The Hill of the Ravens

by H. A. Covington

  “Yes, the abuse of civil law was one of their favorite and most destructive weapons,” agreed Don. “That’s one reason why we don’t have any civil law or lawyers in the Republic, just community arbitrators drawn from citizens over the age of fifty who arbitrate disputes on the basis of common sense.”

  Palmieri nodded wearily. “A bit too late for my brothers and sisters and me. Of course, what it really was in practice was a gigantic child kidnapping ring, snatching children from white working class families or religious homes and giving them to families of rich liberal élitists who couldn’t or wouldn’t have children of their own, or even worse, what they called gay couples back in those days. Always white kids, of course. Somehow they never seemed to get around to applying all these wonderful child protection laws to Mexicans or blacks. One night, thirty armed men crept up on our home in the small hours of the morning. They shot our dogs with silenced rifles, and then kicked in the door of our house. My father didn’t even know what was happening. He thought we were being attacked by criminals, which we were, of course, but trouble was that the criminals had badges. My father grabbed a pistol from the nightstand and the soldiers of the United States shot him dead.

  “I used to dream of monsters when I was a kid, and that night I really did wake up and find a monster beside my bed, a big thing in body armor and a gas mask. It pulled me out of bed and down into hell. They dragged my mother out into the yard, screaming in her nightdress, in twenty-degree weather. They handcuffed her and threw her into a police car. I only saw her once again, at the formal hearing three months later, but they kept her in a kind of glass booth so she couldn’t communicate with us and teach us any more hate. The fact that they taught me a hate on that night that has never died probably escapes them to this day. The judge banged his gavel and they took me away, and they took all my brothers and sisters away to different places. After years of searching I have been able to find my sister Graziella and my brother James and bring them Home. The other five vanished forever. God knows where they are now, or even if they are alive. I remember my mother’s face staring at me through the plexiglass while they were dragging me away from the hearing, and then someone turned out the light in her booth and I never saw her again. A few days later my court-appointed lawyer came and told me that Mom committed suicide the day after that piece of shit in the black robe took away her legal custody. Then he stood up and closed his briefcase and walked out of the room and I never saw him again. Poor Mom. She loved everyone and in return those bastards burned her soul alive.

  “I had it rough, but in a smooth kind of way, if you get my meaning. The Federal court system placed me, or I should say they sold me for the so-called adoption bond to a pair of fruits in Seattle who paid two hundred grand for me. So at least I got a free ride Home. If I’d been sent to Florida or Chicago it might have turned out different, like it did with most of my brothers and sisters. It was a big luxury condo on Capitol Hill where they took me one day. Most kids would have rebelled outright, but I think maybe my Sicilian peasant heritage came in handy. Somehow I understood that there was a time when one had to bow down to superior authority, smile in their faces, keep quiet, and wait. They have a saying in the old country, you know, about how vengeance is the only dish that tastes best when eaten cold. I knew without doubt that someday I would have my revenge against the evil people and the evil government that murdered my parents. Bruce and Neville were good enough to me the first

  couple of years, and so I kept my mouth shut and went with the flow, yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir. Frankie Has Two Daddies, you get the idea. They bought me bikes and baseball gloves and computer games, and tried to be my pal and all that stuff, even talked with me some about the Bible like Mom used to. No King James, though. They definitely used the inclusive version.”

  “Let me guess,” said Redmond. “The story of David and

  Jonathan?”

