Freedom's Sons

by H. A. Covington

  “We won’t have a proper blue water fleet for many years,” said Bresler, shaking his head sadly.

  “Afraid not,” concurred Morgan. “Just coastal defense, and not too much of that at first. The KM is diddling around with some crude torpedoes and missiles that might be able to sink an enemy vessel if we can get close enough, and if they work, but we don’t have the manufacturing capacity to produce anything in serious quantity. Right now, we’re about like the Confederate navy trying to make submarines out of old boilers and mines out of beer barrels. Actually, we do have a couple of small submarines, for what they’re worth. One we appropriated from the Oceanographic Research Unit of the University of Oregon, and another one we confiscated from Microsoft.”

  “What the hell was Microsoft Corporation doing with a submarine?” asked Frank Barrow in surprise.

  “Apparently, Bill Gates bought it as a toy many years ago,” replied Morgan. “When Gates OD’ed in the crapper, nobody knew what to do with it, and it got lost in the shuffle. We found it sitting in a dry dock shed on Lake Union. I don’t see any real use for them. We don’t even have anybody who knows how to sail them, although Hacker put two-man crews on each and told them to figure it out.”

  “Let’s hope they don’t end up drowning themselves like the first crew of the Hunley,” said Morehouse. “I talked with Hacker myself down in the Convention bar the other day, and I agree with his plan. The Republic doesn’t need a blue water fleet anyway at this juncture, just coastal defense to keep anybody from sailing right on in and landing whatever the hell they want on our coastline. How are you coming on Kriegsmarine uniforms?”

  “When the Americans ran from the Puget Sound naval base in Everett, they left behind a whole warehouse full of sailors’ blues,” said Morgan. “We stamped the eagle over the right pocket and onto the caps, and there ya go. Class A and dress uniform issue to all ranks should be complete by the end of March.”

  “How about the land forces?” asked Barrow.

  “Every Northwest soldier is now in uniform, although a few are still short some items on their dress kit, buttons and belt buckles and such. Small arms we’re up to requirements on; about half the line units are toting M-16s and the other half are packing Kalashnikovs. Our Russian friends have been very generous with accessories and ammo.”

  “They want the full NDF contract,” commented Barrow.

  “They do indeed, but as grateful as we are to Big Bear, the Republic has to make our own weapons just like everything else, and as soon as possible,” said Morehouse. “We can’t be dependent on foreign sources for our armaments. We’ve taken over the Olympic Arms factory down the road here, and we will be producing our own small arms and ammo very soon. The larger ordnance is another problem. How are we doing on heavy weapons, General Morgan?”

  “We’ve managed to acquire over a hundred modern artillery fieldpieces and fifty-six tanks, ranging from modern American vehicles like the Abrams Mark IV to an old Sherman we dragged out of a museum and re-activated,” said Morgan. “Shells are a problem. I heard what you just said, Red, but we need to acquire overseas suppliers for all our heavy ordnance until such time as we can tool up our own arms industry. We now have over a hundred Strykers, and we’re converting the old Kenworth truck plant in Tukwila to manufacture our own armored car modeled on the old British Saracen, more as an exercise in getting skilled people employed once again than anything else. I hate to be a prophet of doom, but we all have to realize that fighting the Americans as a guerrilla force back during the revolt was one thing. Then they couldn’t find us, and we had no turf to defend. Now we do. As brave and proud as these NDF kids are, we can’t stand up to the Americans in a head-on battle, and we won’t be able to for years. We beat Partman because those assholes in Washington were running around like chickens with their heads cut off and they never backed him up, for which we can thank God. If the kikes had pulled themselves together in time when Partman did his little mutiny thang, they could have held on to Portland like the Allies held West Berlin, for as long as they wanted. We won that battle through pure audacity, but that won’t always serve.”

  “You have a General Staff now, don’t you, John?” asked Morehouse.

  “More or less,” confirmed Morgan.

