Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista (86 page)

40

Alex looked over and said,
“Brian’s bedtime was hours ago, you don’t have to stay up.  Nothing’s going to happen tonight.”  He was lying on the bed closest to the door.

“Is the television bothering you?”  It was nearly midnight.  She was sitting up on her bed, leaning back on pillows propped against the headboard.

“No, no problem.”

She was physically tired, but too mentally wound up to sleep.  Brian, her son, was sleeping three blocks away.  Tomorrow they might have their chance to find him, and rescue him.  Rescue? Was that the right word? Recover.  They’d be able to find him, and recover him.  No, be honest— the correct word was
take
. They were going to find Brian, and
take
him. And so what? Hadn’t Brian been taken from her, his own mother?

Tomorrow was the 4th of July.  Karin was certain to leave the Fed Tower with Brian, and then they would take him away.  Finally, she’d be able to see her son, to hold him, and then…what?  She didn’t know.  Could she ever become the mother to a child she had never known for the entire five years of his life? She didn’t have an answer.  

And what about Alex? Once they had Brian in the Piper Cherokee, once they lifted off from the Golden Arrow Casino’s runway, where were they going?  After five days together, they still hadn’t discussed the future beyond finding Brian, except in the most general terms.  She still had more than three hundred ounces of gold left in her “operational fund,” even after financing the airplanes, the casino hotel and shopping spree, the helicopter shuttle, the Dodge Durango, and the Holiday Inn.  This much gold could be enough to start a new life, when they arrived wherever they were going.

But would Brian ever accept her? Ranya realized that she’d have to keep Alex in the picture, there was no other way that Brian could grow to accept her presence. 

Alex, lying on his back on the other bed, only ten feet away.  He’d never made one pass at her, and she didn’t know what to think about that. She was grateful, she supposed.  He was, after all, twenty years older than she was.  Not that she was worried, not even in a single hotel room over night—not with the .45 under her pillow.  But even without the pistol, she wouldn’t be worried.  No, sexual assault wasn’t her fear, not after spending five days with him.  So what was the remaining fear? Aside from the obvious, aside from the ever-present dread that the door might be smashed down at any moment, by a federal assault team dressed in black…

Her other remaining fear was being ditched.  She’d basically brought Alex this far, paying for the airplanes, the hotels and the Durango. Now it was all his show, using his telephone and video camera monitoring systems.  What did he need her for anymore? If he had the chance, would he grab Brian, and abandon her? It was hard not to consider the possibility.  Experience had taught her that there was no percentage in trusting people, in caring deeply for people. You could make the commitment, and it was still damned easy to wind up alone, inside a small cement room with a locked steel door.  Alex could even be setting her up to be arrested.  Could he be stringing her along, waiting for the right moment to drop the trap? Didn’t FBI agents routinely do that, build false trust and play on emotions, in order to entrap their targets? Could he be using her, the same way that she had strung Basilio Ramos along, and used him?

She wondered how Basilio was doing.  With Peter Kosimos dead and one of his Blackhawks down, his security gig at the Vedado Ranch conference must have been a complete disaster for him.  Basilio might even have been aboard the crashed helicopter.  Perhaps even now he was dead in the wreckage.  But dead or alive, Basilio Ramos was a thousand miles and two states away. If nothing else, at least she’d slipped free of him.

***

The weak air conditioning
in their room at the Holiday Inn room was apparently turned off for the night, and the windows didn’t open.  Only a feeble stream of stale air came out of the vents, no matter how Alex adjusted the thermostat.  After giving up on climate control, he turned down the bedspread and the top sheet, and lay on his back wearing a gray t-shirt and his blue running shorts.  Ranya sat against the headboard of her own bed a few yards away, channel surfing with the volume turned down low.  The flickering television was the only light on in the room.  

She was wearing a black t-shirt and matching black running shorts. He couldn’t help but observe that Miss Bardiwell looked awfully hot, with her long sleek legs crossed at the ankles, and her curvaceous figure clearly outlined, and he had to remind himself of their age difference.  They’d seen all of the cable news shows through several repeats of the headline stories; they’d even seen Bob Bullard with the Pacific Beach pier behind him. They’d seen the child miners, and again they laughed together at the blunt warning: “Gold: It’s Just Not Worth It!”

