The Hill of the Ravens

by H. A. Covington

  “Did you ask the kaffir what he was waiting for?” queried Nel. “No,” answered McBride, shaking his head. “Major Coleman

  had a history with uppity white boys like me in his command. Asking questions was considered to be insubordination, and from that it was one step to an accusation of racism or hatecrime and finding yourself on the wrong side of the wire in one of the camps. We all learned very quickly just to keep our mouths shut, do what we were told and cash our paychecks. About two o’clock in the morning, I’m sitting behind the CQ desk and Coleman is pacing the floor when all of a sudden his cell phone rings. His personal phone. Not the CQ phone, not the direct-line secure fax from Centcom DHS, nothing on any of our computers. No official communication from our own people, which is the way the information would have arrived if we had picked it up from satellite surveillance or through regular military intelligence. I always had the impression that this was something Coleman was working personally, possibly without even the knowledge of Centcom. Anyway, Coleman goes into his office and talks for a couple of minutes, really low. I couldn’t understand anything that was said. Then he comes out and tells me to call the pad and tell them to fire up the choppers. When we get to the hangar Coleman calls the officers and senior NCOs around, pulls out a map he or somebody had hand-sketched on a sheet of paper from a yellow legal pad, and he described to us how we would set the ambush, with particular attention to the placement of the Claymore anti-personnel mines up along the hill. I’ll tell you something, Colonel…this was not a spontaneous thing. Someone had scouted that terrain at Ravenhill Ranch beforehand, and I am damned if I think it was Coleman. Monkey Meat simply wasn’t that intelligent. Someone wanted that whole unit wiped out and was going to make damned sure it happened. Someone who knew what the hell he was doing as a

  guerrilla and counterinsurgency officer, and believe me, that wasn’t

  Major Woodrow Coleman.”

  “One of your own people?” asked Redmond. “Then why would he let Coleman take the credit for a coup like bringing down Tom Murdock and Melanie Young?”

  “I have no idea on earth, sir,” replied McBride. “Coleman told us it should go down about dawn, and so we would have the rising sun at our backs. We were to be on the lookout for a ten year-old OD green Dodge pickup. That was the NVA forward scout vehicle, the one that always preceded any major troop movement of Volunteers by motorized transport.”

  “Did Coleman give you any idea that he knew who would be in the forward scout?” asked Redmond. He had a deeply personal reason for asking.

  “You mean was the informer in that vehicle? I couldn’t say. If Coleman knew who was in it he didn’t tell us,” replied McBride, shaking his head. “He just said we were to let that vehicle pass, which was a pretty standard thing if we wanted to catch the main body of the enemy…I mean the NVA, pardon me. The whole point of having a forward scout was to detect or to trip any ambushes. We wanted to make sure we didn’t give ourselves away. When we got back to base I learned that the two men in the scout truck had heard the shooting, got out of their vehicle, flanked us, and inflicted a couple of casualties on us before they skedaddled.”

  “That is correct,” agreed Redmond, remembering the only time he had spoken about Ravenhill with Bill Vitale after the fifth tankard one summer night some years before, out on the deck behind his house. Vitale had been one of the men in the scout truck. Vitale had broken down wept in drunken agony when he spoke of his dead friends and comrades, something that by common consent neither of them had ever mentioned again. “Go on, please.”

  “After the green Dodge pickup passed, we were to slide a mine out into the road using a Bangalore torpedo and wait for a main convoy of three vehicles, two vans, one blue and one white, and one Kenworth truck with slatted sides containing a large number of personnel. Whichever vehicle was in the lead, we were to blow it and stop the convoy, then give the occupants everything we had. Complete free fire zone, no quarter, no surrender to be accepted.”

  Nel.

  “So the informer wasn’t with the main convoy?” conjectured

  “Either that or the informer was there and for some reason

  Coleman wanted to make sure he or she never made it,” said

  McBride.

  “Why the hell would even a kaffir do that?” asked Nel.

