Freedom's Sons

by H. A. Covington

  “I presume you’re not just speaking off the cuff, Colonel?” asked Captain Jones over the commo.

  “Oh, no, Captain,” replied Hart, “I crave retribution for the murder of my dusky dulcinea, right enough, but I made sure to clear this op with higher-ups. The conversation I had by secure uplink with ONR Director Goldblum was most instructive. I never liked this barmy idea of sheltering America’s remaining productive people and plant under the guns of our worst enemies. Very bad form and asking for trouble. It’s also insulting to the New Model Army. I mean, what the devil do they pay us for, anyway?”

  “We’re glorified bloody turnkeys is what we is, sir,” said Jones. “Prison guards keeping their cities locked up. No job for a soldier, that.”

  “Precisely, Captain. Soldiers need a proper war with proper opponents. Consider our little expedition this evening as contributing to our job security. Hence certain parties’ willingness to let us have use of the air transport, otherwise we’d be hoofing it tonight.”

  “ETA to Pole Mountain Road AZ ten minutes, Colonel,” spoke up the pilot in the cockpit. “It could be cut to four minutes if you’d just let us…”

  “No, you need to circle round and make your approach from the west,” said Hart. “Stay low as you can and scare the piss out of the prairie dogs. Our intelligence on their air defenses is by no means what it should be. I want to make absolutely certain there are no nasty surprises waiting for us.”

  Lieutenant Bobby Campbell the Third was staying late at the Civil Guard station with his father and uncle, helping Major Tom Horakova get set up in his new office, or rather the office he would use when he was in Basin to check up on events Across the Road. Ironically, it was the same utility closet into which Bobby had thrown the battered Gabi Martine a month ago. Bobby had cleaned it out, removed the shelving units, and moved in a desk and several filing cabinets. Tom Horakova and Corporal Sweeney were now fiddling around with the in-house telephone and computer connections. “I assume your laptop is worldnet-accessible, Uncle Tom?” asked Bobby with some envy.

  “Yes, sometimes it has to be, when there’s something on somebody’s computer I need to see,” said Horakova. “It took me years before I could get even that level of clearance. I can view foreign websites and read them, and take notes which I then have to type up and submit in hard copy reports, but I can’t download anything off the worldnet.”

  “Mmm, surely by now we’ve worked our own IT capabilities up to the point where we can ease up on some of the cyber-paranoia?” asked Bobby.

  “Not being able to connect with the rest of the world has advantages other than security, Bobby,” his father reminded him. “Do you really want your twelve-year-old son looking at videos of women performing sexual acts with animals and watching gyrating, screaming niggers?”

  “No parent would allow anything like that!” exclaimed Bobby.

  “It happened all the time before the revolution,” Robert Campbell senior reminded him. “I’m old enough to remember that. The damned internet of the early part of the century was even sicker than it is now, and it destroyed millions of young white people in their minds before their bodies and souls followed. The Republic is determined that in this country society controls the internet, not vice versa. Freedom stops where white children begin.”

  Horakova spoke up. “Not being able to download is a pain in the butt, right enough, but the Republic has always vowed that Jewish bastards from anywhere in the world will not infect our communications systems or databases with any kind of virus, or Trojan, or spyware, or malware of any kind, never mind corrupt our children with the moral excrement that democracy wallows in. The only way to make sure that never happens is to restrict access to the worldnet, or at least restrict it to read-only, as in the case with me, so there is no actual transfer of data packets that might contain something they shouldn’t.

