A DISTANT THUNDER Read online

  At the final briefing Tank told us, “If Special Agent Shelley takes our Burger King out of the airport and into town down Henderson Boulevard and right into our trap, well and good. We’re looking at three or possibly four Bremerized limousines. If it’s three, we blow the middle vehicle when it’s rounding the curve and right on top of the culvert, and there will be enough blast to take out or at least slow down the other two. If it’s four limos then we blow the second one to cross over the culvert. If Rothstein happens to be in the car that’s passing over the charge as it detonates, he and everybody in that limo is toast, no worries. But the whole purpose of having all those cars is to conceal the precise whereabouts of Hizzoner from us evildoers, and he might be in one of the others. That’s why after the opening bang, we all close in and do the old Shock and Awe trick on any limos or moving pieces of limos that try to get by us. We’re lucky here in that the right-angle curve of the road will prevent any of our teams from firing into the other.

  “Ted and myself, Carol and Paddy and Ray will be in the center spot, back behind that derelict barn I showed you. When we close in, Ted will hose down the fire zone with the M-60. Since they are our guests, Paddy will have the loan of our BAR loaded with our homemade Teflon slugs, and Carol gets my own Mike Sixteen, also with Teflon rounds. I’ll give a coup de grace where needed with an RPG. Our team will E & E in the Explorer and the Toyota pickup. Spidey and Susie will come up from the south with the Ford pickup, de-bus and take out any enemy vehicle still intact with the LAWS rocket, while Comrade Lurch will be in the back with the Stinger and with any luck take down the chopper when it swoops in to try and cover what’s left of the motorcade. Tommy and Mack the Knife will be down behind the apartments in the Camry and they’ll turn south on Henderson, link with the heavy weapons team and back them up with one RPG as well. Every team has a rocket grenade except for Shane and John. Sorry, guys, I know that leaves you a bit light, but with any luck none of the limos will even get up to your position. You guys move down the road with the Cherokee and stand by to recover any of our people who for whatever reason lose their transportation and need a ride. If that happens, the rest of you, head north and John and Shane will pick you up on the fly. Smack will be cruising the area around the airport and letting me know what’s going on, when the Lear jet lands, and most importantly, what route they’re taking into town. He will also be available for any extraction of stranded personnel. Keep low and take it easy, Jack, because once he’s down they’ll be watching all over for us as well. Bones has set up an aid station in Yelm, where you guys were test firing your weapons last night. Any wounded need to try and make it there. Otherwise, rendezvous at the Dew Drop Inn within two hours after contact.” The Dew Drop Inn was a barn on a dairy farm outside Bucoda.

  “All this, of course, is if Burger King goes into town down Henderson Boulevard,” took up Brennan. “If he goes down Capitol Boulevard or out onto the interstate to get to Evergreen College, then we do a stand-down. It’s not a good idea for us to be hanging around twiddling our thumbs in those positions for seven or eight hours until he decides to cruise on back to the airport. Somebody will spot us loitering about, sniff reward money and phone the Domestic Terrorism Hotline. Plus we have to assume there will be Feds and cops of various kinds patrolling the area that close to the airfield. You all know your stand-down positions?” We did. If Rothstein missed his morning appointment with destiny, Johnny and I got to spend the day in the Tumwater public library and then at a high school tennis match until we got the call telling us to re-deploy. Or else to forget the whole thing and get back to Dundee, because something had gone wrong somewhere. That happened entirely too often for my taste.

  Before we went out, Tank called us all together for a prayer. Tank wasn’t a Christian but some of us were, and out of respect for those comrades and also out of a sensible desire to hedge our bets with the Man Upstairs just in case, we all bowed our heads over our weapons. Tank’s prayer was always the same. “Lord,” he intoned, “You know how busy we’re all going to be today. If at times we forget Thee, O Lord, don’t you forget us.”