  “Oh, yeah, they were real big on that particular chapter and verse,” returned Palmieri with a contemptuous sneer. “Then one night the inevitable happened. I think the two of them drew straws to decide which of them got to break me in, so to speak. Daddy Nev drew the short straw in every sense of the term, for which I imagine Daddy Bruce was thankful afterwards. Daddy Nev came into my bedroom and tried it on. I was thirteen by then, big for my age, and I knew more about what was what than they realized I knew. Along with the baseball mitt they’d given me a Louisville slugger. Bad move on their part. I knocked the fudge-packing motherfucker flat with the first blow and then while he was lying in a daze I locked the bedroom door. Then I went to work with the bat. Took my time, nice and slow, aiming every blow so I could hear the faggot scream and feel things break, feel them crunch and rupture through the wood of the bat. All the time I knew how horrified Mom would have been, she who’d loved everybody in Jesus’s name and always taught meekness and forgiveness. Part of me felt bad about it, because of Mom, but that night it was my Dad’s Italian blood that came out in me. I think my forebears in the South Bronx were watching too and cheering me on. Christ, it felt good to finally hit back, to finally hurt back after all those years of helplessness! Neville was screaming, Bruce was pounding on the door screaming, finally I broke the bat and then climbed out the window and beat feet. I learned later it took Nev four days in the hospital to die. I lived rough on the streets of Seattle for about three months, then the cops picked me up in a sweep. I was tried as an adult of course, and they sent me to Walla Walla, life for the killing and no parole because of the hate thing. Guess who my first cellmate was?” asked Palmieri with a grin.

  “A Northwest settler?” asked Redmond.

  “Yeah. Not just any settler either, either, as great a bunch of guys as they all were. It was Winston Wayne!”

  “Ah! CO of the Coeur d’Alene Brigade, then Commandant of the Sawtooth Flying Column. So you were one of the Walla Walla Forty-Three?” asked Redmond in admiration.

  “Yup. The future Brigadier and me and forty-one other bad-ass white men busted out of the strongest prison west of the Mississippi and we went into the mountains. Most of us hid out in the Coeur d’Alene area. On the morning of October 22nd, I could actually hear the shooting from Gus Singer’s place from the safe house I was in. Wayne told us to stay put while he stuck a .45 in his belt and went out to see what the hell was going on. An hour or so later Wayne comes in grinning from ear to ear, tosses me a Heckler and Koch submachine gun, and says ‘Courtesy of the Idaho State Police, young Francesco! The cop I got it off won’t be needing it any more. Gentlemen, lock and load! Let’s go make ourselves a Homeland!’ From then on, as they say, it’s all in the history books. Look, Redmond, let’s cut the crap. You’re a senior BOSS officer and Corby Morgan’s son in-law. You didn’t come here just to jaw-jack about the old days. What’s going on and how can I help?”

  “Actually, sir, I really did come to jaw-jack about the old days,” said Redmond. “One episode from the old days in particular. It is a fact, is it not, that you are one of the eight Volunteers who survived the last ambush that wiped out the Olympic Flying Column?”

  “Only because I wasn’t there,” said Palmieri dismally. “I wasn’t there!” The older man was silent for a moment. “Jesus, Redmond, why the hell did you have to bring that up? That was the worst thing that ever happened to me in my life, in a way even worse than what happened to my family. Those guys and gals were my family. It was like losing Mom and Dad all over again. What could there possibly be for you to investigate after all this time? That evil

  bitch Trudy Greiner sold us all out for a million bucks. Redmond,

  before God I have never raised my hand to a woman in my life! That was one of Dad’s ironclad rules for his boys and I have always obeyed him. Not even during the war. I never even shot at a female cop or soldier, at least not on purpose. I’d aim away at the last second, if I saw it was a woman. A lot of us would, even with those wretched

  American bitches. But that’s one woman I’ve dreamed of killing
all my life. I wish I had her and that million bucks out at Union Station. I’d fire up a locomotive and throw her into the methane furnace alive and kicking, and the money after her!”

  “Minister, please understand this. Something has come up, and I need to know about that time. I don’t mean any insult or insinuation, but I have to ask these questions. I need to know where everyone was when the ambush at Ravenhill ranch went down, and I need to know why they were there. Now, I understand that the original idea was to launch a truckborne mortar attack on the ZOG Special Criminal Court in Port Orchard, with a view towards disabling the facility and killing as many lawyers and other enemy effectives as possible?”

  “Yeah, that was the plan.”

  “You did not go with the main column, but you drove the flatbed truck with the mortars?” asked Redmond.

