Firepower

by John Cutter

  Vince wanted to find out what happened to Chris’s brother, Bobby — meaning he had to gain the trust of these militia types. Therefore, he didn’t say Actually, white Europeans got their number characters, much of their math and science and engineering from the Arabs and Spanish. And we borrowed a good deal of our chemistry from the Chinese — who had a developed civilization before Western Europe did. Then there was all the stuff we learned from the Egyptians. A great deal of western culture came from the Bible — the first part written by Jews, the second part written by Jewish Christians. Europe was a melting pot — Professor.

  Instead, Vince pursed his lips and nodded thoughtfully, as if he agreed with Gustafson.

  Leaning closer, lowering his voice a little more, Gustafson said, “You must know that Western Civilization is under threat.”

  Vince thought, Yeah, it’s under threat from guys like you.

  He knew that “Germanic and Anglo-Saxon cultures created civilization” was code for “White People created everything good”. It was white nationalist euphemism, employed when recruiting new people. They didn’t get into the racial epithets, the outright Jew-hating, the eugenics and the Holocaust denialism right out in public. That would draw the wrong kind of attention.

  Vince just nodded. And said, “Sure it’s under threat. But what are you going to do about it?”

  “We will create a new homeland for our own people, Vince,” Gustafson said earnestly, now speaking in a whisper. “To do that we need to be strong, and willing to fight, if it comes to that. You’d be a great asset if you came on board. But the background I have on you, while detailed in some ways, gives me no clear sense of your philosophy, your political leanings…”

  Vince frowned but said nothing. He had always voted as an independent. He didn’t talk about politics online. He had worked too long in the covert world to commit that intel sin. The less people knew about you, the better.

  “So first, Vince,” Gustafson went on, “we have to know if we can trust you.”

  “And how do you figure on making that determination?”

  “You’ll have to come to our base, unarmed, and begin your re-education…”

  “If you’ve got the guts,” Colls put in.

  Vince gave him a long, flat look. “Seem like I was short on guts, out there on the trail… Mac?”

  Colls’ hands tightened into fists on the table top.

  Gustafson sighed. “Mac — do be quiet. I don’t think this man’s courage is an issue. Vince here is not stupid. He doesn’t take foolish risks. He doesn’t know if he can trust us.”

  “Very good, Professor,” Vince said. “You’re exactly right. I got on the wrong side of your people. Doesn’t seem smart to let myself be surrounded by them.”

  “Of course. I give you my personal guarantee — my word! — that no one will try to… to ambush you. You won’t be attacked. You’ll be unarmed, but unrestrained.”

  “I keep my knife. Your men are packing major heat. I think they’ll be safe. Just think of the knife as a — a good luck talisman. I’m never without it. It’s on me now.”

  “Is it?” Gustafson frowned. “I didn’t see it.”

  “It’s under my coat. The knife comes with me.”

  Gustafson hesitated, and then nodded.

  They shook hands on it. “We’ll pick you up, right here, after breakfast tomorrow, if that’s agreeable to you. Say 9:00 a.m.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  Gustafson nodded once, briskly. “Let’s go, men.”

  They all got out of the booth and headed toward the door, Colls casting a dark look over his shoulder.

  Vince grinned at him, waggling his fingers in a jovial goodbye.

  The waitress came over and said, “Another Coca-Cola?”

  “Sure. You have wi-fi here?”

  “Yep, we just got it a month ago. Boss thinks it’s going to help business. It doesn’t. The password is ‘Eat at Pats’.”

  “Going to get my laptop from my saddlebag.”

  She looked at him impishly, trying to hold his gaze. “A saddlebag? You rode a horse here?”

  “Sure. The kind with two wheels.”

