The Brigade

by H. A. Covington

  “Okay, once the guys take out the sentries with a silenced piece, how do they get into the booths?” asked Randall.

  “The guard will have a swipe card in a black leatherette case in his belt, to gain him admittance to the booth in case of need,” said Hill, looking at the appropriate page on the photocopied Centurion Group procedural orders. “They get the card off his belt and swipe it. There will be a single projectionist inside the booth, and he or she has to be silenced, quickly. The armed guards we can’t take a chance on, but if the projectionist inside is white, I’d rather they not be killed, just cuffed and their mouths taped. What are these booths like inside?”

  “Small, but not too cramped,” said Brewer. “The guys will have to move the projection camera back out of the aperture, but it rolls on a kind of track set into the floor. The grenade throwers will have room for a good wind-up. The aperture is about six feet long and three feet high, so the shooters should have a good pan and even a little cover from any return fire. The distance down to the front row tables where the main targets will be sitting will be something over a hundred feet, and about a twenty-five degree angle. They should be able to get a lot of hits. The stage itself is big as hell, one hundred and thirteen feet wide and sixty feet deep, and the main podium will be maybe seventy yards from the projection booths.”

  “We can clear the stage,” said Cat.

  “Uh, guys, aren’t we forgetting something?” asked Christina. “What about the security cams in both the little hallways, and also in the main corridor? We’re going to have to get into the building and move through it, transporting weapons, not only observed by mobs of people and with guards stationed at every door, but also under surveillance from a central security camera system in the control room.”

  “We have to find some way to take out the whole security camera system at once,” said Hill, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

  “Which will immediately alert any security supervisor with the intelligence of grapes that something is going down,” pointed out Brewer.

  “Yes, but he won’t know what,” said Hill. “What’s the first thing people do when a computer or electronic thingummy of any kind goes on the fritz? They tap it, shake it, re-boot it, run diagnostic tests, and try to figure out whether or not it’s working properly. My guess is that whoever is running the security control room won’t immediately start screaming that the sky is falling when his cameras go out. He’s going to push buttons and click switches, ask his technician to test the system and waste how many precious seconds before he decides to go on full alert? Twenty? Thirty? Sixty? You can do a lot in sixty seconds if you’re fast and you know where you’re going and what to do when you get there.

  “Right, the basic plan is as follows: We get the seven-Volunteer team inside the Kodak, conceal them temporarily, yank all security cameras, although as yet we don’t know how we’re going to do that, and then before the guards can react, we sprint for these two projection booths, take down the guards, get inside the booths, get set up, and on Charlie’s signal Cat fires the opening shot and takes down the biggest kike he can sight in on. Then we do the old Shock and Awe trick. The Mad Minute should actually last between thirty and forty-five seconds. By the time the security commander knows for certain that it’s not just his cameras blowing a fuse and something really is happening, the guns are going off and there’s no more concealment required. The grenadiers will throw two grenades each, and keep one in reserve for the E & E. The first grenades will go as soon as the firing starts, then another two after thirty seconds. The full auto men will cover the corridors outside the projection booths and keep them clear of enemies, cack any ZOG goons who try to gain entry to the corridor and any glitterati who pop out of the private boxes into the halls. Then the grenadiers and the full auto men start popping smoke bombs, filling the theater with smoke and creating mass confusion, maybe even popping the sprinkler system just for shits and giggles, while our team gets out the way they came in.”

  “Which will be . . . ?” prompted Christina.

  “That’s the skeleton for us to build on guys, and yes, I know it has a couple of gaping holes,” admitted Hill. “The two biggest ones being how do we take out the cameras and, yes, ma’am,” he looked at Christina, “how the hell do we get in there to begin with?” Hill sighed. “Something about the air down here must put people in mind of movies all the time. I’m thinking now about the first Star Wars, when Luke Skywalker and his rebel space fighters were attacking the Death Star. That’s kind of what we’re doing now. Luke found a single small, vulnerable entry point, a waste disposal duct or something, that he could shoot a missile through right into the core of the Death Star. That’s what we need to find.”

  “Oh, I know where that is,” said Brewer.

  “Eh?” said Charlie.

  Brewer pointed to the map. “You can’t see the basement levels on this schematic, but right below the back of the stage, here, just below the old Green Room, there is a more or less secret entrance into the Kodak Theater. It’s an underground tunnel or walkway that leads to the lobby of the Hollywood Royale hotel about four hundred yards away at the northeast corner of the Hollywood and Highland Center complex. There’s no security guards or cameras either in the tunnel itself, or on either end.”

  “You knew about this?” demanded Randall incredulously. “And us sitting here beating our brains out all this time, trying to find a point of entry?”

