Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista (59 page)

Sumner’s eyes were welling, he was on the verge of tears, and he swallowed several times before softly answering.  “No…I don’t w-want to g-go back.”

“That’s good.  I don’t want to either, because once we turn around, everything gets real official.  Everything is recorded, inventoried. Paperwork out the old wazoo.  Right now, we’re still just two men having a friendly, unofficial conversation.  So help me out Harvey, give me a reason to get off your boat.  Give me a reason to send you on your way across the Pacific, with Uncle Sam’s blessing.”

“W-what…do you w-want from us?”

“Just the truth, Harvey.  No more bullshit.  Show me the gold, and show me the cash. No—forget about the cash, you can keep it.  Just show me the gold.”

Sumner breathed deeply, and stood up from the dinette.  He knelt down and pulled up a heavy teak floor panel in the center of the main saloon passageway, and set it aside. Then he reached far down into the bilge, his arm fully extended, and after a few moments of tugging, he pulled out a short section of galvanized steel pipe, dripping with oily seawater.  The sailor had struggled to lift it up one-handed; it was obviously extremely heavy for its size.

Bullard felt a momentary chill when he saw the foot-long pipe, with an end-cap on each side.  It looked like almost every pipe bomb he’d ever seen—and he’d seen a lot.  Sumner wiped it dry with paper towels from the galley, and then unscrewed one steel end-cap and placed it on the dinette table. He tipped the open pipe at an angle, and four white plastic tubes slid out onto the table.  Inside of each translucent cylinder was a short stack of what appeared to be one-ounce gold coins.

“I thought so,” said Bullard, grinning, a friendly uncle once again. “How many are in there?”

“Eighty.”

“What kind?”

“American Eagles,” the despondent sailor admitted.

“Call me patriotic, but that’s my favorite brand!” exclaimed Bullard. “Now, I’m going to tell you how we can resolve your problem.  How we can avoid going back to the Customs dock, and tearing your boat to pieces. I’m a reasonable man, Harvey, very reasonable.  And I really do admire you, that’s the truth.  I’m not the kind of man who would leave you broke, right at the start of your voyage across the Pacific.  Tell you what. Let’s go fifty-fifty, half-and-half.  Forty for you, and forty for Uncle Sam—and then you’ll be on your way in five minutes.  Or, we can go back to the Customs dock, and you’ll spend ten years in prison, minimum.  You and Roxanne both. We find any illegal guns or ammunition, and that’s another ten. You’ll be old by the time you get out Harvey, and you can’t get those years back, trust me on that.  So, do we have a deal?”

Harvey Sumner finally found the nerve to stare straight back at Bob Bullard.  “I don’t have any ch-choice.  Take them.”  He reluctantly pushed two of the plastic tubes across the table.  

Bullard unzipped a horizontal compartment on the bottom of his black vest, dropped the two rolls of gold coins inside, and zipped it shut again.  Then he stood up from the dinette table.  “You made a wise decision, Harvey, you’ll never be sorry.  I hope you have good luck on your voyage, I really do.  Fair winds, and all that.  Now stay down below for five minutes, and then go give Roxanne a big hug.  Tell her how you kept both of you out of prison, and saved your boat.  She’ll understand— there was nothing else you could do.” 

He knew that he could have taken the entire stash of eighty gold coins, but half was safer.  He wanted Harvey Sumner to keep sailing west today, far away, out of range.  If he took all of his gold and left the man dead broke, Sumner might decide to cancel the voyage, and turn around. Then, bitter and out for revenge, he might find the ear of some rabblerousing reporter, who might raise a stink.  No, half was better.  Half meant that Sumner was not coming back.

Besides, the sailor probably had another pipe with another load of gold coins hidden somewhere else on the boat.  He would do all right.

Bullard ascended the ladder and stood in the cockpit, blinking in the bright sunlight while slipping his shades back on.  The high cliffs of Point Loma were receding astern, as the two boats had continued heading offshore while he was down below.  Roxanne Sumner was still standing behind the wheel, staring straight ahead, looking right through him.  The two Customs agents who had boarded with Bullard were standing near the stern, holding onto the twin backstay wires.  Their faces were unreadable beneath their DHS ball caps, and behind their reflective sunglasses.

