Freedom's Sons

by H. A. Covington

  “Maybe literally cutting one another’s throats,” said Bobby. “I understand that federal agencies conduct outright gang wars over turf and personnel and the dwindling tax flow now, complete with assassinations and bombing each other’s offices in Burlington and D.C.”

  “They do indeed,” said Horakova with a laugh. “Last year an FBI assistant director was shot dead in his office in Fort Hoover with a silenced weapon by one of his own department heads. The bone of contention was a corner office with an especially comfortable swivel chair.”

  “I don’t imagine Goldblum and his ONR bitter-enders are happy at the prospect of being put out to pasture,” remarked Bobby Three.

  “Oh, they’re spitting nails,” said Horakova with a smile. “The mighty U.S. of A., finally accepting the verdict of history? Unthinkable! Needless to say, all of the old neo-conservative and revanchist elements in the American power structure are fighting against the agency’s disbandment tooth and nail, as are the East Canadians—it looks like Ottawa may end up being the last citadel of completely entrenched Jewish power in the world.”

  “They always were,” added Campbell senior. “I notice that after those Israeli refugees took over, Ottawa started quietly but effectively reducing their non-white immigration. Not that Toronto and Montreal and Windsor and some other places aren’t still nigger-riddled slums, but they do seem to have kept a better rein on things than the Americans ever did. They don’t have nearly the same problems with their cities that the Americans do.”

  “I think part of that has to do with the fact that other than the strip just a few hundred miles above the U.S. and NAR borders, Canada was never all that inhabitable for non-whites,” said Horakova. “Especially Africans. Negroids and dark-skinned people on the whole have never liked excessive cold. They’re not genetically engineered for it. Now that we have the best and most temperate parts of British Columbia and Alberta, the amount of territory in Canada which is genuinely comfortable for human habitation is sharply reduced.”

  “Not to mention the Jews disliking any competition in the victimology stakes,” said Bobby. “Canada is a little bit better off than the rump of the U.S.A. materially, true, but there is still only a limited level of resources and goods to go around, and with almost eight million Jews now, you know who’s going to get the lion’s share, or I suppose I should say the jackal’s share. Anyway, returning to practical matters, guys, what do we do now?”

  “I gather everybody on the ground Over The Road wants the Community Prosperity Zone project to get on track and succeed, and they want to see some of those New American Dollars start flowing from Burlington to Basin?” asked Tom.

  “Yes, sir, that appears to be the case,” replied Bobby. “There are no ONR personnel that we know of Over There in Jefferson County, except for a few snitches who send emails to Burlington telling them nothing in particular for a few bucks, and for a few bucks more, they copy us with the same emails. At least we think we know them all.”

  “I had a talk with General Cardinale at the WPB in Olympia yesterday. He agreed that you need to be aware of any possible bad actors Over There, and so he gave me their latest rat roster for Jefferson, Silver Bow, and Lewis and Clark Counties,” said Tom, opening his briefcase and handing Bobby a couple of sheets of paper. “This information is borrowed from the ONR files in Burlington, so unless they’ve detected our latest hack, this list is up to date.”

  “That possible?” asked Campbell senior. “That they’ve spotted the hack and slipped us a beard?”

  “Probably not,” replied Horakova. “Their IT security has been slipping for years. There’s significantly fewer young computer geek kids coming along, as the white population shrinks and the Circus steadily downsizes the Jewish component of the American civil service with rigged accidents and the occasional garroting. There’s a lot less money to pay those IT grads who do come along and give them all the latest cyber-toys, so the real hotshots are now headed to the techie expat colonies in South America and North Africa. The ONR and other U.S. government agencies use outdated software and old hardware, and their firewalls are antique, so I think I can promise you that’s not a disinformation plant. Well, I’m pretty sure, anyway. Any unfamiliar names, Bobby?”

  “Uh, no, I’m familiar with all—wait, no, I don’t know this character Mallinson in American Helena. He new?” asked Bobby.

