Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista (65 page)

Besides its small kitchen and restaurant seating area, the mini-mart side of the establishment sold lottery tickets, hunting ammunition, ice, beer, liquor and other necessities of life. Horses were kept in a corral on one side of the diner, and off to the other side was a combined garage and junkyard.  A mobile home stood under cottonwood trees at the back of the corral. Chickens pecked in the dirt, unmolested by dogs resting in the shade.  The land around the place was relatively flat for this part of the country, and offered views of distant mountains in several directions.

An hour after finishing their huevos rancheros and
posole
grits, Ranya Bardiwell and Alex Garabanda were nursing coffees, waiting by the single large window in front of the dining area.  It was Wednesday morning, and they were the only customers.  They were dressed for the outdoors.  She was wearing her green fatigue-style pants and khaki short sleeve camping shirt.  Her loose shirt was left untucked, covering the .45 stuck under her belt.  He was wearing gray BDU pants, a green t-shirt and his brown operator’s vest.

Alex’s burgundy Crown Victoria “bureau car” was parked out of the way on the repair shop side of the diner.  It was nine o’clock, an hour later than the planned meeting, but delays were the norm when waiting for an informant to show up.  Allowances for time slippage had been built into their plan.

Two days earlier, on Monday morning, Alex Garabanda had made the forty mile drive up to Santa Fe in his Crown Vic.  The only Milicia checkpoint was on the highway off-ramp leading into the capitol, but he was not molested beyond a cursory glance at his FBI credentials. As he had expected, the state was not ready to provoke a direct clash with the federal government.  For this first drive, he brought only his Sig pistol, in case his car was searched.

He registered early at the Santa Fe Regent’s conference center, and attended a full day of politically correct multiculturalism, diversity and tolerance indoctrination.  He made sure that he was seen by the lecturers and group moderators, but without leaving a strong impression.  This dry-run process had been repeated without incident on Tuesday.  The room was paid for through the rest of the week.  He left his FBI-issued cell phone hidden under the mattress, plugged into its charger, the wire concealed behind the headboard.  The phone was set to forward calls to his voice mail. The do-not-disturb sign was left on the door.

On both days, Ranya Bardiwell stayed behind and out of sight, at his house on Camino Del Cielo. 

Wednesday morning before first light, they both left Albuquerque in the Ford.  This time the car was fully loaded with baggage, weapons, communications and other technical surveillance gear, and of course, Ranya’s stolen gold in her two bags.  Alex Garabanda took one last look at the house in his rear-view mirror, and wondered if he would ever see it again. Probably not, he thought without any real regret.  Though it had been the place he and Karin had raised their son, the negative memories of the last few months had taken away any luster from what had once been their happy home.

As planned, Alex and Ranya had arrived at the nameless diner, had breakfast, and waited.  They didn’t talk much.  They were both lost in their own thoughts, and were still uncomfortable with and mistrustful of one another.  At 9:15, a rusty brown full-sized pickup truck pulled up in front of the diner.  It had a tradesman’s lumber rack extending above it from bumper to bumper, so he recognized it as their ride.  The welded steel rack was empty except for an aluminum ladder tied down on top.  Two men were in the cab of the truck.  One got out and walked over to the diner’s front door, which opened with a bell’s jingle.

A short Indian man, who was some years beyond sixty, shambled over to their table.  He was wearing jeans, a plaid flannel shirt and a green NAPA ball cap pulled down low. Wispy hairs grew from several moles on his chin.

“You’re Alex?”

“Where’s Joseph?” This old Indian was the wrong man, and he was using the wrong protocol for the meeting…but one had to make allowances in New Mexico.  The truck with the pipe rack was the key detail.

“Joseph couldn’t make it, something came up.  I’m his grandpa.  He told me you needed a ride.  He told me all about it.”

This sounded reasonable, and Alex adapted.  He had no alternative. “Then you know where we’re going?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“And I need somebody to take care of my car for a little while, until I get back.”

The old Indian gestured with his head toward his truck outside, where the other man waited in the passenger seat.  “My brother can drive it.  No problem.  Let’s go.”

“We need to get our stuff.  Pull your truck behind my car.  The Ford over there.”

