Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista (11 page)

After shooting Malvone, Bullard had run away, and yet, incredibly, in the aftermath of the attack, he had been called a terrorist-battling hero, and he was promoted!  This dramatic reversal of fortunes only confirmed to Bullard that it was his fate to rise inexorably upward, even as his colleagues sank all around him.

He had first felt this strange destiny within him on that ill-fated day in Waco Texas, when most of his ATF assault squad had been wiped out. Yet even that disaster had improbably led to him winning ATF valor awards, and a key early promotion.  These two experiences had convinced him that even while America broke apart and sank, he would be able to skip across the burning wreckage, and somehow achieve an even higher station.  This was his karma.  He accepted it and he welcomed it.

His full-time boat captain Cesar Escoria knew the deal, and was an integral part of Bullard’s escape plan.  He had brought Cesar over to the DHS from the ATF’s Special Training Unit, after that radical endeavor had gone up in flames at Malvone’s house on the Potomac.  Escoria’s fluent Spanish and abundant Latin charm would be critical for enabling Bullard to make the transition to a comfortable life in Mañanaland.  Bullard had the high-level police, military and governmental contacts that would make the transfer possible, but his Spanish was less than fully adequate to the task. With Cesar as his
Capitán del Yate
, melding the Eldorado into the luxury marina landscape of the Mexican Riviera was going to be
no problema
.

Just as it was going to be
no problema
coaxing Wendy down below into the Eldorado’s luxurious master stateroom, after today’s boat ride. When you had money, power and a yacht, broads were never a problem. It already promised to be a great day on the water.  The sun was burning through the light morning overcast, and Bob wondered how long it would take Wendy to peel off her wraparound skirt and her halter-top to catch the rays.  He gave her ten minutes, max.

Wendy’s friend Sandra had scampered around the pilothouse up onto the forward deck, shedding her own halter top and wrap, revealing a skimpy red bikini.  Cesar was giving her a personal tour of the yacht.  All the way back in the cockpit, Bob could hear Sandra giggling and squealing at Cesar’s familiar jokes.

Wendy asked, “Bob? Can I call you Bob?”

“Of course you can, doll face.”  Bullard had heard De Niro call broads “doll face” in a movie.  If De Niro could pull it off, so could Bob Bullard.  And why not? He was the regional director of the DHS!  He could call broads whatever the hell he wanted to—and Wendy was just a hick airhead anyway.

“Are we going to take this big ole’ boat out for a ride today?”

“No, not today.  It’s a major hassle to get it underway.  Instead, we’re going to go out on one of my Homeland Security speedboats.  It’s a real screamer; it’ll be a hoot!  You’ll just love it, I promise.  They’re going to swing by and pick us up right here in a little while.”

“You mean like a race boat? One of those long skinny
thangs
, with the great big motors?”

“That’s right, one of those.  Just like NASCAR on the water, only better.  It’s a real Fountain racing boat—it was confiscated from the dope smugglers.”  Just like the Eldorado was, he thought, but didn’t say.

“Oh Bob, you really are something, you are just full of tricks, aren’t you?”  Wendy unwrapped the gold sarong from around her waist and let if fall to the deck, revealing long tan legs, and a tattoo of a spread pair of wings above her round buttocks.

“I try to be, Wendy.  I try to be.”  Bullard sat on the blue canvas upholstered bench seat with ran across the transom, leaned back and crossed his legs, and appraised her very promising curves.  She was wearing only a thong bikini bottom under her wrap, another hopeful sign. When they returned to the Eldorado from their seventy mile-an-hour jaunt out past Point Loma on the Fountain, Bullard knew that the two ladies would be as excited as bitches in heat.  They always were—it never failed. There was just something magical about the wind on their faces, the pounding waves, and the roar of the motors.

“Say Bob, what’s a girl got to do to get a drink around here anyway?”

He smiled.  “Name your poison, sugarplum.  Just name your poison.”

***

Ranya awoke from a catnap lying on her back.
  She had been resting on the wild grass, her brown pack for a pillow.  She was wearing dark blue jeans and her black hooded sweater, her booted ankles crossed, her fingers intertwined across her stomach.  The two men who were going to be the other passengers on the plane were occasionally talking, while sitting on opposite sides of a picnic table twenty feet away from her. 