The digital clock on the small lamp table between their beds blinked over to 12:00. It was Friday the 4th of July, a government holiday.  This might be
The Day
. Karin and Gretchen were certain to go out somewhere with Brian—to the beach, or to a picnic, but somewhere.  When Brian was taken outside, they would be following right behind, on foot or in the black Durango.  Separating Brian from Karin (and possibly from both Karin and Gretchen) was going to be tricky, but with the element of surprise, it was very doable.  Once they had Brian, a fast one hour drive out Interstate 8 would bring them to the Golden Arrow Casino, where Flint was waiting with his airplane. 

But then what?  Where would they go?  Where would they tell their pilot to fly? Cantrell County was an option, but Alex knew that Cantrell County was on borrowed time.  Eventually, the
reconquista
civil war was going to sweep across that county, despite the bravado and marksmanship of its citizen-deputies.  Anyway, he’d had more than enough of New Mexico. New Mexico was his last assigned duty state, and no place for a renegade FBI supervisor.  No, if they were going to bolt, they’d have to go north, somewhere.  Idaho, Montana, Wyoming…somewhere.  These were the “free states,” according to many.

But what did Ranya want?  What were her expectations? She believes that I stole Brian from her.  She as much as blamed me for the five years she spent in nonjudicial detention.  Would she ever completely forgive me for those five lost years? Would she take Brian and run away with him, the first chance that came along? Could she make room for me in her life? How would they share Brian, after they had him back?

When would they even be able to talk about these things?

First things first.  And the very first thing was:
get Brian.

What was the use of even thinking about the rest of it, until then?

41
 

Friday the 4th of July

Early morning.  Their bags were packed,
Alex and Ranya were prepared to leave their room in the Holiday Inn on a moment’s notice.  Only the laptop and its accessories remained on the desk, ready to be unhooked and shoved into waiting cases.  They took turns watching the computer screen, monitoring four current video camera images around the Pacific Majesty. Two of these cameras were in stationary positions, but two were under operator control.  These cameras occasionally panned, tilted, and zoomed independently. 

One of the primary cameras they were monitoring showed a long view down Broadway toward the bay, a half dozen blocks west.  It covered the entire width of the avenue, including the main front entrance of the Pacific Majesty, seen at a downward slanting angle.  “Broadway 7” was a live camera.  Somewhere, someone was sitting in a security control room, intermittently manipulating it.  When it was set on its usual wide angle, people walking in and out of the Fed Tower’s main entrance were only discernable in their general details: man or woman, suit or dress, hat or long hair.  This was okay, Alex was confident that if Brian walked outside with Karin, he’d be recognizable.  There just weren’t that many kids going in or out of the Fed Tower.

While Alex watched, Broadway 7 began to move, and he selected full screen to enlarge it on his computer.  The camera tilted down slightly as it zoomed in, until its frame bracketed a man standing on a cement traffic divider, next to a left turn lane at Broadway and India.  The man appeared to be walking along a row of cars.  The color video image was surprisingly crisp and steady.  

“Ranya, check this out.”

She sat on one of the upholstered room chairs, beside Alex.  “Is he holding a sign? What’s it say?”

“He keeps turning. Wait, there it is.  Um, it says, IRAQ WAR VET. Ah, shit…the poor guy’s only got one arm.  Look, the sign is pinned to his shirt.”

***

The man was wearing an old desert uniform
, three pale shades of tan. He was holding what looked like a matching desert uniform cap upside down in his left hand.  He limped toward the direction of the camera, past two luxury sedans and an SUV stuck waiting in the turning lane.  Long brown hair and a short beard covered his collar and obscured his face.  His right sleeve was folded up and pinned beneath his shoulder.

When the left-turn arrow switched to green and the cars pulled away, the man walked back to the utility pole near the end of the narrow traffic island. He crouched down and pulled a plastic water bottle out of a backpack resting on the ground against the pole, and took a drink.  A brown sleeping bag was strapped beneath the pack.

