The Hill of the Ravens Page 30

  “We have one more survivor to interview,” said Redmond as they floated down over I-5 back to Olympia. “The one I am most reluctant of all to approach with this.”

  “General Willem Vitale?” asked Nel.

  “Yes. I’ve sent word through military channels that I need to see him, so he knows we’re coming. He’s still down on the border, and so we’ll be away for a night, maybe two.”

  “Sir,” began Nel diffidently, “I understand this man is your lifelong friend. I’d offer to take over the interview myself, but I am only a sergeant and it would not be correct for me to interview a general in the SS, nor frankly could I muster the necessary officer presence in view of the difference in our rank. As late in the day as it is, would it not be better for you to bring another senior officer into the case?”

  Redmond chuckled. “In the first place, Sergeant Nel, under Section 30 of the Offenses Against the State Act, that BOSS brassard you’re carrying makes you Jesus Christ and all twelve apostles rolled into one anywhere in this man’s Republic. As an agent of the Bureau of State Security you have the legal authority to walk into Longview House right now, without asking anybody’s permission, and you can ask John Corbett Morgan what he had for breakfast if it is germane to

  a security matter you are investigating. John Corbett damned well has to answer, and he knows it. He may well have your guts for breakfast the next day, but he has to answer you first. You can go anywhere, arrest anyone, beat the crap out of anyone or kill anyone if need be, and if you can convince your superiors that it was necessary to prevent forty million white people from going back to the horror we lived in all those years ago, then you’re Jack the Lad. The Republic faces a clear and present danger from the United States and damned near everybody else in the world, and a society in our position must have blunt instruments at its command to break open the heads of those who would destroy us. That is the only way that an organization such as ours can possibly do our job. Remember the first rule you were taught on your first day in training when you came out of the Civil Guard to join the Bureau. This revolution of ours is forever. The white race will never, ever go back, and your job is to make damned sure we don’t.”

  “Technically, yes sir, I do have that right, but President Morgan’s breakfast menu aside, we do live in a real world, you know. Realistically, as regards this case?”

  “Look, Hennie, I get what you’re saying, and I appreciate it, but no,” said Redmond, shaking his head. “Duty isn’t something you pass off to someone else when the going gets rough. That’s why it’s called duty. It is yours. I had that drummed into my head during my History and Moral Philosophy classes at Sandpoint. It’s Old Man 101, not to mention the core of Aryan manhood. Duty is what being a white man is all about, duty to family and country, duty to God, duty to history and to the Folk, duty to the past and the future…Christ, the citizens of the Republic have duty crammed down our throat, because that is who we are and that is what we were made for. The Christian Identity people call it the Yoke of God. The Old Believers say that a man must dree his weird. Beyond that, this is something I have to do for myself. If I shirked this, neither Bill nor my own family would forgive me and I would never forgive myself. It would be like I was afraid to face reality, and that is against the First Principle of National Socialist Thought. We accept things as they are, not as we would like for them to be. That’s us, Hennie. That is how we live now. We are the men who did what had to be done forty years ago, and we do what has to be done today.”

  “Where exactly will we be meeting the general?”

  “He’s down in the Sawtooth hill country, touring the crossings and the forward positions and the outposts, checking on readiness, getting a personal feel for what the Mexicans are up to down over the line, that kind of thing. I could wait until he’s back, but we need to get this done. You up for a little copter ride?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. When we get back to the office, go home and meet me at the Bureau helipad in two hours. Change into your bush tackies and take along whatever weapons or rations or gear you take when you go walkabout. Wherever Big Bill Vitale is, I can guarantee you that business suits aren’t required dress.”

  * * *

  The two BOSS men, now attired in their own camouflage fatigues, finally ran Major General William Vitale of the Special Service to earth at Outpost Twelve down on the border. Redmond and Nel landed at Twin Falls airport in the small hours of the morning, where they were met by a smaller military chopper and flown to a forward airfield in the rugged Sawtooth range about thirty miles to the southeast. Below them occasional lights twinkled in the cold blackness from the isolated border ranches and farms. From the forward airfield they arrived at the outpost after a long and bumpy ride in a Groundhog, a half-tracked all-terrain vehicle capable of climbing the hills like a mountain goat, crossing a lake, and roaring down a tarmac road at eighty miles an hour if necessary. Their driver was an SS sergeant from Vitale’s personal staff who seemed to know the way and thought it might be a good idea to see if the Groundhog could fly in the dark. Somewhat to Redmond’s surprise, they made it in one piece just as the sun rose over the mountains to the east.

