Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista (49 page)

If she killed Ramos now and then she escaped, the entire episode would blow wide open in the morning at the latest, when he was missed and both of their bodies were inevitably found.  After that gruesome discovery, the Comandante’s last girlfriend would be everybody’s number one suspect—and Ranya did not want that type of attention, to say the least.

A floodlight mounted on the outer right corner of the balcony shone down upon the front landing of the house, from the doors and the flagstone stairs, toward the driveway and the gate.  Immediately beneath the balcony on the ground floor was a window room, protruding six feet out from the house.  On the other side of the balcony, the up-slope side of the house toward the three garage doors, there was no spotlight.  Better, there was a row of shrubs along the front of the house on that side, between the window room and the garages.  It was only fifteen vertical feet straight down the stone corner between the balcony and the house, into the darkness…

Peering over the right side of the balcony she could see the guard leaning back against the door, illuminated in the beam of the floodlight. His head was tipped forward…was he even fully awake? If he looked up toward her on the balcony, he would be blinded by the spotlight. Presumably, any late straggling guests might come through the house, but perhaps not. Was he now relying on the door being opened up from within to give him a nudge to wake him up, if any straggling guests were coming out?  If she descended down the other side of the balcony, could she make it to the professor’s car in the near darkness, without attracting this sleepy guard’s attention?

She considered the guard’s probable reaction if she went downstairs through the house, and opened a noisy garage door.  Could the Comandante’s girlfriend get away with driving off in one of his well-known vehicles, without being challenged? That was a dicey proposition, at best.

Instead, she decided to lower the bags and the Dragunov rifle down into the hedge, directly beneath the left side of the balcony, and go for the professor’s Solaris.

Back in his bedroom, she went on a search for rope to lower down the bags.  She hoped to find a coil of rappelling line, a roll of 550-pound test parachute cord, anything at all capable of holding the two bags and the rifle, but she found nothing like this.  In his room, he had one pistol, one rifle, and no rope or paracord.

Quietly laughing to herself, Ranya was beginning to wonder just what kind of “commando” Basilio Ramos really was.  Clearly, the kind who was more interested in collecting gold than guns.  The only useful gear she found in his room was a set of compact Steiner binoculars, and a small tactical flashlight.  She packed both into a side pocket of her pack, and continued looking for rope.

Finally, as a last resort, she settled on his rack of civilian neckties. Each tie was silk, five feet long, and with a series of quick square knots, she created two uniquely colorful ropes, each twenty feet long.  Another pair of neckties became a sling, so that she could carry the rifle as unobtrusively as possible across the driveway.  Slung across her back, barrel down, the Dragunov would blend with her dark form as she crossed the open ground.

If she was challenged and had to fight, she would only have the eight .45 caliber pistol bullets, and the ten rounds in each of the three rifle magazines.  There would be no way to shoot her way past the gate, and certainly no way to ram the gate with the tiny Solaris wagon.  The bars of the fence around the front of the house were ten feet high, and each was tipped with a wrought-iron arrowhead. If she was seen, compromised and challenged, if she had to battle her way out, she would have to go all the way around the house and up the mountain trail.  She harbored no illusions about her chances of outrunning the swift-footed Falcons, but regardless, she would not surrender.  One way or the other, she would get out of the compound tonight.

Now, faced with the difficulty of an escape that had seemed so simple in the abstract, she questioned why she hadn’t simply bolted today during the march or the rally, when she had had every opportunity.  Before, it had seemed like such an easy thing to slip out of the compound.  Looking over the balcony at the reality, it didn’t seem simple or easy at all.  It looked like long odds, very long odds.

Back inside the room, she had only a few more tasks to take care of with the camera, and then she changed into her long blue jeans, her black hooded sweatshirt, and her cross trainers.  She adjusted Ramos’s web belt so that it fit snugly around her waist.  The .45 was a comfort to her in its black nylon holster. It was cocked and locked, with a round chambered, the safety engaged and the hammer back.  She looked around the room again, at Basilio passed out on top of the dead professor.  With her folding knife, she sliced through the four nylons that still held him to the bed, lest he wind up strangling himself tonight if he tossed and twisted around.

