The Brigade

by H. A. Covington

  “Actually, I watched the Oscars for the first time this year,” said Morehouse with a quiet smile. “The finale was a real blast. Now that’s a tasteless joke. The name of this gentleman with the informed opinions is Barry Brewer. You may have heard of him.”

  “Barry Brewer is Erica Collingwood’s agent!” exclaimed Julia. “So that’s how—sorry. Uh, look, Red, suppose I give them Barry’s name and they turn him over to the FBI, or they just have him killed. Their version of putting a horse’s head in your bed?”

  “Then he will be avenged,” said Morehouse calmly. “However, before you leave I want to give you a little conversation piece. The last time you saw Mr. Blaustein, did he have to ask you the time?”

  “Uh, no, not me, but he did ask his secretary,” said Julia curiously. “That was just before I went to the Los Angeles airport. He said he’d lost his Rolex. He was really pissed off about it, said it was a birthday gift from his wife.”

  “Dorothy Blaustein, yes.” Morehouse pulled a gold watch out of his short pocket and handed it to her. “Quite expensive, diamond settings. Must be worth at least 50 grand. You can see, it’s inscribed on the back of the case, To Arnie from Dotty, and the date. It was removed from his nightstand in his Beverly Hills mansion, several nights ago, while he and his wife were both asleep. No alarm was tripped, none of his guards saw anything, and his dog didn’t bark. Give this to him when you see him, and tell him it would be wise to treat Mr. Brewer with courtesy and respect, always. It’s not a horse’s head, but I think he’ll get the message.”

  Zack’s wireless phone bleeped. He opened it and listened for almost a minute, then closed it. A grim expression was on his face. “Damn,” he said softly. He looked up at Lear. “Ted, you and I need to talk. It looks like our luck has run out.”

  “What do you mean?” demanded Lear.

  “That was brigade,” Hatfield told them. “They’ve confirmed that we’re about to get some unwelcome tourists here in Astoria. Fattie’s coming, in force.”

  Sheriff Ted Lear was the first to speak. “I didn’t hear anything about that!” he protested.

  “I know you didn’t, Ted, or you wouldn’t have let Julia come up here,” replied Hatfield.

  Morehouse spoke up. “That means that you weren’t told anything by either the Oregon State Attorney General, or by the feds or anyone else, which is bad news for you. That means that the federals consider your department to be compromised, which of course it is, from their point of view. That in turn means that the FATPO aren’t coming just for us. They’re coming for you, and most likely for your family as well, and for anyone they consider to be on your team. FATPO always enters an area with two lists in their pockets, Sheriff. One is a list of alleged Nationalist or NVA sympathizers. Sometimes those lists are accurate, sometimes they’re not. I think you can assume that you’re on that list, and maybe your mom and Julia here if the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, which is the case more often than not with this government. The second list is one of potential Unionist collaborators, or loyal Americans as they would say, people who can be relied on to rat out any of their neighbors with Nationalist inclinations, anybody with NVA-connected family members, so forth and so on.”

  “We had an informant in your department from the very first, Ted . . .” Hatfield said.

  “So I eventually gathered,” said Lear sourly. “I was, well, disappointed in Chrissie.”

  “Which means that the government probably has at least one in your department as well,” Hatfield went on remorselessly. “We’ll find out who after you are kicked out of office and maybe interned or disappeared, and we see who gets to become the next sheriff of Clatsop County. Who has a hankering for your job, Ted? Anyone spring to mind?”

  “Maybe,” replied Lear with a weary sigh.

  “Well, whoever it is, you can bet they know that the FATPO are coming soon, and when they take over they’ll replace most local law enforcement here with politically reliable officers, most likely assorted minorities from outside the area. Same with the Astoria and Seaside PDs, you get the idea. Looks like our days of peaceful if occasionally bumpy coexistence are at an end. The shit’s going to hit the fan, I’m afraid.”

  “Damn!” said Lear with a sigh, his shoulders sagging. “I really hoped we’d make it through somehow. What the hell should I do in the meantime?”

