The Brigade

by H. A. Covington

  Annette opened her mouth to ask a question, but Jackson waved her to silence. “That will be explained. You two hear me loud and clear on this. If you ever show up drunk or high, or if I ever smell liquor on your breath, you’re out—both of you—because I consider you two to be a team and I expect each of you to ride herd on the other one and make sure they perform their duty. One of you will be out for disobedience and the other will be out for letting your partner disobey. We haven’t had to cashier many Volunteers so far, because we’ve been choosy about who we ask to join, but it’s not a pleasant process and it involves assessing that person as a potential future security threat and taking corrective action if we feel it’s necessary. Guys, I’m not trying to threaten you or intimidate you. I am simply telling you straight up how things are. We will be trusting each other with our very lives. We have to live closer and become tighter than any band of brothers and sisters, and part of that process is that we must know that each of us can rely on every other man and woman in our team to do their duty. I trust that this will be the last time I ever have to speak to either of you about General Order Number Ten.”

  “It will be the last time, sir,” replied Annette quietly.

  “Good,” said Jackson with a smile. “Now, before we go any further, a little bit of the fun part. Both of you will need alias names. In your NVA work, and on the phone and on the computer and in text messages, you will always refer to each other not by your real names, but by your Volunteer names. By the way, on the phone and when you’re dealing with any other Volunteers besides the ones in this room, my own name at present is Arthur. Now how about you two? Any preferences? But whatever you pick, don’t get too attached to them. Your Party names will be changing every few months.”

  “Tom and Becky,” said Eric immediately.

  “There you go,” giggled Annette merrily. “That’s an inside joke. Eric and I have known each other since kindergarten, and in the sixth grade he was Tom Sawyer in the school play, and I played Becky Thatcher. Our first kiss was onstage, in front of all the other kids and a couple of hundred parents and spectators.”

  “I made damned sure I got that role,” reminisced Eric happily. “Had to beat up Marty Landers for it.”

  “Nothing wrong with the odd inside joke in your Volunteer work,” said Hill with a smile. “We try to be happy warriors. I chose my own name of Oscar after another Oscar who lived a long time ago. He had a list of Jews. So do I.”

  “Tom and Becky it is, then,” Bresler concurred. “For the time being.”

  Jackson continued, “Okay, Tom and Becky, A Company is what is known as an active service unit, which means that we plan, initiate, and execute actual physical attacks on the enemy. We shoot people, we burn things, and we blow things up. We’re the guys in the ski masks, the last sight that many a Mexican and monkoid and badge-carrying federal goon sees on this earth. Some of the staff people are beginning to call outfits like ours line companies.”

  “I thought all units were, uh, active,” said Eric.

  “All units are, in that if ZOG catches any of us we all get dragged away to torture and death,” spoke up Bresler from his window seat. “There are other kinds of companies, though, with specialties. Some have purely support and quartermaster duties. Some have purely intelligence functions, some are technical companies like our teams of computer geeks, some do propaganda, some are special high-powered Third Section death squads that carefully stalk and take out important targets, so forth and so on. We’re two and a half years in since 10/22, and there is already a good deal of variance across the Northwest in the way we’re organized. In every state and county, the local brigade commanders are going with what they find works for them. For example, here in Oregon we now have NVA battalions, which are mid-level units comprised of six or eight companies. There was a long debate about this, having to do with the fact that we’re getting in more and more Volunteers all the time but we have to keep individual teams to roughly five or six people, i. e. the number of people who can squeeze into a single automobile in case they have to do the Resurrection Shuffle real quick. To make a long story short, we decided to experiment with dividing brigades into battalions here in Portland, whereas in Seattle and Spokane they’re keeping it at two levels, brigade and company, and to handle the influx they’re creating more companies with more compartmentalized teams or crews per company. Both methods actually seem to work equally well.”

  “What about Idaho?” asked Eric. “Or am I asking too many questions?”

  “This is nothing that the enemy doesn’t already know,” replied Bresler. “Idaho and western Montana are developing oddly, maybe because they’re so damned big and they don’t have the concentration of cities and people we have along the I-5 corridor here. Most of the units there are rurally based, and they’re developing into something we call Flying Columns, groups of 30 to 60 Volunteers who roam the countryside more or less at will, like Jack Smith and the Montana Regulators, and O.C. Oglevy’s lunatics out in the Idaho Panhandle. They’re the guys that decorate the roadsides with nigger and Mexican heads on sticks. Something is developing out in the Wild East of the Homeland that is starting to look very much like liberated territory. The feds simply do not have the manpower to cover that entire huge area, especially with millions of their soldiers scattered across the globe anywhere there’s oil and fighting to steal it from the natives. So there are very large stretches off the interstates and along the blue highways, towns and villages where the NVA more or less rules the roost. We’re already trying some Flying Columns west of the mountains, like Tom Murdock’s column in the south part of the Olympic peninsula, and Corby Morgan up around Port Townsend and Port Angeles in the north. I’d say our First Brigade Third Battalion out along the North Shore would be good candidates for that. They’ve almost created just such a liberated zone to the west of here, in Columbia and Clatsop and Tillamook Counties. Counties the feds are increasingly careful to avoid.”

