask the obvious?” demanded Zack.

  “My first assignment on my new job with the Northwest Broadcasting Authority,” said Julia. “Historical documentation of the events surrounding the transition from American Empire to Northwest Republic. This is Erica Collingwood, by the way.”

  “Hello, General Hatfield,” said Erica demurely. “Julia’s told me a lot about you.”

  “I can imagine. Welcome Home, comrade,” said Hatfield. “I’m sorry, ma’am, I didn’t recognize you not covered in blood or cockroaches. I always thought The Boogeyman Does Boston was a classic.”

  “You would. She’ll be doing the narration and voiceover,” Julia told him. “I always wanted to be an independent producer, but I never thought I’d be doing my first documentary film with Erica.”

  “Comrade Collingwood, I assume you acquired a taste for being shot at on Oscar night. But what’s your excuse, other than the obvious one that you’ve lost your mind?” he asked Julia. “You know this could turn into a firefight at any moment?”

  “Yes, I know, but whatever happens, we’re here to record it for posterity,” said Julia. “Plus get some more of those hunky shots of you waving your Winchester in the air.” She fumbled around in her field jacket pocket. “I have an authorization and clearance from the Army Council to accompany the NDF on operations, subject to blah blah blah,” she said, pulling out a sheet of paper.

  “Never mind, I wouldn’t know what such a document looks like anyway,” said Hatfield. Behind him Hill cleared his throat and gestured toward the main gate of the Coast Guard station, which was now standing open, and Commander Anthony Ratcliff was standing outside waiting for him. “Oh, shit! Let me go see if I can talk this guy out of a bloodbath. Try not to get shot, both of you.” He turned and walked to the gate to confront the base commander.

  “Is that Erica Collingwood?” was the first thing Ratcliff asked him, his hand over his eyes and peering at the camera crew.

  “Yes,” said Hatfield. “The taller one is the woman I’m going to marry if things work out, so you can see I’m kind of motivated to find some way to convince you to let me in there without all kinds of shooting and explosions.”

  “Does that thing work?” was Ratcliff’s second question, pointing at the cannon. “Wait a minute, I know that piece! You stole it off the c
ourthouse lawn! No way that hunk of junk is going to fire after a hundred years!”

  “We had to re-bore the barrel, make a new breech block, and add all kinds of rubber fittings and whatnot to the carriage so it would roll, not to mention manufacture several hundred of our own shells, some which I have to admit are of indifferent quality. But they made good weapons in those days. Some of our snipers are still using Mausers and Enfields from World War One, not to mention Two, in perfect firing condition because they’ve been kept up. That gun works fine on the range, and it will blow your gate and your interior structures to shredded wheat,” lied Zack briskly. “Not to mention the mortars and our guys who will play you a tune on Uncle Joe’s ukulele, and if those don’t persuade you, we’ve got enough just plain dynamite we can throw over the wall. I can get proper artillery and even some tanks from Salem or Vancouver if I want, but I’m not going to divert crucial equipment for a pointless sideshow like this. There’s not going to be any siege here. We’ve got too much more important stuff to do to waste the time and effort and blood. You’ve got over two miles of perimeter to defend and you don’t have the manpower to do it. You know damned well we’re coming in today, Ratcliff. The only question is how many people will be lying here dead when the sun goes down tonight? Look, Ratcliff, you seem to be a decent guy, a guy I wouldn’t mind having a few beers with someday when they revoke General Order Number Ten. But if you kill a single one of my wonderful kids out there because of some stupid mixed-up idea of loyalty to this filthy evil empire that has turned this whole planet into a slaughterhouse and a cesspit, then you’re going to piss me off, bad, and when we get in there my mood is not going to be sweet. Well?”