Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista (52 page)

If she could get the Ford, and if she found out where Brian was being taken, she could overtake the truck pulling the trailer and catch the silver SUV.  She could shoot out a tire on the trailer to stop the black pickup, and force them to pullover while they were in a remote area.  It could work.

The Crown Vic pulled past the playground and made the left, heading back uphill in the direction of the Garabanda house.  She would have to go after him.  There was no better alternative that Ranya could see.  He would presumably know where Brian was going—if the man in the Crown Vic was indeed Alexandro Garabanda.

The truck pulling the trailer had been loaded down with more than just gear for a weekend camping trip.  They were taking two vehicles, so they were moving, and not just making a vacation road trip.  If she could just find out where they were going…she could pursue them.

Ranya had to suppress her urge to follow the FBI man’s car immediately.  If she did, he would probably spot the boxy little wagon with the solar panel hood and roof trailing behind him.  She couldn’t afford to spook him.  In any event, if Garabanda didn’t go straight to 4875 Cielo, she couldn’t follow him anywhere else, not with the Solaris almost out of juice. Even fully charged, the electric car would be hard pressed to follow the powerful V-8 Ford.

She silently cursed Professor Johnson again, this time for being a tree-hugging eco-pansy.  Why couldn’t he at least have driven a car with some power, instead of this glorified golf cart? She guessed that he drove the electric car because he had found a power outlet where he could mooch free electricity, probably at the university.  No doubt his students thought he was a hero for his choice of vehicles, even though most of the electricity to charge it probably came from coal-burning power plants.

There was no alternative except to return to the house on Camino Del Cielo, and hope to spot the FBI man there.  She was running out of options. Basilio Ramos might be waking up at any time, if he had not already.  It was not lost on her that she was only five short miles from his villa, driving the very distinctive car belonging to the dead man left in his bed.  She decided to leave the car where it was, around the corner from the playground, where it could at least begin to recharge its batteries once the sun climbed over the mountain.

Garabanda’s house was only three blocks away.  She could walk there in few minutes, for a daytime sidewalk recon.  If he wasn’t at home, she could return later after dark and hide the Solaris in the same empty garage across the street.  Then she could break into the empty house through the interior garage door, and set up a long-term surveillance. Garabanda was her last link to Brian.  If he didn’t go back to his house at all, well then, she was just out of luck.

First, however, she needed something to eat and drink.  She had eaten nothing since enjoying the catered buffet line behind Comandante Ramos’s villa.  In hastily packing her escape gear, she hadn’t even considered food or water, a huge oversight!  In the back of the wagon were two bags containing what was probably a fortune in gold coins, plus an exotic four-foot-long Russian sniper rifle, but not as much as a water bottle or a sandwich.

There was a convenience store on the corner of Montgomery and Tramway.  She could walk there, buy what she needed, then walk back uphill to 4875 Camino del Cielo. She found a black and red UNM “Lobos” ball cap in the back of the professor’s car.  With her short hair and her shapeless black hooded sweatshirt, she thought she could almost pass for a man, once she pulled on the ball cap and her sunglasses.  The wolf on the front of the hat even matched her mood.  The .45 caliber pistol went inside of her jeans on the front left side, its grip to the right, “Mexican carry” style.  It was invisible under her loose sweatshirt.  Eight rounds weren’t much, but they were all she had. She certainly couldn’t take the Dragunov. The Russian rifle was as long as a canoe paddle, and a lot heavier.

23

He was deep inside a forest. 
It was a world of dark shadows and radiant sunbeams.  The sun’s rays were painfully bright when they struck him in the face. He tried to move, but his feet were stuck.  He looked down, and saw only rough brown bark, the skin of a tree growing twenty or more feet straight into the ground.  He tried to look at his watch to check the time, but he could not move his arm, which was a rigid tree branch, extending straight out from his side.  

