Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista (16 page)

That should hold them for a while, he thought as they spun in their robes and departed his office, sputtering and muttering and fuming in impotent rage.

After they were gone, Bullard’s young chief of staff entered the office and sat on the black leather couch across from his mahogany desk.  “That went well, boss.  I think they know you mean business.”

“Damn right I do,” said the Homeland Security honcho.  “We won’t be having any of that Detroit bullshit in the Southwest Region!  I’ll burn Montclaire to the ground and bulldoze the ashes into the Pacific first.”

“Sounds like they realize it now, if they didn’t before.”

“You know what they say about Arabs,” said Bullard.  “They’re either at your throat, or at your feet.”

“Yeah.  Say, listen boss, you know that special list of yours, the, umm…folks who are presently incarcerated?”

“Sure, the scumbags I helped put away.  What about it?”

“Well, you wanted me to inform you when any of them were released.”

“Okay, so who was released?”

“Actually, nobody was released, exactly.”

“Then what are you telling me this for?”

“One of them escaped.”

“Escaped? Who? From where?”

“Umm…it would be a certain Ranya Bardiwell.  A female prisoner.”

“Bardiwell…Bardiwell…I remember that name.  Go ahead, refresh my memory.  Who is she, and why do I care about her?”

“She’s from Virginia.  She was involved in the Malvone affair…”

Bullard leaned back in his leather chair, his fingers laced behind his thinning hair.  “Oh yeah…Ranya Bardiwell.  Now I remember.  Hot little number.  Brunette.  We tried to pin the Virginia Attorney General’s assassination on her boyfriend, but they both disappeared.  When we finally grabbed her, she got put away under Article 14.”

“Right.  Conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism.  There was no solid evidence, so she just got three years of non-judicial preventive detention. When that stretch of NJPD was up, it was rolled over for another three.”

“So, where’d she escape from?”

“Officially, she bolted from the Federal Prison Transit Center in Oklahoma City.  You know, ‘Air Con.’  But actually, she escaped from an NJPD camp in western Oklahoma.  All women, mostly Article 14s.  And she killed an assistant warden on her way out.”

“Hmm.  Okay.  All right.  Shouldn’t be a problem, but you never know.  Keep an eye out for her, tickle your search engines, and check the traffic going into the Field Offices.  If she surfaces, if you hear anything at all, let me know right away.”

“Okay boss, will do. Now, your next appointment is with the California Director of the Border Patrol.  He wants to know why you’re ordering his men back off the line in the Campo sector again.”

“Christ, whatever happened to just emailing?  All right, send him in.”

***

“Whoa…there’s another one of those red X’s,”
said Kalil.  The giant X was painted on State Road 355 directly in front of an antler-decorated gateway arch, at the beginning of a long private driveway.  The terrain was more forested and hilly now, and the ranch house, if any, was invisible from the road.  “What do you think it means?”

“Probably means the land was stolen from the Mexicans,” answered Derek.  “Probably marks a ‘land reform’ area.  Spanish land grant territory.”

“That’s some serious shit, then,” said Kalil.  “X marks the spot… must be some kind of a warning.”

“What did you think
‘Tierra o Muerte’
meant?” asked Ranya.

Derek said, “Man, that Governor Deleon, he’s not messing around! Hey look, there’s another sign.  At least this one’s in English.”

This sign was also written in red paint, on a white sheet of plywood, attached to a pair of timber posts just off the shoulder of the road next to a barbed wire fence.  Derek stopped in front of it and they all read it together, the girls crouched behind the front seats.  While they paused, a black crew-cab pickup truck blasted past them from behind, crossing over to the oncoming lane, going at least one hundred miles an hour and quickly disappearing from sight.

The sloppily hand-lettered sign read: “Warning Gringo!  You are trespassing on Land Grant Territory!  This is stolen land!  Do not attempt to buy any property on this Territory, it is stolen and your deed will be invalid!  If you are occupying stolen Land Grant Territory, leave now! You have been warned!”

They were all quiet, reading the sign.  Derek whistled softly and said, “Man, I’m glad I don’t live on any stolen land around here.  Sounds like the day of reckoning has come at last for the white cattle barons.”

“Yeah,” added Kalil, “And payback’s a bitch.  Come on, let’s go.”