  “Captain Hatfield and the Wild Bunch?” asked Annette eagerly.

  “That’s what the media call them, yes,” responded Hill with a chuckle.

  “We’ve heard of them, Hatfield and his Winchester and his hat with the feather in it. Almost all the white kids at Ashdown think they’re super-cool, although we only dare to say so in whispers,” Eric told them.

  “I’ll tell Zack that next time I see him,” laughed Jackson. “He’ll be intrigued to learn that he has preppy groupies. Anyway, getting back to what I was saying, another way we do it here in Oregon that is slightly different from the rest of the Army is that we have separate EOD units in each battalion.”

  “What’s EOD?” asked Eric.

  “Explosive Ordnance Delivery. Bombing units,” replied Jackson. “The EOD unit has its own quartermaster who is responsible for obtaining explosives and material to make explosives. They have their own techs who make timing devices and radio-controlled detonators, mechanics who install special shocks and other modifications in any vehicles used for transport. Then there’s the packers who actually construct the explosive device itself and install it in the vehicle or whatever the delivery system is, as well as facilities like chem labs and specially constructed hidden storage places for explosives, etcetera. Elsewhere in the Homeland each NVA company has their own EOD people, or Volunteers in the company who are assigned to that duty, and their own explosives and equipment and supplies. This means that when a company gets rolled up, arrested or killed or dispersed because of a security breach, not only the number of guns the Army has but also the explosive capacity at its disposal is diminished. EOD-related stuff is high maintenance for us. It tends to be bulky, heavy, dangerous and conspicuous to move. It cuts down on a company’s mobility, and mobility is how we survive and keep on fighting. So the way we’ve been doing it for some months now here in Portland is that anyone from company commander on up can propose a bombing target. It goes up the line and is approved by battalion or brigade, the tactical details are worked out, the battalion
explosives officer figures out what is needed, the ordnance is prepared, and then it is delivered to the active service unit assigned the mission for delivery to the target. A Volunteer, or usually two, goes to a designated pickup point, takes charge of the explosive device and takes it away, or drives it away if it’s a car or a truck bomb, and then delivers it to the target and detonates it. The EOD people who provide instructions for use are always masked, so they cannot be identified if the mission goes wrong. That way our explosive capability is much harder for the enemy to get at.”

  “But what if the EOD unit itself is caught or betrayed?” asked Eric. “Also, suppose something comes up wherein an active service unit needs a bomb in a hurry and can’t go through all that red tape, er, I mean procedure?”

  “That hasn’t happened yet,” said Bresler. “If it does, we re-build the EOD company by pulling in people from other units. Thus far the system seems to be working. But each company quartermaster has several devices stashed away in case a target of opportunity presents itself that requires a quick response, like if we see some Unionist’s car parked in an accessible place and we tailpipe him. Plus a lot of smaller devices to use as booby-traps. A company commander can use them at his discretion.”

  Jackson chimed in. “By the by, one exception to this is hand grenades, which are worth their weight in gold and more fun than a barrel of monkeys. When any quartermaster gets grenades they don’t last long. He shares them out among the floaters, and they go out and toss ’em. You will notice that Portland has a lot fewer Mexican cantinas and bodegas on every corner now. I’ve mentioned this stuff because although right now the heavy lifting in the boom-boom line is done by a special unit, you will be given cross-training in explosives and handling, and if you show any aptitude for it you might be asked to join EOD. They’re always on the lookout for new talent, and as the XO mentioned, we may have to reconstitute the EOD unit on short notice. How are you guys in chemistry class?”

  “I’m going to be an engineering major,” said Eric. “I’m familiar with a lot of the basic chemistry already.”

  “Then we may have a career opportunity for you,” said Bresler. “Hopefully not too short an opportunity.”

  “I’m only so-so,” admitted Annette. “We’ve got a couple of really intelligent science geek kids at Ashdown, though. They might be willing to help. I’ve noticed science kids don’t like niggers and spics much.”

  “Good,” said Wayne Hill. “Now we begin to get into the nitty gritty about what we want the both of you to do, at least at first, until you’re more seasoned and we think you’re ready for more wet work. The first thing I want you to get into is recruiting, which is something that every Volunteer does, but not in the sense that you may think. One of the most serious and necessary security precautions the NVA practices is that no one joins the NVA. The NVA joins you. You don’t just walk up to the other kids in your school and say, ‘Hi, guys, anybody up for a little domestic terrorism?’ Remember the prime directive: you never admit to anyone under any circumstances that you are with the NVA. What you have to do, both of you, is to compile a list in your own minds of the kids at your school who in your opinion might secretly hold racial views, the ones who are really sick and tired of all the negroid and government bullshit, the ones who have had relatives or loved ones killed in Iraq or Iran, the ones who could be potential Volunteers. Work with Wade Schumaker on this; he will know these kids as a teacher and you will know them as fellow students. You must never approach these kids yourselves, no matter how sure you may be that they’re ready and willing. You will give Billy here a full profile of each possible recruit, and then you forget about them. They will be observed and approached separately by a Volunteer specially assigned to recruiting duties. Sometimes it takes months of observation and investigation before we make up our minds to approach a potential recruit. Sometimes we never do. If we do recruit anyone else in your school, you may not even be told about it, unless we see some tactical advantage in adding someone to your team.