  Outpost Twelve turned out to be a carefully camouflaged base camp of tents, prefab buildings, plasma anti-aircraft batteries and vehicles hidden in a small canyon on the Republic’s southern Idaho border. It sat by a rushing stream deep in the rugged forest. The lean larches and aspens with their white trunks seemed to knife into the sky, their leaves bright orange and red. The smell of wood smoke, fresh coffee and frying bacon and eggs in the outdoors filled the air,

  mixed with the smell of small arms oil and the indefinable odor of cold metal that always seems to hang over gun barrels and military equipment. The green, white and blue Tricolor of the Republic curled and floated in the cool dawn breeze, and beside it billowed the red, white and blue flag of the Lone Star State. The soldiers at the outpost included a few of Vitale’s SS commandos, but were mostly part of the NDF’s First Battalion, 32nd Regiment. The Thirty-Second was also known as the Texas Light Infantry, drawn from first or second-generation Texas immigrants. These TLI men were considered to be one of the regular army’s élite units, upholding the long and proud tradition of arms of their native land.

  The Texans wore the standard NDF military camouflage fatigues, but on their heads they wore gray felt Stetsons with their regimental badge, an honor granted to their corps after Operation Strikeout due to their successful capture of Kamloops and their subsequent defense of the city against over 35,000 Canadian government and U.N. troops. The day after the local white underground had revolted and seized the government buildings, 435

  Texans from the NDF had parachuted in. They held Kamloops for the next eight days against overwhelming odds, mostly manning the plasma ray weapons that had brought down the UN and NATO bombers, but also organizing the defense of the hastily-erected fortifications and barricades against the Zionist ground troops. The TLI took charge of a ragtag force of over eight thousand white Canadian citizens of Kamloops, ranging in age from 12 to 80, most of whom had never held a rifle in their lives, since Canada had imposed over a generation of gun control on her white citizens. But they had manned the earthworks with the NDF rather than be returned to the Zionist government in Ottawa. Without their bombers, the troops of ZOG were baffled and reduced to clumsy, half-hearted mass attacks. They had never faced anyone who fought back without air support, and they were beaten back time and again, but the sheer weight of

  numbers had rendered it a bloody business. Of the 435 TLI from the

  first eight days, only 197 had survived. Of the eight thousand Canadian militia, only about four thousand were alive when the besieged city was relieved by the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler and the Second and Third SS Panzer Divisions. When the war ended five weeks later, British Columbia and Alaska had become part of the

  Republic. To this day, any Texan who visited Kamloops found that his money was no good ther
e.

  They were taken to meet General Vitale in his command tent. “Don!” said Vitale in genuine pleasure. He rose from his seat behind a folding metal table and shook Don’s hand warmly. He was wearing a trim camouflage field uniform with SS runes his general’s oak leaves, and his Leibstandarte riband with the words Adolf Hitler in Germanic Fraktür lettering just above his left sleeve cuff. Big Bill Vitale always slightly unnerved Don and others who knew anything of history, because he bore more than a passing resemblance to his infamous father at the height of his power, but no one ever dared to mention the fact. “I heard you wanted to talk to me about something, but it must be more important than I thought for you to come all the way out here. Haven’t found any more of my doppelgangers from ONR running around, have you?”

  “No, not thus far,” Redmond replied.

  “I actually didn’t think that character favored me at all.” Redmond forbore to tell him that in an effort to fool the DNA scanners at GHQ, the Federals had located one of Bill Clinton’s many illegitimate by-blows who was approximately the same age as Vitale, a broken-down drunken derelict from Little Rock. Then the Federals had surgically altered him and mentally programmed the man to act as a suicide bomber. Although he had never referred to Vitale’s background out of courtesy, it seemed unnecessary for him to know that Don had killed his half brother. Suddenly Big Bill’s face went slack. “Dio, Don, it’s not Tori, is it? Is she all right?”

  “No, no, Tori’s fine,” Redmond hastened to assure him. “Everybody back home is fine. That’s not why I’m here.”