  “Yes, but don’t worry about him,” said Horakova. “He’s one of ours, a synthetic. He doesn’t actually exist. The Circus created the identity, did a full background on him including faked CCTV footage that has him going from a bogus address to a bogus job, drinking in bars and shopping for underwear and so on. He communicates with the ONR as a hologram.”

  “The War Prevention Bureau is feeding the ONR disinformation through a hologram?” asked Bobby Three, bemused.

  “Yeah, it’s cheaper and less dangerous than risking a real agent,” said Horakova. “The ONR has budget constraints like every other American government agency, so they haven’t gotten around to actually calling Mr. Mallinson in for a meet. With any luck they’ll be disbanded as an agency fairly soon, their assets will fall into disarray, and the identity can just disappear without Goldblum’s snakes ever figuring out we put one over on them. But it’s not just disinformation. By way of selling his cover, Mallinson feeds them legitimate low-level intelligence that’s been carefully screened and scrubbed, and he’s also supposedly the American-side link to a network of agents on our side of the border, a daring dude who slips across the Road and meets with his heroic spies for truth, justice, and the Amurrican way by campfires under the light of a pale prairie moon. Don’t worry, the spy network are holograms and synthetics as well. That’s where the real disinformation gets slipped in. The Office of Northwest Recovery is convinced they’ve got six medium-placed assets over here. In reality we’re just playing a video game with them.”

  “That’s got to be Birdie!” laughed Bob senior.

  “Got it in one!” confirmed Tom.

  “Speaking of the Circus, how’s Vince doing?” asked Robert.

  “Getting on in years and showing it, but that old gangster brain of his is still going strong,” Horakova told them. “He and Betsy send their love to Ally and the kids. And you, of course, Bobby.”

  “Any chance they’ll be able to make it out here for Christmas like they did last year, even if just for a day visit out of Missoula?” asked Bobby. “Ally and I were kicking around the idea of maybe spending part of the holidays in Olympia, since we have so many friends there who want to see the kids and catch up, but what with all this crap going on Over The Road and niggers wandering around where they hadn’t oughta, I’m almost certainly going to have to be on duty here. I know Ally always loves seeing her Aunt Betsy and Dad together, the two people who saved her and brought her Home. Cathy thinks the Princess Ha-Tonna story is a hoot, although I’m not sure she believes it.”

  “Swear to God!” said his father with a laugh, raising his right hand.

  “I’ll see if I can remember to ask,” said Tom.

  “How’s Ally like her new teaching job?” asked Bob senior.

  “She just started at Cataract High last week and so far it’s great,” said Bobby. “The kids and the staff are still a little in awe of the whole Daughter of the Nation thing, but Ally has always been good at putting people at ease over that. She is doing a special class on Lost Creek and the Solutrean Hypothesis, and they’ve had to move it to the auditorium because so many kids signed up for it.”

  “Great! Anyway, Bobby, getting back to your question as to what you do about all this mess going on Over The Road, just keep a close eye out. Don’t start anything, but if anything does start, make sure the Northwest Republic finishes it.”

  * * *

  Ben Lomax and Brandon Blackwell had solemnly promised Gabrielle Martine that they would maintain the silence of the grave regarding what had happened to her during her impromptu walk on the wild side Over The Road, and the worse-for-w
ear condition in which she had been returned. They both broke their promise within minutes of sending Agent Hornbuckle to drive her down to the hospital in American Butte for treatment to avoid wagging tongues at the local clinic. Blackwell gave Mona James and Colonel Hart a full report, and Ben Lomax brought the Jefferson County kitchen cabinet up to speed in his own office, with the help of a bottle of bourbon and some Styrofoam cups, with the result that Lomax’s deputies and staff soon overheard hoots of mocking laughter emanating from behind the closed office door. By nine o’clock that night, Gabi’s little adventure was all over town.