  Burger King was scheduled to hit dirt at eleven. We pulled into place about ten fifty-five, each team taking a slightly different route into the operational area. Johnny Pill and I had drawn the northernmost outpost, about a quarter mile up from what was soon to become Dead Man’s Curve, on the eastern side of the road, back in the woods down a firebreak. Johnny Pill drove the Cherokee and I was on the conference call with the headset mike stuck in my ear. Johnny’s Uzi was on the seat beside us and I had the stock of the AK-74 folded, the weapon on my lap. So we sat and waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. At four minutes past eleven I heard Smackwater Jack’s voice, “The turkey has landed,” so we knew that the Lear jet was on the ground and so was Burger King. We were under strict orders to keep non-essential chatter to a minimum, so we didn’t get anything like regular progress reports, but we should have been informed once the convoy left Olympia Regional Airport, if they were headed in our direction.

  Unfortunately, this time Feep threw us another curve. The Olympia Regional Airport is small by airport standards but still pretty damned big, and there’s a lot of ways in and out. Smack didn’t pick them up until they were already heading down the road. In the wrong direction. “Marie and the girls can’t make it for lunch, looks like,” said Smack casually.

  “Marie,” I told Johnny. That was the code word that told us what was going on. “That means they’re heading west down Airdustrial toward the interstate.”

  “Shit,” said John.

  We waited for a while in case they got cute and pulled a doubleback, but we heard nothing from Smack. “Okay, boys and girls,” came Tank’s voice at about quarter to twelve. “Looks like our lunch date is off. Marie and the girls are stuck in traffic, but hopefully we can still get together with the ladies for dinner at Burger King. See you guys then.”

  “That’s it,” I said to Pilafski in disgust. “We stand down until we get the call and hope he comes back this way tonight. Plus I get to catch up on my reading. I never did finish Bleak House and I’m dying to know how Jarndyce versus Jarndyce ended.”

  “You’re weird, kid,” said Johnny. We were just pulling out onto Henderson Boulevard to go improve our minds when I looked to my right, and all of a sudden two motorcycle cops swept around the bend. They were followed by one, two, three black stretch limos with dark green tinted windows, identical as peas in a pod, little Amurrican flags fluttering on their front fenders. Two more bike cops brought up the rear. Smack hadn’t mentioned anything to us about a motorcycle escort. They must have met the limos en route. Overhead we heard the rumble of a low-flying helicopter. Our target was right on top of us, at the same moment we were breaking up the ambush, coming from the wrong direction where no one expected them, and now the two cops in the lead were turning their heads slightly and staring right at two Northwest Volunteers who had come there to kill them and were caught totally unprepared. Oh, yeah. I grinned at the cops and waved, the motorcade swept on by, and then I shouted a warning into the headset’s little stick mike in front of my face. I didn’t bother with code talk, but out of ingrained habit at least I didn’t shout out anybody’s name in the clear. “Boss! Get them back!” I yelled. “Here they come! Burger King is headed your way southbound, repeat, southbound! You got maybe ten seconds! He’s coming, God damn it! “

  “Huh?” said a male voice in surprise. “They’re coming from town? How the hell did that happen?”

  “I see him, and our lady friend has the remote in hand,” came Tank’s voice in my ear, calm and steady. “Okay, Volunteers, it’s showtime after all. Let’s go waltzing Matilda.”

  We later found out that through nothing more or less than sheer, unadulterated coincidence, about the same time Rothstein’s motorcade was sliding onto I-5 northbound at the Exit 101 on-ramp, a few miles north around the Pacific Avenue exit there were some completely unrelated fireworks. Interstate Five was the ma
in drug route between Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver for the multifarious Third World narcotics gangs and cartels from L.A., all of whom knew and despised one another. Two Cadillac loads of dopers, one being monkoids from the Mau Mau Nation and the second cholos from the Mexican Mafia, were both headed back to South Central from separate pharmaceutical runs to Seattle. They recognized one another just as they rolled past Tacoma and played grab-ass for about twenty miles, flipping each other the bird and trying to run each other off the highway, so forth and so on. Then at exit 106 they said to hell with playing bumper cars, pulled over to the shoulder and started blasting away at one another with their Uzis and 9-mils and whatever else they had. But they forgot where they were. In Los Angeles, commuters had long ago come to take such scuffles in stride as just another traffic hazard and the police were no longer even a factor, but the Northwest was full of dangerous white boys with guns and that was a whole different matter as far as law enforcement was concerned. The Olympia cops and the FBI were already jittery about the Rothstein visit. They got garbled word there were bullets flying at the Pacific Avenue exit, everyone automatically assumed it was an NVA tickle of some kind, and all manner of ZOG descended in full force on that stretch of interstate and started blazing away at the startled gang-bangers. Special Agent in Charge Don Shelley was alerted to a possible DT contact—that’s ZOGspeak for domestic terrorist—and rather than risk running into some kind of unknown NVA-related sitch with his precious Hebraic cargo, he decided to abort. The airport was closer than Evergreen College and so the ever-cautious Shelley turned back. He ordered his convoy to get off at Exit 103, cut over onto Cleveland Boulevard and back down Old Yelm and Henderson, thus sliding headlong into our bona fide Volunteer ambush.