In the camps, she had become accustomed to making the transition to consciousness in a sly way, in secret.  In D-Camp, they had slept in open barracks on bunk beds.  Useful information could sometimes be overheard, if one was skilled at pretending sleep.  She knew that a giveaway was sudden perfect stillness and quiet on the part of the faker, so she gradually began a light snoring sound, her mouth partly open. After five years internment in the camps, the natural sleeping sounds women made were all very familiar to Ranya Bardiwell.

She had been dropped off at this place by Mark Fowler, in his truck. The two men were already waiting there, clad in desert camouflage uniforms, sorting through their gear on the wooden picnic table.  Fowler asked her to wait in the truck while he went over and talked with them, and he returned in a few minutes.  “Don’t bother trying to make friends with those guys.  They’ve got their game faces on, you might say.  They’re in the tactical mode now.  They’ll accommodate you, and that’s about it.  It’s Caylen Barlow’s plane and pilot, so they don’t have any choice about taking you, but don’t expect them to like your showing up.  Just listen to the pilot.  He’s already been briefed, and he knows exactly where to drop you off. You’re clear about the link-up in Mountainview?”

“Sure, no problem.”

“You’ve got the New Mexico road map?  You’ll be forty miles southeast of Albuquerque, when you jump out.”

“I’ve got the map in my pack, and a compass.  We’re landing on a dry salt lake.  After I get out, I walk four miles south, across the salt flats, until I hit State Road 60.  Railroad tracks run parallel to 60; I follow the tracks five miles west toward Mountainview.  Right at 6am, I walk into the Ancient Pueblos Restaurant on State Road 60, and order breakfast.  I ask the waitress for Don, and then I tell Don that C.B. sent me.  He’ll keep me in the back room until the bread truck makes its delivery, and that’s my ride into Albuquerque.  It’s a good plan.”

“Yeah, it is,” replied Fowler.  “Now, most of the folks in Mountainview are still on our side, but watch out.  Milicias could set up checkpoints or do sweeps while you’re there. When they show up, it’s always at least fifteen or twenty of them, sometimes a lot more, and they’re usually kind of twitchy on the triggers.  Especially around gringo cowboys, like in Mountainview.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“Don’t put your pistol together until you’re in the city. It won’t do you any good at a checkpoint anyway; it’ll just give you away.”

“I won’t.”

“You’ve got my knife…”

“Right here.” She patted her right side front jeans pocket. “Thanks.”

“Well, okay then, good luck.  I hope you find your son, I really do. Getting his address, that was a lucky break.  If you make it back here, you know you’ve got a place to stay.  Both of you.”

“Thanks for everything you’ve done…”

“No problem, I’m glad to help.  Say, how’s your shoulder?”

“Sore, but I’m damn glad to be rid of the chip.”  An adhesive butterfly closed the tiny incision.

“You’ve got everything you need?”

“Yes, thanks.  I’m ready.”  Barlow and Fowler had seen to her outfitting with the gear and clothes she would need.  After much discussion, she had decided to keep Linssen’s 9mm Glock pistol.  It was broken down into its main parts, and concealed against the metal internal frame of her pack.  They were concerned about magnetometers being used in Albuquerque in portals, and metal detecting wands being used at checkpoints. The Glock had plastic ammo magazines and a plastic grip and frame assembly, and hence fewer steel parts to conceal.  These parts and the ammunition were hidden inside the modified seams of the pack’s heavy duty nylon fabric, against the metal alloy internal pack frame.  

The downside was that the pistol had to be carried in such a way that it would not be readily available in the case of an unexpected emergency. She was simply smuggling it into the city, to have it ready to use at the time of the hoped-for rescue of her son.  Fowler did provide her with a wickedly sharp Strider folding knife for self defense, in situations where the Glock would be disassembled, hidden and unavailable.

While resting on the grass she reviewed her conversations with Barlow and Fowler.  She visualized her forthcoming rendezvous and pickup at the restaurant.  She imagined various possible rescue scenarios in Albuquerque.  Even through closed eyelids, she could tell that the sun was almost gone.  Their plane was going to arrive at last light.  She continued to feign light snoring, her mouth agape in an unladylike pose, while she listened carefully.  Finally, she was rewarded with unguarded conversation by her two reticent companions.

***

“She’s sure a sweet piece of ass, ain’t she?
  Pretty face, nice long legs… Looks real inviting, laying there on her back…”

“Too hard for my taste.  I can’t abide women that tough.  Women should be softer.  And she looks like a butch with that short black hair.”