  “Most likely he didn’t want to share the reward. Tom Murdock had a one million dollar price on his head,” McBride reminded him. “The others had bounties on them as well, starting with two hundred grand for Melanie Young. You have to remember that FATPO worked under the Department of Homeland Security, and that the rules that applied to normal Federal agents or police officers didn’t apply to us. We operated on what was euphemistically referred to as a performance bonus system. It was a fancy name used to conceal the fact that we were more or less bounty hunters and mercenaries. When we were able to kill or capture the more well-known NVA people the unit involved shared the DHS reward, with the CO getting the lion’s share, of course. Coleman was quite capable of having his own informant whacked simply so he wouldn’t have to split the score. And maybe collect the reward for the informant as well.”

  “I hope to hell that’s not what happened, because if so then we may never know the truth,” said Redmond grimly. “You said you had something special to tell me. What was that?”

  “Yeah. I have no idea at all whether or not it means anything, but it’s the one thing I ever held back from that day at Ravenhill. That’s why I’m glad you boys came by this morning. It’s time I got this off my chest. Hang on a minute,” the old man told them. “I need to go upstairs and get something. You boys help yourselves to another beer out of the fridge; I may have to rummage around a bit.” When McBride returned after a few minutes, he had a small manila envelope in his hand, and he dumped an object from the envelope into his palm. “You know that Coleman stole the gold crucifix from Melanie Young’s dead body,” McBride said. “He later sold it to a Jewish tabloid television show host who gave him some really obscene price for it.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Redmond. “The Republic traded two

  American spies facing execution back to the Washington government

  in order to get that crucifix back, but only once the blood on the cross was DNA tested and matched against Melanie’s FBI records to make sure the bastards weren’t scamming us. Our own True Cross.”

  “None more true,” said Nel.

  “None indeed,” agreed Redmond. “That small gold cross and chain is now in a sealed case on display in the Hall of Heroes.”

  McBride spoke. “I didn’t know then how much the new nation would come to value that little gold cross, but I saw that revolting primate wrench it off that dead girl’s neck, and I decided I didn’t want Murdock’s body to be similarly defiled. When we got back to base camp in Bremerton, I was the officer in charge of stripping Tom Murdock’s remains down in the morgue, bagging his clothes and personal effects, photographing his corpse, fingerprinting and taking DNA samples, e-documenting everything, so forth and so on. I believe Coleman gave me the job as a little bit of added humiliation. I took something from Murdock’s body. It was on a leather thong around his neck that had been severed by a bullet, but instead of falling onto the ground it was actually stuck to the back of Murdock’s shirt in his own blood, which is why Coleman didn’t grab this as well. Here it is.”

  Redmond took the small object of simple pewter into his hand. “It’s Mjolnir! A Thor’s Hammer!” he whispered in excited awe.

  “You mean Tom Murdock was an Old Believer?” demanded

  Nel.

  “Yes,” replied McBride. “I didn’t know what it meant then, I

  thought it was just some kind of biker jewelry or something, but I knew that it was something special for him. I felt absolutely foul about what we had done, and so I decided to keep this one thing out of the hands of his enemies. It wasn’t a souvenir, it was…it was my way of apologizing to him, of keeping back something of his from hi
s killers. Can you understand?”

  “Why the hell did you never say anything about this before?”

  demanded Redmond.

  “Well, to begin with, at the time it didn’t seem like a good idea to admit to my new comrades in the Northwest Volunteer Army that I had robbed the dead body of one of our greatest fallen heroes,” said McBride. “Being a defector I was on thin enough ice as things were. Later on, it just didn’t seem relevant. I’m still not certain that it

  has any relevance to what happened to the Column. Like everybody else, I bought the Trudy Greiner story. I figured she sold her own people out for the shekels. Who knows? Maybe she did after all. God knows, it happened often enough back then. Maybe this hammer means nothing at all. I knew from overhearing Coleman’s conversation on the phone that night that there was an informer. Ever since then everyone said that Greiner did it for money, and I have seen the problems that this religious divide among our people has produced in the Republic’s society. Why should I add to those problems by revealing that the great warrior and commander Tom Murdock was really a follower of the Aesir and was getting it on out of wedlock with a woman whom Christians regard as our own Saint Joan of Arc? I owed Corby Morgan a big one, because when we came to him and told him we wanted to defect he believed us, and he didn’t put a bullet in our heads and bury us out in the woods.”

  “How widespread was the knowledge that Tom Murdock was an Old Believer?” asked Redmond urgently.

