A Mighty Fortress Read online

  Spuckies – Derogatory and defamatory term used by local white people in the Northwest to denote racially conscious white settlers who came into the Homeland during pre-revolutionary times. Origin of this term unknown.

  SS – Special Service. The NAR and the Party’s élite military formation. Drawn from the top achievers of all the NDF branches, with naval, air, and space mobile wings. Highly trained and equipped with the most advanced equipment, the SS deliberately follows the traditions of its historic namesake of the Third Reich. The corps seeks to erase all differences and divisions of class, religion, and nationality, creating a true Aryan band of brothers. For this purpose, extensive political and racial education based on the principles of National Socialism is part and parcel of SS training and qualification.

  Stukach – A Russian term meaning informer, dating from the time of Stalin and the hideous purges of the 1930s. How exactly this term entered the lexicon of the Northwest American Republic is not certain. When applied to the family or person of a citizen, it is considered the ultimate insult, along with the words “whigger” and “attorney.” All three are considered to be killing words, i.e. prima facie casus belli under the law of the Republic for a duel to the death if the parties involved cannot be reconciled by formal procedures under the Code Duello.

  Take The Gap – Broadly speaking, to Come Home. To immigrate to the Northwest American Republic. In practice, to “take the gap” generally connotes an illegal entry into the Homeland from the United States, Aztlan, Canada, or sometimes by air. “Taking the gap” often involves physically running the border under gunfire and pursuit.

  Tickle – An operation of the Northwest Volunteer Army against a Federal or Zionist target.

  Third Section (Threesec) – Intelligence, counterintelligence, security and special operations department of the Party prior to 10/22 and during the War of Independence. Created by Matt Redmond, who served as Threesec’s first director until his death. Organizational ancestor of both BOSS (q.v.) and War Prevention Bureau (q.v.)

  Volunteer – A male or female soldier of the Northwest Volunteer Army.

  Whigger – “White nigger.” A defamatory term for whites during the pre-revolutionary time who aped the mannerisms and subculture of blacks. Considered to be a killing word in the NAR, i.e. sufficient casus belli for a duel to the death if no compromise can be reached between the parties involved.

  Woodchuck – Originally a term with defamatory and derogatory connotations used by Aryan settlers in the Homeland to denote those who were born in the Northwest, especially rural areas. Now transmuted and claimed as a proud and honorable designation by those born in the Homeland.

  WPB – The NAR’s War Prevention Bureau. A covert agency designed to prevent the necessary military, political, and psychological conditions from developing within the United States, Aztlan, or anywhere else that might lead to an existential military threat to the existence of the Northwest Republic, through the use of targeted assassination and other black ops. The WPB is also responsible for tracking down and liquidating spies and traitors to the Northwest Republic, including informers and traitors from the time of the War of the Independence. Their motto in German is “Alles bekennings wird abgerechnet” – “All accounts will be settled.”

  ZOG – Zionist Occupation Government. Term originally created by the obscure National Socialist writer Eric Thomson in the 1970s. Strictly construed, ZOG means the Federal government of the United States. In actual usage it is a much more all-embracing term meaning the System, the Establishment, the generic “them” used by oppressed peoples to denote the Federal tyrant.

  A Mighty Fortress

  I.

  “Be a gentleman tonight, and don’t clip any of the bimbos.” – Bobby Bells

  Kelly Marie Shipman and William Cody Brock were both born on the same day in June. Both of them lived in Washington. Both were newly graduated seniors at Hillside High School in Seattle, and both gratefully received welcome birthday presents from their friends and family. For her gift on the day she turned eighteen years old, Kelly received a new car from her proud and doting parents. To celebrate his eighteenth birthday, Cody got to kill a man.