With no warning, he simultaneously heard and felt a bang, then another bang, and another! Suddenly he realized that his mortal enemy, the woodcutter, had discovered him.  His enemy was down behind him where he could not turn to see, chopping into his lower back with a heavy axe! Bang!  Another deep cut was hacked into his defenseless wooden body.  Bang!  Another deep chop.  How many more, until he went over? Bang!  Then he both heard and felt the fatal cracking and splitting, the world tilted away under him, and he was going down, down, down!

Basilio Ramos tried to open his eyes, but they were sticky with some kind of crusty gunk. With effort he managed to partially open one eye, but the other was jammed hard against whatever he was lying on.  Gradually his waking consciousness came sifting back into his mind, and the tree once again became the man.  He was lying face down on a bed, his left arm thrust out stiff, asleep, paralyzed.

That God-awful banging continued.  Banging on his bedroom door. A familiar voice yelled, “Comandante!  Comandante!  Are you there? Are you inside?”

Christ!  What time was it?  For that matter, what day was it?  What country was it?  “Yes, I’m here,” he croaked.

“Comandante, do you wish to reschedule the staff meeting?”

Oh, goddamn it all to hell!  He’d slept through his own staff meeting! What time was it? His Rolex watch was on his right wrist, he had to force his head to turn all the way over, but without his temporarily useless left arm to help raise himself.  His face turned through the sheets toward the right, and—oh my God in heaven! What in the name of all damnation?

He was not alone in bed.  Next to him was a man, a bald and bearded man with a blue-black face!  Ramos recoiled away, but he was hindered by his still useless left arm, extended straight out, anchoring him in place.

That voice again!  “Comandante, are you all right?”

He coughed, cleared his throat, and struggled to speak.  “Yes, yes, I’m fine!  Now, go away!”

“But what about the staff meeting?”

The staff meeting!
¡Maldito hijo de puta!
“Ahh, the staff meeting is cancelled today.  No—make it later.  I’ll be at the Academy at…noon.” He tried to think, but his mind refused to function.  Noon? What time was it now? Was midday too soon?  Think!  Later…best to make it later…  “No! At one.  One in the afternoon, is that clear?”

“Sí, Comandante, very clear!  One in the afternoon!”

With his weak but still functional right arm, he pushed himself away from the corpse.  The dead man’s face was turned toward his own, a yard away on his king-size bed.  His eyes were open and bulging out, dull and dead.  With his swollen black tongue protruding between crooked yellow teeth, he resembled an enormous rodent caught in a human-sized rattrap.

Oh, and that smell!  His room smelled like shit, worse than shit! Ramos managed to push himself to the edge of his bed, and swing his legs down one at a time.  He tried to stand but only his right arm worked, the left hung uselessly, then the room shifted under him and whirled and everything went black again.  He was dropping through a deep well, a spinning vortex leading to the center of the earth, straight down to the fiery pit of hell!  Gradually the spinning stopped, and he was able to open his eyes again.  He was sitting on the floor, leaning against his bed.  There was indeed a body on his bed, a dead man, there was shit and blood and God-knows-what all over his sheets, and all over the man…

What kind of nightmare was this? Last night…he remembered seeing Félix Magón, the new governor. He remembered the girl, the Arab girl Ranya, dressed like a million peso
puta
in a black mini-dress.  But after that…what? What? Where was Ranya, and who was this dead man, who seemed vaguely familiar?  Ramos slowly pushed himself to his feet, using the side of his bed for support.  The dead man was lying on his stomach with his pimply white
gabacho
ass in the air.  Blood and shit was all over everywhere!  The man’s face was purple, his head was twisted more than ninety degrees to the left, his eyes protruding like those of a doomed rat, already halfway down a snake’s throat.

What in the name of hell was going on?

Standing unsteadily, naked, he looked down at himself and was greeted by another shock, and he thought, I have to take a shower, right now!  Right now! He looked again at his shriveled manhood, at the dried shit and blood encrusted together all over himself, the revolting patina matching the backside of the corpse…

What in the name of Satan had happened here last night?

He staggered and lurched toward his bathroom, and leaned against his computer desk for momentary support.  He looked down and saw a sheet of printer paper in front of his keyboard.  It said,
“READ THIS”
in large block print
.
  A sinking feeling overcame him, a feeling of dread.  He pulled out his desk chair and dropped into it, his shower temporarily delayed.  

