A Mighty Fortress Read online

  “Yup,” said Barrow.

  “Where is that Doctor Doom kid, Joe?” asked Morehouse. “Can he rig one or both of these comrades up either with a covert recorder or better yet some kind of broadcast bug?”

  “He’s out at Eastgate mall looting the Radio Shack,” replied Dortmunder. “I’ll call him in.”

  “Don’t use the phone. Send somebody reliable out there to find him and explain what we want, so he can get what equipment he needs, then bring him here,” said Morehouse. “That will take a while, I’m sure. I suggest that you two comrades use the intervening time to find a dark corner and catch a couple of hours of sleep.”

  “And none of that carnal sin stuff,” Dortmunder reminded them with a chortle.

  “Get thee behind me, Satan!” said Cody, shaking his finger sternly at Emily, and getting another elevated middle finger from her in return.

  The mansion was a large home built back in the late part of the last century, intended for wealthy cyber-yuppies, and it actually had servants’ quarters which had no doubt hosted a long series of illegal alien maids and gardeners and pool boys. Cody and Emily were able to find a spare bedroom with two twin beds in it tucked off to one side on the top floor. They lay down in their clothes on the separate beds, Cody set a travel alarm clock he carried in his gear, and turned out the lights. “Tell me a story,” demanded Emily.

  “Once there were three bears who tore up and ate a little girl who wouldn’t let them sleep,” said Cody.

  “Tell me the one about why you didn’t want me to go with you into that meeting at church today,” she said.

  “Do we really need to be talking about this now?” he asked.

  “Not if you don’t want to,” she said with a shrug he could feel if not see in the dark.

  Cody sighed. “Look, we both know that you can do anything a man can do in this line of work, and you do it damned well, as good as me or better,” he said. “No argument. And no, my macho isn’t offended by you personally. It’s not about you as such, it’s a deeper thing, and I think it’s the natural way for a man to feel. Just because women can do these violent and military things, some of them anyway that don’t require as much physical strength and endurance as others, that doesn’t mean that they should be doing them. Okay, I accept the world as it is, I know we need female comrades and we’d be stupid and probably lose the war if we didn’t use all the available talent and intelligence and courage that women bring to our racial struggle. Girls like you are a necessary evil, if you’ll pardon the expression, with emphasis on the necessary. Again, no argument from me. And if you feel you’ve got something to prove by being here, take my word for it, you’ve proved it to every man jack of us. I know we’ve got some Neanderthals in the NVA who don’t want women to vote under the Republic, who want to shove you back into the kitchen and keep you barefoot and pregnant, and that’s crap. Women like you have earned the right to do whatever the hell you want in our new country, for you and all your sisters and daughters, pardon the trite language. When they start handing out medals you’ve earned every one of them and I want to pin them on you myself. But God damn it, it just doesn’t….” He ran down.

  “It just doesn’t feel right?” she concluded for him.

  “No, it doesn’t. I’m sure you’ve seen it on TV when some Army or National Guard unit is leaving for Iraq or Saudi or Gaza, and they show some woman in camouflage with an M-16 over her shoulder kissing her children good-bye and then handing them to her husband, who is going to stay home and take care of the kids while Mommy goes off to war, and those scumsucking liberal asshole news commentators think this is just the greatest and most wonderful scene since sliced bread. I used to see those stories on the tube and I’d wonder, what kind of so-called man could do something like that? How could he live with himself? How could he look himself in the mirror every morning knowing what a cowardly turd he was?

  “Emily, for Christ’s sake don’t think I’m dissing you in any way. I’m not, I swear. But I shouldn’t be fighting with you at my side. I should be fighting for you or—well, for some woman, back in a home some place with a family and children that I am trying to protect from these horrible tyrants. That’s the way it’s been down through history. And you, I mean women, you’ve always been a civilizing and moderating influence on men and their urge to fight one another. Kind of a brake that periodically gets called into play to stop us boys from burning down the whole house with our horseplay, so to speak. That’s what your role should be in any kind of sane society, stopping us guys from doing a lot of the stupid things we do. Making us grow up and be responsible. But in America, a couple of generations ago, women decided they wanted in on the menfolks’ rat-race, and the menfolks’ pointless brutal competition, and the menfolks’ politics, and the menfolks’ wars, and when you did that, you stopped being a civilizing influence and became part of the problem. We ended up with power-mad bitches like Margaret Thatcher and Hillary Clinton sending the troops out to slaughter just as easily as men ever did. Look, am I making any sense at all, or am I just really pissing you off? Because if we’re going to go into that den of fools this morning and break bad on them, I don’t need you pissed off at me.”

