The Hill of the Ravens

by H. A. Covington

  “I’d like to talk about the Olympic Flying Column,” said Don bluntly. “I’d like to talk about Ravenhill Ranch. I’d like to talk about why you weren’t there when Murdock and the rest of them got it.”

  “Why wasn’t I with the Column?” snarled Leach. “I’ll tell you why! I wasn’t there because Tom Murdock put me on baby-sitting duty with Holy Joe Cord at the aid station. The same man who invented these plasma weapons that have made our survival as a nation possible, so I’m glad I didn’t strangle him with my own two hands, as often as I was tempted to do so! Commandant Murdock ordered me to secure the temporary medic position in Poulsbo to take care of any wounded we might have after the attack in Port Orchard. Trudy Greiner was supposed to be there as well, driving one of our vans. She was to act as a nurse if necessary and also to provide onward transportation for any of the wounded. She never showed up, and later we found out why.”

  “You believe Trudy Greiner didn’t arrive at the aid station because she was the informer who betrayed the Column?” asked Redmond.

  “You don’t know your history very well, do you, son?” snapped Leach. “Where the hell have you been for the past thirty years? Yes, that’s why the bitch didn’t show up. She had a million bucks burning a hole in her pocket and she had other things to do. You know where I was when my brothers and sisters and comrades died, Colonel? I was listening to Holy Joe babble on about the saving grace of Jesus fucking Christ while we laid out scalpels, latex surgical gloves and IVs, and cat gut to sew people up and morphine syringes to stop them from screaming while we tried to save their lives in the back storeroom of a goddamned Burger Boy! We had a little portable TV, we had it on CNN, and in the cheery light of first morning we

  heard that they were all dead! We packed up our gear, I got into my car and Cord got into his, and we ran like hell! We were so upset we didn’t even take any of those cute little packets of ketchup they used to give out at those joints! Now why the hell are you asking me this after all these years? I don’t think this Jaapie kid was even born then!” “Some rather serious questions have arisen regarding the

  events of that time, Admiral,” said Redmond evenly. “What questions?” demanded Leach.

  “Admiral, I have been ordered by the State President to find out exactly what happened at Ravenhill Ranch and why,” said Redmond. “I am sorry to take up your time, but I intend to do just that. To find out what happened.”

  “If you do, will you do me a favor and tell me?” said Leach, suddenly seeming to shrink, turning his head away. “I always…that business about Trudy Greiner…it just never seemed right to me, Redmond.”

  “Not right in what way, sir?”

  “I just never could understand how she could do…what they said she did. Dammit all, I just never figured her for a rat!” he cried out, a lifetime of agony and frustration in his voice. “I’d give anything if…”

  “If what, sir?” asked Redmond.

  “If I could die knowing she didn’t betray us,” sighed Leach. “I was…somewhat in love with her. I have always had this idea in my mind that the whole story never came out there. It was something I wanted to believe, you understand. It just…didn’t seem right to me.”

  “Then maybe it’s time it was made right,” suggested

  Redmond. “You may even get to ask her about it yourself.”

  “What?” demanded Leach, astounded.

  “She’s Coming Home,” said Redmond. “On October 22nd. Independence Day. Trudy Greiner is going to walk across the border crossing at Mountain Gate, or so she tells us.”

  “Well I’ll be…what exactly do you want to know?” asked

  Leach keenly.

  “We’d like to get some background first,” said Redmond. “We’d like to know how you got involved in white racial nationalist activity in the first place, how you ended up in the NVA. Just take it from the top.”

