The Brigade

by H. A. Covington

  “In theory, all fighting is supposed to cease,” said Oscar. “Hence the term cease-fire. In reality we will be edging the Zionists out of everywhere we can edge them out of, and that ride will get a little bumpy, but we ask that you try to avoid any major confrontations that may upset the peace process, or whatever term they use for these Longview negotiations. Keep your heads down, and don’t initiate any attacks except defensive ones.”

  “Define defensive,” pressed Jackson.

  “Anything you can get away with that doesn’t totally upset the whole apple cart. Use common sense, Bill. Any time there’s an incident, and we’re sure there will be plenty of incidents, we want to be able to holler that the Feds were the ones who broke the truce. At some point, the question will come up regarding their evacuation of Portland under the terms of whatever treaty or agreement the Longview conference comes up with. This whole command needs to be ready to back up with force whatever the new government decides in that respect. The time may come when they balk, or we just get tired of waiting for them to leave, and you will be called upon to secure the Republic’s territorial integrity. But this time it will be as a real army, of a real nation.”

  “Our nation . . .” whispered Christina, her eyes moist. “I still can’t believe it . . . if only he could have lived another few months, just to see this day . . .”

  “You know, Chris, my new capacity as chief cook and bottle washer is going to give me a fair amount of authority in Astoria,” said Zack. “What do you think about Lockhart Avenue in place of Marine Boulevard?”

  It was still Marine Boulevard on the next morning, overcast but warm, when Zack rolled into Astoria in his famous War Wagon Humvee. Behind him rolled six truckloads of armed Volunteers who peeled off and headed for their respective positions along the waterfront, in the downtown area, and to certain buildings that were to be commandeered for the use of the new régime. The high school was to become a barracks and training depot for the new national army that Zack had been told would be called the Northwest Defense Force; he hoped that other arrangements could be made by the time school was scheduled to start in September. An observation post and communications transmitter was to be established at the top of the Astoria Column, and guard forces against sabotage were to be installed on all the bridges across the Columbia River mouth and Youngs Bay.

  The streets were quiet; traffic pulled over to let the NVA convoy by, and local pedestrians simply stood and watched in silent curiosity as Zack and the last truckload of rebels pulled up in front of the Clatsop County courthouse. There was little sense of history in the making. Sheriff Ted Lear was standing on the sidewalk alone, waiting for them. Zack clambered out of the Humvee, his broad-brimmed feathered hat on his head and his famous Winchester in his hand. “Morning, Ted,” he said to Lear. “Anybody inside?” he asked, nodding up at the courthouse.

  “A few of the clerks and maintenance staff,” said Lear. “Not much for them to do since you guys ran all the lawyers and judges off years ago, but they’ve held down the fort, I guess you could say.”

  “How about your department?” Hatfield asked, looking at him. “Anybody going to give us any trouble?”

  “I called them all in last night and had a talk with them, after the President’s speech,” said Lear. “Them and what’s left of the Astoria police department after you shot Sam Hall. I told them I was staying, but if anyone wanted to leave, they had my best wishes and God speed. A few handed in their badges, and they’re home packing their U-Hauls. I probably could have listed their names beforehand. Some of them are scared you’re going to retaliate against them for things past. Not yourself so much, but some of these men you have with you have seen the inside of our jail a few times, and there’s likely bad blood against some of my deputies and Astoria PD officers. Or against me.”

  “Not too much,” said Zack reassuringly. “You were always fair. You were never the village bully or the Chamber of Commerce’s chief head knocker, like some of the local coppers around the Northwest. Like Sam Hall was. That’s what killed him.”

  “He was no loss. I never did like corrupt cops, and I found out he was one of the ones responsible for calling that invasion force of government thugs into my county. Some of the others who are leaving are just too old dogs to learn new tricks. The rest of us are staying. How about you, Zack?” Lear asked. “Are you going to turn into some kind of medieval tyrant now, and decorate the streets with the heads of everybody who’s ever offended you in the past?”

  “I am going to secure this area for the Republic, Ted, and I am going to make sure the Americans never come back,” Hatfield told him.

  “You were an American yourself, once,” said Lear sardonically.

