Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista (62 page)

“It’s Russian, it’s the real thing.”  She said.  “Scope’s authentic too. Pretty cool rangefinder setup.”

“Yeah, it is.” He placed the butt of the rifle on the table, holding the barrel up, and ran a hand down the two silk neckties, examining them. One was solid blue, the other a multi-colored paisley.  “What’s the story on the, uh, ‘custom sling’?” he asked.  The two ties were knotted together in the middle, and tied to the bottom of the stock and to the gas tube just above the barrel, in front of the fore stock. 

“The Dragunov was one of the Comandante’s newest souvenirs. Last night I climbed off a second story balcony at his house, and I had to lower everything down first.  I made a rope from neckties, it was the only ‘rope’ I could find.  Then I had to carry both bags and the rifle, and it needed a sling, so…”

“Well, it’s certainly original,” he laughed.

“I like it.  Classy, don’t you think? They’re real silk.”

“It looks terrific, but how’s it shoot?”

“Good enough.  It shot up a truckload of Falcons last Wednesday.”

“I heard about that! You were there?”  He laid the long semi-auto sniper rifle back down on the table and sat opposite her, casually eyeing it while they continued their conversation.

She understood his interest: there was no other rifle quite like the Dragunov, with its skeletal laminated wood stock, long sleek barrel, and menacing black scope.  Not the most accurate rifle in its class, with good ammunition it could still shoot inside of an inch and a half circle at 100 yards.  This meant that it could easily hit a man at well beyond 600 yards: certainly nothing to sneeze at.

“We were coming back from the range, in a convoy. The Falcons had a scout truck out in front, and it was ambushed by one guy with this rifle.  Ten quick shots, and then he took off on a motorcycle.  The Falcons tracked him down.  They killed him at his house.  Ramos kept his rifle as a souvenir, and now it’s mine.  I took it, just like I took his .45 and his gold. I wish he’d had something a little shorter in his safe, but this was the only rifle.  Anyway, I know it works!  I saw what it did to a pickup truck full of Falcons.  Straight through the windshield, from long range.  It wasn’t pretty.”

“The bullet it fires, it’s about like a .308, right?” he asked her.

“Hmm…maybe a shade more powerful than that.  More like a thirty-ought-six, depending on the load.  But the magazines only hold ten rounds. Drop the mag, check it out.  The cartridges have a funky rim—you’ll never mistake them for .308.”

“How do you know so much about guns?”  He fumbled with the magazine release until the black steel box came free.

“My father was a gunsmith, back in Virginia.”

“Really? Is he still there?”

“He’s dead.”

“Oh—I’m sorry.”

“So am I.”  She wanted to say,
he was killed by another federal agent, like you
, but she didn’t.  There was nothing to gain by opening up that painful subject with this FBI agent.  She changed the subject to break the uncomfortable silence.  “Listen, when can you get in touch with your pilot? How soon can we fly to California?”

“I already did, while you were moving your car.”

“You called him from here? Was that smart?”  She thought: have I hooked up with a moron, somebody who’s going to bring her enemies down on their heads with his carelessness?

He countered, “Come on, I’m not stupid, I know how to do this sort of thing.”

“You’re sure nobody could hear your call?”  She felt like mentioning what had happened to his informant after his cover was blown, but she held her tongue. What good would it do? She didn’t need him becoming depressed and possibly even suicidal again.

“I just set up a meeting for tonight, that’s all.  I invited him over. He’s a friend, so there’s nothing strange about it.  I used a good cover story, about Karin and Brian leaving, and my moving back into the house. I’ll ask him about flying us once he’s here.  But Ranya, there’s one other thing...”

“What ‘one other thing’?”

“We’re not going straight to California.  I have something I need to do first.”

“What are you talking about?  For how long?  I don’t want to wait around, and you only have one week before you’ll be missed, right? We need to get going on this thing, right away.  I’m done with Albuquerque— I’ve got too many targets pinned to my shirt already.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t just go.  I can’t leave New Mexico, not yet.”