Then it was time to go.  She took the bags and the rifle outside and quietly closed the two glass doors behind her.  She crouched on the left side of the balcony and lifted the backpack over the low stone wall.  A rope made of neckties was already tied to the grab handle on top of the pack. She leaned over on her stomach and lowered it down hand over hand.  It slid behind the bushes with just a rustle and nudged the ground, and she let go of the necktie rope, dropping it down as well.  She was fully committed now: there was no turning back.  Next over the stone parapet went the green canvas zipper bag and the rifle, tied together.  She was careful not to let the weapon bang or scrape against the walls on the way down.  

One more glance over the right side of the balcony: the guard was still leaning back against the front doors.  Nothing left to do now but slide out over the ledge, hanging down by her fingers, and find the first foot holds where the rocky walls joined in a corner between the balcony and the house.  The uneven stones made easy hand and toe holds.  It was no problem pushing against the two rock walls, spread ninety degrees apart, and inching her way down.

After a few rock-climbing moves, feeling with her fingers and probing with the tips of her shoes, she settled the outside edge of her right foot against the top of a protruding stone.  She moved her hands to new positions, shifted her weight to the new foothold—and the tiny ledge crumbled and snapped.  She pushed away as she fell so that she wouldn’t scrape her way down the rocky corner, and landed on her back with a loud crash, in the middle of the dry bush.  

The wind was knocked out of her; she lay still and clumsily drew the pistol from its holster even while she gasped for air. The dozing front door guard was only yards away on the other side of the window room, and she expected to hear a cry of alarm.  After a few moments to recover her breath, she extricated herself from the hedge, rolled and lay prone on her stomach in the space next to the house.  She allowed a minute to pass, waiting in the hidden spot for her heart to stop racing, and then she raised herself to a crouch, and continued with her escape.

She bunched up the necktie ropes, and stuffed them into side pockets on both bags.  There was just adequate space to move along the wall concealed by the hedge, so she slipped the rifle over her back with its necktie sling, barrel down, and picked up a bag with each hand, and slowly, hunched over and turned sideways, she carried them a yard at a time toward the garages, twenty feet away.

After a few careful, silent minutes, she was at the end of the shrubbery near the first garage.  Basilio’s black Jeep was behind this door, but it might as well not have existed.  The professor’s little Solaris wagon was only thirty feet away now, across the asphalt driveway.  It wasn’t parked in complete darkness, but neither was it bathed in the spotlight shining from the other side of the balcony above the window room.

***

Take a deep breath, shoulders back. 
Muscles primed.  One heavy bag in each hand.  She told herself that there was no way to be perfectly, invisibly stealthy now, even wearing dark clothes, with a black hood pulled up over her head.  Just do it!  She slipped away from the shrubbery by the first garage door, and covered the thirty feet to Professor Johnson’s Solaris in a few seconds, stopping on the far side, away from the front door of the house and the driveway gate. The driver’s side door was unlocked, thank God.  There was no need to fumble with the key.

She pushed her heavy backpack over into the passenger side foot well.  The rifle and the other bag went into the back, and she slipped in behind the wheel.  She closed the door, firmly but quietly.  No alarms, no guards, no notice at all…so far.  She unfastened the web belt, and took the pistol out of its holster, sliding it into the gap between her right thigh and the center console.  If she had to, if they stopped her at the closed gate, she’d shoot the guards and try to open it herself.  But with only eight bullets in the .45…the odds were very long.

She found the keyhole on the side of the steering wheel and turned on the car.  There was no motor noise, but the digital dashboard display instantly lit up.  Softly glowing red numbers and letters informed her that the battery bank was at 27% charge. After a few fumbling moments, she found the anemic headlights and turned them on, sending their light away from the house.  She pushed the centerline shifter into reverse, and gently depressed the accelerator pedal.  The car eased back as she turned the wheel to head out the driveway.  She could handle it.  Electric or not, a car was a car.