  She laughed, “No, no, not at all. All you’re telling me is that you’ve got healthy racial instincts, which I knew already. Look, Cody, you’re spot on. It doesn’t feel right to me either, because it isn’t right. It’s completely against nature for me to be doing what I’m doing, and I despise these Jewish feminists like Gloria Steinem and Germaine Greer and Shulamith Firestone and Andrea Dworkin and the whole plug-ugly nickel-nosed crew. They started all this nutty man-hating crap, this idea that men are enemies and competitors, so that now two generations later I have to live like this. I should be wearing dresses every day, and really baking cookies for a decent and honorable man who loves me and protects me and supports me, so I can get on with my own job in life of raising as many children as I can bear, beg, borrow, or steal. I need a man to be the head of the family while I am the heart. That’s what every female chromosome in my body demands that I do, but these damned Jews and the lunatic world of toxic waste they’ve made won’t let me do it. In the world that they’ve forced me to live in, I have to spend every waking hour getting one up on every man in sight, or else I’m a failure and a victim in society’s eyes. I’ll show them victim! There are women who haven’t been so badly damaged by feminism that they’ve lost every genuinely feminine instinct. They know that something has gone badly wrong in our lives. Most of us have some little corner in the back of our minds where we understand what we’ve lost, kind of a genetic memory if you like. It hurts like hell, and we want it back. And thank you for not wanting me to go in with you today, male chauvinist that you are. Like all girls I’m a sucker for a romantic gesture. I think it’s really sweet.”

  “I’m a really sweet guy when I’m not shooting people,” Cody assured her.

  She laughed softly in the darkness. “So I’ve noticed. Look, there’s something else, and I suppose I might as well ask. Never mind my mother and never mind all these carnal sin jokes, are we ever going to get it on? I don’t mean now. We have to go back on the job in a few hours. But is it ever going to happen? If you can tell me one way or the other, I’d like to know where I stand. For future reference, I’m interested and I’m on the pill.”

  “Emily, I just don’t know,” he said with another sigh. “I know that’s not what you want to hear, but I just can’t tell you now.”

  “Kelly?” she asked.

  “No, not Kelly,” he assured her. “Apparently I was pretty damned obvious, eh?”

  “As an elephant in church, yeah,” she agreed.

  “That was just me taking a last gasping shot at having some kind of adolescence, which is another thing those It Takes A Village snakes took from me. I think that’s why I talked Bells into letting me go back to high school for a year. I wanted one last taste of what might have been. Kelly and me were never possible. We talked a littl
e about it at her house tonight, and we both understand that.” That hadn’t been exactly the gist of the conversation earlier that evening, in the Shipman den by the light of the flickering tube, but as young as he was, Cody understood that there were times, especially where women were concerned, where honesty is not always the best policy. Besides, it was true. There had never been any realistic chance for him and Kelly, so he wasn’t actually lying to Emily. “But suppose I did get involved with you?” he went on, “And then tomorrow or the next day, or next month, or next year, we get in another firefight with the Feds and you end up dying in my arms, or me in yours? Although I doubt it would be that dramatic, just horrible. You see what I mean, Em? I shouldn’t even be having this discussion with a fellow soldier. None of this should even be a consideration. It simply adds to the confusion of an already stressful and confused situation. You shouldn’t be here. But having said that, I’m glad you are. And I know now that the one thing that I remember my father telling me about women is true.”

  “And what’s that?” asked Nightshade.

  “They always want to have deep and heavy analytical talks about the relationship at four o’clock in the morning, when you have to work next day and you’re trying to sleep.”