  “Whatever it is, couldn’t it wait until our 10/22 barbecue at your place?” asked Vitale curiously. “Don’t get me wrong, you know I’m always glad to see you, but things are a bit up in the air right now. Is this official? Look, Don, if there’s a state security problem going on here in this command that I need to know about, spit it out, man! We can’t afford any slip-ups today!”

  “No, it’s not really an official visit, just want to have a little chat, sir, but I’m afraid this is something that has to be taken care of as quickly as possible, and definitely before the twenty-second. It’s an old case that we’re re-opening.”

  “And you brought your BOSS partner for a casual little chat?” asked Vitale with arched eyebrows. “Must be some old case. Never mind. You’ll tell me when you’re ready, I’m sure, and in the meantime I’m forgetting my hospitality. Have a seat, gentlemen. Care for some coffee?”

  “Real coffee or ersatz?” asked Redmond with a smile.

  “Real honest to God coffee from the Medford hydroponics garden,” said Vitale. “That’s the one thing we suffer from in the Republic, the lack of a tropical climate to grow proper coffee and tea and tobacco, but the hydroponics guys are really doing wonders making up for it. Our homegrown real stuff costs like hell, but it’s available in every supermarket and I understand they’re even going to be re-opening Starbucks soon. Won’t that be something, after forty years? And I might add this isn’t special officers’ ration either. Any unit I command, I eat and drink exactly what my men eat and drink. No more and no less.”

  “Actually, I developed a taste for the acorn brew when I was first married,” laughed Redmond. “Sarah has some variations on it, honey and special magical herbs. We still drink hers at home, but I have to admit a proper java is great on a cold morning.” Vitale took out a thermos and poured them each a mug of strong, steaming black brew into metal canteen cups and handed it to them. “Then came the ersatz instant. I think I was about twenty-five before I ever had my first cup of real coffee, and thirty before it had real sugar in it.”

  “All the sugar beet crop had to be used to make fuel alcohol before that,” Vitale reminded him, sipping from his canteen cup.

  “Yeah, I remember. You’re a hard man to track down in the field, sir. You’ve implied that this is something more than a routine border post inspection?”

  “Officially, yes, that’s all it is,” said Vitale. “Unofficially, I’m here because we’re expecting a consignment in sometime today.”

  “I always got a kick out of sanctions-busting,” said Redmond with a grin. “What’s the consignment? Medicine? Electronics parts? Vintage champagne?”

  “No. We are awaiting a consignment of the most precious contraband of all,” said Vitale soberly. “Fifty-seven refugees from one of the last surviving Mormon fundamentalist communities in Utah. Twenty-one of them are children under twelve, including two

  newborn infants. They’ve been living rough all summer since the

  Mexican authorities evicted them from their homes in Provo.”

  “Limpezia de sangre?” asked Don with loathing.

  “You got it. No one with what the Mex refer to as ‘pure blood’ can own property or be a citizen of the wonderful Nuevo Mondo Hispanica now. The pale and wicked gringo must be driven at last from the lands of La Raza, so forth and so on. Military intelligence heard rumors of the colony’s existence and we sent Wild Man Mooney down there undercover to try and make contact with them.”

  “Now there’s a name to conjure with!” exclaimed Redmond. “Rescuing whites from Aztlan is Captain Mooney’s specialty, I believe?”

  “Yes. For the umpteenth time, Paul Mooney stained his skin brown and dyed his hair black. His Spanish is perfect. You stand next to him, you’d swear to God he was a cholo. He even sweats Mexican.”

  “I beg your pardon?” asked Redmond.

  “The War Prevention Bureau biotechies have these pills now that these deep cover guys can take, and it actually chemically alters the composition of perspiration so that the body odor reflects the DNA composition of a mestizo, or even a negroid.”

  “I know WPB has agents who can pass for monkoids for short periods of time, but that’s a new one on me,” said Redmond, shaking his head in wonder.

