The Brigade

by H. A. Covington

  “You’d also be completely visible to anyone on the other side of the building,” said Hatfield, shaking his head in disgust. “Plus when we E and E after the shots you’d have to scramble down this side of the roof within range of their weapons, a dangerously exposed target yourself. Damn, Cat, I’m sorry. I should have gotten up here and checked it out first. Let that be a lesson for me. No, this is bullshit. We’ll have to use one of the windows. Let’s go back.”

  Back in the stairwell, Hatfield said, “Let’s uncase the weapons and get ready, leave the boxes here like we planned.” They both opened the boxes with their gloved hands and took out their guns, slapping in magazines and chambering rounds. Cat checked the mountings on his telescopic sight, which he had left locked onto the weapon, and briefly sighted it through the open door toward one of the trees to make sure it had not been jarred out of place and he’d kept his zero. Hatfield put the duct tape and plastic ties in his jacket pocket and a pouch with magazines for the grease gun over his shoulder on a strap, then screwed on the silencer for the .22 and put that in his other pocket. They moved down the stairwell to the third floor. “Masks,” said Hatfield, and they pulled their ski masks down over their faces. He peeped out the door. The corridor was still empty. “Okay, twenty-four condos in this whole place, eight to a floor, four to a side. I’d say our optimum position would be the window of the last one down from here on our right. That would be 3-D. Get your lockpick ready.” They swiftly moved down the hall, weapons at the ready, to the far end of the corridor and apartment 3-D. As they passed 3-C, they heard the television clearly from within. “That one’s occupied,” whispered Hatfield. “We’ll have to be quiet once we get inside.” They moved to the door of 3-D. Cat leaned his rifle against the wall and took out a small folding tool similar to a jackknife, with a number of thin and peculiar-looking blades and picks opening out of it. He was about to start worrying at the lock when he noticed something.

  “Shit!” he said, pointing to the upper corner of the door. Hatfield saw a small glowing red light and a small shield with three tiny stars on it. “It’s a TriStar alarm system,” Lockhart said. “Those are quite legit, I can tell you. We open this door and we’ll set it off. Whoever lives here must have armed it when he or she left this morning.”

  Hatfield looked at the nameplate on the door, which read Finckbone. “Sounds Jewish,” he said. “A Jew would most likely know that Steinberg Security Systems was bent, and he wanted to make sure he got a real alarm system in his crib, so he installed his own. Damn! That means we’ll have to use 3-C. Somebody’s in there, which means any alarm system won’t be armed, but I really did hope we wouldn’t have to take hostages. Crap! Well, let’s get on with it. We’re running out of time. Those feebs may be on their way already.” They moved silently to the door of 3-C. The name on the door said Englehardt. Cat quickly and deftly worked one of his odd blades in the lock, then another. The second one did the trick; the deadbolt sprang and the door slid open a notch, revealing a gold chain. The two men could hear the television clearly now. It was CNN news. “I’ll kick it,” whispered Zack. He stepped back and with a powerful kick snapped the chain and slammed the door open. He and Cat leaped into the apartment foyer and Lockhart kicked the door shut and locked it behind them. They charged into the living room.

  A white-haired little old man was sitting on the sofa watching the television. He was fully dressed in a suit and tie, cleanly shaven, and on the sofa next to him was a aluminum medical cane. Apparently he hadn’t even heard the door being kicked in. He looked up at the two intruders in some surprise, calmly picked up the remote and muted the television, and said “There ain’t nothing in here worth stealing, muchachos. You don’t believe me, tear the place apart if you want, and if you’re gonna get all pissed off when you don’t find nothing and kill me, then to hell with you and your beaner mamacitas who produced you through copulation with a goat and a burro respectively. Now how d’ye like them apples?”