The Fountain was keeping pace with the Mystic Lady a dozen yards off the sailboat’s port side, and Bullard waved it over. When it was pressed alongside the sailboat’s hull, he lightly hopped down and across, followed by the other two Customs agents.  The leader of the Customs detail slid across to the center bolster, giving him the controls again. Bullard said, “He was clean as a whistle.  Fine man, a real gentleman. Everything was in order, we had a nice conversation.”  He winked over at Wendy, and she smiled back.

Then he turned the wheel to the left and shoved the throttles ahead. The Fountain’s four black Mercury engines screamed and the boat shot up onto a plane, leaving the sailboat far behind them as swiftly as if it was at anchor.

Bullard did the rough math in his head.  Forty ounces of gold, at roughly $7,000 an ounce, was what? $280,000 New Dollars? Not that he would ever change the gold for paper blue bucks—God forbid!  These forty ounces would go aboard the El Dorado to join the rest of his gold stash. And sure, they represented a good day’s work.  They felt solid and heavy on the left side of his utility vest.  But really, the forty ounces were just a drop in the bucket compared to what he already had, or even to what he collected as part of his other routine operations.  The Indian casinos alone paid 25 ounces a week for protection.  Only keeping the Border Patrol away from carefully selected portions of the Mexican border paid more than that.

26

Ranya spent an hour
studying the life of Brian Garabanda, as seen through the digital camera lens of Alexandro Garabanda.  There was Brian taking his first steps, Brian coming down a sliding board, Brian riding a Big Wheel, Brian blowing out four candles—and almost always grinning at the camera.  Brad would have been rightfully proud of how adorable his son was.  Brian had his father’s blue eyes, and unruly light brown hair.  His dimples and the little freckles on his nose were Brian’s alone.

After looking at hundreds of pictures, Ranya found that she could not hate the man tied to the chair, the man who made her son’s face shine with happiness in photograph after photograph.  

Garabanda certainly didn’t look like an evil man, slumped back and snoring softly in his old easy chair. He had wavy brown hair, which needed to be combed.  He had a Hispanic surname, but he didn’t look Mexican. His ancestors could have been from any number of European nations. Asleep and with his face in repose, she guessed by the tiny lines around the corners of his eyes and the creases of his mouth that he was in his mid-forties or maybe a bit older.  His eyes were now closed, but she remembered from their previous stare-downs that they were cinnamon brown, and that they had fire in them when he had shown a spark of anger.

The laptop computer had no electrical cord or AC adapter, and after several warnings, it shut itself off due to a low battery.  In the kitchen, she found part of a loaf of wheat bread and half-filled jars of peanut butter and jelly. She made sandwiches and washed them down with tap water, while flipping through Alexandro Garabanda’s stack of mail, which consisted mostly of bills and junk mail advertisements.  Once she finished her lunch, she took a kitchen chair into the living room, and turned the television back on.  After spending five years in detention, Ranya watched even the commercials with interest.  They were in both English and Spanish, depending on the station, and whether they were national or local in origin.

The new cars seemed very small, and touted their high gas mileage above all other factors.  The local ads were tilted toward security-related businesses: locks, alarms, burglar bars, guard dogs and chain link fences. Then a new commercial came on, with a picturesque seacoast in the background.  A kindly looking man stood in front, his hands in the pockets of his sky-blue windbreaker.  She guessed he was selling insurance or a medical plan.  He was wearing a blue cap with DHS written across the front.

The friendly pitchman said, “Hi, I’m Bob Bullard, your regional director for the Department of Homeland Security.”  The name jolted her, but it took a few seconds for her to place it.  “As we all know, this has been a year of difficult problems and unique challenges.  But with challenges, also come opportunities.  Once again, the Southwest Region has led the nation in security awareness and preparedness.  We should all be proud of that record, but we can always do better.  I don’t need to remind you that improving homeland security means improving the economy, and increasing everyone’s prosperity and well-being.”