“What’s the next town?” asked Destiny. “Maybe they’ll have cell phone coverage.  I can’t send these pictures; I can’t get a signal at all! I don’t understand why they don’t have cell phone coverage out here. I mean, this is America, right?”

“Chulada.  The next town is Chulada,” replied Derek.  “About two miles ahead.”  He had his road map, folded to the right section, lying on top of the center console between the front seats.  “Doesn’t look like much on the map.”

State Road 355 ran through wildly beautiful country now, at times alongside flowing creeks choked with willows, oaks and cottonwoods, at times winding up and through the foothills of the Sandia Mountains, with its peaks on their left side. The van crested a rise where the roadway had been blasted out of live rock, leaving jagged granite walls fifty feet high on either side of them.  After the top, the road dropped and turned suddenly to the west, and all at once they saw the roadblock, but too late.

Derek slammed on the brakes, coming to a sudden stop just in front of a row of 55-gallon drums.  The steel barrels were painted red, and extended across the asphalt from the right shoulder to the yellow centerline.  Another row of drums ran across the oncoming lane, but twenty feet further down. Any traffic in either direction would have to come to a complete stop, and weave slowly between the two barricades to continue on their way.  The barrels might have been empty, filled with water, or filled with dirt or cement.  There was no way to tell by their outward appearance.

Ranya was impressed by the setup.  Empty barrels were a bluff, but highly mobile.  Water-filled barrels would be too heavy to ram at full speed, yet could still be drained and easily moved around, as long as a water supply was available to refill them on site.  Dirt or sand-filled barrels would mean a semi-permanent checkpoint. Vehicles that were parked on either shoulder prevented anyone from driving around the obstacles.

“What in the hell is this?” asked Derek.  As if in answer, from behind both of the barricades of steel drums, more than a dozen men suddenly stood up in one movement.  Armed men, weapons shouldered, aiming black rifles directly at the van’s windshield from a range of twenty feet. Armed men wearing brown berets, and brown t-shirts.

One of them screamed,
“¡Salga! ¡Salga del carro!  ¡Ahora mismo!”

Ranya looked between Derek, the armed men, and Kalil.  “They’re saying to get out, right now!”  Sudden fear rose from her guts, nearly paralyzing her.

“Don’t worry, it’s just the New Mexico Milicia, it’ll be cool. Remember, they’re on our side,” replied Derek.  “I’ll do the talking. Just chill, all right?”  He kept his hands on the steering wheel as two pairs of the men moved around the sides of the nearest wall of barrels, their weapons still shouldered and pointed at the van’s windows.  The pairs advanced toward each side of the van, remaining a bit in front to avoid a crossfire while aiming at the driver and passenger.  The rest of the
Milicianos
behind the barricade kept their rifles trained on the windshield.

“¿Estás loco, gringo? ¡Ya te dijé salga!  ¡Ahora—rápido!”
The Milicia man shouting the demands kept his rifle aimed directly at Derek, through the open driver’s side window, emphasizing his words by thrusting the muzzle forward.  Ranya noticed his finger wrapped around the trigger, and she slowly shrank down and back in the van.  She recognized the rifles, old M-16A1’s, the original Viet Nam era Armalites with the smooth black plastic forward stocks.  Each rifle was loaded with a long curved thirty round magazine.

“
Es
okay,
amigos
...” said Derek, calmly.  “We’re on your side. Really, we’re coming to help.  Umm…
E-stamos…con…u-sted-es
.”

Kalil was frozen in his seat, but still whispered, “Derek, man, I think we better…”

“¡Silencio!  ¡Callate!  ¡Ciera tú boca, y salga—no voy a decirle otra vez!”
  This
Miliciano
continued to advance toward the driver, weapon shouldered, until his rifle’s quivering muzzle was only a yard from Derek’s face.

Derek spoke, slowly and quietly.  “Listen,
mi amigo
…calm down, okay?  Calm…down. 
Tranquilo
. I’ve got a letter of introduction for Professor Robert Johnson, at the university—it explains everything.”  He slowly moved his right hand toward the center console, brushing aside the folded map, and began to open the hinged compartment on top.