  “I was,” replied Zack with a nod. “I’ve found I prefer being a white man instead. To answer your question, Ted, we’ve had a lot of law in the past few generations. Too damned much law, and not enough justice. Now there’s going to be justice, and some of it may be pretty rough, but I don’t think it’s going to be anywhere near as bad as people think. Not around here, anyway. Remember that little meeting we had up on the bleachers back at Astoria High one night some years ago? Remember what I told you we were going to do? Well, we did it. The people who need punishing and the people who don’t belong here are all pretty much gone now, one way or the other. There’s not going to be a need for any bloodbath. Elsewhere, the cities?” He shrugged. “That ain’t gonna be pretty. But right now I want people here to learn that they not only need fear us, but that they can respect us and trust us. You can’t win hearts and minds by going berserk in an orgy of vengeance, and I won’t allow that to happen here.”

  “What about the Coast Guard station in Warrenton?” asked Lear.

  “That’s going to be ticklish,” Hatfield agreed. “You know Commander Ratcliff?”

  “Pretty well, yeah,” said Lear.

  “Red, white and blue fanatic type?” asked Hatfield.

  “Duty type,” said Lear.

  “Will he talk to me?”

  “I can call him and find out,” offered Lear. “Am I still sheriff, by the way?”

  “Of course.” Hatfield walked back over to the Humvee and took out a folded Northwest Tricolor flag. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and walked across the street to the historic Astoria post office. Lear followed him. The flagpole was bare; the Stars and Stripes hadn’t been run up there in a long time, by tacit agreement with the postmaster. Hatfield quietly unfolded the blue, white and green banner, hooked it up through the eyelets, and raised the flag of the new nation to the sky. A breeze caught the fabric and the Tricolor billowed out full for all to see. There was some scattered applause from the bystanders and a few cheers and rebel yells from the NVA men.

  Lear looked at Hatfield oddly. “You crazy sons of bitches,” he said softly. “You did it. You really did it.”

  “We did,” agreed Hatfield.

  “By the way, Julia called just before I left the house this morning.”

  “How is she?” asked Zack.

  “She’s good. She said she watched the Brat’s speech last night, and she stayed up all night thinking and praying, and she’s decided she’s quitting her job down there in L.A. and coming back home to stay. Immediately.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” said Hatfield soberly. “I presume she understands that the rough stuff isn’t over yet? That all this could still go bad, really bad?”

  “Yeah, she understands,” said Lear.

  Hatfield sighed. “Now, I suppose I need an office of some kind. You know the courthouse. What would you recommend?”

  “Well, if you’re in a mood for irony, there’s always the office of the old Clatsop County Diversity Commission, on the second floor,” offered Ted with a chuckle. “The Mexican lady who used to be in there doesn’t seem to have come in to work for a while.”

  That afternoon Zack and several other Volunteers got into his War Wagon and took a ride over to Warrenton. They drove down 12th Place and pulled u
p outside the main gates of the United States Coast Guard Air Station. The post was surrounded with the usual Bremer walls and rolls of razor wire, and a large Stars and Stripes flew defiantly over the gate, as well as a second one from the flagpole in front of the main building. Several M-16 muzzles slid out of dark slits in the gatehouse. “Ignore them. Point the barrel high,” he ordered his machine gunner, a German Volunteer named Karl Vogler who was wearing shades and a peaked Alpine winter cap, some kind of German or east European military surplus. Vogler was one of the increasing number of foreign Volunteers who were finding their way to the Northwest to fight for white freedom. There had already been talk of forming a separate German-speaking brigade in the new Northwest Defense Force.

  “Zey have us covered, sir,” said Vogler, staring at the gate house.

  “I know. Just disregard unless they do something. We’re not here in a hostile sense, at least not yet. I just want to have a word or two with the station commander.”

  After a time the gate opened and a Coast Guard officer in full uniform stepped out, Commander Anthony Ratcliff. Hatfield noticed Ratcliff was wearing a sidearm, but he left his own Winchester in the Humvee when he got out of the vehicle. He walked up wearing his usual tattered canvas duster and floppy Northwest fedora-style felt hat with the feather in it, and he saluted the scowling Ratcliff, who didn’t return it, nor did he offer to shake hands. Hatfield ignored the Coast Guard man’s discourtesy. “Afternoon, Commander,” he said conversationally. “Name’s Hatfield, officer commanding the NVA Third Battalion, First Portland Brigade. Sorry about the civvies. I understand some of our guys up in Washington have uniforms now, but they haven’t gotten around to issuing us any down here as yet. Don’t even know what they look like.”