  “Okay, major permanent assignment: you and the best military minds we have need to put together a strategic plan for resisting an enemy invasion, most likely from the United States, but work on variations from Canada and this new Aztlan entity that looks to be set up soon in the Southwest, as well as all conceivable combinations thereof. Keep it updated all the time; it needs to be reviewed on the basis of every item of fresh intelligence we can get hold of at least once a month.”

  “Already on it,” said Morgan. “We call it Plan One.”

  “Art, what’s the status on the Civil Guard?” asked Barrow.

  “Pretty much one hundred percent up and running, and in uniform,” replied Justice Minister Arthur Flowers proudly. “All patrol cars and other Guard vehicles are now correctly painted and detailed, and the blue and red American siren lights have all been replaced with blue and green. There are now thirty-three thousand Guardsmen and—women, give or take, in over three hundred stations across the Republic. Mostly concentrated in the large urban areas, of course. About seventy percent of them are former American law enforcement officers who stayed on, and the rest have been drafted in from the NVA and NDF. We’re making sure that almost all the senior personnel are Jerry Rebs, for obvious reasons.”

  “Are the two elements meshing okay?” Barrow wanted to know. “I can imagine how hard it must be to go in to work every day with people who were trying to kill you this time a year ago.”

  “It’s a little tense in places, especially in the cities like Seattle and Portland and Spokane, where there was a lot of bloodshed on both sides during the war,” Flowers told them. “But a lot of the old cops were always quietly sympathetic to begin with, and the rest who have stayed on are professionals. I see signs that things are getting ironed out. The real PC assholes and truly Unionist cops were all killed during the war, or else they got the hell out after Longview. The ones who can’t forget the war, and who can’t work for the new government on grounds of conscience, have mostly been honest about the fact and resigned. The ones who have stayed on are mostly the better elements, the real cops who are all about the job itself, and they really, really appreciate our getting rid of the shitskinned minorities who caused ninety percent of the crime and the trouble under ZOG. For the first time in their careers, they’re actually seeing crime get better and not constantly worse. There have been some personnel incidents in station houses, but we’ve handled them, almost always through transfer, and not always the ex-Union cops, either. Some of our guys still have some pretty big chips on their shoulders left over from the war as well,” admitted Flowers. “It’s not cool to walk into the break room on your first day on the job, and find some goon sitting there scarfing down donuts who beat the crap out of you with a phone book in high school for saying nigger.”

  “Those chips on men’s shoulders are going to be there for years. We’ll all have to learn to work around them,” said Morehouse.

  “How do the men feel about being disarmed on the street level?” asked Gary Bresler from Commerce and Industry.

  “It’s not absolutely certain yet that we’re going to do that,” Flowers reminded him. “The Convention hasn’t ruled on it. But it’s a fascinating concept—an unarmed police force for an armed society, where a cop has to command respect for the man he is and not just for his badge and his gun. A surprising number of Guardsmen are in favor of it.”

  “Walter, how go our foreign affairs?” said Morehouse, turning to the former American Secretary of State. “Or do we have any yet?”

  “Not many. So far the only foreign country that has granted us full recognition, complete with exchange of ambassadors, is Russia, but that’s probably the best one to have right now,” reported Stanhope. “Not just f
or what they can do for us, but because other developed nations figure if Big Bear is in here foraging for goodies, then they’d better be here, too. A lot of other countries are going to get nervous at the prospect of the Russians getting a monopoly on our timber and pulp, our minerals, our future grain production, our produce, and our markets. The Northwest Republic is going to be a food-producing nation with a hard-working white population, and those are getting fewer and more far between as world capitalism continues its decline. We are probably going to find ourselves in the same ironic position that Rhodesia and South Africa once faced, in that we will be feeding the very people who are trying to destroy us.”