  “Sure, the various cyberwar and cyber-intel outfits in the government have full access, and they get hacked and infected and sometimes completely wiped out, whenever the Americans or the East Canadians or the Chinese can get past our firewalls and detectors. But those computers are never connected to any others, and so any virus whatever stops there. We have learned to live without the internet. None of our defense systems or our power grids or anything important are dependent on interconnected computers. We do everything we can the good old-fashioned way, through human beings who write stuff down on pieces of paper. Anything I learn about what our buddies Over The Road are up to, I’ll write up in my best secret policeman’s bureaucratese and send it on to Olympia by mail or courier, or I’ll make a phone call on a secure line, or if it’s something really hot I’ll go see whoever I need to see and tell them personally. Yeah, it’s a lot slower way of doing things than a few keystrokes, but it balances out as a lot safer. One of the reasons neither the Russians nor the Americans could ever conquer Afghanistan was that the Taliban’s command structure consisted of a few bearded geezers in turbans sitting on grass mats in a hut or a cave around a big brass pot of tea. And you know what? We’ve found over the years that it doesn’t really matter how fast you can do something. What matters is whether it’s worth doing at all.”

  Bobby had taken to carrying his Jefferson County hotline phone on his belt next to his personal phone, and now it bleeped at him. “Hmm,” he said. “Wonder what Lomax wants? I’ll put it on speaker.” He pulled out the phone and opened it, “Yes, sheriff? What can I do for you?”

  “You can get your ass out to your house, now!” came a voice.

  “What?” exclaimed Bobby. “You’re not Sheriff Lomax.”

  “No, Campbell, this is Brandon Blackwell. Remember me? I stole Lomax’s special phone because I had to get hold of you.”

  “So what’s this about my house?” asked Bobby.

  “That son-of-a-bitch Hart called in some of his thugs, and they’ve got two military helicopters as well, so for all I know this may be officially sanctioned,” said Blackwell rapidly. “They left about ten minutes ago. I hacked his laptop and so I know where you live, I think. I’m following them over the border in my ground car. Hope I can find your place in the dark.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” snapped Bobby, a chill suddenly creeping into his blood.

  “Hart was fucking that hapa FBI agent you guys shot, Mona James, and he’s out for revenge,” said Blackwell. “He’s got eight or ten guys in the copters, and he’s going to attack your house and kill Allura, probably your kids as well! Move!”

  Bobby snapped the phone shut and looked at the others, aghast. “Tom, you’ve got your BOSS skycar?” asked Colonel Robert Campbell.

  “Out front,” said Horakova. “We can get there three minutes from liftoff.”

  “Sweeney, get Schmeissers and full ammo belts from the arms room!” ordered Bobby Three. “Move it!” He stepped into the lobby. “Boardman! Who’s out on patrol?”

  “Martinelli and Briggs, sir,” the sergeant told him.

  “Both of them in skycars?”

  “Yes, sir,” replied Boardman.

  “Tell them to respond to a gun call at my house out on Pole Mountain Road. Approach with caution, there will be other Guardsmen and civilians in the area as well as armed hostiles, possibly as many as a dozen. Call the NDF command centers in Butte and Helena both, and tell them we have a penetration by two American helicopters carrying special ops personnel, target being my wife and family. If nothing else we can nail the swine when they try to cross back over to their side of the Road. Request an SS rapid response force.” By then all four men were running for the door, Corporal Sweeney tossing them Northwest-made MP-40 submachine guns, two pounds lighter than the German originals due to carbon fiber folding stock and fittings, as well as web belts laden with magazine pouches. They leaped into Horakova’s car, and as the vehicle whirred and chunked and lifted into the air, Bobby flipped his personal phone open. “Come on, Ally, pick up!” he hissed under his breath.

  “Hi, Bobby,” he heard
his wife’s voice say. “You guys on your way already? Dinner won’t be for another hour.”

  “Yeah, honey, we’re on our way, but not for dinner,” her husband told her. “Ally, listen to me. I’m not joking, and you have to do what I say. We have some unwelcome visitors on their way, hired killers from Across The Road. They’re retaliating for that time we visited them a few weeks ago, and they’re coming to kill you and the kids as punishment for one of the nigger bitches.”

  There was a moment of silence on the other end. “All right. What do you want me to do?” she asked calmly. There was no panic, no unnecessary questions, no hysterics like an American woman would have immediately lapsed into. Northwesters grew up knowing that they lived in a world full of enemies, and an attack could come at any time, from any quarter.

