‘We’ve been recalled to Manhattan?’ asked Darley.
‘Yes, and it’s about time. I’m growing sick of hiding in the boonies like a runaway slave.’
‘You think you’re well enough to travel?’ The little man’s head dipped and bobbed as he ran a quick diagnostic check of his friend’s well-being. Gant had been in a car wreck and then shot, but he did look relatively well considering the alternative.
‘Get in the van, Dar. I’m fine.’
‘Fine, huh, boss?’ Even when he smiled, Darley looked like a bird weighing up a juicy worm.
‘Just get in the goddamn van.’
Samuel Gant was hurting like he’d been kicked by a mule and stung by a swarm of yellow-jackets, and he wasn’t in an easy-going frame of mind. The only saving grace was that the flak jacket he was wearing had saved him from the full force of the buckshot when Griffiths’ hired gunman shot him. The jacket had taken the brunt of both barrels, but some of the spreading shot had peppered his thighs and arms. Checking himself after Darley had dragged him clear, he’d discovered a massive haematoma on his ribs and all four limbs looked like they’d been drilled by weevils. And his mangled ear stung like a sonofabitch. For two days he’d been laid up by fever, and he still wasn’t certain that the doctor Hicks supplied had removed all of the shot from his system. Maybe somewhere along the way he’d die from lead poisoning, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him now. He wanted to be around when Hicks’ plan came to fruition; at least he’d know that the future was brighter than he was feeling just now.
‘I’m surprised that we haven’t been told to go and finish off the job,’ Darley said. He started the black van while Gant climbed in, the tattooed man taking his time and moving very gingerly. He knew how his boss felt; his head was still pounding from where he’d been struck unconscious and he didn’t think that all the Tylenol in the world would be enough to shift the pain. That fucker who’d smacked him around was going to hurt bad before Darley was happy again. ‘Why don’t we just walk into the hospital, shoot his guards and then kill Griffiths once an’ for all?’
‘We’ve talked about this before, Dar. It’s enough that we’ve confirmed where Griffiths was taken and that he’s fully sedated. In his present state he’s no threat to the operation. Hicks has capitalised on that and has moved the timescale forward. You should be happy he still wants us there for the big day after our righteous fuck-up!’
‘I suppose we can always come back later and finish what we started with Griffiths.’
‘If everything goes to plan, we won’t have to come back,’ Gant said. ‘Anything that Griffiths has on Hicks will be old news by then. Now get a move on, I want to be back in New York before nightfall.’
Pulling out of the lot behind the motel where they’d been holed up, Darley sent the van east, picking up Route 80 towards New Jersey, lost in his own thoughts for a few seconds. Drizzle streaked the windscreen like a greasy film that the wipers struggled to contend with. Finally he looked across at Gant. The tattooed man had rested his skull on the headrest and had closed his eyes, his lids flickering in time with his ongoing pain. Darley didn’t want to disturb him, but there was something that had just come to mind. ‘When you say Hicks has moved the timing forward, how soon are we talking about?’
‘Very soon. Days, I’m not sure,’ Gant muttered without opening his eyes.
‘Won’t Hicks’ statement lose a little meaning?’
‘How’d you come to that conclusion?’
‘We’re months away from November ninth, I thought Hicks wanted to mark the anniversary.’
Gant shrugged, turning his head away from Darley in a none too subtle attempt to shut him up. ‘Maybe he’d prefer to have his own date on the calendar. Anyway, I’m beginning to think that Kristallnacht Two is a poor name for what we’re planning. There’ll be more for the Jews to worry about than broken glass, Dar, much more.’
Darley nodded glumly, letting out a sigh that roused Gant. The tattooed man looked over at him. His yellow eyes were the proverbial piss holes in snow. ‘By the sound of things you’re worried about that.’
‘Just concerned that the statement we’re making is a little too big. One-Four, brother, all the way. But that shit’s poison to everyone, Gant.’
One-Four. Code for the fourteen words in the racist skinhead pledge: we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.
Gant grunted. ‘Yeah, it’s poison, and that’s the whole point. No Jew-boy will ever tread there again.’
‘Neither will any of us whites.’
‘Darley, the white race is on the verge of extinction, and if we don’t strike now we’re doomed. Unless we do this thing there won’t be a white man setting his foot any place, because we’ll all be gone. So don’t go quoting the One-Four to me without remembering exactly what it means. We have to tear down US society and rebuild it as a segregated nation with us whites back in control. That ain’t going to happen while the Jews are at the head of the wave of colour that’s engulfing us. Other people don’t care, and that won’t change until we show them what’s really happening here. When we make this statement, when we make our stand, then every white man will rise up at our sides and finally do what needs doing.’
Darley had heard similar anti-Semitic propaganda for years, and he didn’t need reminding. He hated what was happening in his country, how whites were being bred out of existence, all of them becoming grey men. He knew that the Jews were behind the conspiracy to infect the nation, using feminism and liberalism to take away the white man’s masculinity. Hell, the Jews were behind the immigration laws that took away all the manufacturing jobs that were the mainstay of the white-skinned, blue-collar classes, and he was certain, too, that they were guiding the blacks, the poisoners of the white race with all their drugs and genetically inferior blood. He hated the Jews with as much passion as Gant or Hicks or any of them, but still, what Hicks had in mind was extreme even for a radical extremist like him.
‘I grew up there, Gant…’ he whined.
Gant slammed his hands on the dashboard. ‘Are you turning into a fucking race-mixing left-winger, Dar? Don’t you see that’s exactly what I’m talking about? You can’t even walk through your own neighbourhood without feeling like you’re the fucking foreigner. You want to just hand over the place you grew up to those bastards? White people built this country, and we can sure as hell tear it down overnight.’ Gant blinked slowly, sitting back in his chair. When he continued his voice was steadier, and held more promise.
‘Marches and demonstrations are old school. They didn’t work. Burning niggers on crosses didn’t work. We have to do something much bigger if we ever hope to get the mongrel races out of here. There’s only one solution: kill every one of them that’re here, and make sure they can never return. That’s the only way we can start over.’
The little man still wasn’t sure. A bomb he was OK with, but this?
It was as if Gant could read his mind. ‘McVeigh tried with a bomb in Oklahoma and achieved nothing. We have to do something with more impact than that. That’s why Hicks has declared war against the destructive forces that are taking over our country. We all know that the Big Brother central state is destroying us. We have to see our government, and the Jews controlling it, for what it is… our mortal enemy. We have to strike against them where it really hurts. Ultimately nothing changes in this world without violence, you have to see that.’
‘Course I do, Gant. I’m with you all the way, but it’s one thing kerb-stomping a nigger, another doing something as… as brutal as this.’
Gant laughed. ‘Darley, the white man is the most brutal, the most vicious creature on the face of the earth. And this is the white man’s way of showing that when we get our backs up, then we won’t stop at nothing to reclaim what’s rightfully ours.’
Darley concentrated on the road, pretending that the hammering rain demanded his silence. He reflected again on his pledge, the One-Four, and was as staunch a follower as ever. The only problem: Manhattan was a part of this white nation, but he couldn’t see how it could figure in any future, let alone that of his people or their children. There’d be no reclaiming it when Manhattan became a no-go area for everyone.
Chapter 34
‘Ever feel like we’re being poked and prodded like a bug in a Petri dish? That we’ve been cultivated all this time, till we’re a more virulent strain than the disease itself?’
That caused me to blink at the morose face of my friend. ‘Christ, Rink, that’s heavy thinking for an ignoramus brute like you.’