  “Grew up in Pensacola, and from the time I was a boy I always wanted to go to sea,” recounted Leach. “My father was a retired full commander in the United States Navy. For him the only three real things, the only absolutes in the whole universe were God, my mother, and the Navy, not necessarily in that order. He had me clawing canvas and tying sheepshanks and double hitches on our boat when I was five. I joined at seventeen and after basic at the Great Lakes Training Center I was assigned to the missile frigate Higby in the Persian Gulf. Every now and then we used to pop off a Cruise or two at Tehran or Riyadh whoever we were told to hit by whichever Bush or Clinton or other empty suit was in Oval Office at the time. We didn’t care. We were the living spearheads of the Great American Petroleum Empire and proud of it. We kept hoping for orders to nuke Mecca and really rattle the ragheads’ cage. Ironic, isn’t it? I might have ended up as one of the Republic’s worst enemies if the bastards had just had the sense enough to leave me the hell alone. Afterward I spent the rest of my life endeavoring to demonstrate to the government of the United States that they’d fucked with the wrong man. Think I’ve made my point?”

  “I think they’re beginning to get a glimmer, Admiral,” replied Redmond with a smile. “How, exactly, did they fuck with you? That’s not just an official question, it’s personal with me as well. Every man of your generation has his story. I am always fascinated to hear those stories. What happened?”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” agreed Leach. “Every man of my generation has his story, some incident that turned him from an American back into a white man. Okay, since you don’t mind spending government time spinning yarns, neither do I. This story is mine.

  “Like I said, we were on patrol the Persian Gulf. Then we got a re-fitting and R & R order, the kind all sailors love. Off patrol we went and into some exotic port. The exotic port in question for the Higby was a place called Eilat, a resort town on the Red Sea, in what was then the state of Israel before the original owners took back that particular piece of real estate, may Allah bless and keep them for their immortal courage that shamed us all. I was just turned nineteen years old, young and strong, full of piss and vinegar, and with several months pay burning a hole in my pocket. Me and some buddies of

  mine were on shore leave and we were cruising the beach looking to pick up some of those long, lean Jew girls with the tanned legs and the arrogant Levantine faces who lounged there like coiled snakes. We’d all heard what great fucks they were and how willing they were to do their duty for international concord with us American allies. I used to get a chuckle out of that when I was ramrodding Force 101. The one time in my life I myself ever tried to race-mix, Destiny slapped me down, slapped me down hard! One of life’s ironies.

  “We heard a noise,” recalled Leach, his eyes starting to wander back into the past. “We came across some Israeli police who were underneath a pier beating a little Arab kid, maybe twelve years old. I never did learn why, but they were really working this little guy over, three of the bastards. Big burly men with black curly hair and hook noses and blue-shaven chins and bulging muscles. Beating the boy, beating him and beating him, in the head and the face and the ribs with nightsticks, with fists and boots, kicking him in the balls while he rolled on the sand screaming. I didn’t speak a word of Arabic, but somehow I understood that the boy was screaming curses at them, not begging for mercy. It was the look in the kid’s eyes. That impressed me, more than anything. It was the first time I ever saw anyone stand up to the Jews. I saw a young boy shouting defiance in the face of death, and it moved me to my very soul. Non-white or not, I’ve always had a hell of a lot of time for Palestinians since then. Yeah, they’re brown, but by the living Allah who made them, they are a brave and noble breed! Somehow I knew what I wanted then. I wanted to see that same look in the face of a young white boy. I wanted to see a young man of my own race display that kind of courage.

  “My buddies tried to pull me away, told me not to interfere, it was the Jews’ country and none of our business. Sorry, man, but when three thugs are beating a child to death, no matter where I am and no matter what
his race, that’s my business. I was a pretty hefty dude in my younger days and I waded into them. Racked ‘em, jacked ‘em, and knocked their kosher asses into eclipse. That’s when I learned that whenever they’re faced with any real opposition and they don’t have overwhelming odds on their sides, Jews are cowards. The much-vaunted Israelis weren’t anywhere near as tough as they were cracked up to be, not when they came up against a single man who wasn’t

  afraid of them. There were three of them, big mean men, and if they’d had any real spirit at all they would have kicked my ass bad, but I kicked theirs. I got a nightstick away from one of them and I laid all three of those filthy kikes out on the sand, streaming blood from their goddamned hose noses and bawling like babies. The Palestinian kid ran off. No idea whatever became of him.