It was a typed, printed note, evidently created on his own computer. He had to rub his eyes hard and blink several times to focus on the words.

“By the time you read this, I will be far away.  In case you cannot remember last night, I left a slide show on your computer.

“If you pursue me, I will send copies of this slide show to every member of the Falcon Battalion, and to all of the leaders of the state government.  If anything happens to me, the pictures will be automatically sent out in a way that will ensure that your entire battalion will see them.

“Goodbye Basilio, I won’t be seeing you again, or any Falcons or Zetas or anyone else you might send.  I won’t, because if I do see you or them, the entire world will see all of these pictures.”

After a moment of trepidation, he reluctantly pushed the computer mouse, and a full screen image came up. It was unmistakably him, Comandante Basilio Ramos,
“El Che,”
wearing his brown beret with its silver Falcon medallion.  The bald gringo, the dead man was …oh… my… God!  The image changed, he was on his knees, and that dead man, oh my dear God…  The picture switched again, he was now behind the man, taking him in the dog position like a woman!  His forearm was wrapped around the man’s neck and he was grinning like an idiot, staring directly at the camera!

The photos continued to switch every few seconds, but he could not watch anymore, or he was going to be sick.  He lowered his forehead onto the desk.  He had to think!  But with his head already splitting open, each forced thought was another red hot steel wedge being hammered through his skull.  There was one thing that he did know: he knew that no matter what, he could not allow any hint of this…situation…to get out.  

***

Alex Garabanda hadn’t been by his house
in several weeks.  Outside, it didn’t look any different.  With pebbles instead of grass for a front yard, watering and mowing were irrelevancies.  It was an ideal low-maintenance yard for an FBI Supervisory Special Agent, who was often on the road for weeks at a time working cases.

Some “gift” Karin had handed over to him.  More like a poison pill. They had bought the place when he had been assigned to Albuquerque, right at the top of what turned out to be the worst real estate bubble in memory.  They had taken a loan for $320,000 in old greenbacks to buy the 1,800 square foot place, certain that its price could only go up.  Instead, within months, all of the homes in the area began to slide in value.  In no time, they owed more than the falling worth of the house.  Even worse, interest rates began climbing into double digits, and the monthly payment required by their adjustable rate mortgage nearly doubled.

After the real estate market collapsed, deflation began to hammer the economy down. With their two federal salaries, the Garabandas had hardly noticed the deflation, except for the growing number of for-sale signs, foreclosure and eviction notices, and neighbors packing up and leaving one after the other.  Karin and Gretchen were just two of the latest to take off, leaving him without Brian, but instead with this albatross of a house.

Well, at least he would be able to stop paying rent for his apartment. He couldn’t sell the house, he realized that was impossible.  If he tried to sell it in this economy, he would be lucky to get an offer.  It was now worth less than half of what he owed on it.  As a federal law enforcement officer, defaulting and walking away from his debts was not an option. After Congress passed the “Fair Real Estate and Mortgage Act,” defaulting on a loan with a greater balance outstanding than the value of the underlying property had become a crime.  

Because of FREMA, homeowners across the USA were perpetually on the hook for the difference between the money they still owed to the bank, and the money the bank would receive at a foreclosure auction.  This hadn’t stopped millions of Americans from becoming “bolters,” but as a federal officer, if he walked away, he’d lose his job and his pension.  If he ever wanted to see his federal pension, he’d have to make the monthly house payments, no matter what.  Still, he wondered if it was even worth it.

After the real estate bust and the deflation, hyperinflation had swept in like a fast rising tide, with prices doubling every other month.  The Garabandas had to scrape every penny of both paychecks together just to put food on the table.  These were hungry times for civilians, many of whom were unemployed.  Thank God he’d been able to shop in the military commissaries!  Finally, their federal salaries were indexed to the inflation rate, and for a while they were living on easy street, because their monthly mortgage payment (unadjusted for inflation) suddenly seemed like small change.