  “We’re not Mexicans, Mr. Englehardt,” said Hatfield. “My name is Smith, and this is Mr. Jones. We’re with the Northwest Volunteer Army. Sir, I apologize for breaking in on you like this. It’s damned rude of us, I know, but unfortunately it’s necessary for us to make use of your windows. We’ll be out of here as soon as we can, I promise you, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to restrain you to make sure you don’t do anything foolish. Mr. Jones, check the rest of the apartment, make sure there’s no one here.” Cat headed first into one bedroom, then the other. He shook his head. Hatfield slung his submachine gun and pulled out the duct tape.

  “Northwest Volunteer Army, eh?” said the old man keenly, studying them sharply as if he could see beneath their masks. “You’re all over the news this morning. It’s all I watch these days. News and old movies. Got satellite TV, three hundred channels and nothing on but crap. Never watch anything made after John Wayne died. Would you be the same fellers who blew away those two Red Sea pedestrians out there on the pier last night?”

  “Something like that,” said Hatfield.

  “Hell, sorry I missed your performance,” said the old man. “I was watching Pollyanna, of all things. Heard the shots, of course, but you boys had hooked up and booked by the time I got to the window, just like I told those cops who came banging on the door at the crack of dawn. So now you’re back, and judging from that M-21 it looks like you’re planning on doing some more shooting. From my window. You gonna shoot down police officers, son?” he asked Cat. “That’s kind of cold, don’t you think? They’re just ordinary Joes like you and me.”

  Cat looked at Hatfield, who explained, “I hope we don’t have to harm any of the local officers, sir. We’re after bigger game. Two FBI agents are on their way here, and they’re the ones we want.”

  “Well hot damn!” cackled old Englehardt. “By all means, use my window! And tie me up too, if ya gotta. But I need to warn you, son, I had to get my prostate yanked out a while back, and my bladder ain’t none too predictable. When I gots to go, I gots to go, so don’t be offended if I piss in my pants. You might want to put some towels under my chair or something.”

  Thinking quickly, Hatfield decided to take a chance. “Sir, we really don’t want to tie you up or gag you or inconvenience you any more than we have already, but we have a job to do here and we can’t risk you cutting up rough or trying to telephone anybody or yelling for help at the wrong moment.” Cat-Eyes was already peering out of both windows. He selected the one on the right, opened it, quickly removed the screen and closed the blinds to a small aperture of about eighteen inches. He moved a small table beneath the window and pulled up a chair. He sat down and attached a clip-on bipod to the rifle’s barrel a few inches behind the muzzle, wrapped his left arm through the sling for extra bracing, and sighted left to right.

  “Perfect,” he said.

  “Mr. Englehardt, will you give me your word that you won’t try to interfere with us in any way?” asked Hatfield. “If so, we’ll keep an eye on you but we won’t tie you up.”

  “You got it, son,” said the old man. “But on one condition. When the time comes I want to peep out this other window and watch.”

  “You don’t like federal agents, Mr. Englehardt?” asked Lockhart in amusement.

  The old man scowled. “I don’t like anyone who has anything to do with the government that stole my Social Security that I paid into all my life, blew it all in the stock market when they switched over to those personal investment accounts as they called ’em, and left me to live on $445 a month compensation benefit, which I only get because I was already drawing Social Security when it went belly up. When my grandchildren get to be my age they won’t get doodly squat, but they still have to pay deductions to pay off the deficit those sons of bitches ran up in Washington when they gambled away the Social Security fund like so many drunken sailors.”

  “How can anyone live on $445 a month?” asked Hatfield in wonder. “And if you don’t mind my asking, how can you afford to live in this pl
ace?”

  “Oh, the Jews who built these condos got a complete rebate on all property taxes forever and a day from those corrupt leeches in the state and county government, no taxes or water or electricity rates at all so long as they reserve two apartments for codgers like me, so-called deserving seniors,” snarled the old man. “Me and old lady Hoskins down in 2-B drew the short straws. I’m a veteran, Vietnam. That’s how I recognized Jonesy’s weapon there. I used to tote the old M-14 myself, back in the day. Betty Hoskins got in by claiming she was a dyke, which is kind of ridiculous for a woman of 75, and it shamed the hell out of her, but what the hell else could she do? If it weren’t for this place we’d have both been sent to a home and probably gotten the needle by now. Damned wog doctors can’t kill us old white folks off fast enough, once the private insurance runs out. But it ain’t the whole $445 I have to live on every month, son. They still charge me $400 a month for this apartment.”