  By way of refusing to admit to herself or anyone else that she had royally screwed the pooch, over the next few days Gabrielle Martine developed an obsession bordering on the deranged with the Lexus Model 12 luxury sedan she had left behind parked in front of the Basin cop shop. The vehicle was a courtesy loaner from the Montana state government, so at some point its loss would have to be explained by the Economic Recovery Administration and the state motor pool would have to be compensated, an expense the ERA would find irritating and Gabrielle would find very embarrassing. “What are you doing to get my car back?” she demanded of her staff.

  “Actually, ma’am, it’s not your car,” replied Mona James. “We borrowed it from the state, remember?”

  “Then it’s even worse to allow the racists to steal it!” shrieked Gabi.

  “They didn’t steal it. They view it as contraband which they confiscated after you used it to make an illegal and unauthorized entry into their country,” explained Brandon Blackwell patiently.

  “No it wasn’t illegal!” insisted Gabi. “I had a permit! You ought to know, you got it for me.”

  “Illegal under the laws of their country,” Blackwell explained wearily.

  “They’re not a country!” yelled Gabi. “They’re nothing but racist criminals who assaulted and falsely imprisoned an official of the government of the United States! They’re traitors!”

  “Hardly, marm, unless the men who assaulted you were over forty years of age,” put in Colonel Hart suavely. “If they were younger than that, then they were not born under United States law and have never drawn a breath under United States jurisdiction. The letter of the law may say otherwise, of course, but in real life it’s a bit thick demanding people to be loyal to a country they have never been any part of.”

  Gabrielle stormed out of the office in the Boulder Hot Springs hotel. “Letter of my ass! Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit! Get me my muthafukkin’ ride back!” she shrieked as she left.

  “You enjoy pushing her buttons, don’t you?” Mona asked Hart when their boss had gone. She was barely able to suppress a smile.

  “Immensely,” replied Hart with a chuckle.

  “You guys do realize, don’t you, that from now on this whole trip is going to be about nothing but the car, the car, the goddamned car?” said Brandon Blackwell. “Any chance we could get the damned thing back at all? Maybe have Sheriff Lomax talk to that Nazi cop lieutenant?”

  “They’re not all Nazis,” Mona reminded him.

  “According to the ONR’s intelligence file on Campbell, he is,” Blackwell told them. “He and his wife are both members of NUNS, the Northwest Union of National Socialists, and their twelve-year-old son is a member of both officially recognized youth groups, the Pioneers and the Hitler Youth.”

  “The ONR bothered to put together a file on a junior rural police officer?” asked Hart curiously.

  “Oh, yes,” replied Mona James. “Lieutenant Robert Campbell the Third is married to Allura Myers, the daughter of presidential assassin Georgia Myers. Right after the killing of President Hunter Wallace, when she was a toddler of about nineteen months or so, the child was abducted by a couple of WPB goons from her home in Washington, D.C., who shot and killed her grandmother and her nanny in the process and spirited her away to racist-occupied Montana in the middle of a raging war. Their propaganda people decided this act of infant kidnapping and the murder of two unarmed women would make a good national epic of Aryan heroic vitalism, as I believe they refer to it, and so she became kind of a poster child for the Northwest Republic. They call her the Daughter of the Nation, in honor of her mother’s exploits as a whore and her skill with a sharpened pencil. Campbell, the man she married, is the son of one of the Circus ops who kidnapped her, who is now the Civil Guard commander of the entire Montana Border District. The other is a former prostitute who is still with the WPB. Married to the current director of the agency, in fact. So yes, the Office of Northwest Recovery has a file on the whole Campbell family.”

  “Hmm… interesting,” mused Hart. “Wonder if we can do anything with that? Could I take a look at that file?”

  “Sure,” said Mona. “I’ll send it to your laptop.”

  “But do you think Lomax could help get Gabi’s damned Lexus back from the goots?” persisted Blackwell.

  “I rather doubt it,” said Mona. “I don’t think Sheriff Ben has too many favors racked up with his colleague Across The Road right now. Rather the reverse, I’d say. Campbell probably figures Lomax owes him for not slaughtering Gabi on the spot.”