“You’re just pissed off because she won your HK off of you yesterday.”

“Naw, it ain’t that.”

“The hell it ain’t.  You’re pissed off because you had to buy your own pistol back from her.  You should be grateful she let you have it back for only fifteen hundred blue bucks.”

“Yeah, she don’t have a clue what guns are worth.”

“Lucky you didn’t bet your rifle, or she would’ve took that too.”

“Like hell she would! Okay, I’ll give her she’s a crack shot with a pistol, and not half bad running around with a little bitty carbine.  But take us out to the thousand-yard range, and I’d eat her lunch! Nobody can touch me at a thousand yards with my .338.”

“Shit you say!  I can beat you left handed at a thousand!  Hell, I made a sixteen hundred yard kill with this here fifty caliber last December.  Confirmed it with the laser range finder, in front of two witnesses.”

“Where, across the Rio Grande, down by El Paso? Man, that ain’t sniping, that’s just plain murder.”

“So? It’s a free-fire zone out on those river islands, ain’t it?”

“Yeah, I suppose it is, but it’s still nothing to brag on.  Nobody’s shooting back, to speak of.  Nobody serious.  Did I ever tell you about when I was in Iraq, when—”

“Only about two dozen times.”

“Yeah, well, that was
sniping
. The real deal.  Once I spent three straight days in a sniper’s hide, right in Ali Baba’s back yard.  Peeing in a bottle, not moving an inch.  You earned your kills over there—they were shooting back!”

“Well, we’re going to earn them tomorrow morning, that’s for sure. A whole bus load of armed Milicias and only two of us…”

“Don’t worry; it’ll be a turkey shoot.  We used to do it the same way in western Iraq, taking out Syrian infiltrators in SUV convoys.  We’d put a round from a suppressed fifty cal through the lead vehicle’s engine block, and they wouldn’t even know they were being shot at.  They’d think they busted a rod or something.  Once they’d stop, they’d all climb out to look at the engine, take a leak, stretch their legs...”

“And that’s when the fun begins!”

“Yep, you’ve got that right.  I’ve flown recon over our ambush position. It’s in a draw, on a long upgrade.  Once the bus comes to a stop, there’s nowhere for them to go, no cover or concealment at all. You’ll be 400 yards in front with the fifty, so if anybody feels like staying inside the bus, just put rounds straight through it.  Then they’ll get out!  I’ll be on the flank, and I’ll have the angle to pick off anybody who tries to find cover under the bus, or behind it.  We’ll both take out the runners, and they’ll all be dead in five minutes, max.  Then we’ll call for the bird.  You wait—it’ll be even better than Iraq.”

“How many, you figure?”

“Intel report says they change the guard at 0800 hours, and usually it’s about twenty of them Milicias in a ratty old school bus.  Brown berets, M-16s, the whole nine yards.  So they’ll be getting to the ambush site just after seven.  We’ll do the job and be in the air before they know what hit them.”

“You think they’ll have any shooters, anybody who can put out counter fire?”

“Naw, these Brown Berets are all show and no go.  They’re good for scaring old ladies at checkpoints, that’s about it.”

“What if the plane doesn’t show up for the extraction?  We’ll be a hundred miles from nowhere if the shit hits the fan.”

“It’ll be there.  Anyway, we won’t initiate the ambush unless we’re in radio contact with the plane.  He’ll be sitting on the ground just a few minutes away, like we briefed it. And just in case, we’ve got a solid escape and evasion plan.  Hey, you didn’t mark it on your map, did you?”

“What, you really think we could be captured?  Man, I do
not
plan on being captured by those Milicias—that is
not
in my plan!”

“I didn’t say it was.  It’s just not professional to mark your map, just in case.  The guy’s taking a big risk, being our E & E contact.  So marking his ranch or anything else on your map…well, it’s just not right.  It’s not professional.”

“Look, just because I didn’t fight in Iraq, doesn’t mean I’m not a professional!”

“No offense, but Albuquerque SWAT isn’t exactly the Army Special Forces.”

“Now, don’t start on—”

“And anyway, why couldn’t you pass that Spanish test? You’re born and raised in New Mexico, and you couldn’t pass the Spanish test? Hell, I learned some Arabic, and I hated those freakin’ rag heads!  All those pretty little señoritas you got over in New Mexico and you couldn’t learn Spanish in 28 years?”