  Hill continued, “Beyond that, we are very interested in the student body at Ashdown Academy for another reason. Their parents. Ashdown is one of the most upper class prep schools in the Empire; the kids who go there are the sons and daughters of the ruling élite. Senators and Congressmen, major corporate executives from Fortune 500 multinationals, major media executives, the most senior civil servants, Hollywood stars and production moguls, intelligentsia and powerhouse public figures. We have to know the enemy, know everything about him. I want you to send me, through Billy here, every item of information that you can come up with about every kid at Ashdown, what their parents do and when and how they do it, their movements, their divorces and scandals and private lives, anything that we can’t get from the publicly available media. Wade has been doing some of this for us, but you guys will have a much better perspective because the kids will say things to you they won’t say to a teacher or authority figure. You keep your ears open, and make notes in your mind. To save time and make sure you make a full report, you can type up this information and put it on a CD if you like—not a hard copy whose printer could be traced—and use a school computer, not your own laptops. Then you just pass the CD to Wade or Billy. A lot of this intelligence will be irrelevant to our purposes, but you pass on everything you pick up about anyone, and you let us decide what’s relevant and what isn’t.”

  Jackson spoke up. “Look, comrades, I don’t want to sound like I’ve got a case of blue-collar envy, or keep harping on your relative social and wealth positions in life. I’m not making smart-ass cracks about rich kids here. I’m not like that. I’m a National Socialist. This war is about blood, not economics. It’s about bringing all white people together so we can sink our class and religious differences, ride out the storm of the 21st century and survive as a race. But to do that we can’t all be ex-convicts who grew up in trailer parks and work as manual laborers or pump jockeys. We really do need to recruit active Volunteers on your elevated socio-economic level. We have to know about your fellow students and their parents because these are the people who run America. These are the people who keep American society functioning, such as it is. These are the people who will eventually make the collective decision that the war has to come to an end and that means they have to give us the Northwest Republic as the price of peace. That’s why we consider you guys to be an important catch.”

  “Not to mention the fact that after independence we’re going to need skilled, intelligent, educated people to build a new nation and a new order of society from the ground up,” added Hill. “Now, I can’t give you any idea what this intelligence you provide will be used for. Maybe nothing bad. But it’s conceivable that you could be setting the parents of some of your friends up for assassination. If you have a problem with that, tell me now,” Hill concluded.

  “They say this is a race war, Lieutenant,” said Eric soberly. “But it’s more than that. It’s a civil war between whites over the presence of non-whites in America, just like the one from 1861 to 1865. Once again, they’ve got us killing each other simply through their being here. They shouldn’t be here, not at all. Annette and I understand that there are going to be white people who choose the other side. We wouldn’t have come here tonight if we weren’t prepared for that. We understand the implications of our actions and we’ll take the consequences.”

  Annette spoke up as well, in a determined voice. “Sir, when you ask me to make war on Ashdown Academy, you’re asking me to make war on a whole system that allowed an animal to get close to my sister and destroy her, for no reason other than the fact that his skin was the color of shit and he could bounce a ball on a wooden floor. A system that looked the other way, and treated my sister’s death as just one of those things, like an automobile accident or a tornado—as if black hatecrime against white people is some kind of natural disaster or visitation from God that no one can do anything about. A system that told me I was to forget what happened to my sister, forget she ever lived,
accept her death like pigs at the trough accept it when one of them is carried away to be slaughtered and just keep on shoveling the slops into their faces. That’s all white people are in the long run. We’re just livestock to these people. They slaughter us whenever they choose, in Iraq, or in an alley, or in a nursing home if you’re old and white and poor and some Third World doctor decides he needs to cut expenses. I have to make sure that my children and Eric’s won’t have to go through anything like I have done with Jan’s death, ever. Eric’s right, I understand the implications and the consequences. Ashdown Academy and everything it stands for has to go. I pray to God I don’t have to hurt anyone who is my friend, but I will do so if I have to in order to bring this horror to an end, and if that’s wrong then I will take that sin on my soul. You don’t have to worry, I’m in this all the way.”

  “Well said, both of you,” replied Jackson with a nod.

  “Ah, now, as to going all the way . . .” began Hill delicately. He looked at Jackson, who laughed in a wry tone and shook his head.

  “No sir, you go right ahead,” Jackson said. “I want to hear how you tell this.”