Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista (20 page)

They were standing thirty feet from the wall and Kalil, who continued in English to alternately shout abuse and plead for his life.  The fifteen Milicianos slowly formed a wide half-circle around Ranya, away from the wall, their rifles nonchalantly trained toward her from their hips.  The Jefe thrust the loaded rifle at her, and hissed, “Shoot that damned noisy ape! Shut him up!  Kill him right now!  Do it or we will chain you back beside him, and this time, I will not tell them to aim at the mountain!  Do it now!”

She held the loaded rifle at port arms, across her chest at an angle, her right fingers wrapped tightly around the pistol grip, her left hand on the smooth black plastic fore stock.  Ranya looked at the Jefe; he was staring intently at her with his coal-black eyes as he backed away from her.  With her right thumb, she could feel that the safety was already pointing up, ready to fire single shots.  She glanced at the semi-circle of Milicianos fanned out behind her.  She looked at the blindfolded Kalil, still chained to the wall and loudly protesting.  A dozen M-16 rifles were pointing in her direction.  The Jefe had his pistol out, in his hand, twitching by his leg. His eyes burned her with their intensity.

She ruled out trying to reason with him—the Jefe was in deadly earnest, and the brown-shirted troops would obey him no matter what. Ranya quickly weighed her options as they all stared at her, in the dead-end alley thirty feet from Kalil on the wall.  She could thumb the safety back to full auto, spin and shoot the Jefe, and maybe a few of the other Milicianos besides, before she was riddled with their bullets and killed.

The Jefe made a slight nod, and the fifteen rifle barrels slowly began to rise.  

Talk was out.  Running away was out.  Shooting the Jefe and then being killed was out.  Crying, begging or showing any form of feminine frailty was out.

Time was out.

She threw the black rifle to her shoulder, flicked back the safety while taking aim through the rear peep sight, and emptied the magazine in a single ripping three second burst.  She saw her M-16’s bullets shred Kalil from his belly to his throat as the front sight climbed his body on full auto, giving him at least a swift death. 

Well, the radical anarchist had come to New Mexico to find a revolution.

And he had found it.

They were silent and still when her rifle went empty, and after a moment she lowered its barrel toward the ground. As the echoes of her shots died, she turned to the Jefe and said, 

“In war, you either kill, or you are killed.  And I am still alive!”

9
 

In her best Spanish she asked him,
“Are these all of the rifles?”  Ranya was holding a small plastic bottle of spring water, handed to her by the young officer from the tribunal.  He was just a few inches taller than she was, perhaps six feet.  He was wearing a camouflage uniform and black boots, with a green web belt and a pistol in a black nylon holster, and of course his brown beret.  She was still in the same jeans and black t-shirt she had been wearing since Texas.

“Most of them are in here,” he answered
en Español
. “A few hundred are already out with the regular Milicia patrols, and some others are at the academy.”

“What is ‘the academy’?” she asked. 

“Another place we use.  A private high school.  Or it was. Now my group uses it—the Falcon Battalion.”

They were looking into an open garage, in another part of the mini-storage complex from the dead end alley where she had shot Kalil.  The young officer with the long dark hair had taken custody of her from the Jefe immediately after the forced execution.  He had arrived with four of his personal bodyguards, and flatly said, “The test is over, and now she is mine.”  The Jefe had nodded acquiescence, staring above the killing wall.

Ranya shook her head at the sight in the garage: a jumbled mountain of black plastic and gray metal.  “It’s a shame to see rifles treated this way, even if they’re old.  If they are stored properly, they should last forever.”

“I wasn’t here when they were unloaded.”

The twenty by twenty foot garage was filled with a heap of black rifles, chest-high in the center.  If the unloading had begun in an orderly fashion, it had obviously ended with rifles being thrown into the garage.

“How many are in here?”

“About a thousand five hundred, I have been told.”

“About a thousand five hundred
,” thought Ranya.  She wondered if there was any accounting for the exact number of rifles, much less their serial numbers.  As always, when it came to firearms, there was one set of rules for the common folks, and quite another set of rules for the government—even in this lunatic state of Nuevo Mexico.  A lifetime ago back in Virginia, her father would have been jailed for misplacing even one “class 3” full-auto rifle due to sloppy paperwork.  In the end, the Special Training Unit of the ATF had simply killed him.  Here, fifteen hundred fully automatic M-16s were treated as casually as swap meet junk.