Ranya was almost in the middle of the back of the van, kneeling, her hands on the foam mattress, when a burst of rifle fire exploded just a few feet from her.  She saw most of Derek’s head disappear in a red eruption and she fell prone, just as Lisa jumped to her feet screaming, “Don’t shoot!”  There was another burst of fire, and glass fragments rained down on Ranya’s back.  There were the sounds of the muzzle blasts, and the sounds of bullets pinging through van’s sheet metal skin.  There were men yelling and orders shouted, and after a few endless seconds, the full-automatic firing abruptly stopped.

The side door of the van was slam-rolled back and Ranya went limp, as many strong hands dragged her out and flung her on the ground.  She buried her nose into the dirt, and felt a hot muzzle tip against the back of her neck, and another against her spine.

She was instantly filled with sorrow that she would never see her son, after coming so far.  She saw Brad’s face, and somehow she felt him beckoning her forward.  She saw her father and mother, and a little girl with pigtails running through a sunny field to meet them with her arms held out.  

But the expected flashing plunge into eternity didn’t come.  She still tasted the dirt of this good earth against her lips.  

Gradually the ringing in her ears subsided, she heard the moaning and wailing of another girl, and then Ranya began to return to the present.  Two college girls.  Destiny and Lisa.  She slowly turned her head to the side and saw them lying not far from her, a spreading lake of blood under their bodies.

“¡Hijo de la chingada, qué maldita porquería! ¡Qué desastre! What a damned disaster!”
spat out a voice in guttural foreign-sounding Spanish.
“Who the hell told you to fire?”

“The big gringo was reaching for a gun in that box, Jefe!  I had to shoot!”

“So, where’s the gun, you idiot?  Go ahead, check the box!”

Ranya’s mind was now spinning at incalculable speed, sifting through the probabilities that added up to life or to death.  Without consciously considering the risk or the alternatives, she said,
“No hay fusil, Jefe.  There is no gun.  There is only a letter.”

“What?  Who speaks?  One of the gringas speaks Spanish?”

“Sí, Jefe, I can speak it.  The tall one was only reaching for a letter in the box.  A letter explaining that we are revolucionarios, Voluntarios, coming to join in the people’s struggle.”

“Is this true? Shit!  Then why didn’t the fool simply get out of the truck when he was told?”

“He didn’t speak our idiom, Jefe.  He was a fool.”

“Get up.  Get up.  Help her up, you clowns!”

“Gracias Jefe.  Gracias.” 

***

The “Jefe” was examining
the Ruskin-Johnson letter, while they were being driven up State Road 355 to Interstate 40 on the way from Chulada to Albuquerque.  They were sitting in the comfortable rear seat of the black crew-cab Ford pickup, which had sped past the doomed van an hour before.  Ranya was handcuffed, but the cuffs were in front, and not too tight.  At least she was still alive…

Three
Milicianos
were in the front seat, and four more sat in the cargo bed behind her, their loaded rifles carried in various casual positions, sometimes pointed at one another.  All of them wore brown berets and brown t-shirts.  The t-shirts were decorated on the front with the state logo, the red “Zia” tribal design from the New Mexico flag, the circle with four lines extending out to the top and bottom and left and right.  In the center of the circle was a red star, apparently a new addition to the state symbol.

Some of them wore olive drab or camouflage utility pants, and some wore blue jeans.  Some had boots on their feet, and others wore sneakers. Several of their faces hinted at Central and South American Indian origins. Their hair was worn in every length from shaven to shoulder-length.  Some of the shaven-headed
Milicianos
had gang tattoos covering their arms and necks, and even their cheeks and foreheads.  These seven troops all carried identical M-16A1 rifles, but the rest of their gear was a hodge-podge of various military cast-offs and civilian daypacks and belt pouches.

When Ranya had been pulled up from the ground, some of the men had lip-smacked lewd sounds at her while suggestively grabbing their groins, and she feared being gang-raped.  After being patted down and searched, she had been shoved into the back seat of the pickup truck without any more than a few rough gropes through her jeans and her black t-shirt.  Her knife, her compass, and her nylon wallet holding part of her cash as well as her recently acquired Texas driver’s license had disappeared.  

She wondered if Destiny was alive, and if she was, what was happening to her.  The blond had been left crying on the ground at the scene of the attack.  Derek and Kalil she knew were dead, and she was all but sure that Lisa was also dead by now, judging by the amount of blood she had seen pooling on the ground beneath her unmoving body.  Ranya, although sprayed with blood, had not been injured beyond scrapes and bruises.