  “You seem to have talked him out of it, Brandon,” remarked Hart. “Why did you bother?”

  “You two are FBI and NMA. You get to go back to your respective agencies when we leave this cow pie of a town,” said Blackwell. “I would have to explain to the ERA in Burlington why I was returning minus an African-American Power Womyn, the loss of whom would really screw up the top management’s diversity quotas. It’s not just the risk of getting demoted and sent to run a paper mill in West Virginia. That would be the least of my worries. You know about the civil service’s new CFI policy, Criminalizing Failure and Incompetence? They wouldn’t even have to put me on trial. They could just bring a civil lawsuit against me, slap me with some fifty-million-dollar or so civil judgment that I could never pay and then have me civilly committed to a penal factory for contempt of court for not paying the fine.”

  “Yeah, that’s an old trick,” commented Mona. “That goes back to the days of the first mandatory government health insurance. If you didn’t buy the insurance, the IRS hit you with a tax bill for it. Then if you didn’t pay the fine and the taxes, off you went to a prison factory making military uniforms or farmed out to private companies or whatever. They eventually stopped the practice when they realized the government didn’t have the facilities to lock up tens of millions of people, and the value of their labor still didn’t outweigh the cost. Stalin could make that kind of thing work, but we never could.”

  “So you see why I would rather get Gabi back to the ERA in one piece,” said Blackwell. “My apartment in Burlington may be a roach nest the size of a double-wide coffin, and a deep freeze in winter when the power goes off, but it’s still better than a forced career in manufacturing. At my age I wouldn’t survive, so getting Gabi back to Vermont intact is kind of a priority with me.”

  “She can still put the bad-mouth on you if you don’t recover her precious Lexus,” pointed out Mona. “Could she send you to prison over an automobile which she lost through her own idiocy?” Brandon looked at her, and Mona had the grace to look away. “Sorry,” she said. They both knew that because Brandon was white and male, Gabrielle Martine could pretty much do anything she wanted to him and scapegoat him any way, if she was sufficiently irritated or if she just wanted to lash out. Having someone to blame was one of the primary reasons why a certain number of white male bureaucrats like him were kept on in the civil service.

  “Is there any way in which the car can be recovered?” asked Hart.

  “That Nazi—that Northwest cop said they might sell it to one of their local blockade runners as a joke,” said Brandon. “Some cowboy from their side who’s notorious for it, young joker named Selkirk. For all I know, he might have been serious. I asked Lomax who the fascist was talking about, and the way he describes it, this kid might be dumb enough to drive the car back over the Road to impress some girl he’s datin
g on this side.”

  “That’s illegal on the girl’s part,” spoke up Agent Hornbuckle. “A federal felony if she is knowingly harboring or consorting with anyone from the racist entity. The FBI enforces those laws, or we’re supposed to. If we can arrest this smuggler maybe we could trade him for the car.”

  “Do you still have your tracker on the vehicle?” Hart asked Mona.

  “Surely any smuggler worth his salt would have sense enough to remove or disable the GPS!” said Brandon.

  “It’s not in the GPS itself,” said Mona. “I stayed away from those in case Gabi or anybody who might want to defect tampered with it. Besides, factory-standard GPS doesn’t track inside the Republic, since the Republic doesn’t exist. The bugs I put on the four cars weren’t actual GPS trackers per se, they were micro-transponders clipped to the car’s main onboard computer, programmed to ping my phone if the vehicle crossed the interstate.”

  “Who did you think was going to defect to the Northwest?” demanded Agent Hornbuckle, miffed. “That’s against the will of the Lord!”

  “She suspected us, old chap,” said Colonel Hart sardonically. “You and me and Brandon here. It’s in our genetic makeup to be naughty boys, you see. This close to the border, one never knows if even one of us domesticated specimens of the pale and beastly breed might yet feel the ancestral call of the wild, and slip the collar and leash to go running through the dark forest once again.”