  Stanhope went on: “The wealthy businessmen and multinational corporations who really run the world are not stupid, comrades, and they understand that once we get our act together, the Republic is going to be a major world power. We will come through with an efficient and productive economy, a well educated and racially homogenous population, a young population, and we will have the ability to make and to implement decisions free of the kind of strangling government red tape that afflicts everywhere else in the Western liberal and social democracies. Other countries won’t be able to admit the fact in public for fear of the Jews and liberals, but they will all want a piece of our pie, if only to prevent Big Bear from getting all of it. As per usual, the European Union wants to have its cake and eat it too. While their politicians are screaming hatred at us from every podium, all kinds of corporate and big business movers and shakers from Europe are easing their bods over here on scouting trips, pretending to represent private corporate interests, or come here for the skiing in Sandpoint, or whatever. Then when they get back, they’re reporting to their respective governments, and the EU in Brussels itself as to whether or not they think we’re going to make it. Once they’re convinced the Republic will be around for a while, they’ll want to do business, especially since the Third World markets they’ve relied on for a generation have now collapsed completely or else been taken over by the Chinese.”

  “And how do the ching-ling-dings feel about us?” asked Morgan.

  “The Russians got here first, they don’t like the Russians, and in any case we can’t have anything to do with them for racial reasons,” said Stanhope. “Russia now has a foothold in North America, as they view it, so the Chinese will back Aztlan so they can get one, too. Actually, they were playing the beaner card long before we came along. Where do you think most of the funding for Frente de la Raza has been coming from for at least the last ten years? My guess is that we will end up with a hostile Aztlan on our southern border which is not only mestizo, but a Chinese client state.”

  “Canada?” asked Morehouse.

  “Always the most Judaized of all the Western democracies,” said Stanhope. “Even more so than the United States, if you can imagine that. The Canadian government has always been virtually a colony of Tel Aviv. They regard us with horror and loathing, but so far as we know, no one in Ottawa is nuts enough to try physical force. Our army is already a lot larger than theirs. We bloodied them badly in British Columbia and Alberta during the war, and they know full well that all the NVA cells didn’t move south after Longview. For all their swaggering and their mouth, Ottawa doesn’t want the guerrilla war starting up again.”

  “A lot of Canucks want to do just that, including my own wife,” said Barrow. “Jane hides it well, but she’s damned bitter about the way we sold out the Canadian West at Longview, and she has every right to be. If the NVA ever starts rolling again through the Great White North, she’s made it clear that she’s going back, and as terrible as that would be for me, I wouldn’t have the right to stop her. We betrayed our Canadian comrades at Longview, and it still tastes bad in my mouth.”

  “What the hell could we do, Frank?” asked Stanhope sympathetically. “You remember how it was, and I saw it from the American side. The Canadian government simply wouldn’t talk to us. They wouldn’t even send an observer. They hung tough and laid all the weight for the loss of the Northwest on Chelsea Clinton’s shoulders, and they reaped their reward. That’s why the Canadian regime is now the absolute darling of world Jewry. The kikes can’t do enough for those thieves and bugger boys in Ottawa these days. You got all you could get at Longview, Frank, you got the Republic. I think Jane understands that. Right now the Canadian government officially pretends that we don’t exist, and we think that solipsistic approach will continue for a while, at least until they get their orders from Israel.”

  “But will Israel itself last much longer?” asked DeMarco.

  “Intelligence reports tell us that the Muslim nations are beginning to muster their forces for the final effort to drive the American occupation troops from their lands, and overrun Israel while they’re at it,” said Stanhope. “They may well be successful, but whether they are or not, it’s going to be a bloodbath, and in very short order the United States will have far more on their plates than us alone. That’s why we—they, I should say—that was the reason that the U.S.A. agreed to Longview at all, knowing even as they went in that the result wasn’t going to be an optimal one from their point of view. But you and the Political Bureau were right on that one, Red. The most we on the American side came to Longview hoping to get was a white Puerto Rico and no nationalizing of American corporate assets.”

  “That’s the biggie,” said Morehouse. “How fare our former lords and masters in La Cesspool Grande?”