  “It’s important. Mooney can now fool a trained police dog as well as other Mex. He has an authentic East L. A. accent. He ought to. He grew up down there and his hatred for the spics is total, but with a little alteration he can pass for one of them and they haven’t caught him yet. He’s so authentic I understand the Mormons damned near killed him when he got into their camp in the Wasatch. Not hard to understand. The beaners have been hunting them like animals for months. Mooney was able to persuade them to Come Home easy enough; they were about ready to try and run the border on their own anyway, although there’s no way a group that size could have made it past the minefields. Mooney took command and they’ve made it on foot up to a point about twelve miles from here on the Mexican side, where we were able to infiltrate and get them a dirt bus and a couple of SS men for the last run Home. They were supposed to take the gap

  this morning, in the hours of darkness, but they had a delay. The two infants are now three, a little white boy who was born at four o’clock this morning. Mooney has a communicator and he brought us up to date. He’s decided to try and take the gap in the daylight, as dicey as that is. The other side is swarming with Mexican patrols and they now have a unit of Chinese helicopter gunships on the border. The Mex don’t savvy heat-seeking infrared sensors but the Chinese do, and Wild Man didn’t feel comfortable waiting another day at the jump-off for nightfall. There’s no way that where he was could have been defended long enough for us to go pull them out. He’s coming down from the mountains with all of them in the bus, and he’s going to break cover and make a flat run for the Keziah Crossing checkpoint.”

  “Right under their noses?” asked Redmond. “Isn’t that risky as

  hell?”

  “Yeah, I’ll grant you, the danger’s not small. But better than

  risking another day hunkered down like sitting ducks. Here,” Vitale gestured to a map on the desk before him. Both the BOSS men leaned over the table to look at it. “You can see. It’s only about a mile of open country, we’ve given him our latest poop on where we think the Mexican minefields are, and that bus is souped-up and mineproofed, water in the tires, the floor lined with heavy nylon conveyor be
lting. With any luck at all, they should be able to make it before those dozey Borderos realize what’s happening. There’s only two things that worry me. One is those damned Chinese choppers. We can spot them a little on radar and by satellite, bobbing up and down over the woods and the prairies. They’re keeping their noses low and looking hard at what’s on the ground, which is their mission after all. But my guess is that once Mooney breaks cover he’ll be halfway to the line before they even see him. The second thing is that the Mexican commander on their side this month is United Nations General Alfonso Castaneda. He’s a monster, but he’s smart and he’s tough and it’s never a good idea to underestimate him. Him and me have a history.”

  “I know Castaneda,” said Don, his voice suddenly growing cold and hard. “He has his own ideas about how to cure limpezia de sangre. His treatment of white women is…well, you know what he does.”

  “Oh, yeah. I know what he does. Well, with any luck he won’t catch any of these Mormon girls today and un-purify their blood. As

  you can see, we have a reinforced company of TLI, air mobile with Valkyrie gunships to give him cover. The Valkyries are packed and armed and warming up just down the creek here on a little LZ the engineers dug out for us and camouflaged. Pull down a few nets and they can be in the air at the drop of a hat. We’re hidden up here in the hills so the Mex don’t spot us from one of their border observation posts and figure maybe something is up, and the heat shield should blur and block any satellite surveillance from the U. S. or Chinese orbitals they may have access to. We can be over there in a matter of minutes if we can get adequate warning and a good fix on Mooney’s position. Besides, we have a battery of self-propelled 88s at Keziah. Once he leaves the starting gate, Mooney will be in range almost all the way and those 88s can discourage any pursuit. Now we’re just waiting for news. It should go OK. Mooney is an expert at this sort of thing.”

  “A legend is more like,” said Redmond.

  “I have always wanted to meet Captain Mooney,” said Nel slowly, turning his coffee cup in his hand. “He got my sister and my niece out of South Africa. Mooney entered the country, Azania as it is called now by the kaffirs, by posing as a Mexican delegate to the 24th World Anti-Racist Congress. He made contact and brought as many as he could Home with him. Mooney flew an ancient Russian transport plane directly from a secret airfield near Germiston with over 200 Afrikaners crammed into the hold like sardines, almost suffocated by the smell of the extra fuel. He evaded the Chinese fighters and he got out over the sea. He was the only pilot available. The man who was to be co-pilot had been captured by the Chinese and tortured to death. Fortunately the man who had to hand-pump the drums of jet fuel into the aircraft’s tanks to refuel it did survive. The flight took over twenty-six hours, almost all of it over the Pacific. No airfield along the way would let the aircraft land to rest or refuel. Anna and Louwietje Nel sliced open Mooney’s trousers with a knife,