  “That leaves you $45 a month to live on. How can you possibly survive on that?” demanded Hatfield.

  “I’ll show you. Go look in my kitchen, in the cupboards over the counter.” Hatfield went in and opened the cupboards. He saw long rows of cans.

  “Dog food?” said Zack in a startled voice, incredulous and horrified. “You live on dog food? Mother of God!”

  “Cheap dog food at that,” chortled Englehardt. “Alpo is gourmet cooking for me. Oh, I do get some help from the local food bank, if I can get down there early on Monday morning before the Mexicans swarm in and grab all the good stuff. They give me some rice and beans, usually, and sometimes dried potatoes and onions, and I’ve learned to make up a kind of goulash. Also I can sometimes get some things like Louisiana hot sauce or garlic to kill the taste, although most anything that’s strong enough plays hob with my old digestion. I cook it all up in one pot on the stove there and keep it festering. That’s it in front of you.”

  Hatfield lifted the lid of a stock pot on the stove and saw a gooey mess that looked like vomit inside. “Dear God!” he moaned.

  Englehardt shrugged. “My two grandsons and my granddaughter help me out whenever they can, although they’re in bad shape themselves. My son Adam, their father, was killed in Iraq back in ’07. Civilian contractor, his truck hit a mine. He was supposed to be working for Halliburton but it turned out he was actually employed by a sub-contractor himself, who filed Chapter 11 so they wouldn’t have to pay all those death benefits they promised their employees. My grandson Todd was in Gaza, and he made me an allotment from his pay, which helped, but then he came back missing a leg and they kicked him out, so that stopped. My grandson George hasn’t worked in a couple of years. He told a nigger joke and some white asshole informed on him, so he’s blacklisted. My granddaughter Cassie’s husband is in Afghanistan now; he offered me an allotment but I told him to keep it, he has his own family to worry about. Most of the things I would want to spend money on I can’t do no more, anyway. And after all, this place does come with free cable, so I can watch the world go to hell every day. Tell me something, boys,” the old man asked. “Is it true that those two kikes last night were about to sit down to a $60,000 imported dinner flown in from Israel?”

  “Where’d you hear that?” asked Lockhart, his eyes still out the window.

  “CNN. They had some rabbi from Portland on there crying his eyes out and sawing on the sad violins like mad, talking about how these two wonderful Jewish love boids was gonna sit down to this great expensive meal that Jakie had spent all this money on to show his love for his Irene. The hell of it is, I think he meant it. That’s how a Jew shows his love, by spending huge sums of money. They quantify everything in money, everything in the world has a price tag for them. And when I heard this I was thinking about Todd, who lost his leg defending Israel from the poor nation they stole that land from, defending that Jew’s right to sit down to a sixty grand feed not three hundred yards from where I sit eating dog food. That’s a Silver Star from Khe Sanh hanging on my wall there, and now my son is dead and my grandson maimed for life defending those people and their shitty little stolen country, nothing but a blank wall ahead for those I will soon leave behind, and they sit there within my sight stuffing sixty thousand dollars in their faces. God damn them! God damn them to hell! Christ, I get so hungry . . .” Hatfield saw the tears rolling down the old man’s cheeks now. Englehardt looked up and said quietly. “Boys, if that was you out there last night, you did right. You did a good thing, a just thing. Don’t ever doubt that. I can die happier now, because I lived to see a little justice, for me and mine. Today you’re going to give me some more. Do what you gotta do, boys, and don’t worry about me.”

  Hatfield’s phone beeped. He took out his phone and saw I CAN TASTE THAT GREEN BEER NOW. “They’re coming,” he told Cat. He closed the phone and it beeped again almost right away. This time he read TWO DELIVERIES SHOULD BE THERE SOON. “Okay, Mr. Green is on them. Green SUV, fully tinted windows, remember.”