She said, “Well, I can’t do anything with them in a pile like this. Have some men bring them out and stand them against the walls, this way.”  She picked up the first rifle she could extricate from the jumble, and leaned its muzzle against the wall outside of the rolled-up garage door.  “It doesn’t matter how much space it takes, get them all lined up.  Then I can begin to grade and sort them.”

“How long will it take?”

“To get them stacked along the walls?”

“No, I mean to sort them, to grade them, after they are lined up for inspection?”

“Hmm…if I can show some of your men what to look for, maybe a few minutes each.  So at least a day, maybe two, if I have some help.”

“All right, we’ll do it that way.”  He looked her square in the face. He was standing just a few feet away, and she did not avoid his gaze. “Ranya, I want to tell you directly, that I had nothing to do with that disgraceful episode with the firing squad.  That was completely El Condor’s idea.”

“El Condor?”

“Correct.  The Peruvian, Carlos Guzman.  I think you may have heard him called El Jefe.  He has many other names as well.”

She sipped from her water bottle, while returning his eye contact. “It hasn’t exactly been my best day.  But I will do my duty, for the cause.” She was gaunt and hollow-eyed after spending the night in the cement cubicle, her hair and face unwashed for two days.

“Well, I’m sorry that it happened.  Very sorry.  Say, are you hungry? You must be dying of hunger. I’ll have some of the men line up the rifles. Let’s go get something to eat.”  The young officer told one of his trailing bodyguards to get a detail of regular Milicianos moving on organizing the rifles for inspection.  Then he said to Ranya, “Come on, let’s get out of this dump.”

Near the front office of the complex was a small parking lot.  A black Chevy Suburban with opaquely tinted windows was parked by the gate, its engine already rumbling. He opened the door behind the driver, and motioned for her to get in.  She studied the modified door as she climbed inside—the window glass was at least two inches thick. It was a customized, armored luxury SUV, the type preferred by Latin American executives and government officials with reasons to fear kidnapping or assassination.

His bodyguards followed, and took the other places.  Two besides the driver climbed into the front, and three more climbed in through the rear doors. The rear bench seat had been turned around to face backwards, allowing the three men to climb in and out without interfering with the passengers in the middle.  Ranya noted that this also allowed them to keep their weapons trained to the rear, to fight off any attackers in that direction, as well as to leap out at a moment’s notice to go on the attack in a counterambush.  There was a custom “moon roof” over the rear seat—she guessed this opening was to allow the men in the back to stand and fire in any direction, while the vehicle was on the move.  All of the windows were closed, and the air conditioner was running.

Instead of the standard full-length rifles, his bodyguards carried newer carbine versions of the M-16, with short barrels and collapsing stocks.  The bodyguards all wore khaki-colored combat vests over their brown t-shirts, with pouches and compartments for extra M-16 magazines. Each of them had a black drop-leg tactical holster strapped to his right thigh for a pistol.  They wore the brown beret with the same silver falcon as their leader, woodland camouflage utility pants and a variety of boots. They had the self-assured, almost cocky demeanor of serious operators.

These bodyguards seemed fitter and more alert than the Milicianos she had seen at the Chulada roadblock, or in today’s firing squad. Elite troops.  The Falcon Battalion, he had called them.  Ranya thought that if this personal detachment accompanied their leader everywhere, it would be extremely difficult to escape from them.  Two of them had intricate blue prison tattoos on their bare arms and up their necks, but unlike some of the ordinary Milicianos, not on their faces.  Several of the tattoos depicted machetes dripping with blood.  From the accompanying tattooed Germanic calligraphy, this machete logo seemed to be one of the signatures of the MS-13
pandilla
, or gang faction.

The chain link gate rolled open, and the SUV pulled out of the complex and onto a wide street.  It looked like an area zoned for light industrial and commercial use.  She could see the Sandia Mountains on their right side, to the east. A second black Suburban was waiting outside, and fell into line behind them.

“Whew! I’m glad to be out of that shit hole,” said the young officer. “Pardon me…that dump.  That place makes me nervous—it’s too much like a prison, with that cement wall around it.”