  “Yes. Me and Volunteer Saltovic. You may have heard of

  Drago, he’s a well known concert pianist now.”

  “Yes, Minister, I know. May I ask why you were assigned to that particular detail?”

  “I had helped Joe Cord, Drago, and Sergeant Ron Nolan build and load the home-made mortars, and I knew how to operate the hydraulic elevation press as well as Drago and Ron did.”

  “Who actually drove?” asked Redmond.

  “Drago Saltovic was driving. I was on the passenger side in the cab. We left the lumberyard in Hoodsport at five thirty or thereabouts. The McCanlesses were driving our scout car, a beat-up old Oldsmobile that looked like it was on its last legs, but Ed had souped that thing up to where it could outrun anything Fattie had short of a helicopter.”

  “Only four people with the mortar truck?” asked Redmond keenly. “Wouldn’t it have been more usual for Murdock to divide the Column into two groups, one his and one commanded by Melanie Young to escort the mortar truck?”

  “Mmmm, yeah,” agreed Palmieri, “Usually we’d move in on an operational area in two or three smaller columns, but I think in this case the thinking went that too many vehicles together might draw attention to the mortars. We wanted to look like we were just delivering some PVC pipe to a construction site, and it might look

  odd if we had a small convoy of other vehicles with us. The idea was that if we were intercepted, Drago would hit a two-minute timer that would detonate the mortars on the back of the truck and obliterate anything within 300 yards when she blew. Then while that was ticking we’d pile into the back seat of the Olds and Ed would burn rubber out of there. Ed was a demon driver and I figured we would have had a better than even chance of getting clear. If we didn’t, there were enough weapons and ammo in the car so that we would have taken plenty of those Federal pigs with us.”

  “How were you planning on getting to the target area in Port

  Orchard?” asked Redmond.

  “We had decided on a kind of roundabout way down into PO,” Palmieri explained. “Highway 101 South down to Shelton would have been the obvious way for us to start out, but then 101 was always full of FATPO and army checkpoints and patrols.”

  “That’s because it was always full of NVA as well,” chuckled

  Redmond reminiscently. “The Federals used to call Highway 101

  Ambush Alley.”

  “Yeah, and we figured we’d better avoid Ambush Alley,” replied Palmieri with a nod. “So instead we eased northward along some county roads and firebreak roads, then across 101 real quick just south of Lillivaup where we slid the truck and the Olds onto an old de-commissioned ferryboat that some of our people had come up with from somewhere. There was a crew of three men on that thing, never knew their names, never saw them before or since, but it took them maybe ten minutes by the light of dawn to slip us across that little finger of Hood Canal there and get us up onto land again.”

  “So there may be other surviving NVA Volunteers who knew about the mission and participated in it?” asked Nel excitedly. “These three men…”

  “It won’t fly, Hennie,” said Redmond, shaking his head. “You think one of the ferryboat guys might have ratted out? But it wasn’t the mortar truck that was ambushed. It was the main column.”

  “Ach, cies, ja, Colonel, you’re right,” agreed Nel in disappointment.

  “Go on, please, Minister,” urged Redmond. “Once the four of you and the mortar truck got across Hood Canal, what then?”

  “From there we moved slowly down the cat roads towards

  Bremerton,” Palmieri continued. “Finally we came out onto Highway

  3 going right into Port Orchard. That was about seven thirty in the morning. The attack was scheduled for nine sharp, right when all the bastard lawyers would be coming in so we could take out as many suits as possible. We were making good time and we didn’t want to get to ground zero too soon and call attention to ourselves. We pulled over into a small diner just outside Port Orchard, so did the McCanlesses, we got out, locked our vehicles, bought a paper from the vending machine, walked into the greasy spoon, sat down and had breakfast just like we were normal citizens.”

