“The Butcher’s Bill”
Overall, things were going badly for the Americans.
There were hundreds of communities, now all white. One could always tell when one was in such a free zone, because the flagpoles on government buildings and schools were bare, or sometimes flew only a state flag.
Those who resisted the concept of armed struggle before the war had always claimed that ZOG’s [Zionist Occupied Government] immense technological advantages prohibited guerrilla warfare in North America, but it turned out that this simply wasn’t the case.
♣
“Probably a drop-in photo op thing, like I said,” answered Lockhart. “The Israelis are really ginning up their PR [Public Relations] machine in this country. The word seems to be that the Muslims are finally going to quit fooling around with the various American occupation garrisons in their assorted countries and they’re going to launch some kind of mass offensive aimed at Israel, no one is quite sure how, but that’s the buzz. The Jews are worried, judging from the money they’re throwing around Washington, D.C. like it was confetti, and judging from the way the damned TV preachers are calling down the spirit for Israel even more than they ever have before. This is probably part of their campaign to pressure the United States into finally nuking Mecca.”
“Jesus Christ,” muttered Gardner. “I’m not a Muslim, but even I know that will simply make any peace between us and them impossible, forever.”
“I think that’s the idea,” said Lockhart dryly. “Make damned good and sure we can never call this madness off.”
♣
“May I suggest this might be an appropriate occasion for Operation Festival, sir?” asked Jackson quietly. “Technically I’m supposed to get the Army Council’s permission before I initiate Festival and possibly cost us more casualties than we can afford to lose,” said Coyle with a sigh. “For the next 24 hours, we are going after these sons of bitches. Blood vengeance for a fallen brother is a just and righteous act, and a moral duty to all men of honor and pride. Suicide fails our cause and our future, and it fails Cat-Eyes Lockhart and Joe Mohr and Scott Gardner. They would want us to live for the Republic, not die for it. Spill the enemy’s blood tonight, but spare your own as much as possible.”
That night all hell broke loose in Portland. About dusk, the two urban brigades of the NVA [Northwest Volunteer Army] coalesced into a little over a hundred assault teams, four to six people per team, with at least two vehicles per team.
Commandant Billy Jackson and First Brigade were assigned the mission of attacking and doing as much damage as possible in downtown and North Portland, the last remaining African ghetto of any significance remaining in the Homeland. “If it looks at all feasible, I want to see if we can clean out that whole damned black spot tonight,” Coyle told him. “We need to beautify the City of Roses by making sure there’s not a single black face on the streets. Oh, and while you’re at it, see if you can clean up Portland University. According to Tom and Becky the few decent white students live off campus, so it’s pretty much a free fire zone.”
“Can you let me have the smokers, Tom?” asked Jackson. “I think they’re just what the doctor ordered for those putrid groves of academe up there.” “That’s affirmative,” said Coyle with a nod. “Tonight we unveil all three of our secret weapons and introduce ’em to Mister Joo.”
By seven o’clock that night the television news had figured out that something was going on, and interrupted regular programming with a series of increasingly confused and hysterical reports and rumors.
FATPO [Federal Anti-Terrorist Police Organization] and police patrols moving through the winter darkness were being fired on from every corner and rooftop by snipers and RPGs [Rocket-Propelled Grenades], by small parties of Volunteers who then vanished into the night. What little liberal-lefty night life still existed in Portland was down in the Pearl District; now small groups of men and women were running through the streets throwing hand grenades and Molotov cocktails through the doors and windows of trendy yuppie fern bars and night clubs, shooting anyone with a black or brown face, dodging into alleyways and in and out of buildings when the police pursued, then turning and firing on their pursuers. By seven thirty the downtown area was rattling and crackling with gunshots, bursts of automatic weapons fire and the intermittent hollow boom of explosions, mixed with screaming and shouting as patrons of various establishments fled for cover.
The elements from First Brigade’s D and E Companies sent to assault the University of Portland found the campus in chaos, devoid of police or FATPOs, all of whom had been ordered into North Portland or elsewhere through some act of carelessness or incompetence. About 50 Volunteers split into two groups and moved into Eric and Annette’s alma mater from Park Avenue on the south side of campus and 12th Avenue on the north side. The electricity was out, but the university’s emergency generators had kicked in, so there was some light outside and in the larger buildings.
Groups of students, mostly non-whites, were milling around on the quads, in the student union and in the dorms, some with candles, many with beers. A number of persons of color and wildly bearded Jewish-looking types were up on benches or planter walls haranguing small clumps of listeners with long screeching tirades of the left-wing “Fight the Fascists!” variety; one oddball Mexican was actually shouting the famous Communist battle cry from the Spanish Civil War, “¡No pasarán!” Some of the students had gotten hold of a motley variety of pistols and long arms from somewhere, probably gang-banger hardware, and they were flourishing them and firing them in the air, jumping around like demented monkeys and screaming about fighting the Fascists.
Then all of the sudden there was the NVA in the flesh, coming at them from out of the darkness, gun muzzles flashing, cutting them down with aimed shots like shooting fish in a barrel, and the student scum turned and stampeded in terror. The Fascists passed all right, as they had done in 1938. Finally the Volunteers turned loose the first NVA secret weapon of the night, a pair of two-man crews each armed with a home-made flamethrower built from scuba diving tanks that contained a pressurized load of home-made napalm, one of the Red Baron’s creations, shot in a thin but volatile stream through a nozzle adapted from a welding torch. The “smokers” worked perfectly as they went from building to building and dorm to dorm. Inside twenty minutes the entire campus was in flames.
By ten o’clock at night North Portland was a burning madhouse. “Maybe a way to wind up Operation Festival… physically and psychologically,” said Hill.
One reply on “The Brigade excerpts, chapter XXVIII”
Aside from the firearms that sounds like a typical day at university. Although, I had the pleasure of watching more Asiatic corruption than semitic tirades (although they were certainly present). Now off to procure “A Distant Thunder.”