  “You got me, Colonel. You’ll recall that I was on the other side when Murdock was commanding the Column. I got some of the intelligence briefings, and I do recall that even then the FBI and Homeland Security were trying to exploit religious divisions within the racially conscious community in the Northwest, but I don’t recall any specific mention of Murdock’s religious affiliation. If the Feds knew, it never trickled down to my level. As to what I have picked up since then, well, I’ve heard a couple of remarks down through the years that would indicate to me that Murdock’s religious views were known in the NVA. How widespread that knowledge was, I have no idea at all.”

  “One last thing, Mr. McBride. I notice that you don’t wear the

  War of Independence ribbon yourself?” asked Redmond.

  “Of course not!” replied McBride, in a puzzled voice. “Why would I? On 10/22 I wear the Missoula Salient medal and the Operation Strikeout campaign decoration with the Chilliwack bar because I earned them as a soldier in the NDF, wearing the uniform of the Republic. But nothing from the NVA time, and I never go to reunions or Old Fighters’ functions. How could I? I fought against the Republic and was responsible for the death and torture of Volunteers. I’ve done what I could to make up for that, but for me to wear the

  ribbon would be an insult to the memory of those who died because of me. An insult to the living survivors as well, like that man I told you about in the park in Bremerton, whom I mutilated for life when I obeyed the orders of a monkey. Suppose I were to meet him at a reunion? What should I do then? Buy him a beer and toast the old days? I don’t deserve that decoration in the same sense that men like you do. Please give me credit for some sense of dignity and propriety, Colonel!”

  “According to your service records, you were there with the NDF Second Army when we went into Portland to implement the provisions of the Longview Treaty?” asked Redmond.

  “Yes, I was. So what? So were thousands of others.” “The Battle of the Bridges?” pressed Don.

  “I believe that’s what it is called nowadays, yes,” admitted McBride carelessly. “I don’t recall it as a battle, just an especially nasty day in the life.”

  “In the official military history of the NVA/NDF the Battle of the Portland Bridges is considered to be one of the most important engagements in the War of Independence. The enemy sought to deny the Second Army entry into Portland and we had to bop our way in. By NDF regulations, anyone who participated in that fight in any capacity is entitled to wear the green, white and blue ribbon,” said Redmond. “It was the first time since 1945 that white soldiers faced down the ZOG bastards on equal terms, in the open, face to face, man to man, gun to gun, artillery to artillery, tank to tank and whupped their kosher asses up one side and down the other. Tell me, are you not the same Volunteer Arthur McBride who ran forward onto the northbound Interstate 205 bridge over the Columbia River out of Portland, and disarmed the explosive charges that the U. S. Army Rangers had planted there?” asked Don. “Along with Volunteer Brooke Arnold? Under heavy fire from the enemy?”

  “Yeah. So?” responded McBride with a shrug. “That was a long time ago, just one incident in a thousand. Most of the Ranger fire was directed against the southbound lanes where the charges were disarmed by Volunteers Steve Carter, Eric Muegge, and Rick Nesti, all of whom won very well-deserved Iron Crosses. All Brooke and I caught over in the northbound lanes were a couple of potshots.”

  “She caught a rather bad one, if I correctly recall from your service file. Did you not drag Volunteer Arnold to safety after she was hit, and then return to complete your mission, in the process shooting and killing with a pistol two Rangers who attempted to prevent you?”

  “Yes. Why do you ask?” asked McBride curiously. “I haven’t thought about that incident for years. What does it have to do with…?”

  “Last night my wife and I attended the Old Fighters’ Reunion in Olympia,” said Redmond sternly. “We didn’t see you, and that’s unfortunate, because you had every right to be there, and every year our numbers grow fewer. It’s your decision, but I hope we’ll see you there next year. You may consider that a personal invitation. We have a very good medical service in the Republic. We especially pride ourselves on our geriatric care. That means you have some years left to you. During that time, Sergeant-Major McBride, I would appreciate it if you would wear your War of Independence ribbon openly upon your person. You earned it, and you need to let those young people coming up in our nation know that. You have set a very good example thus far. Set a better one. Wear your ribbon. And wear your Iron Cross. The one you won by your heroism on that Portland bridge. I read Volunteer Arnold’s report this morning before coming to see you, by way of background information.”