  * * *

  “This was the best I could do on short notice,” said Doctor Doom a few hours later, as he handed Nightshade her bugged Bible. He was a thin, blond young man with an intense and ascetic look, but not the thick glasses usually associated with science nerds. “I put this together from some of the bits and pieces I got from the Radio Shack. The Feds have all kinds of homing devices and tiny little fiber optic surveillance mikes and cameras the size of a pinhead, that you can wear in your hair or your lapel or disguise as a dozen different things, and which will broadcast for a two mile radius. Third Section has a little bit of that kind of exotic stuff that they’ve used on our own covert ops, but the only person I know who would have access to it or know how to use it would be Doctor Joe Cord, and he’s off on some kind of special mission at the moment. So this will have to do.

  “Basically, I pulled out the videophone micro-circuit board from a cell phone and slipped it into the spine this Bible. It’s about the size of a small person’s thumbnail, so it fits fairly snug. I glued it in with super-glue so it won’t fall out at an embarrassing moment. This particular model of chip has its own power cell, so it will work on its own without the rest of the phone. There’s no lens, since Commandant Dortmunder told me all you guys wanted for this morning was audio. It’s a small chip, and it nestles very snugly in the spine, and it’s black, so unless some takes your book in hand and feels a bump in the spine, or examines it closely, no one should see it. But it’s a pretty clumsy job, and anyone who actually handles the book may notice when they try to open it that the spine is a bit stiff, and get curious. So be careful and try not to let anyone else handle it. Before I pulled out the chip I dialed the number of a laptop with telephony that the Commandant gave me, and so you’ve got a wireless connection to that device that will transmit through the local cell sites. Let’s just hope they don’t space out on us or we don’t have a sunspot surge. Try to hold the top of the Bible in the direction of whoever is speaking, almost like a mike, but don’t make it too obvious. Your conversation will be recorded as an MP3 file on this laptop, so we’ll have a permanent record of whatever goes down.”

  “Give me those highlighters,” requested Emily, pointing to a set of the felt-tipped pens on the table which the officers had been using to mark maps. She hadn’t come to the safe house dressed for church on the previous afternoon, so she was now wearing a hastily assembled Christian-like female costume which included the skirt and the shoes from her NVA uniform which she has been trying on only the evening before, and she’d had to borrow a cross on a chain from one of the Christian Volunteers at the headquarters. Emily took the Bible and began going through it quickly, highlighting various passages in color. “In a fundie church everybody has their own Bible, and if I show up with a new one that’s unmarked, someone might notice. Ever since these things were invented, a really devout Christian’s Bible always has a psychedelic look. As to the bug, I presume we’re going to have other things going on to distract everybody’s attention. Is this thing broadcasting now?”

  “Yes, it’s on,” said Dortmunder. “General Barrow, myself and Eddie and several other Volunteers will be in our vehicles, circling the neighborhood of the church. Bobby Bells wanted to do it when he heard what was going down, but he’s got his hands full running our new public recruiting and broadcasting station at the Eastgate mall. He thinks a lot of you two, apparently. I will be monitoring you on this laptop that the Doc here has programmed to receive your audio feed. I won’t be able to see anything of what’s going on, but I will have the laptop and I will be able to hear you and whatever goes on at this unusual prayer meeting.”

  “What did you decide about sending us in strapped?” asked Cody.

  “That’s going to be up to you two, since you know the ground and the people, but I would be more comfortable if you went in with some kind of armament, even if it’s concealed,” said Dortmunder. “This set-up still makes my antennae quiver.”

  “What do you think?” Cody asked Nightshade.

  “Suppose they search us going in?” she replied.

  “You think they’ll be that security-conscious?” asked Dortmunder anxiously.

  “My guess is, not,” said Cody. “I think this is just going to be a preliminary meeting for Regenthal to call down the spirit and see who’s with him on this little vigilante venture. I don’t think they’re going to try to go out and attack anyone. Who would they attack? We’re not out in the open yet, except at a few places like Eastgate. He’ll be praising the Lord but not passing the ammunition, at least not today.”

  “You guys willing to bet your life on it?” asked Dortmunder.