  “Well, when I got back to the ship that night all hell broke loose. Needless to say, I was immediately ratted out by one of my own so-called buddies. Back in those days white men used to inform on one another to ZOG so quick it would make your head spin. No racial pride at all, no sense of honor or integrity or self-esteem. The Marines were waiting for me, they placed me under arrest, and from then on my life was one long nightmare. I had one stroke of luck, in that once my captain had heard my side of the story and the Israelis’ side, he refused to hand me over to them and he even refused an order from the Pentagon to do so. That was before the Diversity Law went into effect. A couple of years later there were no more white male captains, just white male execs to actually sail the vessel, and I wouldn’t have stood a chance. Captain Barlow was a real sailor, though, and he stood up for me as far as he could. He kept me from being lynched. If I’d been turned over to Israel I wouldn’t be standing here today. But Barlow had no choice. He threw me in the brig and I was court-martialed for hatecrime and ‘manifestation of bigotry’ as it was called in the Uniform Code of Military Justice back then. In my case it was more serious than usual, because the bigotry I allegedly manifested was anti-Semitism, and that was always worse than any other, except maybe saying nigger.

  “I was dishonorably discharged from the U. S. Navy, to my father’s bewilderment and disgrace, and I did a year in the brig in Portsmouth. After I got out my father disowned me. He never cared what the circumstances were. All he could see was that big glaring DD. The United States Navy was always right. Period, end of story. I tried to get a merchant seaman’s card, hell, I would have sailed on a Liberian tramp steamer if I could just have gone back to sea, but it was no soap. I couldn’t get a berth on a garbage scow on the Hudson River with that DD and anti-Semite on my record. Couldn’t get any job at all except flipping burgers or pushing broom. So I figured if I

  was gonna do the time, I might as well do the crime. I decided to

  become a frigging anti-Semite.

  “I went to the library and I started reading about the Jews. There were computers in the public library in Pensacola, and in those days there were still a few web sites available that told the truth, operating on servers out of Singapore and such. I was able to read Henry Ford’s The International Jew online. I was also able to find a site that had Commander Rockwell’s White Power on it. If the library had caught me printing it I would have been arrested for hatecrime, so I sent it chapter by chapter to a printer at a private mailbox service run by Chinese. They either couldn’t read it or else didn’t they give a damn so long as my money was good. I stopped by after work and paid out most of my salary from the day labor agency for those precious printed pages. I read that book over and over and over again, and I became a National Socialist. To this day I collect copies of White Power. At home I’ve got over a hundred editions in twelve languages. From that day to this I have never wavered in my knowledge that Hitler was right and that just about every evil on earth today stems from our rejection of the man from Germany and his message to all of us. All of a sudden I understood why the world was the way it was. And then one day, by accident, I came across a web site that had some of the Old Man’s stuff on Northwest Migration. It made sense to me, this idea that all of us who knew about the Jews should band together to grab at least a little piece of the pie back from them. I worked the day labor agencies in Pensacola and St. Pete for a year or so until I saved up a few bucks, and then I took the bus to Seattle. I took any job I could on the water, on the piers, and I eventually made a contact who hooked me up with the NVA.”

  “Where you acquired the nickname of Bloody Dave,”

  remarked Redmond.

  “Yeah, I was the guy my commandant of the moment called on when there was some really nasty wet work to be done,” growled Leach. “I was mad, Redmond. I admit it. Mad in the British sense, raving insane. Mad and mean at what had been done to me by the United States. I lived on rage and hatred. I grew up on stories of John Paul Jones and Perry and Farragut, Midway and the Coral Sea. I wanted nothing more in the world than to sail the seas wearing the same uniform my father wore, and then they did that to me, all

  because I wouldn’t stand by and see a child beaten to death by cowards. It’s really weird they charged me with hatecrime. Because it was that year in the brig that gave me hate, Redmond, a hate that it took me years to get under control. Sometimes it gets to me even now.”

  “Like when you were in command of the Spokane and you shelled Wellington, New Zealand to get seven of your men back?” asked Redmond dryly.

  “They laid hands on my boys,” said Leach quietly. “I, of all people, know what it means to be in that situation. Barlow could only go so far for me, but when a man is under my command I go all the way for him. Nobody lays hands on my boys. Not ever.” The he grinned. “Well, nobody except me, anyways.”