  Kelly’s birthday began at seven o’clock on a fine summer morning, when she bounded down the stairs of her home in the affluent Seattle suburb of Mercer Island, a bundle of joyful youth and energy and anticipation at the beginning of her life. She was tall and leggy, an athletically perfect blonde teenager with ivory skin, crystalline blue eyes, and a killer smile of capped teeth that had set her father back almost ten grand. He had been able to deduct the dental work as a business expense, since Kelly had been modeling for advertisements and acting in commercials and on local television since she was three years old. The profits she made were scrupulously placed into a special trust for her by her father, who was administrator of the trust but who wasn’t above spending it on his daughter, especially if it gave him a good tax write-off. The Shipman family lived in one of the last remaining small islands of the American dream, in a split-level ranch dwelling located in a gated community which was flawlessly landscaped, well lit, and discreetly fortified against the outside world. The house had six large bedrooms, a swimming pool, a basement rec room containing more sports and games and entertainment gear than the downtown YMCA, and a capacious garage containing at any given time at least four late model motor vehicles, including her father’s prized Ferrari. The house carried a mortgage larger than the municipal debt of some American towns, but the Shipmans could afford it. They were among those lucky Americans who were not only still employed, but very gainfully so indeed. Kelly’s father, Dr. Edward Shipman, was a cardiologist who ran his own clinic and HMO in Seattle. His company provided three essential services: heart attack and stroke recovery, emphysema home care including home oxygen supplies, and out-patient AIDS and HIV care. Dr. Shipman used to remark wryly that “Our clinic cashes in on the three great health disasters of the past hundred years: smoking, AIDS, and the American diet.”

  He wasn’t joking. With Medicare and Medicaid long gone the way of Social Security, Shipman’s HMO catered only to the dwindling number of Americans who either still had health insurance, or who were sufficiently wealthy to pay for the services of himself and his doctor-partners to keep them alive. Doctor Shipman had also developed a reputation for discretion which brought him a number of special celebrity patients whom he treated for assorted embarrassing conditions in a consulting room tucked away in his home. Kelly’s mom, the elegantly attired and flawlessly presented Marty Shipman, was senior vice president of a major medical supply firm linked with the HMO, and Kelly herself had already brought in more money from her modeling and minor acting gigs than some blue-collar workers ever earned in their lives. The American dream was very much alive in the Shipman household.

  This morning Kelly was attired in spotless, glistening tennis whites. She was holding a covered racket under one arm, while in a tote bag over one shoulder she carried jeans, shoes, and a knitted top. “Tennis this early, Kel?” asked her father, looking up from the breakfast table. Shipman was a tall and distinguished-looking, avuncular man with a suave bedside manner which stood him in good stead with his well-heeled patients. “Tomorrow morning I could see, since you’re going to have a huge birthday dinner to work off,” he continued. “How’s eight o’clock at the Belvedere sound? And you can certainly bring Molly along.”

  “Why not invite Craig as well?” suggested her mother, referring to Kelly’s intermittent boyfriend. She approved of Craig Crabtree wholeheartedly. Dr. Shipman wasn’t quite so certain. There were one or two dimly perceived warning flags up in his mind regarding young Crabtree, although he couldn’t have explained why. Something in the boy’s manner, a slight oiliness, a few small but definite indications of dishonesty, a little too casual interest in the drugs cabinet in Shipman’s home surgery had put him on his guard where Craig was concerned. Shipman looked at the young beauty at his breakfast table in silent wonder. He knew that s
he had been a woman for a good while now, and today would make it official. Once again he fought down his panic and his fear at the terrible world she was about to enter, where he could no longer protect her. In the America of this day, to love a child meant quiet, lifelong terror.

  “Great, Dad! They’ve got a ricotti quiche to die for!” laughed Kelly. “And I already invited Molly to wherever we’re going.” She pointedly did not mention Crabtree, which her father found relieving. Maybe they were having another spat, and maybe this time it would last. He was honest enough to admit to himself that it wasn’t just that he didn’t want his daughter with Craig Crabtree. He didn’t want her with anyone. Not until she was thirty. Or thirty-five.