  *

  Next morning, as he was finishing his breakfast at Pat’s, Vince opened his laptop and reread the pages he’d found about Gustafson. Inheritor of wealth from his grandfather’s tobacco plantations and father’s lucrative investment in cigarette companies… Wrote his doctoral treatise on Nietzsche… Taught Germanic myth studies and third-level German language classes… Published a paper showing that German culture is heavily influenced by Norse mythology… His book Concentration Camps Reconsidered led to his dismissal from Florida State University… Was on the David Duke for President Committee… Attended meetings of Identity Evropa and chairs a white nationalist “Identitarian” group, the Germanic Brethren… Organized a group of people who unfurled banners over freeways, reading “It’s Alright to Be White”… Investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms for unregistered guns… Charges dropped, journalist suggests Judge was bribed… Journalist found dead, supposed plane crash.

  Vince looked at his watch. Almost nine. He put the cash on the table to pay for his meal and the tip, packed the laptop in its case, and took it out to the trail bike.

  The autumn day was misty and cool, smelling of pines. He put the laptop in the saddlebag and straddled the bike just as two vehicles rolled into the parking lot. In the lead was a restored 1950s-era US Army Jeep, painted in green and brown cammie colors. Mac Colls was driving, with a big, wide-shouldered blond man sitting beside him. The man had a short blond beard on chunky face. Both men wore paramilitary uniforms, round green field caps and aviator sunglasses. Behind them came a glossy black Humvee. Shaun drove the Humvee, and the red-haired man at his side wore paramilitary uniforms and field caps. In the back was Gustafson, wearing a uniform. He had four stars on each shoulder.

  Colls pulled up beside Vince and Gustafson said, “Fall in behind us.”

  Vince nodded and revved the bike. The jeep moved on, Vince steering the Harley around it. They drove out to the highway, the Humvee close behind Vince.

  The short convoy drove four miles south on the tree-lined highway. Then the jeep slowed and turned east onto a gravel road. Vince and the Humvee followed.

  After a quarter mile, they stopped at a white-painted steel gate. It slid slowly aside on a rail, and the jeep led Vince deeper into the dense forest.

  Three miles on, the wending road took them to another white metal barrier, this one with a gatehouse. Two uniformed guards were standing to either side of the road, both carrying AR-15s.

  The jeep pulled up at the checkpoint. Vince stopped the Harley and put a boot on the road. The Humvee stopped so close behind him he could feel the heat from the grill.

  Probably stupid of me to come here like this, with armed men in front and behind me, Vince thought. Then he smiled.

  One of the guards was a grizzled older man who had lost his left eye; the socket was blocked with scar tissue. Something about him said “retired Marine Corps” to Vince. A jarhead.

  The other was a burly man with brown hair and fading blue tattoos covering his neck. He had a teardrop tattoo on his upper right cheek.

  Ex-con, Vince thought. Probably schooled in the “Aryan Nation”.

  The older guy slung his AR-15 over one shoulder, stepped around the end of the gate and crossed to Vince. He patted him down.

  “Knife, sir!” he called to Gustafson.

  “I told him he could keep the knife, Gunny,” Gustafson said, over his shoulder.

  Gunny frowned and looked Vince in the face. His frown deepened.

  Then he gave a faint shrug and returned to the gate, pressed a button on the back of a post.

  The guards stepped out of the way as the gate rolled back, and the procession got underway once more.

  Another half mile and the road emerged into cleared grassy land at the foot of a ridge. They drove slowly toward the gate of a
fenced compound tucked against the slope of the ridge. There was razor wire atop the fence and men watching from a guard tower. Vince could see light flashing from binocular lenses up there.

  A flagpole flew an American flag, and beneath it, snapping in the wind, a banner showed an Iron Cross. The gate slid aside for them.

  Surrounded by armed men at the approach to a fenced compound, something clicked in Vince and he began to assess the area as possible combat terrain. At the top, the granite ridge rising over the compound was knobbed with two concrete emplacements. He assumed men were stationed in those emplacements, with weapons, watching the area. He could see a little light glinting off a rifle barrel.

  About a quarter mile to the south, the ridge slanted down to a canyon, from which emerged a line of trees following a cut in the land that probably contained a creek or small river. Good place for a soldier to stay undercover, heading east or west.

  The gate to the compound rolled aside, and the three vehicles drove slowly through.