  “Prepare to be invaded and occupied,” said Morehouse levelly. “Get back to your office and start cleaning house. Destroy any and all records, correspondence, e-mails, logs, evidence, gun records, anything that the federals might use to identify local people and target them for arrest and victimization. Format all the hard drives on your computers. Release all prisoners in your jail; whatever they’ve done, handing them over to these body-armored federal gangsters is too much of a punishment. If anyone protests, he’s probably your rat. Deal with him at your discretion. Remove all guns and ammunition and as much other equipment as you can from your armories in CSO and the local PDs, stash it all away somewhere to prevent the FATPO from seizing them and using them against the people in this county. Hide or destroy anything you have that you don’t want used to do harm to the people here, because these apes are coming to do nothing but harm. Start making calls to anyone who qualifies as a real community leader and tell them to batten down the hatches. Above all, insofar as it is at all humanly possible, save the children. Tell people to get their kids to safety anyway they can, even if it’s out of the Northwest for a while. This is the Iron Heel, Ted, and it is coming here to crush and to maim and to destroy all resistance to the tyranny in Washington, D.C. Prepare for it like you would prepare for a tsunami. If I were you, I wouldn’t be around when our new lords and masters roll up to your office in their black armored cars. They probably mean to kill you.”

  “Oh, God!” moaned Julia.

  “Julia, getting back to your mission, we need to get you the hell out of here. Tonight,” said Morehouse. “Zack, I know you’ve got a million things to do, but before anything else you need to give that skel Wally a call, and then get her back down to the dock and on that boat back to Portland.”

  “I’m on it,” said Zack, opening his phone.

  “I’ll give her a ride,” said Ted. “Looks like I have to go back to work, so it’s on the way.”

  Morehouse looked at her gravely. “Julia, I am going to ask that you don’t tell Walter Post anything specific about why you’re leaving early and not spending the night. Just say you and Zack had a lover’s quarrel or something.” Julia couldn’t help but give a feeble giggle. “We don’t know whose side he’s on, most probably his own, and in his hands a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. He might try to make some money by letting the Fatties know that we’ve been tipped off, and that can get a lot of people killed. Including your brother and including Zack.”

  “I won’t say anything,” said Julia, shaking her head. “Good thing I didn’t even get a chance to unpack.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” said Morehouse gravely.

  Zack stood up. “Okay, I’m outta here, and you’d best be rolling along as well, Red. I think the AC would want you out of the area.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll stick around and do anything I can to help until I’m flat out ordered to E&E,” said Morehouse.

  “Suit yourself. Geraldine, it’s always a pleasure to see you,” said Hatfield to Mrs. Lear, “And I am sorry it can’t be under better circumstances.”

  “It will be some day, Zack,” said the old lady quietly. “For now you have to do what a man has to do, as do you, Ted. I don’t have to add I will be praying for you both. And you, Henry, even if you are a Nazi atheist.”

  “Nazi agnostic, ma’am,” said Morehouse, rising.

  Hatfield turned to Julia, who had also stood up. “Jules, it was really good seeing you again. Just wish it didn’t have to be so brief. Let’s not make it fourteen years next time.” He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. “Take care of yourself.” He
picked up his rifle and pulled the broad-brimmed hat down over his head, turned and headed out the door. Julia followed him and caught up with him on the porch, putting her hand on his arm. He turned to look at her and by the porch light he saw tears glistening in her eyes.

  “This is just like Iraq all over again,” she whispered. “I don’t want you to die. I’m scared I’ll do what I did back then, make myself forget about you so that when I finally heard you were dead, it wouldn’t destroy me as well. Now that I’ve seen you I can’t go through that again. It takes too long and it puts scar tissue over everything in me. I can’t live like that anymore.”

  “Before you came tonight I was wondering whether or not I would say anything to you,” replied Hatfield quietly. “Then this other stuff came up, which reminded me loud and clear of all the reasons why I shouldn’t, but what the hell. If it’s ever possible for us to meet again under some kind of sane circumstances, and if it seems appropriate at the time, there’s some things I want to talk to you about. I guess you know what.”

  “Yes, I know,” she told him.

  “Well, that time isn’t now. I meant what I said. Take care, honey.” He leaned over and kissed her again, this time gently on the lips, and turned and went out into the darkness.