  Brewer grinned at him. “A good movie always has surprise twists. Seriously, it’s semi-secret, largely a matter of Hollywood gossip and rumor, and before I said anything I had to make sure that this passageway really did exist, and then see if it could be accessible and usable for us. This subterranean corridor has been there for some years. I don’t know when it was first built. The why is a little more complex and bizarre. You remember what I told you about all those hijinks in the Green Room in past shows? Well, there are times during an Academy Awards show when, for the purposes of the celebrities and the studio executives, a surreptitious entry or exit from the ceremonies, sometimes willing and sometimes unwilling, is desirable. Mostly just to avoid media and paparazzi, of course. But also, a star may have become completely drunk or stoned or hysterical over losing an award, and gone completely out of control, and he or she has to be removed from the premises and taken away to get cleaned up and calmed down, but discreetly, not in front of the audience or the massed media and paparazzi. Brittany Malloy’s little high-wire striptease at last year’s awards is a good example. She was wrapped in some cop’s jacket and taken out by this underground exit and straight into a waiting ambulance, thence to Betty Ford, which is kind of the movie studios’ private Bastille for stars they want to keep around for a while because they’re still bankable at the box office, but who need some straightening out. Put it this way, not everybody who is sent to Betty Ford actually has an addiction problem. Sometimes they’re kind of doing time. The Burger Kings kept poor old Max Garrett in there for six months after he asked that cop who pulled him over down in Malibu if he was a Jew, and fined him millions of dollars, which he had to pay before they’d let him out. Otherwise they would have had a shrink commit him to a real looney bin with rubber walls.”

  “Unbelievable,” said Lee Washburn, shaking his head.

  “Sometimes police or medical assistance may be required backstage and the big studio moguls like Sid Glick may decide not to bother the regular Awards Show security or medical personnel and handle whatever the problem is on the QT, with everyone coming and going below ground. That passage is also intended, ironically, as an emergency escape route for the stars and the big cheeses if any bad acts break out in the auditorium, a fire or some looney tune movie fan with a gun, something like that. That’s why the passage comes out near the Green Room, which is where most of the high weirdness has taken place up until this year. It’s actually possible that when the shooting stops, our guys and some of these hebes may be heading toward the same exit. Glick and the BKs have alw
ays decreed that this secret tunnel not be covered by guards or cameras, because of the potential for embarrassment and blackmail.”

  “Okay, that means if we can get our assault team into the Hollywood Royale hotel, we can get them into the Kodak unobserved?” asked Christina.

  “Mmmm, maybe,” said Brewer. “There is a definite protocol involving the use of this underground corridor. It’s locked down on both the hotel and theater ends, and can only be opened with one of those damned swipe cards. The Hollywood Royale management has a master, and so do Sid Glick and a few of the Burger Kings, and temporary time-coded copies are issued every Oscar night to anyone whom the BKs think might need one, or who can wheedle one out of the hotel manager. Our guys will probably end up having to carry about three of those cards per team, to open various doors.”

  “So how do we get one?” asked Hill.

  “Here’s where the plot thickens,” said Brewer. “This year, some of the stars and lesser species who miss their Green Room have clubbed together, and in a kind of spiteful thumbing of their plastic surgery-enhanced noses at the studio execs, they have pooled some of their ample spare change and rented two whole floors of the Hollywood Royale for two nights, the night before and the night of the Awards Ceremony and the Governor’s Ball, which is held in the Kodak’s 40,000 square-foot ballroom. They have allegedly scammed a master copy of the key card for the underground tunnel from somebody at the hotel for a staggering sum, and had copies made, but only for the glitterati élite. The plan is to have their own series of little private parties and orgies running in the background at the Royale while everyone is all nice and smiling and polite at the main functions. All the while, everyone will be slipping out through the tunnel to these party rooms at the Royale for a snort of coke or a shot of smack or a quick dipping of the wick in some receptacle or other, or else just to flip the bird to anyone who dares to try and control these people’s behavior even for a single night.”

  “So all we need is to scam our own copy of one of these swipe cards off a real live movie star,” sighed Hill glumly. “I don’t suppose you’ve recruited any Oscar nominees into the Third Section’s intelligence apparatus, have you, Mr. Ripley?” Brewer said nothing, but smiled genially at them all.

  “‘Strewth, you haven’t, have you?” said Randall, looking up at Brewer sharply. “I mean, not really?”

  “I’m a talent agent, remember?” replied Brewer. “That’s what I do.”

  “You’re kidding!” said Hill, staring at him.

  “I think before we proceed any further, guys, we need to adjourn the meeting for a bit and I need to take Lieutenants Hill and Randall to meet the jewel in Third Section’s crown,” said Brewer. “Gentlemen, we’re going to Beverly Hills.”

  XIX

  A Star Is Suborned

  My resolution’s plac’d, and I have nothing

  Of woman in me. Now from head to foot

  I am marble-constant.

  Antony and Cleopatra—Act V, Scene 2

  Brewer made a call on his cell phone, spoke briefly with the person on the other end, and an hour later he drove the two officers to Beverly Hills in his late-model Lexus. Their destination was not the expected huge mansion with a swimming pool and a tennis court. Instead, Brewer pulled into a block of four upmarket but understated condos in the Spanish colonial style, circling a cobblestoned central courtyard with a fountain, discreetly set back in a small cul-de-sac off Beverly Boulevard. Brewer asked the pair of them to get down low in the rear seat as he punched a code into the box in the flower bed at driver height, and the wrought-iron electronic security gate slowly opened. “Cameras in the courtyard?” asked Hill.