  “The thing is, we have to stay in character,” said Nightshade firmly. “They think we’re a couple of brain-dead high school kids who are into Jesus and each other. Would a couple of kids like that show up at a secret meeting to do the Lord’s work carrying guns, when we have never before shown any indication of even knowing what a piece looks like? I’m sure we could come up with some kind of excuse, but it would be out of character. Yeah, I’d be more comfortable myself with a holdout in my purse or in an ankle holster for Cody, but suppose we’re searched? Maybe we could explain them away, but again, it would be a variation in pattern and it would make them curious. I’m not even going to be carrying my blade, because good Christian girls don’t go around tooled up in that manner. I’m none too happy about going in with this bugged Bible, even. Suppose they run a metal detector over us?”

  “It shouldn’t pick anything up,” replied Doctor Doom cheerfully. “Once I removed the lens and the other components the chip is largely plastic, and the micro-circuits are mostly silicate compound, even the conductive elements. Latest thing from China. We’ve really let the gooks get ahead of us in technology.”

  “Again, do you want to bet their lives on it?” repeated Dortmunder, looking at Doom.

  “What exactly is the plan, anyway?” asked Cody. “What are you comrades on the outside going to do? Just listen in?”

  Red Morehouse sighed. “No, we’re going to nip this in the bud, like I said earlier, but we need to be a little circumspect about it, and we need you two in there first to scope out the sitch. Because this event is taking place in a church, we don’t want just to raid the place and take everybody into custody, with or without gunfire. I cannot overemphasize how utterly vital it is that the NVA and hence the Northwest Republic not be perceived as being anti-Christian in any way, especially at this crucial phase of events. We don’t want to bust in there and find it’s nothing but a prayer meeting calling down the Great Jumping Jesus to smite all us Nazi sinners, so forth and so on. The enemy media would be all over something like that, and they’d squeeze every ounce of propaganda value out of it.


  “We have to get some kind of proof that something untoward is going on. This Regenthal character has to actually say something in our hearing that indicates that they’re planning some kind of un-Christian paramilitary or terrorist attack against the Republic. Terrorist attack—damn, that sounds odd for someone on our side to be saying! Once we hear that, we’re going to bust in the doors and grab them, especially Regenthal. We’ll get what we need from him. Be interesting to see how long he lasts in his own ball-busting chair we captured in Renton. But we need you to provide us with the necessary final ingredient of proof, and also we need you wired so you can give us some kind of information about what the setup is inside the building, how many of them there are, what weapons if any, whether or not Regenthal has sentries posted, etcetera. He wouldn’t be much of an army officer if he didn’t. We do not want to end up staging a massacre on church grounds that the enemy propaganda can turn against us. I’m not comfortable in subordinating your lives to considerations of public relations, but sometimes that’s how it plays out.”

  “Nightshade is right,” said Cody with a sigh. “This is a role we are playing, and we have to stay in character. Take the bug, but no guns.”

  “I will be commanding your backup crew myself,” said Barrow. “Don’t worry, we used to do this kind of thing all the time when I was a cop. We’ll be following you out there, and owing to the potentially national-level sensitivity of this assignment, the AC has decided there will be a special squad of reinforcements assigned to this case, to make sure we bag them fast and alive. You’ll get to meet your first SS men, Cody. They’re going to be an hour or so getting there, but once they’re in place around the church and we have the information we need, we’re busting in and we’re grabbing Brother Jesse’s sanctified OD green ass, and that preacher as well, plus anyone else who’s there gets dragged into the net. I don’t know what we’ll do with them exactly, but we not only need to find out what they know, we need to let the rest of the evangelical community know that the jig is up, we’re onto them, and we’re not going to tolerate any counterrevolutionary shenanigans. Everyone in the new Republic is free to worship as they please. They are not free to commit treason and then hide behind religion to escape the consequences. This morning, you guys will have to play along with whatever they say until we move, and be ready to take cover or whatever you need to do when it goes down. Don’t worry, we won’t leave you comrades dangling in the wind for too long. Now, like I said, we’ll be listening on Doctor Doom’s laptop. If at any time you feel threatened and you think you need immediate extraction, your SOS is ‘That Old Rugged Cross’. Kind of an inside joke there. That’s the gospel song they used to play at Klan cross-lightings. Think you can work that into a conversation?” he concluded with a chuckle.