  “Right now everybody is screaming for Chelsea’s head, of course. The liberal wing of the Democratic Party and the neocon wing of the Republicans co-sponsored the impeachment resolution. Everyone figured that the Sea Hag would simply get them all to back off, since the Treaty was signed on her orders and not Chelsea’s. For a time last month it looked like Hillary had decided the heat was too great and she’d made a mistake, and she was trying to walk it back and maybe even resume the war on some pretext, but in view of the, uh, incident in Denver, Hillary is now removed from the scene.” He looked at Barrow suggestively.

  “That wasn’t meant to be so messy,” said Barrow. “We sent in two of Charlie Randall’s best operatives, both foreigners to try and divert suspicion. They were posing as a waiter and a bellhop in the Denver Hilton. One of them was a Serb and one of them was a white African. It turns out that both of them had issues with Hillary due to what was done to their own homelands in the past, and when they extracted her from the conference and got her alone up in the bridal suite, it got personal. We’re pushing a disinformation program to blame the episode on disaffected elements in the United States establishment. It may have some effect over time, but right now, nobody’s buying it. That slaughterhouse in the hotel room had NVA written all over it. Everybody assumes we somehow got O.C. Oglevy into the hotel undercover.”

  “I’m surprised the Americans haven’t called for a full-scale war over it,” said James Salvatore from Interior, shaking his head.

  “Hillary Clinton had so many enemies in the American establishment by now that most of Capitol Hill and Wall Street were clinking champagne glasses together when they heard the news,” said Stanhope. “Discreetly, of course. I’ve already had contacts from former associates of mine in Washington offering money, information and cooperation to the Republic out of pure gratitude, as well as veiled suggestions as to who should be next on our hit list. That’s an interesting possibility for us. If there are elements in Western governments willing to exchange favors for removing their internal political and commercial enemies, we might be able to develop a lucrative little cottage industry as hitmen.”

  “Hey, it’s what we do,” said Barrow with a shrug.

  “Will Chelsea be able to make it past impeachment without Mommy Dearest?” asked Morehouse.

  “She now has a tremendous sympathy vote going for her, of course, over the tragic loss of her sainted mother,” said Stanhope. “Old man Bill’s brain burned out long ago from the coke and the booze and the syphilis, and all he does is wander the White House corridors in a
n old bathrobe with a Secret Service man in tow, exposing himself every now and then to the secretaries and the female staff. But if Chelsea cleans him up nice and rolls him out in a wheelchair before Congress, she can maybe rally enough sympathy and nostalgia for the Auld Lang Syne of the Nineties to beat the impeachment. She’ll be a lame duck for the rest of her term, but a lame duck is what we want.”

  “We’re having WPB work up some plans to take out the major driving people behind impeachment if it looks like it might succeed,” said Barrow.

  “What’s WPB?” asked Dr. Paul Hassling.

  “The latest in our own alphabet soup. Used to be Third Section,” explained Barrow. “The old NVA Threesec has now split into two sections. There’s BOSS, the Bureau of State Security, which is responsible for counter-intelligence and internal security within the Republic. That’s Dangerous Dan’s outfit, or the McGrew Crew as they call themselves. Then there’s Charlie Randall’s WPB, the War Prevention Bureau, which is responsible for foreign operations and intelligence. Both report to me and through me to the State President, with oversight from the parliamentary security committee.”

  “So it’s going to be Parliament for sure and not the National Convention?” asked Fiona Bonnar.

  “Looks that way, yes,” replied Barrow.

  “Frank, how is Force 101 doing?” asked Morehouse.

  Barrow consulted his own notes. “We’ve made an estimated forty thousand apprehensions and terminations so far, the overwhelming majority of them in the top six urban areas of the Republic,” he told them. “About a thousand of the more egregious and publicly notorious cases have been tried before court-martials. The prisoners were condemned and hanged within twenty-four hours. Most of them, anyway. For public relations purposes, we made sure there have been some acquittals as well, over a hundred so far, all sad sacks or people who genuinely got caught up in an impossible situation. The prisoners who have been openly hanged are mostly well-known informers from the War of Independence, and white people of both genders who are widely known to have committed public bestiality and perversion in the past. Their misbehavior was public, to the point where their punishment needs to be public as well.”