  “They’ll have to exit the vehicle when they get out there on that pier,” said Lockhart confidently. “When they do, I’ll knock both their asses into the river!”

  In the Chrysler Aspen, Rabang Miller had finally finished tearing the deputy’s citation into the tiniest possible shreds, and she rolled down the window and tossed the confetti out. Brian Pangborn, who was driving, looked over and said to her sharply, “Roll that window up! You know procedure! You heard that sheriff! It’s possible one of these people may be a military-trained sniper!”

  “Like these bumpkins are going to give me another ticket for littering?” Rabang sneered. “Besides, I think that sheriff is in with the racists.”

  “Oh?” said Pangborn politely, with a weary roll of his eyes. “On what do you base that brilliant deduction?”

  “I’m a woman of color,” she told him primly. “That means I have a feel for racists, a sixth sense.”

  Pangborn sighed. “Look, I’m going to tell you something, Rabang, and if you want to report me to the Diversity and Tolerance Office, fine, but you’d better listen up. This is for your own good. Not all white men are racists and engaged in some deep dark conspiracy to do down women and people of color. Not all white males are your enemies, but if you and your kind don’t quit acting like horse’s asses, by God, eventually we will be!”

  “And just what the hell do you mean by my kind?” demanded Rabang frigidly. Oh, shit, I’ve done it this time! Pangborn moaned to himself. It’s Nome, Alaska for me for sure. He was about to start framing a suitably groveling apology when Rabang’s cell phone chimed with the first few bars of “I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar” and she opened it. Pangborn drove along in silence and turned left onto 39th Street while Rabang engaged in a conversation with someone apparently from her son’s expensive private middle school in Portland. Sounds like Junior has dropped himself in the shit again, thought Pangborn. Maybe it will take her mind off my politically incorrect lapse there. He drove past Columbia Prospect on his right, onto the pier, and toward the police cars and yellow crime scene tape on the platform.

  “There they are,” said Hatfield, looking through a crack in the blinds. Old man Englehardt gingerly peeped out the second window through the blinds as well.

  “Got ’em,” replied Lockhart, sighting the rifle and slowly matching the Chrysler’s pace.

  In the SUV Rabang closed her phone in a fit of irritation. “What’s Juan done now?” asked Pangborn, hoping to distract her from the previous conversation.

  “The usual,” snapped Rabang. “Just a few rocks in his locker this time, but this is one time too many and they’re talking expulsion. If he gets kicked out of Westwood Academy that will be the second school this year! I told the principal I’d be in for a parent teacher conference at 1 o’clock.”

  “That’s going to be cutting it pretty close,” said Pangborn as he slowed to a stop by the state police forensics van. “We’ll be at least half an hour here, then two hours minimum back to Portland, where we’ll run into lunch hour traffic. I don�
�t think you can make it. You better call him back and re-schedule.”

  “Fuck it,” said Rabang. “I’m not going to risk throwing another eight thousand dollars down the tube because that little junkie can’t even finish a semester. Let’s go back now.”

  “Back to Portland? Now?” asked Pangborn, stunned. A senior Clatsop County deputy was walking over to their vehicle. “Aren’t we supposed to be investigating a double homicide?”

  “Screw that,” said Rabang. “You heard me tell Cletus back there that he’s got forty-eight hours to catch these racists, and since I doubt if he could catch a cold, in two days we’ll be back here with full authority and our own team, with a list of names from Homeland Security. We will shake every tree in this county, gather up all the apes who fall out, and use the Dershowitz Protocol to get the information we need, as well as all the confessions we need.” The deputy was knocking on the window. Pangborn rolled his window down and flashed his badge.

  “FBI,” he said.

  “Hey there,” said the deputy. “Sheriff said you guys would be coming out. We’ve been waiting on you.”

  “Can you give us a minute, deputy?” asked Pangborn, and rolled up the power window again. “I know why the Dershowitz Protocol was instituted and all, but I have to confess I’d like to get a confession once in a while without sticking hypodermic needles under people’s fingernails,” he told his partner in exasperation.