  They were now on a broad tarmac apron outside what looked like the entrance to a concrete bunker fitted snugly into the base of the ridge. To the right and left, within the high fences, were steel outbuildings.

  Vince stopped the motorcycle, climbed off, and walked it over to the side of an outbuilding where it would be out of the way. In the distance he could hear gunfire echoing from somewhere west, in the woods. Automatic weapons rattled; carbines clipped out single-shots.

  The other vehicles parked and Gustafson strolled over to him, looking pleased with himself. “Welcome to Wolf Base, Mr. Bellator. What do you think of our digs?”

  “Impressive. Makes a man wonder, though — is this place supposed to keep people out or keep people in? Looks like a scaled-down penitentiary, Professor.”

  Gustafson grunted. “You’ll come to appreciate it, if you stay. There’s far more than you can see from here. This is really just the front door. The ridge you see before you is hollow, in large part. There are three levels of bunker complex inside it. You should call me General, by the way. The men expect it. And the women too.”

  “There are women here, General?”

  “Certainly. We have no children on the premises, but eventually we hope to have a full, thriving community, spreading out around this organizational center. It’s the beginning of a new nation.”

  Mac Colls and two other Brethren strode up, all of them looking very serious, as if on a mission. They had been ordered to keep a close eye on Vincent Bellator, he guessed. They all had guns holstered on their hips. 9mm Glocks.

  “Where do we go from here?” Vince asked.

  “Orientation,” said Gustafson. “Starting with a short tour. Then — you’ll get an education.”

  *

  Coming through the metal door into the bunker on the ground floor, Vincent found himself standing in a kind of hallway bisecting an airshaft that rose between three other doors. Above, the shaft led up to the ducts and gratings of central air.

  “First floor,” said Gustafson, leading Vince and the three bodyguards, “is comprised of barracks on the left, storage for food and medical goods on the right, armory at the back.” The shiny steel armory door was set at the back of the airshaft, a little out of view of the front door.

  “There are three levels in total, except for one small brig down below the first floor,” Gustafson went on. “Stairs lead up to the other levels and to the emplacements overlooking the approaches.”

  Vince figured the entrances to the emplacements were the bunker system’s weak point, since they were connected to the heart of the facility. Kill the men manning those upper gun bunkers and take a walk down the stairs…

  He wondered what the emplacements were armed with. M60s? Tripod light machine guns? Sniper rifles?

  “I’d be curious to see your armory,” said Vince lightly.

  “I’ll bet you are,” growled Colls.

  “There are things here you won’t learn about, and won’t see,” Gustafson said, “until you have earned our trust, Mr. Bellator. Would you object to my calling you Vincent?”

  “No objection. How big is the barracks?”

  “We have two of them, Vincent. Each one with sixty bunks. Only a fraction of them are currently taken up, but we have enough people in various places around the state and the nation to fill them all… and then some.”

  Gustafson led them through the door on the left, where Vince got a glimpse of a concrete-walled room arrayed in bunks and lockers. Two men in paramilitary uniforms sat at a green metal table with disassembled guns in front of them. They were cleaning the weapons and practicing assembly. Both snapped to their feet, saluting when Gustafson came through the door.

  “General!” they both said at once.

  “As you were,” Gustafson said.

  As a former professional American soldier, Vincent found this pseudo-military fakery both laughable and annoying. But he kept himself carefully stone-faced.

  Gustafson led Vince and the bodyguards back to the metal stairs. Vince noticed another stairway, probably to the basement, farther down the hall.

  They climbed the main stairs up to the second floor. “Lecture hall and video center on the left,” Gustafson said, pointing. “Library and study to the right, conference room behind.”

  The third floor contained another barracks, across from a cafeteria and kitchen, and one larger room divided into administrative offices and a communications center — Vince got only a glimpse of a room full of computers, monitors, and a military-style tactical radio system. A thick-bodied man wearing headphones was sitting at a radio, muttering into a microphone. Two other men were working busily at desktops. Providing propaganda to white nationalist websites?