  XXV

  Comes The Dawn

  The man that once did sell the lion’s skin

  While the beast lived was kill’d with hunting him.

  King Henry V—Act IV, Scene 3

  Leonard Posner was a god who walked among men. He was tall, tanned, and distinguished looking, with a blow-dried silver-tipped mane and a nose job to die for. Leonard Posner was the Fearless and Hard Hitting On The Spot Correspondent for Fox News, the Man Who’s Always One Step Ahead of the Action. Arguably the biggest prima donna in a television news industry where prima donnas leaped and twirled in front of every camera, Posner traveled to the world’s hot spots with an entourage that sometimes outnumbered the rest of the press party put together. Besides a whole team of sound men, camera crew, advance men, film editors and mixers, as well as a phalanx of private security goons from Blackwater, that entourage included his own personal makeup artist, a $200 per-cut hairdresser, his own personal chef, a scriptwriter, and a crew of roadies to manhandle and set up his plush air-conditioned trailer in any locality in the world from the Iraqi desert to the Oregon woods. Then there was his personal assistant, a stunning blonde with the IQ of a can of cheese whizz, who had a special Hollywood-style “personal services” clause written into her contract.

  Leonard Posner wasn’t just Mr. Fox News. He was Mr. News, period, regarded with some justification as the most well-known, trusted and admired face in broadcast journalism since Walter Cronkite. His nightly telecast never fell below 100 million viewers. His (more or less) off-the-cuff op-eds delivered from the field, sometimes under Iranian shellfire or in the middle of rioting Palestinians, had been known to shape national policy, since Chelsea Clinton considered him “dreamy” and constantly puffed him to her presidential mother. Leonard Posner’s salary and bonuses were larger than the budget of a medium-sized American city. His mansion in Beverly Hills had been the scene of week-long orgies of every known form of drugs, sex, and madness that had reduced the most jaded Hollywood studio executives and corporate CEOs to respectful awe and wonder. Right now, media divinity Leonard Posner was leaning over the rail of an obsolescent old car ferry, puking his guts out into the dark water of the North Pacific in the darkness before dawn.

  His colleagues of the Fourth Estate were struggling with might and main to keep straight faces. “Does any man or woman among us dare to catch this on our phone cam and slip it surreptitiously onto the internet?” asked Mark Hastings from CNN in a whisper.

  “I wouldn’t advise it,” replied the petite and sassy Sue Loomis from Reuters. “Leonard has a lot of strong points, but a sense of humor isn’t among them. Be my guest, Mark, if you think a few laughs is worth a lifelong blood feud, and I do mean blood. Those Blackwater thugs are quite capable of beating the crap out of you or worse, you know. Whenever he goes out partying down in L.A. the paparazzi give him a wide berth. Leonard gives those animals personal bonuses for services rendered, and he can put a hurt on you in more ways than one.”

  “Haven’t quite found your sea legs yet, eh Leonard?” called Randy Jensen from McClatchey Media.

  “Fuck off!” moaned Posner.

  “This tub was meant to haul tourist SUVs to Catalina Island in those nice balmy waters down south, not sail this far north on the open ocean,” remarked Bill Baker from the Associated Press, an ex-Navy man who thereby claimed the status of resident expert on all things nautical. “Glad we won’t be trying to wallow this hog across the Columbia Bar. Hell, we can’t even keep up with the rest of the convoy without the tugs.”

  The convoy Baker referred to was a task force of six vessels. The media people were standing at the rail of the promenade deck of the S.S. Ventura, which had been commandeered from where it lay rusting in mothballs in the Los Angeles marine boneyard, and fitted out for this one final mission. The Ventura now contained a little over three hundred officers and men of the Federal Anti-Terrorist Police Organization, with full weapons and equipment, as well as over 50 vehicles including transport trucks, Humvees, armored personnel carriers, a staff car for FATPO General Roland Rollins, SUVs for the embedded media party, and of course Leonard Posner’s trailer and the diesel tractor truck that would haul it ashore. The Ventura was moving forward on only a quarter engine power, since she was being towed on four twelve-inch hawsers, two each attached to the ocean-going tugboats Josephine P. and Clownfish. The total FATPO force was almost 1400 men, but the rest were dispersed into two Alaska cruise ships, the Ketchikan and the Kodiak Queen, which had also been commandeered by FATPO and converted into troop transports. Escorting the whole motley flotilla was a 378-foot Coast Guard cutter, the U.S.S. Frederick J. Higby, a ship that was named after a former chairman of the House Armed Services Committee who had managed to cut the Coast Guard an extra hunk of federal budget money some years before.