  I always called it the luck of the Irish. Rooney used to call it the hand of God. Whatever it was, Somebody somewhere out there in the cosmos was sure as hell giving us a hand, because this kind of amazing coincidence happened a lot down through the years. It was like all of a sudden after almost a century, as a reward for our finally showing some hair on our ass, the white man’s bad run of the cards was over and the goddess Fortuna smiled on all us little Sullas once again. Luck often enough will save a man, if his courage hold. And save a people.

  Once the Federal motorcade passed us, there was silence for a few seconds. Johnny spoke from behind the wheel. “I’ll roll us on down there as soon as we hear...” The ground shook beneath our feet, and we weren’t even standing on the ground. It was that powerful. We didn’t hear an explosion as such; it was almost like the earth groaned. We felt the blast jigger through our bodies like we were jelly, and then we got hit with a shock wave that rattled the trees around us like a sudden gale. I looked to my left and saw something in the sky. At first I thought it was the helicopter, but then I saw it was a long black stretch limousine, twirling lazily a hundred feet in the air. It sailed over the trees and out of sight. “They’re playing our song!” I yelled at Johnny, opening the door and standing up, leaning my weapon over the roof and bracing myself with my left hand. “Let’s rumble!” Johnny peeled out of the firebreak just as one of the black armored limos came hurtling around the bend at about seventy miles an hour. That Fed driver had gotten the message, loud and clear. Once he got past us, he was outta there.

  Johnny saw that too. “Jump! “ he yelled. I jumped and rolled and came up with the AK at the ready. Johnny peeled out of the firebreak and rammed the limo full in the side, caroming off the armor plating and sending the Cherokee spinning, its front end smashed in. The limo swerved and leaped off the road, jumped the small ditch on the west side of the highway and slammed into a large Douglas fir, still in the air. The doors of the limo opened and four men staggered out. Three wore the usual Feep quasi-uniform of dark suits, patent leather shoes, black trenchcoats and shades. One Federal had a Heckler-Koch submachine gun which he waved groggily at the Cherokee, firing a wild burst. I muttered to myself fire-a-burst-of-six and the Fed dropped down behind the open rear door. I thought I’d got him, but from behind the door he fired the Heckler again at the Cherokee, which was sitting smoking and wrecked in the middle of the highway. I’m not sure the Zionist gunman had even figured out I was around yet. The driver saw me, though. He raised his Glock pistol and I raised my AK to my shoulder. We fired at the same time. He missed. I didn’t. I saw his head pop. I looked over and saw Johnny out of the Cherokee, his head bloody from the impact of the crash, spraying his Uzi at the Fed behind the car door who was spraying at him.

  The other two started stumbling away from the vehicle. One was a huge black man in a black trenchcoat with a shaven head and one of these Lion of Judah goatees, trying to shoot at me with a Glock with one hand and with the other trying to drag a roly poly figure in a gray silk suit away, leading him by the hand like one leads a child. Finally something clicked in my adrenalin-pumped and noise-rattled and cordite-smoked mind. The short fat dude in the gray silk was one Samuel L. Rothstein, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Bingo. Burger King. Johnny saw him, pointed, and yelled at me “Get him! “ I snapped off a burst at the pair of them but they were into the woods. I ran across the road and jumped the ditch and all of a sudden there I was in the great Northwest forest. Fifteen feet in from the highway and it was damned near primeval, Douglas firs and ferns and lovely spring sunshine spilling down in columns from the sky. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see Sasquatch peeping out from behind a tree trunk. And no sign at all of Big Jew and his Affikin-Amurkin minder. Oh, Christ, no, don’t tell me I lost a damned Supreme Court Justice! I cursed to myself in rage and despair. In a second it all flashed before me. How many of my friends had died just down the road or would die in the next minute, and me lose the son of a bitch? Then I heard something in the underbrush snap ahead of me and to my right. Suddenly, instinctively, I understood.