While his back was turned to the camera, another car rolled up behind him, it was immediately identifiable from above as a San Diego Police Department black and white cruiser.  It was followed by another, and when both units were stopped in the turning lane, two police officers stepped out, and strode up to the Iraq veteran, who stood to meet them.  It was obvious by the body language of all three men that harsh words were being exchanged. 

The veteran slapped his cap on his head and put up his one hand in a fist, turning and taking a fighting stance, causing the police to step back and pull out their batons.  A standoff ensued while one of the officers spoke into the radio mike clipped to the epaulet of his uniform. After a minute, some kind of a deal seemed to have been reached with the veteran, who relaxed and allowed the officers to approach.  When they were close, the two police suddenly seized the veteran by his shoulders, roughly guided him to the back of the first cruiser, and pushed him down inside by his head.  The police cars then departed as rapidly as they had arrived.

Alex and Ranya made eye contact and shook their heads in silent agreement.  Whatever it was they had just witnessed, it wasn’t right.  Alex switched back to the four-camera display, and they continued their surveillance of the Fed Tower.

***

Bob Bullard had computers
in most of the rooms of his penthouse atop the Pacific Majesty.  On weekends and holidays, he liked to give the city a quick inspection over breakfast, with his personally chosen sequence of downtown security cameras.  Between toasted bagels, fresh fruit, orange juice and coffee, he had noticed a beggar, bold as brass, standing on a traffic island right in the middle of Broadway.  He had Police Chief Ramón Devlin’s personal cell phone number on speed dial, and he immediately reported the vagrant.  Five minutes later, Bullard had a reason to call him again.

“Nice work Ray.  I appreciate how quickly you handled that situation. I know it’s not easy, but we have to draw the line.  No panhandling means no panhandling, even if it’s a tearjerker like that one-armed G.I. Joe.  Uh huh, right.  East of I-5, I could care less, but you can’t let it start up again downtown.  You let one bum get away with begging in traffic, and you’ll have ten bums on every corner by tomorrow.  That’s exactly right, and then we’d be right back where we were last year.  Nah, no charges. Right, tell them to drop him off at the vet center on East El Cajon.  If he wants to come back downtown, he’ll have a hell of a walk.  Thanks Ray.  Later.”

The veterans center would be perfect for the vagrant, Bullard mused. The vet would feel right at home sleeping on a cot in one of the twenty-man tents.  Standing in a chow line for a ration of free slop would be nothing new for the old soldier.  Times were hard, and expectations were low.

Beggars could not be choosers.

***

Basilio Ramos had visited the city
twenty years before, with his mother. They had gone to the famous San Diego Zoo and to Seaworld, and stayed for a long weekend with friends in the Santa Ana section.  It had been a pleasant middle class area of San Diego then, with detached homes on shady streets.  This morning Ramos and his small team of Zetas had to drive over to Santa Ana in the big crew cab truck, to pick up their van and the local driver who would take them downtown.  Once again, Chino and Salazar rode ahead of them on the Kawasaki as armed scouts. 

Last evening they had spent only an hour at the
padrino’s
cliffside estate, before being driven to an empty house in the same mesa-top enclave. This fully furnished Mexican Mafia safe house was where the team spent the night going over maps, discussing possible snatch scenarios, drinking beer and watching television.  

During his brief audience with the local godfather, Ramos was surprised to hear that the man was very interested in acquiring property in Nuevo Mexico, perhaps one of the confiscated ranches.  Ramos concluded from this conversation and the high level of respect he had been afforded, that rumors of his personal and professional problems had not been signaled ahead to San Diego.  Chino and Salazar even lauded him to the gang boss as “
El Che Guevara de Nuevo Mexico
.”

Driving through Santa Ana on this Friday morning, the Comandante couldn’t believe what a different world he was in now, compared to his youthful memories of suburban San Diego.  Every foot of curb space was occupied by parked cars, and more cars were parked on sidewalks, driveways and yards.  Many were stripped or burnt hulks.  The green lawns and manicured shrubs he remembered were gone, along with the trees and their shade.  Chickens scratched in the dust, goats ripped at the remaining greenery where they could find it.