  “After Ravenhill you went east, I believe?” asked Don. “In fact, I am told you went east contrary to orders from the Party. They told you to report to Commandant McLean in Medford, yet your records indicate that you spent the rest of the war with the Hayden Lake Flying Column until you were given your command at Ellensburg.”

  “You mean did I ride with O. C. Oglevy?” laughed Leach. “Damned straight I did! I mean rode with him, literally! We used to move around on chopped Harleys and armored assault vehicles like Mad Max the Road Warrior, like Genghis fucking Khan! Vikings on wheels. Closest thing I could find to sailing on land. We had an armored eighteen-wheeler we called Big Mama, with everything on board up to twenty-mil cannons! None of that escape and evasion shit for O. C., no sir! We didn’t escape and evade ZOG, ZOG tried to escape and evade us. We went after everything we could find wearing a United States uniform. We hit, and we hit, and we hit!” said Leach, punching his fist into his palm for emphasis. “And when we got the bastards down we kicked them and kicked them and kicked them! Then we poured gasoline on them and set them on fire watched them burn and roll and scream. They sent helicopter gunships after us, and we opened up with Big Mama and we shredded them into confetti, metal and flesh and blood drifting down on us like snow. We brought others down with laser-sighted .50-cals firing armor-piercing bullets we made ourselves. They sent tanks, and we dug holes and buried nitrate fertilizer bombs and blew those tanks fifty feet into the air!

  They sent the Rangers, and we charged them like madmen and got in close and whipped them down into jelly. I remember a guy named Tiny Knowlton. Dumb as a bag of hammers, but six feet ten and all muscle. Tiny didn’t even carry a rifle. He had a red all-metal fire axe he found at one of the forest ranger stations out in the woods. He decorated it with leather grips and wrote weird stuff on it, kissed it and slept with it. He named that axe, you know.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Redmond. “As a matter of fact, I do know. He named it What Goes Around Comes Around. Something to do with his time in Soledad prison, I don’t recall exactly, if even we ever knew. What Goes Around Comes Around now hangs in the Hall of Heroes in Olympia, alongside Comrade Walter Knowlton’s two Iron Crosses.”

  “And so it should. Funny, you know. I could never get used to referring to him as Walter. Tiny was so strong he could bust open a Bakelite he
lmet with a single blow like it was a watermelon. The best times were when we dealt with the loyalists, those pieces of shit who dared to put an American flag on their porch or open their filthy yaps against us. Some fucking red white and blue asshole out in some little town in Idaho ran his mouth about evil racism and we heard about it, O. C. and the boys would roll in with Born to Be Wild blaring on our speakers, and believe me, we never had any trouble out of those places again. Because in most cases they don’t even exist. We burned them to the ground and if we could find salt, we sowed it into the ground as a kind of ritual so nothing ever would grow there again. You were on about my moniker of Bloody Dave? That was where I got it, and I earned it.”

  “Yes, sir, so I’ve heard. Getting back to Ravenhill, you were at the meeting which took place at the Hoodsport safe house the night before the planned attack on the Special Criminal Court in Port Orchard?”

  “That’s right, although not all of it,” Leach told them. “Me and a number of the other guys. Pretty much the whole Column was there, out in the woods behind the house and watching the road coming and going, weapons ready. I remember hearing Murdock mention he wasn’t too comfortable having all our people in one spot like that, but it was necessary.”

  “Why necessary? Did he say?” asked Redmond.

  “Not in my hearing. It wasn’t usual, though. The Column usually moved in on a target in at least two groups, more often three. Murdock would command one section and Melanie Young or one of the sergeants would command the others.”

  “But when the witcommando was ambushed at Ravenhill, it was almost all of you except for a few who were detached for separate duties,” pointed out Nel. “For example, we know that only four Volunteers were sent to collect and bring in the lorry with the home-made mortar tubes on it. That seems an odd level of exposure for so important a weapon. Do you have any idea why that might have been, meneer?”