  “Well, good, because that’s where we made the reservations,” said her mother, who kissed her daughter’s cheek. “Happy birthday, honey!”

  “Don’t worry, I’m hitting the court tomorrow as well and every morning for a while,” Kelly told her father as she sat down at the table. “I’ve got a couple pounds I need to drop before they get too comfortable on my butt, so I’m going to get in a couple of sets with Molly before class starts every day. We can change in the locker room.”

  “Oh, Kel, for heaven’s sake, you are not fat!” exclaimed her mother in exasperation.

  “The scale decrees otherwise,” replied Kelly. “Manny says I’m now at optimum weight and I need to nip any gain in the bud before it gets to be a problem.” The Emmanuel Skar Agency was representing Kelly’s talent down in Hollywood.

  Kelly and her best friend and tennis partner Molly Bergstrom were beginning their first day of AT, Advanced Track summer school at Hillside High School. AT was one of the many dodges that genuinely concerned teachers and administrators had developed in order to try and salvage something out of the ghastly wreckage of the American educational system, without actually admitting publicly that it was a ghastly wreck. These days the public schools consisted of little more than social and political engineering with a heavy dose of mandatory diversity training and multicultural brainwashing, essentially warehousing the kids until it was time for a few of them to go on to college and most of them to go into the army or the workforce. Stripped of all its politically correct psychobabble, the Advanced Track was essentially a way of making sure that at least some of the high school’s student body, those who were capable of learning, actually got some kind of education. In this manifestation, AT took the form of a selection of college-level courses for academically gifted students, i.e. those who could read beyond the level of the TV Guide and those who had demonstrated that they could at least think a little on their own. Even though she had already graduated from Hillside, Kelly was attending a dramatic arts class for those who wanted to get into acting and cinema as a profession, partly for the practice and partly for something to do over the summer before she entered UCLA in September. Kelly was majoring at the university’s School of Acting, and had already arranged her class schedule around her latest movie; students at the School of Acting got course credit for actually working on set in any capacity.

  She had begun her serious acting career that spring, i.e. her first actual movie and her first venture outside the limited Seattle market. By special permission from Hillside High, Kelly had taken her final course exams in March, which she had aced with straight A’s as she always did. She had then spent April and May in Hollywood, on the set of the movie studio. She had landed an extensive supporting role in a Grade B-Plus teenaged romance flick filmed in Hollywood for a major cable network. The male lead was a rising and arrogant young star with blow-dried hair and a $700 dollar per day cocaine habit at age seventeen. The female lead was a mediocre actress, aged twenty-eight but playing seventeen, who successfully gained plum roles through her expertise on the casting couch and didn’t care who knew it. In the movie, Kelly Shipman played the female lead’s best friend, her character being the head cheerleader that Kelly was at Hillside High in real life. The role had started with a good allotment of speaking screen time for Kelly’s character Jill, and the director had been sufficiently impressed with Kelly’s talent and camera presence actually to write in some more for her, largely in order to shore up the lead starlet’s lackluster performance.

  Her newly acquired agent Manny Skar had assured her that the exposure would be noticed, and Manny’s prediction was already proving valid. Although her first movie wasn’t even released yet, Kelly Shipman had already been signed for another movie, a Disease of the Month made-for-television weepy wherein she got to play not the sick girl, but once again the best friend. “Don’t worry, you’ll be past the sidekick stage in another flick or two,” Manny assured her ebulliently, waving his cigar in the air as he sat behind his desk. “You’ve got ingenue written all over you. In between B’s I can get you into some C horror and slasher flicks too, if you want. Every star needs at least one bow-wow in their youth they’d rather forget it when they make it to major stardom. It’s kind of a Hollywood tradition.” At the same client conference before she returned to Seattle for graduation, Skar had also made some insinuating suggestions about how Kelly could go a lot farther in the business if she would agree to at least take her top off on camera. Kelly, who was by no means a dumb blonde, had gotten the clear signal that it would also materially assist her career if she agreed to take her top off in Manny’s office as well, on a regular basis. She had firmly but diplomatically turned the conversation in other directions, and Manny had taken the hint with good grace. This time, anyway. Kelly decided there was no point in mentioning any of this to her parents. She would deal with it when she moved to California, and Skar wasn’t the only agency in Hollywood. “What time is summer school class over?” asked her mother.

