Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista (38 page)

After breakfast by the pool, she spent some time in the master bedroom at Basilio’s computer, cautiously surfing the internet.  Not only was she interested in news from outside of New Mexico, more importantly she wanted to try to reestablish contact with Phil Carson, her old friend from their time together as fugitives on Brad’s sailboat.  She had not heard from him or about him since she had stepped off Guajira in Santa Marta Colombia, seven months pregnant with Brad’s child.  A week after leaving the boat, she had been arrested by the U.S. Marshals after landing at Phoenix Sky Harbor. 

Now, sitting at Basilio’s computer, she considered risking a search for Phil Carson.  She worried that any direct internet search for his name would immediately ring alarm bells deep within some federal alphabet agency, and this would in turn lead them straight to her again.

Before leaving Colombia, they had agreed upon a system to reestablish communications via new and unused free email addresses. Messages could be posted to these free internet accounts, with only the two of them knowing the exact email addresses and account login passwords. She checked Yahoo and Hotmail to see if the email accounts had already been created by Phil Carson, but she only received generic notices indicating that no such accounts existed.  Further messages told her that due to unspecified reasons pertaining to national security, creating a new email account would require going through an extensive process of proving her identity.  A small section of frequently asked questions told her that due to various unstated abuses, free email accounts could no longer be created anonymously, outside of official supervision.

National security.  There it was.  Once again, she had been tripped up by changes occurring during her five years in captivity.  She wondered what the latest rendition of the Patriot Act was called. She could well imagine the articles she would read, if she wanted to risk searching for such security-related material.  Free anonymous email accounts were too helpful to criminals and even to terrorists, to let them skulk in secret on the information superhighway.  Big Brother had to know who was texting away on the internet, and to whom.  So much for reestablishing contact with Phil Carson the easy way, via email, she thought.

Ranya gave up on the computer, and switched on the enormous flat screen television, which dominated a wall on the other side of the four-poster bed.  Clicking around with the remote, she discovered that the same cable news channels were still in business, along with a few new ones.

After recognizing some familiar talking heads, she paused to hear a panel discussion. The subject on the table was the impending Constitutional Convention, scheduled for September in Philadelphia.  The bow-tied conservative was whining that the entire process was a fraud and a sham, and that any resulting Constitutional Amendments would have no legitimacy.  He said that four of the states that had originally voted for the “con-con” (as they were calling it) had rescinded their votes, after the original purpose of the convention had been “hijacked” by Congress.

The fat and pasty-faced liberal was shouting back that the four “insurgent” states in question could not withdraw their decisions to call the convention.  Their state convention delegates were already in Philadelphia, and the convention would proceed as scheduled.  The necessary total of 34 state legislatures had voted to call the con-con, and by God, that was that! There was no stopping the train: it had already left the station!

Mr. Bow Tie retorted that the renegade convention delegates would have to stay here on the East Coast forever, because if they returned to their Western states, there might be ropes awaiting them, tied to trees!  He said that these so-called state convention delegates were simply Congressional patsies and paid front-men, without any valid authority to vote in the names of their states.  Indeed, Bow Tie said, these fraudulent delegates were now too afraid to even step foot back in their nominal states of origin!

The fat liberal snarled back that the conservatives were obviously afraid of the “Economic Democracy Amendment,” which Ranya mentally translated to mean the forced socialist redistribution of wealth.

The heated debate broke for a commercial, the angry demeanors of the panelists immediately changed to amicable bonhomie, and she switched channels.  It was coming up on twelve noon.  Basilio had advised her not to miss the local Spanish language television news, because the Falcon Battalion promised to be featured in it.

She sat barefoot and Indian-style on the bed, and skipped between Albuquerque channels.  She stopped when she saw the male and female co-anchors of a Spanish language station touting the “liberation” of a large ranch, the
Hacienda Lomalinda
in Monterey County, east of Albuquerque. The hacienda, the pretty female reporter said, was on a Spanish Land Grant territory, and was therefore subject to the Land Reform Act.  The female anchor breathlessly described how the current occupiers of the ranch had rejected every offer by the new state government to negotiate a settlement.   