“It was a prison, for me,” said Ranya.

“Well, yes, and I’m glad we got that straightened out.  Anyway, let us begin again. I’m called Basilio Antauro Ramos.  Or if you prefer, you may simply call me Basilio, and I’ll call you Ranya…if that is all right with you.”  He extended his hand, and she accepted it politely.  His grip was firm and smooth, his fingernails were well manicured, and he was wearing a gold Rolex watch.

“It’s fine with me…Basilio.”  She knew instinctively that escaping would depend on befriending this Basilio Ramos, and gaining his trust. She was glad to be traveling with him rather than with Carlos, the bearded Jefe. Ramos was more refined, he seemed better educated, and of a higher class. And of course he was younger, in his mid or late thirties she guessed, and much, much better looking.

“Excellent.  Now, first, you must be starving.  We’ll stop somewhere right away and get you something to eat, and then I was thinking that perhaps you would not mind too much a change of clothing? And a chance to wash up?”

“As you wish…Basilio.  Yes, that would be very generous of you.”

“And this afternoon, we can begin to inspect the rifles.”

“As you wish.”

“Oh, we have your pack,” said Ramos.  Without being specifically asked, one of his bodyguards in the back passed over the brown backpack, which had begun its odyssey in Starr Linssen’s house in Oklahoma. “
Camarada
Inez, she kept the Glock pistol.  But everything else of yours is in here.”

Ranya accepted the bag casually and placed it on the seat between them.  After her night in the cement cell, unfed and sleepless, she was exhausted.  Then after the firing squad experience, her nerves were badly shaken, but she was pleased to be moving again.  Any place had to be better than that secret prison in the mini-storage facility.

***

The Suburban had a color GPS
display in the center of the instrument panel, and from the middle seat, Ranya could see that they were northbound.  She saw from street signs above intersections that they were on Tramway Boulevard.  From her map study back in Caylen Barlow’s ranch house in Texas, Ranya had the general layout of Albuquerque memorized.  The city roughly resembled a square, with the lazy Rio Grande forming the outward-curving left side.  The famous Route 66 was the bottom of the square, with downtown in the lower left corner.  The University of New Mexico was east of downtown along Route 66, which was called Central Avenue in the city.  The right side of the square was defined by Tramway Boulevard, which ran due north for ten miles along the base of the Sandia Mountains, and then turned westward to form the top of the box defining Albuquerque.  Interstate 40 crossed the city from east to west, just above Route 66, and Interstate 25 bisected the city from north to south.  Seeing the GPS map display, and matching it to her memory and to her current observations, encouraged her with a welcome sense of orientation.

Tramway Boulevard was also State Road 556, a number that echoed the caliber of the bullets she had fired at Kalil: 5.56mm.  Before arriving in Albuquerque, this number had already been planted in her mind, from her map reading at Barlow’s ranch.  This was because Tramway Boulevard— 556—was the primary route leading to her son.  Alexandro Garabanda, his wife, and their “adopted” son lived in the Glenwood Hills subdivision, on the east side of Tramway, above the east-west running Montgomery Boulevard.  She studied the neighborhoods as they drove north.  There was a dry streambed and a bike path along the right side of Tramway.  Beyond this path were comfortable suburban neighborhoods, in the predominant Southwestern architectural styles, mostly stucco boxes and faux-adobes in beiges, tans and corals, topped with red Spanish tiles.  The streets rose uphill on the east side of Tramway, and after only a few blocks, the rocky high-desert foothills of the Sandia Mountains loomed above them all. 

Ranya had never been to Albuquerque before, never been to New Mexico at all, yet it seemed to be a town in serious decline.  Many of the stores in the strip shopping centers were closed, out of business, boarded up or even burned out.  The potholes they were driving across were the worst she had ever seen in any American city.  Many of the traffic signals at intersections were only flashing red, or they were entirely unlit.  It was obvious that the local economy was suffering.  The gas stations they passed had signs that all read the same price for a single grade of gasoline: $26.95 per gallon.  This was cheaper than she had seen in Texas, but there was a difference.  Here, the gas stations also had crude hand-written signs that read, “No Gas.”  Unoccupied cars were parked in long lines leading to the pumps, waiting for the next gasoline delivery, she presumed.  She decided to hazard an ‘innocent question.’