“I know which one.”

The Indian turned and walked back outside to his truck. His brother climbed out and followed them over to the Crown Victoria, and waited, standing by the driver’s door.  Alex and Ranya hauled their backpacks and kitbags from the Ford’s trunk when the pickup pulled up behind.  When Alex hoisted a gear bag over the side, a mixed-breed German shepherd lunged snarling from the truck’s bed.  The older Indian whistled and the dog circled low, watching them, and laid down again.

The two drivers didn’t bat an eye when Ranya’s long Dragunov, wrapped in a gray army blanket and bound with cord, was placed into the bed of the truck.  By its very shape it was obviously a rifle, but this was northern New Mexico, and where they were going, rifles were a commonplace sight.  Gun laws passed in far-off Washington had never held any sway in this part of the country.

Garabanda told the younger of the two men, “I’ll be back in a week or so for my car, just keep it out of sight.  Under some trees would be nice, or throw a tarp over it.”

The man just nodded, and got into the Ford after he was handed a single car key.

Alex leaned over the open door. “Hey, no joyriding, okay?  Just hide it.  You don’t want to be stopped in this car...”

“No shit.”  The driver slammed the door.  

The other three climbed into the rusty brown pickup truck, with Ranya in the middle.  A red and black horse blanket covered the bench seat. A statue of the Virgin Mary was glued to the center of the peeling dashboard, beneath the cracked windshield.  They drove northwest on a two lane road, twisting across a sun-baked moonscape fissured with canyons, escarpments and dry-wash riverbeds.

“No checkpoints?” asked Alex.

The old man came close to smiling.  “No, not around here.  Not on the res.  The Milicia, they don’t mess with us—they know better than that.”

“How’s Joseph doing? He sounded happy on the phone.”  The two men talked around Ranya, while she stared straight ahead.

“Oh, you know Joseph, he’s okay,” said the Indian.  “He’s been clean for two years—he’s done with his wild life.  It’s good to have him home. Moving back here was what he needed.”

“I’m glad I could help him out.  You know, with all that trouble he was in.”

“Yeah. He’s a lot better now.  He’s back home with Sarah, and they have a new baby boy.  He gets some work.  It’s not so bad.  He’s not drinking or using.  We make sure of that.” 

Joseph Mequon was one of Alex’s informants.  He had decided to help the feds, instead of taking a rap for distribution of marijuana.  He’d traded his knowledge of meth labs around Las Cruces for his freedom, and it had worked out well for him.  He had already spent two years in the state pen for manslaughter, and that had been enough for him to last one lifetime.  Now he had left the fast life around Las Cruces and El Paso and returned to the reservation, where he would be safe from those he had helped to convict.  

As often happened, the process of cultivating Joseph’s trust had resulted in something approaching friendship.  Both parties understood that the relationship might be renewed again at some time in the future, if a favor was needed. Now, Joseph was in a position to help Alex Garabanda. The informant was glad to do the FBI agent a small favor, to be redeemed later when he might need help.  Even though Joseph Mequon couldn’t make it in person today, he’d seen to it that the job was done by his grandfather.

The truck turned left off the state road, heading west on a single narrow lane of pavement.  There was no traffic in either direction to observe their exit.  If they were being followed, it could only be from the air. As far as he knew, the Special Surveillance Group was not yet conducting routine aerial surveillance.

Alex Garabanda took a small handheld GPS receiver from a pocket on his vest, and studied their position on its tiny screen map.  “About five miles ahead, that’s where it’s coming in.”

“I know where.”  The Indian smiled, the first expression of emotion that Garabanda had noticed.  “It won’t be the first airplane to land there. It’s a nice straight piece of road.”

After they arrived at the GPS location, the pickup truck waited in the dirt well off to the side of the road.  This was in case the plane didn’t show, and they needed a ride back.  The road was indeed as straight as a ruler for a half mile in front of them.  The land rose sharply in all directions around them, so that a plane landing here would literally have disappeared from radar.  There was a barbed wire fence on one side, but it was too low to cause a problem for a high-wing airplane like a Cessna.  There were no telephone or electric power poles near the road.