  Gustafson took him into the kitchen next. It looked like the large professional kitchen of a university cafeteria. Three women in uniform were cooking; one stirring a pot at a big stove of shiny chrome and brushed steel, the other two doing food prep at a table. The room was pungent with the smell of cooking vegetables and beef.

  “These ladies are from our Shield Maiden unit,” Gustafson said proudly. “They’re trained to fight, if necessary, but their main job is to support the troops. They’re all skilled in nursing, cooking, office work.”

  The tall woman at the oven turned to glance their way. Looking about thirty-five, she was blond, though maybe not originally as her eyebrows were darker. She had a slender face, high cheekbones, blue eyes, a firm chin. No makeup.

  “How’s luncheon looking, Deirdre?” Gustafson asked, smiling at her.

  “We’re ahead of schedule, sir,” she said, returning his smile.

  She looked at Vince — and he saw a flicker of surprise in her eyes. Almost shock. But it was immediately suppressed. She nodded calmly to him.

  He nodded back, and there was a curious sense of connection. Vincent sensed a razor-sharp intelligence behind those crystal-blue eyes. And he felt a kind of recognition for her, though he was sure they hadn’t met before.

  Vincent instinctively turned away, obscurely feeling he might be endangering her. He waved a hand in a way that took in the whole facility.

  “Cruciform design, each level, General,” Vincent said. “The floors laid out in a cross-shape. Coincidence?”

  “Coincidence?” Colls frowned. “What’s he mean?”

  “I mean, with the Iron Cross flying out front…”

  “Not a coincidence,” Gustafson said, nodding approvingly. “The Iron Cross symbolizes the traditional German ideals of strength, faith, courage, and purity — all in a unity!”

  “It’s an amazing place,” Vincent said, doing his best to sound admiring. “Is your thinking, here, survivalist?”

  “If it comes to that,” Gustafson said. “But in truth, it’s a headquarters for the next stage of the United States of America. A stage of purification and greatness!” His eyes flashed with inner excitement. “A new world, Vincent! But it will come at a cost.”

  “This place had to have come at a finan
cial cost,” Vince observed dryly, looking around. “I’m guessing you paid for most of it. Your beliefs must be ironclad.”

  “They are,” said Gustafson complacently.

  “You said there’s a brig. Anyone in it?” Vince tried to make the question sound as casual as he could. But he was thinking that if Bobby Destry were alive, that might be where he’d be.

  “That is not a matter for you to concern yourself with,” said Gustafson coldly. “Now — let us go to the lecture room. You shall see some… home movies.”

  *

  “General, I don’t think we should be allowing this Bellator in here,” said Mac Colls as he stood tensely in front of the desk in Gustafson’s office. “Not even for a look around. I don’t think we can trust him.”

  “That’s what you thought about Gunny Hanson,” said Gustafson as he stood behind the desk, pouring himself a coffee from a steel urn. “He turned out to be one of our best men. I wanted him for the same reason I wanted you and Bellator — military experience.”

  “We don’t know what this Bellator believes in!” Colls protested.

  “We’ll find out. Trust me on that. I know how to put pressure on a man — till I can see him for who he is.” Gustafson tapped a little Sweet and Low into the coffee. “Your real problem with him is simply, Sergeant, that he made a fool out of you. He out-thought you and dismissed you on that trail as if you were nothing! I understand how that would be upsetting, Mac. But that’s why I want him — because he’s a cut above most men! Because he’s fast and smart and careful. If Vincent Bellator is one of us, at heart, he can be the man to take the most critical job in Operation Firepower. We’ll need a professional.”

  “I could have handled that job,” Colls grumbled.

  Gustafson cleared his throat. “Maybe, maybe not. But Bellator — I’m certain he could do it.”

  Colls shook his head. There was just something about Bellator that troubled him, and it wasn’t really that the man had disarmed him. “It’s the way he turned up here… the timing. He comes along only a month before we initiate Firepower. He’s got an agenda, General! Suppose he reports on Wolf Base to everyone out there?”