  “Then you didn’t read it right,” said McBride quietly. “I earned nothing. It was all her. What you didn’t read was that chubby little blonde girl had more courage in her little finger than I ever had in my whole body, on the best day of my life. After Ravenhill I ended up with Commandant Archie McLean down in Oregon. From the moment I saw Brooke lying in an ambush outside Medford, big floppy hat on her head and her golden hair in a braid down behind, an AK-47 in her hands and longing to give any nigger or Mexican who crossed her path a heavy dose of Shock and Awe, my past was dead. She was my life from that point on. I low-crawled up to her in that ambush position, my rifle in my arms, and I looked into those icy blue eyes and I said, ‘I’m Art McBride. Are you married or with anybody?’ She said no. Then I said ‘Tell me what I have to do for you to be my wife.’ She said ‘Kill as many of them as you can, never rat no matter what they do to you, and never lie to me.’ I said ‘You got it. Can we consider ourselves engaged?’ She looked at me and said

  ‘Yeah. Now get back to your position. Fattie’s coming.’ I started to crawl back and then I looked over my shoulder and asked her ‘What’s your name?’ ‘Brooke,’ she said. Then it all started anew for me. I wasn’t fighting for any of you any more, I wasn’t fighting to redeem myself or my past. I was fighting for her. Fighting to be worthy of her. I would have done anything, anything at all, to be worthy of her. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “You’d be surprised,” replied Redmond. “With me it was an eleven year-old girl with braces and pigtails. I was twelve years old myself, and I would have gone up against Godzilla with nothing but a rusty steak knife in my hand for one of her smiles. Her Godzilla was the United States government, and from the moment I first saw her…”

  “Yeah. It was like that. If it hadn’t been for Brooke I
would have run like a bunny off that bridge,” said McBride, nodding with a small smile.

  “What happened to Comrade Arnold after the war?” asked Nel curiously.

  “Through some incomprehensible grace of God that I never deserved, she kept her word and I married her. And for that I damned sure earned an Iron Cross! God, Brooke was a world class bitch! I loved her, she loved me, we both knew it, and we spent our lives rending one another’s entrails with unutterable joy. I fought a long and bitter war so that I could spend the next thirty years wrestling an alligator, gentlemen, and I would not trade you one single moment of it, for any consideration.”

  “Children?” asked Redmond.

  “Six, five living. Our eldest son Jason opted to do his national service in the Kriegsmarine, and he went down on the Corvallis during the Chinese attack off Juneau. The other five are alive and well, thank God, and they load me up with all the rug rats I can handle every weekend.”

  “Your wife died two year ago, I believe?” asked Redmond quietly.

  “Yes. She was out in the garden weeding a flower bed and she moved wrong, pulled on something too hard, and a weak spot in her aorta from that American bullet that none of the doctors ever detected tore and flooded her heart with blood. I found her, too late. She died

  in my arms. I’m marking time now, until death reunites us. She was the last combat casualty from the revolution, you might say. Will there be anything else, gentlemen?” asked Arthur McBride.

  “No, sir. You have been of great assistance.”

  “So now we yet another motive for the betrayal of the Olympic Flying Column besides mere money and treason or unrequited love,” said Nel, shaking his head in bemusement as they got back into their unmarked aircar. “Religious bigotry. Lekker!”

  “Yes, so it would seem” agreed Redmond, his voice grim and a scowl on his lips. “We also have a potential disaster worse than any other conceivable on our hands. Betrayal for money or by a Federal spy we could handle. That happened all the time. It is sordid but historically acceptable. The romance angle with Murdock, Melanie and Trudy adds a Gothic but interesting and politically harmless possibility. But if it turns out that the Flying Column was betrayed because some tub-thumping Christian couldn’t handle the fact that the Party’s greatest hero was an Odinist, then it could finally ignite a full-scale battle between the umpteen factions here in the Republic, all of whom demand that their own beliefs be formally recognized as our official state religion. That is the one thing that could lose us everything that we have gained since the revolution. Jesus Christ on a raft, now I hope that it was Trudy and that she did sell us out for money, or else because she got dumped by Tom Murdock!”