  “My first instinct is to tell you to get out of the house, but American military copters will have infrared detection equipment, and these guys will have night-sights on their weapons,” said Bobby. “They’ll spot the ground car leaving and hit you on the road, or if you try to get out into the woods behind the house they’ll hunt you down like rabbits from the air. Take my X-4 and your own gun from the cabinet, grab the gas masks, and get Clancy and the girls into our bedroom. Barricade the windows and door with our mattress and mattresses from the kids’ rooms. Lie on the floor and keep this phone call open so we can communicate. Don’t open the door unless you know it’s us.”

  “Bobby, Clancy’s not here,” said Ally, for the first time a twinge of fear in her voice. “He’s out hunting.”

  “Damn!” cursed Bobby. “He’s twelve, so let’s hope he wandered farther than we gave him permission to, and he’s down by the creek or up on Pole Mountain. Get the girls and get them into the bedroom now, honey. Tell me when you’re locked down.”

  Tom Horakova spoke up, “Bobby, I know you don’t want to hear this, but American military copters may also have deep penetration thermal scanners, and they may be able to tell how many people are in the house and where they are, from the heat signatures. Suppose they target the house with a missile?”

  “Then I’ve just killed my wife and daughters,” said Bobby bleakly. “But Blackwell said this was personal with that limey son-of-a-bitch Hart. Apparently he’s a race-traitor in more ways than one, and he wants revenge because he was engaging in bestiality with that female wog from the FBI. If that’s the case, he’ll want to get in close and pull the trigger himself.”

  “What was that about Clancy?” asked Bob senior.

  “He’s out potting at wildlife with that twenty-two I gave him for his birthday,” said Bobby. “He’s away from the house.” He called his two mobile Guards on his handset. “Steve, Tasha, what’s your ETA at my place?”

  “About ten minutes, boss,” came Guardsman Martinelli’s voice. “I’m coming from Rimini.”

  “Me too, Lieutenant,” came Natasha Briggs’ voice. “I just passed over Wickesville.” Unlike helicopters, levitational autos could only hover over specially-engineered roads or highways with the required circuitry, so they couldn’t approach an area as the crow flew.

  “Okay, we’re facing NMA military choppers. Make sure your radar is on, and if you get a hostile blip you ground immediately and get the hell away from the car,” Bobby ordered them. “You’re not armored, and a chain gun will blow a skycar to shreds.”

  “Bobby!” said Allura’s voice in his earphone, low and urgent. “We’re in the bedroom now with the mattresses up. The girls are under the bed. I hear something outside. It’s not loud, but it sounds like a helicopter.”

  “They’re coming in using whisper mode, and they’ve beaten us to the house!” Bobby told the others in despair.

  * * *

  It had become customary in the Northwest American Republic for fathers to give sons their first personal firearm at age thirteen; Bobby believed his son to be sufficiently mature and well-trained both by himself and at school to receive a weapon at twelve. It was a .22-caliber Cascade Arms Plainsman (frankly, a Ruger knockoff) chambered for 5.6 X 35mm centerfire Hornet rounds with a hefty (for a .22) 40-grain bullet. It also came equipped with an infrared night scope. His father had given him permission to go out into the surrounding countryside with it on his own, with the proviso that he never went more than a couple of miles from home, and that he only shot at smaller animals. “Rabbits, prairie dogs, squirrels, and coyotes only,” Bobby had warned him. “Nothing bigger, son. You don’t want to bite off more than you can chew. Do not try to bring down a buffalo, or a bear, or a mountain lion with a .22. You can dangerously wound a cat with this, and a bear or a buffalo you’ll just piss off and get torn to pieces or stomped flat. No shooting at thylacines, either, if you see any. We’ve just brought them back from extinction. Unthinking and uncaring men wiped them out once before back in Tasmania. We’ve corrected that, but there’s still too few of them to be sure they’re back for good, so leave them alone.”