The guards, having recently opened the gate for Wayne Parker’s entourage, were ready when they saw another vehicle approaching.  On the way out, the guard shack was on the right side of the driveway, away from her.  Two bereted Milicianos with slung M-16 rifles were standing together by it, smoking and having a conversation.  They had been opening the gate for departing guests for several hours, and they didn’t hesitate for one more.  The automatic twin gates pivoted outward and she was through, heading out of the Sandia Heights neighborhood toward Tramway Road, the miniature electric car easily getting up to 50 miles an hour rolling down hill.

Once on level ground, southbound on Tramway, the display informed her that she was at 22% charge, and the car could travel thirty more miles at the current power output.  Well, Brian lived only five miles away, so this would be plenty.  After taking down his “parents,” Ranya’s evolving plan now called for her to escape with Brian in one of their gasoline-powered vehicles.  She could ditch the professor’s crummy electric car somewhere near Brian’s house.

With luck, if all of them were home, she could break in and catch his two “parents” together in bed.  Alexandro Garabanda was an FBI agent, so without a doubt he would have some type of a security system in place, and of course, he would have a weapon close at hand.  It wouldn’t be easy, it would take some study, take some care.  Perhaps she could lure him outside with some type of ruse.  She would have to see his house, and study its layout.  Until then, all she could do was think up hypothetical situations, and plan to use the element of surprise to the maximum.

22
 

Sunday June 29

Professor Johnson’s electric car
was painfully slow and it was running out of battery power, but it did have one superb quality: it was virtually silent.  No one, no matter how alert, could hear it as it prowled around the Glenwood Hills subdivision in the early Sunday morning hours.  Only a few of the local streetlights were functioning, which was another plus during Ranya’s stealthy reconnaissance.  The little wagon might have been detected if someone was already outside, but there was no one.  Camino Del Cielo was abandoned, it was hers alone.  She had no difficulty finding the Garabanda’s house—a single dim porch light illuminated the number 4875 near the front door.

Many of the houses in the neighborhood appeared to be unoccupied. There was an obviously vacant home diagonally across the street from 4875 Camino Del Cielo.  The front yard was knee high with dry weeds, and there was not even a hint of light from inside.  No cars were parked at the curb out front, or in the driveway.  The place was worth a look on foot. The garage door was rolled open and the space within was empty. She checked it with a little penlight she had taken from the top of Basilio’s dresser.  She found a broken ladder, canvas drop-cloths, empty paint cans and other trash littering the interior.  After clearing away sufficient open space, she backed the Solaris into the garage, parking it just far enough inside to be able to observe the Garabanda residence from the driver’s seat.  

By the collection of junk and debris in the garage around her, it appeared that home renovations had been aborted mid-stream.  Was the owner tying to sell the house when it had been foreclosed, or was it another “walk away,” a product of the broken economy? She remembered the older black couple in the RV, who had given her a lift in Texas.  They said they had given up on trying to live in Houston and walked out on their mortgage, giving their house back to the bank.

A white plastic bucket in the front corner of the garage was identical to the one used to throw gasoline on the man after the rally.  She stared at the empty five-gallon pail, so white that it appeared to be glowing in the darkness.  She remembered the bucket being raised above the man chained to the tree; she saw the gasoline poured over him and the match arcing through the air.  Ranya shuddered at the memory of him bursting into flames, and again she heard his screams.  She had stared at his burning face, it seemed that he had looked into her eyes, but there was no way to know what the man had seen through his veil of flames.  

What a day of excruciating memories it had been, beginning with the jolting shock of Deleon’s assassination twenty feet from her, followed by the man being burned against the tree, and then the radio man’s dragging death, flayed alive while tied to the back of a Suburban.  In the quiet and dark of the night, the misery brought by these painful memories filled her with deep regret at having left Basilio Ramos alive.