  “I know who you are,” said Ratcliff. “Sheriff Lear told me you were coming. I suppose I should be grateful that you’ve only murdered six of my sailors over the past few years.”

  “Your sailors had skins the color of shit, so they’re not allowed here anymore,” replied Hatfield easily. “Your predecessor knew that perfectly well, and yet he still sent them into town. I notice you don’t.”

  “As it happens, we have no more African-American or Hispanic or Asian-American personnel serving in this station,” said Ratcliff.

  “I know,” said Hatfield. “Smart move on your part, or whoever made that call. Whatever point your predecessor was trying to prove, at least you don’t try to prove it with the lives of the men under your command, and I respect that.”

  “What do you want, Hatfield?” demanded the Commander.

  “First off, to let you know that the NVA has now occupied the town of Astoria, and we are assuming the civil authority in Clatsop County. In the coming days we will be occupying Warrenton, Seaside, this whole stretch of coastline, preparatory to the transition of this chunk of real estate to the government of the Northwest Republic. I presume you heard the President’s speech last night?”

  “I did,” said Ratcliff. “I am sickened and horrified that she is considering turning over the sovereign territory of the United States to—to you. Not to mention astounded.”

  “No more astounded than I am, Commander,” said Hatfield. “I really thought we were going to have to scrape the last of you up off our streets with a shovel.”

  “I heard her mention a conference to be held up at Longview. I didn’t hear her say anything about transitioning civil authority to your so-called Republic, here or anywhere else!” barked Ratcliff.

  “No, she didn’t,” agreed Hatfield. “I guess it’s a good thing we have no intention of asking her permission. It’s over, Ratcliff. We’ve won. Do you think the President of the United States would have made a speech like that or called that conference in Longview if the Americans hadn’t decided to throw in the towel?”

  “You’re an American yourself!” snapped Ratcliff.

  “Actually, no,” replied Hatfield. “In case you hadn’t noticed, that’s what these past few years of shooting and blowing things up have been all about. Just because I was born in a stable doesn’t make me a horse, or in the case of the United States, a horse’s ass. We’ve decided that we will choose what we want to be and what we want our children to be. War is when you let the government tell you who the enemy is, Ratcliff, like you do, like I used to. Revolution is when you decide who the enemy is for yourself. Oh, there’s still a lot of yadda yadda and flapdoodle to be gone through, at Longview and maybe in D.C. or elsewhere, but the main point was conceded last night. They’re going to give us our sovereign independence, maybe with a lot of kicking and screaming and face-saving rhetoric and bullshit, but we’re going to get the Northwest Republic. Or else we’ll just take it. Either way, there’s no turning back now, and I suspect you know it. Let me ask you something. Whose idea was it really to get all those black and beaner naval personnel out of this station?”

  Ratcliff hesitated. “Mine, actually,” he said.

  “Must have been quite a hard sell to your superiors. Surprised you didn’t get brought up on charges of racism. Why did you do that? Take a risk like that? Give in to our wicked and evil terrorism and all?” asked Zack.

  “We have a specific mission here, one that has been made a lot harder by the conditions you people have created over the past few years, and I didn’t need the added aggravation of having to protect certain members of the command 24/7,” replied Ratcliff, somewhat defensively. “It was a decision I made for the good of the unit.”

  “Yes, we know. Your mission is air-sea rescue for ships and crews in distress on a particularly dangerous stretch of open sea, the Columbia Bar, the Graveyard of the Pacific out there.” Hatfield gestured in the direction of the ocean. “You also assist the Columbia River pilots when necessary, whenever a ship out there gets into trouble. You’ve stuck with carrying out your mission to save sailors’ lives, and you haven’t allowed your base here to be used against the local community by FATPO or Blackwater or other criminal elements in the employ of the United States government, despite what I imagine must have been some pretty heavy pressure.”