  “Christ, how could you eat anything?” asked Nel in wonder. “Michael Collins’ first rule for life on the run,” said Palmieri

  with a smile. “Never act like you’re on the run.” Palmieri’s face sagged in sudden terrible memory. “The waitress had just brought breakfast to our booth when the television over the counter started blaring the news about the column being wiped out at a place called Ravenhill Ranch, just north of Shelton. We saw news helicopter shots of the burning vehicles. The copters got down real low and used telephoto lenses, and we could see the Fatties turning over the bodies of our brothers and sisters, kicking them, spitting on them, niggers and Mexicans unzipping their flies and pissing on the faces we knew. We were in shock. There was a…a man at the counter, I won’t ever call him a white man, in working clothes with a big red, white and blue flag on his baseball cap. He started showing his butt. He was laughing and yelling and cackling about how great it was those racist bastards finally got theirs, and how none of them really came from Washington anyway because everybody knew the Old Man brought all the horrible racists into the Northwest from around the world, they gave the Northwest a bad name and Northwest people were really loyal Americans…oh, Jesus…I wasn’t even thinking. Before I knew it I had my gun out and in my lap below the table, clicking the safety off. I think we all did. Then Brit McCanless, who in those days was the most incredibly fine chunk of long-haired, long-legged, witchy womanhood you ever saw, leaned over and took me by the wrist. Her hand was tiny but it was like my wrist was clamped in a vice grip. I couldn’t move it. ‘Not now!’ she whispered. ‘We have a mission to complete. Not now, my brother!’

  “So we sat there in that booth, our faces calm and blank, and we choked down our omelettes and hash browns and toast and took our time finishing our coffee, and none of us vomited in our sheer grief and rage. I think that was the hardest thing I ever had to do during the war. I don’t often have nightmares about that time of my life, gentlemen, but when I do, it’s never about Walla Walla prison or combat. It’s about that morning in that diner, and I am stuck there in a kind of time warp, stuck there forever, forcing horrible food down my throat with my chest and my brain on fire, exerting every nerve in my soul not to scream and weep and kill, kill, kill. We finally finished, we got up, Brit paid our check at the cash register just like we were ordinary tourists passing through, we passed the asshole in the American flag baseball cap with a little smile and a nod, and we went outside into the summer morning. The jackass with the American flag cap had another big one on the rear window of his SUV. All four of us memorized the license number as he left. Then we went over by the truck. ‘Do we have a secondary target?’ asked Brittany. That’s all she said. Nothing else, and it was the absolutely right thing to say, because it reminded us that we were soldiers and we had a job to do, and that the time for grief would come later. May the Earth Mother bless Brittany McCanless forever for that.

  “Ed says ‘The phone company offices. We take that out we
can make sure about 200,000 phone subscribers lose service for a bit and don’t get their bills this month.’ Drago says, “We should try for a police station, the big one in Bremerton.’ But I wasn’t having any.

  ‘No,’ I told them. ‘You saw what they did. You heard them cackling in triumph on TV, you heard that motherfucker wearing the Masonic dishrag on his head. We have to make sure they die today as well, as many of them as possible. We can still take out the courthouse. Dead lawyers! We will give the Commandant and Melanie and all the rest of them the best tribute of all! Dead lawyers!’ I guess you can see I still hadn’t quite gotten over the court system killing my parents and stealing my family and giving me to those faggots.”

  “You didn’t think of implementing General Order Number

  Eight?” asked Redmond. “Escape and evasion?”

  “The thought of running away never occurred to us,” said Palmieri, shaking his head. “Anyway, because we would have no covering fire, we agreed to use the timing detonator and turn that

  eighteen-wheeler from a mortar transport into a mere common or garden variety truck bomb. Drago set the timer down to thirty seconds, we drove into Port Orchard and we took out the courthouse. Killed a dozen lawyers, two judges, and the blast managed to jam a long shard of glass right up a U. S. Attorney’s promissory estoppel.” Palmieri chuckled at the memory.

  “There were four of you when you against at least forty cops, FATPOS and U. S. Marshalls,” Redmond reminded him. “Yet you completed your mission anyway, at extreme risk to your own lives. Four Iron Crosses and a victory that took the edge off the massacre of the Olympic Flying Column that morning, recovered the NVA’s morale, and gave us another legend to tell our children.”