They erected the ladder in the back of the truck, lashing it upright against the pipe rack.  A plastic grocery store shopping bag made a fine windsock, a full white billowing balloon.  Alex tied more shopping bags on the barbed wire fence at hundred foot intervals; they blew toward the road at an angle.  The white bags were Logan’s idea, indicating the exact location of the airstrip, and the wind strength and direction along its entire length. The steady breeze was significant, about ten to fifteen from the northwest making a slight diagonal crosswind.  Then they waited, sipping water from plastic bottles, which they had refilled at home from the tap.

***  

Bob Bullard didn’t have much of a view
from his fifth floor office in the Federal Building.  From the outside, the brown concrete structure looked like a massive bunker.  If anything, it was uglier than most of the prisons he’d ever visited.  From his window he couldn’t even see the San Diego Bay, only six blocks away, because the Federal Building was surrounded by much taller edifices.  He could however look up and see his penthouse condominium on the 45
^th
floor of the Pacific Majesty.  The dozen top floors of the tower were visible above the courthouse across the street.  

He had a camera installed on the western balcony of his condo, aimed down at the government piers. He spun his chair around from the window and grabbed his computer mouse, and clicked a desktop icon on his computer.  His screen instantly switched to a live view of the Eldorado, tied to the big government pier jutting 200 yards out on the bay.  By using the arrows on his keyboard, he could move the camera to point almost straight down, or zoom out to the ocean beyond Point Loma.  Seeing his eighty-foot “mobile emergency command and control platform” safely tied to the dock cheered him up.  He knew that no matter what happened in the city or to the country at large, he was only a matter of minutes from cutting the Eldorado’s dock lines and running for the horizon.

The 45 story Pacific Majesty condominium tower had gone broke before it had been finished, a victim of the California real estate crash.  The federal government had then stepped in and salvaged the project, securing most of the apartments for the use of federal employees at deeply subsidized rates, hence its ubiquitous nickname, the Fed Tower.  The convenience of living near work could not be underestimated.  Carjackings, ‘express kidnappings’ and home invasions were all too common for those who commuted into the city, especially for those who had the misfortune of living on the lawless east side of I-5. Downtown San Diego around the courts and government buildings swarmed with police and security cameras, and was relatively safe.

Bullard’s next scheduled appointment was with Jay Lattimore Teague, the head of the San Diego IRS.  Teague was a pompous ass who was a stickler for regulations.  From Bullard’s point of view, this had its advantages and disadvantages.  On the plus side, Teague was a terrier when it came to confiscating the illegal property of citizens who were found hoarding gold or other prohibited valuables.  On the minus side, he accounted for every single New Dollar, Euro and Krugerrand.  There was no possibility of going in with him on skimming operations.  

Teague had first requested the meeting to discuss some matter of urgency, but in reality, the only reason Bullard approved the request was in order to meet his newest acquisition, an IRS SWAT team leader who had just transferred in from Albuquerque.

Gretchen Bosch was a GS-14 who had gotten into hot water in New Mexico, for assaulting her lesbian girlfriend’s ex-husband with a baseball bat. In addition, Bosch had received several reprimands for overzealously searching citizen’s homes and property.  On several occasions, it was reported that she had left private homes looking like Swiss cheese, after her team had drilled hundreds of holes into their floors, walls and roofs searching for contraband assets.  When Teague requested the meeting, Bullard suggested he bring along Agent Bosch. Of course, his suggestion was a command.

Bullard’s Chief Staff Officer had standing orders to send up disciplinary reports on federal officers within the Southwest division.  When Bullard read the personnel file on Gretchen Bosch, he knew immediately that her talent was being wasted in the backwater of Nuevo Mexico. Besides, the new Marxist state government was already doing a fine job of shaking down its citizens, and it was leaving only small pickings for the IRS.

After his secretary announced the arrival, Teague rapped the mandatory three times on the office door and Bullard replied, “Enter.”

Jay Lattimore Teague was wearing one of his black pinstripe suits, and black wingtips.  Bob Bullard had never seen him dressed any other way.  He knew that it burned Teague’s Ivy League butt to be the subordinate of Bob Bullard, who had received his Master’s Degree in Criminology via an internet correspondence course.