  “Yes. I’m her agent and so I have legitimate business here,” said The Talented One. “If I park in this space here beside this cedar tree, there’s a blind spot that goes all the way up to the front door. That’s why I had you both sit in the rear seat, so you can exit from the rear driver’s side. Keep your hats and shades on, though, just in case.”

  On the way there, Brewer had filled them in on the source he had referred to as the jewel in Third Section’s crown, and so they evinced no surprise when the door to one of the downstairs condos was opened by a short, voluptuously built young blonde woman in her mid-twenties wearing jeans, sandals, and a pastel blouse. They stepped inside the apartment into a cedar-lined foyer, and the young woman stood by and waited in silence while Brewer took out a metal detector. She lifted her arms while he ran it quickly over her body. Brewer took out another electronic metered device that looked like a cell phone but wasn’t, and he disappeared into the rest of the apartment, scanning each room for listening devices in a practiced routine. While he did so, the woman pantomimed drinking motions with her hand and arched her eyebrows questioningly at the two other men. Hill leaned over and whispered softly, “Coffee would be fine for me, ma’am, and something cold is usually what my friend likes. Non-alcoholic.”

  She whispered back, so low no listening device could overhear her if any were present. “Yes, I know. General Order Number Ten.” She beckoned them into the living room, which was simply yet tastefully furnished with two plush velvet sofas and several leather armchairs, a dining nook and a large open kitchen off to one side. A patio opened out onto a lush green garden of flowers and ferns. She gestured for them to sit down while she went into the kitchen and took a full pot out of the coffee maker and poured two cups, then opened up the refrigerator and took out a large plastic bottle of ginger ale and another of cola, holding them up for Randall. He pointed to the ginger ale, and she filled a large tumbler and added ice cubes. She then put the kettle on the stove, took out a large plain white mug, and put a bag of herbal tea into it.

  In the meantime Hill and Randall took the liberty of examining the bookshelves that lined the wall of the living rooms, containing not only books but an extensive collection of music CDs and movie DVDs. Hill always did this whenever he had the chance, since nothing helped better in his assessment of someone’s character than learning what that person read and watched and listened to. The woman’s literary taste ran toward the classics of drama, and weighty novels such as no one actually read anymore. The plays ran from the Elizabethan and Restoration dramatists such as Dryden, Webster, Ben Jonson, and of course the complete works of Shakespeare, on to the nineteenth century masters such as Chekhov, Strindberg, Ibsen, and Gilbert and Sullivan, with a couple of slim volumes of Eugene O’Neill, a tag end of modernity.

  There were writers such as Dickens, Hawthorne, Trollope, Wilkie Collins, Thomas Hardy, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Balzac. Hill was delighted to see collections of Jules Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle’s historicals as well, his boyhood favorites. Her poetry library boasted Walt Whitman, Tennyson, and T.S. Eliot, but verged closely enough on political incorrectness so that Hill wondered why it hadn’t gotten her into trouble, since she also owned the legal but frowned-upon works of Rudyard Kipling and Ezra Pound. He was further surprised to see the outright banned works of the Australian poet laureate Henry Lawson, published by one of the pre-10/22 covert Party imprints, which might well have gotten her arrested if anyone had noticed it, knew who the hell Henry Lawson was, and denounced her to Homeland Security. The conspicuous absence of anything gay, lesbian, multicultural, and psychobabble-ish was almost as telling a point in her favor as was what was there. Her musical tastes were wide-ranging. There were CDs of Wagner, Mozart, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Handel, numerous operas, Gregorian chants, the motets of Gesualdo, Celtic music collections, Russian chorals, Doc Watson and Appalachian shape-note singing. Randall looked at Hill oddly, both of them sharing an unspoken thought: a young white female with this kind of taste and education was almost completely unknown in their experience, so what the hell did they have here? Her digital movie collection was the only thing that dated from the 21st Century, or indeed most of the 20th. Of course that included all of her own films and television episodes.

  Brewer came into the room. “The place reads clean,” he informed Hill
and Randall.

  “It’s not that we don’t trust you, Miss Collingwood,” began Hill with some diffidence, but she cut him off as she handed him his coffee and Randall the glass of ginger ale.

  “Of course you don’t trust me!” she said with a merry laugh. “You’d be crazy to trust anybody. Barry sweeps me with that thing every time we meet. I’m not a spy, but you don’t know that, and if they ever suspected me they’re quite capable of breaking in and bugging my apartment and my car and planting something on me. I understand, and I don’t mind.”

  “Henry Lawson?” asked Charlie Randall, holding up the volume.

  She blushed. “I really need to put that away where no one can see it. It’s illegal. But I keep coming back to it, for some reason. I did Thunder Down Under on location in the Northern Territory. You know, the movie about the NASCAR driver running drugs out of Darwin? It wasn’t one of my best, but I absolutely fell in love with the country.”

  Randall opened the book and found a passage, and quoted sadly,

  “I have seen so long in the land I love

  What the land I love might be,

  Where the Darling rises from Queensland rains

  And the floods run into the sea.

  And it is our fate that we’ll wake too late

  To the truth that we were blind,