  “Heavy enough,” admitted Ratcliff. “We didn’t want to make ourselves targets. Like you said, we’re here to save lives.”

  “We appreciate your situation, sir, and you know damned well we’ve reciprocated,” Hatfield told him. “Have we attacked this station? Has a single Caucasian member of your command been fired on or harmed in any way in all this time?”

  “No,” admitted Ratcliff. “Although I keep all off-base trips to a bare minimum. Sheriff Lear has been extremely helpful.”

  “Your guys must be going stir-crazy in there,” commented Hatfield.

  “We’ve got computers and satellite TV,” said Ratcliff with a shrug. “And a very good games room.”

  “Well, I think it’s a good idea for you to keep your men cooped up for a while longer,” said Hatfield. “We’re going to be doing things in town you shouldn’t see, lest your duty compel you to start telling tales out of school. You’ve got what, 120 or so people in there now? Almost all of them support or medical personnel or technicians, pilots and so forth? Never mind, I don’t expect you to tell me. Just keep on doing what you do. You leave us alone, and we’ll leave you alone, if it turns out that’s possible. Here’s a card with my cell number on it,” he said, handing the card to Ratcliff, who took it without comment. “If there is any trouble, give me a call and we’ll see if whatever the problem is can’t be settled by talking instead of shooting. White men have murdered one another over the past couple of hundred years because we can’t seem to decide who this continent belongs to, Commander. I say there’s been enough white men killing one another. It’s a habit we need to get out of. Your superiors are probably going to ask you to do some things that might upset the apple cart, like using your air-sea rescue helicopters to spy on our troop movements, that sort of thing. I understand that you may not be able to resist such orders even if you are so inclined. You have to understand that if I come to consider your pres
ence here a threat to my own men or to the community here, we can and we will take you out. You know what happened on a certain beach a few miles south of here. We’ve got more manpower every day, and we’re starting to acquire enough heavy weapons to do it. But I don’t want this little Coast Guard station here to turn into a Northwestern Fort Sumter. All I ask is that you play as square with me as you feel your duty and your honor allows, and let’s get along while the guys in Longview who will be doing the negotiating on both sides do their jobs. If you need help of any kind from us of an emergency or a humanitarian nature, you call me. There’s been almost five years of slaughter in the Northwest and there’s going to be more. It just doesn’t have to be here. I’m going to go now. Thank you for your time, Commander.” Before he turned around and walked back to the War Wagon, Hatfield snapped him another salute, and this time Ratcliff returned it.

  * * *

  The three counties of Oregon that comprised the Third Battalion’s operational area were in fact one of the largest stretches of territory in the Homeland free of American civil or military authority, and accordingly these counties became a major staging area for the provisional government. By late August, Zack Hatfield was officially General Hatfield of the Northwest Defense Force, and military governor of the district. He was assisted in his duties by a growing staff of local people, including businessmen, former government employees, managers, engineers, merchants, community leaders and technical specialists who managed to make sure that the electricity in the towns and the rural areas stayed on, the sewage and waste disposal systems worked, the stores remained stocked with at least an adequate amount of basic necessities without shortages or runaway inflation, and civil order was maintained.

  Gasoline and diesel fuel were the hardest things to obtain. Prompted by a heavy Christian evangelical element in their senior management, the major oil companies attempted to cut off fuel delivery to local stations in Nationalist areas and “send the racists back to horse and buggy days,” to quote one Texas corporate spokesperson. However, on their way back from D.C. and New York, some of the Boys from Operation Applesmash and Operation Pigkill made a stop-off in Houston. Within the space of a week the CEO of Exxon turned the ignition key on his Ferrari and was blown through the roof of his garage; the chief financial officer of Gulf Oil was found hanging in his pool house by his own necktie wearing only black net stockings and high heels and lipstick; and the huge, garish main tabernacle of an Evangelical television ministry that was one of Israel’s main financial and Scriptural supporters was leveled by a truck bomb full of gelignite. The two charred objects resembling human bodies found in the ruins were assumed to be the televangelist and his beehive-haired wife. After that, fuel deliveries to the Nationalist Pacific Northwest quietly resumed. The price of gas even dropped a few cents per gallon.