  “Three o’clock,” said her daughter. “Molly wants me to go over to her house afterward. I think she’s planning a surprise party, although I haven’t let on I know.”

  “Well, make sure you get back in time for your birthday dinner tonight,” said Ed. “And don’t eat too much cake and nachos.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I won’t be late. After all, you two have to give me my present,” said Kelly with a smile.

  “Your present will be rather hard to fit into a restaurant,” said Ed. “Oh, what the hell, might as well give it to you now. You’re going to see it when you leave anyway. Take a look outside in the driveway.” Kelly looked out the window and saw a brand new silver Ford Explorer sitting on the concrete with a large red bow and ribbon wrapped around it. She squealed in delight and ran outside.

  “Fully loaded, of course, all-wheel drive, front and side air bags,” said her father as her parents followed her outside, beaming. “Leather upholstery, full climate control since you will definitely be needing the air conditioning in L.A., CD player and DVD screen in the back seat for your passengers, and fold down back seats for the move. I’m driving you down to California, by the way, and no argument. The keys are in it. Just what the budding young movie star needs to be tooling down Rodeo Drive and Hollywood Boulevard,” said Ed. “Now come back inside and eat your breakfast. You’ll have time enough to drive it over the summer. By September it will be old hat.”

  “Oh, Daddy, it’s wonderful!” said Kelly, hugging him.

  “Yeah, well, when you sign your first million-dollar contract I expect a second Ferrari from you for my birthday,” said Ed.

  “You got it,” laughed Kelly, and Ed understood she meant it. The cable news was coming on the kitchen TV, with the newscaster describing the latest suicide bombing against the American occupation forces in Saudi Arabia. The screen showed a roadside in a desert background with several burning American military vehicles in the foreground. Ed Shipman hit the remote to mute the sound of the tube. “No, leave it on!” insisted Kelly. “I want to see.”

  “It’s just the same old depressing crap,” countered her father defensively. “Nothing new ever happens over there. Good grief, honey, don’t we get enough terrorist bombs here in Seattle? You’ve seen more than enough horrible scenes like that ri
ding by on the freeway. Why do you want to see them on the television?”

  “Yes, but with Jason over there in Saudi I want to keep up with what’s going on,” said Kelly, sitting down and buttering her whole wheat toast.

  “Which is why your mother and I have acquired the habit of ignoring the news,” said Ed quietly. “A habit I recommend you adopt, Kel. It’s not as if we can do anything about it, so why dwell on it? We could have gotten Jason out of military service ona college deferment if he’d let us, but he was a real man about it and wanted to do his bit for America, which is admirable of him but pretty wearing on our nerves. What if one day you’re watching the news and you see your brother dead on CNN? That’s happened, you know, more than once.”

  Kelly pouted. “I know, Daddy. We’ve been fighting in the Middle East now for how long? Almost since before I was born. Nobody my age can remember when there was no war, at least no war in the Middle East, I mean, not the war here in Seattle.”

  “There’s no war in Seattle, there’s just a lot of horrible crime and terrorism committed by crazy redneck white supremacists,” said Marty angrily, pausing with a fork of poached egg in midair.

  “The spuckies aren’t white supremacists, Mom, they’re white separatists,” said Kelly, buttering her toast and adding grape jelly.

  “And who told you that?” asked Ed suspiciously. “You haven’t been reading those damned illegal leaflets scattered everywhere, have you?”