  “You know, I’ve always prided myself on being a feminist,” said Sue Loomis, “But I have to admit, that damned rubber life raft scares me, and I want one of you big strong men to help lower me down into it.”

  “Piece of cake, Sue,” laughed Baker. “The sea’s nice and calm. It’s not a life raft, though, it’s an inflatable motor launch. It’s quite seaworthy. You could probably sail back to Oakland in it, if the weather stays decent.”

  “I still don’t understand why they won’t let us get into the boat first before they lower it down,” said Loomis with a pout.

  “Just to make sure there’s no accidents,” said Hastings. “If that launch were to tip over in the davits, a million dollars’ worth of sound and camera gear might end up in Davy Jones’ locker. Frankly, it’s not your no-doubt sweet little ass Rollins is concerned about, it’s the gear. Got to have the gear if his moment of glory is going to be caught and preserved for posterity. You got all your pre-landing footage, or notes or whatever you ink people do?”

  “I’ve got at least four hours on tape and digicam of Roland expounding on how he’s going to smash terrorism in the Pacific Northwest at a single blow,” said Sue Loomis. “He’s the greatest military genius since Napoleon, of course. In case you haven’t gotten the message yet.”

  “Oh, we get it,” grunted Hastings.

  Leonard Posner finally finished vomiting over the rail and staggered up to them. “Jesus, Leonard, pop a breath mint or something!” yelled Sue as the ship rolled and the world famous anchorman lurched toward her.

  “Just for that, I won’t sleep with you this trip,” growled Posner savagely.

  “The hell of it is, he really means that as a punishment,” Sue told the others, rolling her eyes in disgust.

  “When the hell are we going to land?” demanded Posner of Bill Baker.

  “Oh, probably about an hour or so,” said Baker. “Roland wants to do it right
as the sun comes up, so the cameras can film him splashing ashore bathed in Mother Nature’s warming glow from above.”

  “Sure he doesn’t want to strip off and float in on a clam shell like that Venus painting from the Renaissance? Botticelli or Michelangelo or whoever the fuck?” put in Seth Goldstein from MTV. “That would sure make my job easier.”

  “Yeah, we only have to report this dog and pony show as an infotainment news story,” said Hastings. “You have to make a rock video out of it for Teens Against Spuckies or whatever. What are you going to call it? Bad-Ass Brother Wets His Pants?”

  “It’s for Youth Against Hate,” said Goldstein. “I don’t know what I’m going to call it. Democracy’s Sword of Freedom or some such poop. Unless Rollins doesn’t like it, since he got full creative control from MTV. You know Rollins won’t let me use the Dead Chickens for my opening? He insists on the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing Battle Hymn of the Republic, of all the antiquated crap. Even insists on playing it on the speakers as he’s coming ashore. This from a black guy, yet! The ghosts of Pat Boone and Kate Smith haunt this vessel.”

  “The Battle Hymn I can see,” responded Posner. “Congressman Rollins, er, General Rollins I mean, is trying to expand his base beyond the South Side of Chicago, and that means appealing to the blue-haired country club set in both parties. Very symbolic and American and all that, and of course the fact that Roland is the descendant of slaves who were freed in the war the song was written to glorify will add a bit of poignancy. Okay, that part I get. But has anyone seriously tried to talk him out of the MacArthur impersonation with the hat and the shades and the corncob pipe? Does he really not understand that he will be making himself look damned ridiculous? Anyway, it’s been done before.”

  “Like most Americans will even remember who Douglas MacArthur was,” snorted Hastings. “Most of our wonderful viewers have difficulty remembering what they had for breakfast yesterday.”