Despite the lack of cooperation from the occupiers of the disputed territory, the state government had given permission for several hundred landless
pobladores
to settle on unused portions of the 14,000-acre ranch, under the terms and conditions of the Idle Lands Act.  These valiant settlers had been harassed and harried by the ranchers, but had stood fast at every turn.  File television footage showed a colorful tent city spread beneath a line of trees, with a rocky escarpment in the background.

The male news anchor said that the settlers had run their own water hoses from the ranch’s irrigation system to the tent city, but the ranchers had retaliated by cutting off the pipes they had tapped, leaving them without a source of water in the hundred-degree heat.

Finally, today, the settlers had reached the limit of their patience, and had marched in a body toward the main ranch house to demand that the water flow be restored.  Television cameramen must have been just in front of the procession.  The in-studio reporters were silent as they played the video.  The view cut back and forth between the colorful line of singing, drumming and flag-waving marchers, and the distant ranch house atop a prominent hill.  Without warning, there was a series of cracks, and the marchers scrambled in confusion and then fell to the ground, as the camera swung wildly amidst shouting and screaming.  There were chaotic camera shots of people wailing and crying over a pair of bodies lying on the road, face down and still, blood flowing from them in dark rivulets.

In the footage aired by the television station, the next scene showed a pair of helicopters swooping down beside the ranch house.  The male anchor reported that after the unprovoked shooting into the column of unarmed settlers, Milicia forces had been flown in aboard state guard helicopters to regain control of the situation, and arrest the snipers who had apparently fired on the peaceful marchers.  The news anchor mentioned that last Monday’s notorious bus
matanza
had happened only a few miles from the Hacienda Lomalinda, allowing viewers to draw their own conclusions about the identity of today’s shooters.  The reporters didn’t question the amazing coincidence of the Milicia helicopters being only minutes away when the marchers were shot, supposedly by the obstinate ranchers.

The Milicia troops were seen only at extreme range, and there was no way to tell from the blurry television images if they were the Falcon Battalion.  Ranya had no doubt that they were, just as she had no doubt who had actually fired on the squatters to trigger the swift helicopter assault.  Her experience in Virginia six years earlier had taught her to question the publicly announced version of any event involving the use of violence by the government.  She assumed that the Lomalinda ranch attack was in reality nothing like it had been portrayed on the news.  She had no doubt that a massive injustice had just been perpetrated and innocent blood shed on both sides, in the name of “Land Reform.”

Well, Chairman Mao—who certainly knew about these things—had said that to make an omelet, one needed to break some eggs.  He also said that power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Unquestionably the same held true today, even in New Mexico’s simmering slow motion revolution.

Nevertheless, it just wasn’t her problem.  As long as she was able to rescue her child and escape from this
casa de locos
called Nuevo Mexico, it was not her business how they redistributed the land.  Not when the land was taken from the Indians by the Spanish conquistadors, nor when it went to the carpetbagger Anglos after 1848, and certainly not when it went to well-connected Comandantes like Basilio Ramos today.  As she saw it, this was no more and no less than the rusty iron wheel of history, breaking loose and turning once again—lifting some, and crushing others.

From a long distance, shaky video footage showed the ranch house sky-lined on a hill, engulfed in flames.  Black smoke was streaming away on a stiff breeze.  The newscaster solemnly announced that the owners had burned their mansion, rather than hand it over to “the people.”  In front of the blazing house, an American flag could be seen falling away from a pole. The television camera’s lens zoomed in on this movement, suddenly blurry at its extreme magnification.  A few seconds later, the red-on-yellow flag of Nuevo Mexico ascended in a series of quick tugs.  There was a single red star filling the circle in the center of the Zia design, as the new flag whipped straight out on the wind, framed in fire.