A man and a woman on bicycles pedaled by, just behind him.  There was an ocean pier visible in the background as he continued with his earnest and folksy message.  “So let’s all pitch in, and help your Department of Homeland Security to help you!  Let’s do everything we can to win the war on terror and economic sabotage.  Report suspicious behavior, and please give your full cooperation to law enforcement at safety checkpoints.  And don’t forget—you can earn cash rewards for reporting illegal firearms, or illegal stockpiles of hoarded gold.  Call 855GUN-STOP, or 855-USA-GOLD, and you can help to support your family, while you help to defend your homeland.”

The camera focused on Bullard’s smiling face, with the two phone numbers superimposed on the screen across his chest.

***

Alex Garabanda was handcuffed
to a bicycle, pushing it along while trailed by a screaming mob.  If he could just spread his hands far enough apart, he might be able to grasp the handlebars and ride away from them to safety.  The handcuffs were passed under the bike’s frame, and he could not get a grip on both handlebars at the same time no matter how he tried. It occurred to him that this was a puzzle, and if he could figure out the solution, he might free his arms and escape.

Then someone hoisted a white bucket above him and without warning he was drenched in a foul liquid, the stink of gasoline pungent in his nose. While he watched, a beautiful woman wearing a brown beret was trying to strike match after match, but the flames kept flaring, sputtering and going out. In desperation, he tried to balance on the saddle with both hands together clasping the front fork, but the bicycle fell over on its side while the crowd around him jeered.  From the ground, he looked up at the blue sky and saw Fidel Castro, wearing a green utility uniform and cap, lighting a long cigar with a silver Zippo.  Then the old Cuban dictator snapped his lighter shut, and casually offered it to the woman wearing the beret.  She smiled warmly at Fidel, and promptly dropped her useless book of paper matches to accept his gift.  

Lying on the ground in mortal terror, still shackled to the fallen bicycle, Alex Garabanda knew that the silver Zippo lighter would not fail.

***

The sound of the television
brought him back, awareness flowing into his mind like the spreading dawn as his eyes flickered open. He groaned aloud when he felt the cords tying his wrists to the wooden armrests.  The female home invader was still here.  She was not part of a bad dream.  The woman—and these new bindings—were very real.  She was sitting a few feet away to his right side, on one of the kitchen chairs that Karin had left behind, watching a commercial on television.

She noticed he had awakened and immediately asked, “Who’s that jackass?” while pointing at the TV.  The female home invader had taken her baseball cap off.  She was an attractive woman with very short brunette hair, something like a pageboy or pixie cut.  Judging by her trim figure and muscular shoulders and arms, she was evidently very fit.  She could have easily been a new Special Agent, fresh from Quantico. He guessed her age to be mid-twenties, so she must have been about twenty years old when she had delivered Brian…if she was telling the truth.

The woman repeated her question, insistently.  “Did you catch that commercial? Who was that guy who was just on?”

“Who?” He was not following her, lost in his own thoughts, and still reacting sluggishly under the residual effects of the vodka.

“The guy who was just on the TV! Who was he?”

For some reason, she was quite agitated about the homeland security public service announcement that she had just seen on television.  He had seen it a few times, and had considered it a joke until now.  His mouth was dry, his head hurt, and it was an effort to speak.  “The guy standing by the ocean?  He’s my boss, way up the chain of command.  Robert K. Bullard. He’s the director of homeland security for the Southwest.  I think he came up from the ATF.  That’s all I know about him.”  

This was not quite true.  Alex Garabanda knew a bit more about Bullard’s rocket-like rise to the top echelons of Homeland Security, and his peculiar knack for leveraging positive recognition out of disaster.  He was a poster boy for the Peter Principle, repeatedly failing his way upward to ever-greater success.  Bullard had won awards for valor both after the disaster at Waco, and later after the ATF’s Special Training Unit fiasco back east. In each case, he had managed to convert his growing fame within the federal law enforcement community into significant promotions.

She was still going on about the public service announcement.  

“Was that California? Where they filmed that commercial?”

“Huh?  What? California? Looked like it.  Yeah, I guess so.”

“Where in California?”

“Where? I don’t know where.”  

“Is that what San Diego looks like?”