  Tonight Clancy was out on Pole Mountain hunting, or rather he was wandering around in the dark pretending to hunt, fantasizing about being characters from his favorite TV programs such as the great African mercenary Captain Caprivi, or the Confederate guerrilla leader Quantrill, or one of the legendary Zack Hatfield’s Northwest Volunteers from the popular Wild Bunch, which was now in its fourth season. Clancy was aware that a lot of old guys who had known the actual Hatfield and really were with the Wild Bunch back then were complaining about the Northwest Broadcasting Agency’s exaggerating and trivializing history, and the writers and producers of the show were in turn defending themselves on grounds of creative license, but Clancy didn’t care. He liked the show, and he wished his mom and his grandfather the Colonel would let them make a movie about Operation Belladonna and his famous grandmother, but for some reason they wouldn’t.

  Clancy hadn’t even fired at anything tonight, just enjoyed a ramble along his favorite mountain trail, where he had sat on a log for a while and watched the stars come out. He was getting hungry now, and heading for home, his breath frosting, guiding his way with a flashlight, when he paused on the path winding down to his house. The air was crisp and cold and the stars were like a sprinkling of dust on the moonless black sky, and as he looked it appeared for all the world like there were two giant bats hovering over his house, moving up and down slightly, blocking out the stars. The boy switched off his flashlight to see better, and he realized that they were helicopters. They weren’t completely silent: Clancy could hear their engines faintly. He couldn’t see their silhouettes clearly enough to identify them from retired Major Mallard’s class in Military Science for the Pioneers, but he immediately understood that these aircraft had no business being where they were and doing what they were doing, and he knew there was only one place they could have come from. Clancy stuck the flashlight in his pocket and unslung his rifle, made sure there was a round in the chamber and the safety was off. Then he began a careful descent down toward the house, weapon at the ready.

  Unknowingly, Colonel Malcolm Hart and his men were now facing one of the most formidable soldiers on the planet—a Northwest twelve-year-old.

  “Sir, the thermoscan confirms heat signatures on three people in what appears to be a rear bedroom of the structure,” the chopper pilot told Hart. “Looks like one adult, two juveniles.”

  “There should be four targets, five if the husband is home,” replied Hart. “Oh, well, a bit of a lighter bag than I’d hoped for, but one makes do. On my mark, lads, down we go.”

  Clancy got to a large pine growing out of a hillock which was slightly above and behind the roof of the garage, and through his infrared night scope he saw that both of the NMA teams now quickly rappelling down lines from the helicopters. He leveled his weapon, aimed carefully, and fired just as one of the rappellers touched ground. The old Volunteer luck held, and his bullet found a nigger, Captain Trevor Jones, smashing the hyoid bone and puncturing the carotid artery in his neck. The black Brit oogled and gurgled and hit the ground, rolling and flopping.
“Sniper!” yelled one of the mercenaries. A window in the house opened and Allura Campbell fired several shots at one of the helicopters from her husband’s army-issue X-4 rifle, dinging the armor plate.

  The skycar containing the four men from Basin swung around the mountain roughly forty feet in the air, which was hugging the highway, headed for the Campbell house. “We got copters!” said Horakova as his radar bleeped. “I’m going down!” He landed the skycar by the side of the road, and the four Northwest officers bailed out just in time to avoid a slashing hail of .50-caliber slugs from one the copters’ chain guns that tore the car in half. They knelt and returned fire, the 9-millimeter rounds rattling harmlessly off the armored aircraft. “Sweeney! Move and fire at the copters, make as much noise as you can, see if you can distract at least one of them away from the house!” yelled Colonel Campbell. He tossed Sweeney several extra magazines. “Bobby, you and Tommy come with me.” Several shots cracked out through the darkness along with several bursts of automatic fire. “Wait, who’s firing out behind the house? That doesn’t sound military, that sounds like something light.”

  “My God, it’s Clancy!” yelled Bobby. The Americans’ automatic weapons fire rattled in bursts. “They’re shooting at my son!” The three of them ran forward while Sweeney directed several long bursts of fire from his MP-40 at the helicopter, changing position after each burst of fire, dodging .50-caliber slugs from the chain gun.