17
 

Saturday June 28

Early Saturday morning,
the Falcons mustered in a local restaurant across Central Avenue from the university.  The restaurant, a popular student and faculty hangout, had wisely changed its name from the Country Kitchen to
La Cocina del Campo
in compliance with the
Español Solamente
law.  After their arrival, the Falcons proceeded to commandeer the establishment by not permitting any new guests to enter.  By nine AM they were the only customers—and non-paying customers at that. 

The management of
La Cocina
made no outward objection to the unexpected presence of the elite Milicia unit, and retreated to their office. The predominantly Hispanic kitchen staff was delighted, apparently regarding the undercover
pistoleros
as some kind of folk heroes.  This morning’s breakfast was on the house, no questions asked.

Most of the Falcons were wearing jeans or solid-color BDU fatigue-style pants, and a wide assortment of civilian shirts.  The shirts were left untucked, to cover the pistols jammed into concealment holsters inside their belts.  Some of them wore brown Milicia t-shirts, with the modified New Mexico Zia design on the front.  Their brown berets went into personal daypacks, or were rolled up and tucked away in pants cargo pockets.

Sergeants passed out special items for today’s march and rally.  The men were handed plain white baseball caps,
gorras blancas
, without logos or markings.  The hats would allow the Falcons to recognize one another among the crowds, and enable them to help one another in the event of trouble.  Along with their own sunglasses (which they had been instructed to bring) the ball cap visors would help to conceal their faces in the bright sunshine’s glare.  

From large cardboard boxes, each Falcon was handed a new t-shirt. Most received bright red shirts featuring an upraised black fist design on the front.
Partido Internacional del Ejército de los Pobres
was printed in a circle around the fist.  This was the logo of the International Party of the Army of the Poor, more commonly referred to as the Army of the Poor, or simply as
Los Pepes
. Other Falcons were given green shirts from the Armed Ecological Group, or the black shirts of the Popular Revolutionary Insurgent Army.  These were just three of the largest of the radical groups participating in the March for Social Justice, along with the Nation of Aztlan, FEChA, Nuestra Raza, and other more mainstream Hispanic rights organizations.

Black bandanas were also distributed to each man, to hide their faces if that became necessary, and to serve as a secondary recognition sign. Some of the men quickly tied on their new bandanas just below their eyes, laughing and aiming their fingers at one another like
bandidos
, before removing them and shoving them into their pockets.

***

Ranya was handed her own issue of gear
along with the rest of them—an honorary Falcon for the day.  She was given a red Army of the Poor t-shirt to wear over her own black one.  The other special items included a cardboard “get out of jail free” card.  It was made of stiff gray paper covered in a swirl pattern, and was the size of pair of business cards creased lengthwise down the middle.  The printing was intricate and faint, deliberately difficult to read, to make the card next to impossible to photocopy. It read in formal Spanish:

The bearer of this pass is acting under the orders of state security.  Do not stop, detain, hinder, question or interfere with him.  This person is authorized to carry non-standard firearms and other weapons, in or out of uniform
.

A single phone number was lightly penciled-in for verification purposes.  Ranya slipped the folded card into the back pocket of her jeans.

In sharp contrast to his men, Falcon leader Basilio Ramos was wearing his usual camouflage uniform, complete with his brown beret and pistol belt.  Today he would not be marching with his unit, but instead he was driving directly to the Civic Plaza by a roundabout route.  The sleeves of his BDU blouse were carefully folded above his elbows, his trousers were sharply creased and his black jump boots were gleaming.  Around him, his men were busy pulling on their new t-shirts, or adjusting their caps and bandanas.  Ranya looked about the restaurant for familiar faces. She saw the men who had made the run up the mountain with her on Thursday morning; they smiled and gave her the thumbs-up sign.  She did not see Genizaro or Chino, the Zetas who had been with her when she sighted in the hunting rifles at the range.