  The black was in charge, and he feared the northern forest. He didn’t understand it. If he’d just had sense enough to run and hide in the woods until help came, then he and Rothstein might both have made it. Hell, I wasn’t Daniel Boone. What was I going to do? Track them by their scent? But in moments of stress, racial and genetic instinct always comes to the fore. This wasn’t Africa. This was the ancient landscape of my people, not his. Homey knew in his soul he was in De White Folks’ House, and it overwhelmed him. The black man dared not face an Aryan warrior in the green forest of the Northland from which I and all of mine had sprung. It was in his very blood to avoid that. Instinctively, probably not even realizing what he was doing or understanding why, he was heading back to what he knew. Asphalt and concrete. He was dragging his Chosen charge back to the highway to try and get another car.

  I moved low and fast about thirty yards through the bush, parallel to the roadway, and I heard an engine and braking tires. The black Feep and Rothstein were shouting and trying between them to drag a young white couple out of their green Kia. The couple thought they were being carjacked, which they were, in a sense. The young guy took a few ineffectual punches at the bodyguard, who cold-cocked him with a single blow from the barrel of the Glock. The white kid dropped like a sack of potatoes. The white girl was screaming and crying and trying to mace the nigger with some pepper spray she had on a key chain. He tore the mace away from her. I heard the bones in her hand crack over her shrieks. Then she looked over and saw me leveling the AK at them. “Get down!” I roared at her. “NVA! Hit the dirt!” She understood NVA, she copped to what was happening, and even twenty feet away I saw her go as white as a sheet in pure terror. She dove for the tarmac, covering the body of her husband or boyfriend with her own. The black saw me as well and snapped up his Glock, fast as lighting. I heard the bullet tweet past my ear. Fire-a-burst-of-six. He staggered and turned and twirled down onto the road. I saw his white shirtfront soaked in red. The fool wasn’t wearing his kevlar and he paid for it with his life.

  Rothstein was scuttling away down the road, his bandy legs pumping, his sticklike arms sprouting out of his plump body, wa
ving like windmills. I charged after him. When I got clear of the Kia I popped a couple of rounds at his feet, and he stopped. “A million dollars!” I heard him shriek. “A million! I swear, a million dollars I’ll pay!” I walked up behind him. I guess by then I was half insane. I could only remember something from my high school drama class, one of the few parts of school I’d enjoyed. I spoke. Well, I kind of croaked. Or maybe shouted. I don’t know. They were the only words I could think of to say.

  “Turn, hell-hound!”

  Samuel L. Rothstein understood, and he turned with a gasp of horror. I saw the round face, the white rolling eyes, the frizzy fringe of hair, the obscene revolting nose. I saw that godawful face and nose raise up to the sky. From the thick, veal-colored lips came a—I guess you’d call it a howl, but it wasn’t really. It was like a loud evil bleat, the sound of a dead soul vomiting. Seventy years ago this happened, and I can’t get that terrible scream out of my ears. Never mind. I can’t describe it and even if I could I don’t understand whatever the hell it was, so I couldn’t make you understand. They’re not like us, and there’s no Aryan equivalent. It was just—it was horrible. That creature was standing in the middle of Henderson Boulevard and it bellowed its death cry unto its god, to whatever force of wicked, worm-eaten cosmic power put the Jewish people on earth to torture and oppress the rest of us. In his last moments of life Samuel Rothstein experienced an epiphany. A revelation of cosmic proportions, one that came far too late to be of any use at all to him. Samuel L. Rothstein suddenly understood that his god had betrayed him. A revelation of eternal truth shattered his soul moments before the bullets from my Kalashnikov shattered his body, that revelation being that the Jewish people ain’t anywhere near as goddamned clever as they think they are.