“Why not?” she asked impatiently.  “What can be more important than getting your son?”

“Not more important.  There’s just something I have to do first.”

“Like what? How much time are you talking about?”

“A few days.”

“A few days? No way—forget it.  As soon as we can, I want to be on the way to San Diego.”

He replied with his own challenge.  “You think airplanes are just sitting around, waiting to go on unauthorized flights? You think it’s that easy?”

She tried to read his face, wondering if he was scamming her, or if she was being set up.  Would ‘his friend the pilot’ turn out to be the point man of an FBI arrest team, or the U.S. Marshals?  The fear of betrayal never left her mind.  If Garabanda was playing her for a fool, he was going to die—no ifs, ands, or buts.  If he was setting her up for arrest, she was going to shoot him right in his ruggedly handsome face, first thing.  “I’m listening,” she finally said, in a noncommittal way.  She realized that she had no choice but to hear him out.

“Good.  You remember my friend, who was…burned yesterday?”

His mention of that horrific event was completely unexpected. “I’ll never forget it.  Never.”

“Well…that’s why I have to stay for a few days.  I have to do something for him.  I can’t leave New Mexico before I do it.  Otherwise his life, his death…it would have been wasted. He would have died for nothing. All that suffering, all that pain…and for nothing.”

“What are you talking about?”

Garabanda had turned morose again.  He had removed the top two cartridges from the Dragunov’s magazine and was rolling them in his fingers like worry beads.  His mood seemed to be swinging back toward the state of melancholy she had discovered him in just a few hours ago.

“Luis Carvahal was my informant.  I was running him, but without the FBI’s blessing or knowledge.  It was kind of on my own.”

“What’s the point of doing it then?  I don’t understand how…”

“Politics, it was all politics.  Ranya, I can get into that later, we’ll have plenty of time.  The point is, he was ghostwriting Agustín Deleon’s memoirs.  Those two went way back together, more than thirty years. Deleon trusted him completely, and he told Luis everything about what was really going on in New Mexican politics, everything he knew.  For his memoirs.  So last week, Luis found out about a meeting that’s going to happen on Wednesday, this Wednesday. Up north on a private ranch. Wayne Parker’s ranch.”

“Wayne Parker? Holy crap, you know what? He was at Ramos’s house last night!  He was a jerk, he was a loudmouthed drunk.  What an obnoxious creep.”

“Parker was at Ramos’s house?  You actually saw him there?”

“Of course I did, I was with Comandante Ramos. He had a reception after the rally—you wouldn’t believe his house.  It’s a mansion, actually.”

“I’ve seen it,” Garabanda said.  “But I was never invited inside, that’s for sure.  It’s at the top of Sandia Heights.  It’s stone, with a serious iron fence around it.”

“That’s the place.  Félix Magón was there, plus some Hollywood types, and a CBA news crew.  Ricardo Mentiroso, among others.”

Garabanda seemed amazed by this latest information.  “Did Wayne Parker and Félix Magón speak to each other?  Did you hear what they said?”

“Yes, and yes.  They had some words together.  Parker was drunk, he was hard to understand, but he mentioned ‘
La República del Norte
’ a couple of times.  It sounded like he had some kind of a deal going with Magón.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he does—how else is he going to keep his million acres off the land reform list?  And now he’s using his ranch to host a secret meeting this Wednesday.  There’s got to be something in it for Félix Magón.”

“I’m still not seeing the point of all this.”

Garabanda paused, quietly drawing a breath, looking directly at her. “Ranya, do you know about the Constitutional Convention?”

“I heard something about it on TV.  It’s going to be in Philadelphia this fall.”

“Right.  Only it’s just going to be a rubber stamp.  The real deal is going to go down at Parker’s ranch this Wednesday—at least, that’s what I think is going to happen.”

“You ‘think’? What’s that mean?”

“Ranya, it’s complicated, it’ll take a little while to explain.  Magón and Parker were organizing the Vedado conference behind Governor Deleon’s back, but Deleon found out about it.”

“And now Deleon is dead, and Magón is the new governor. Good timing.”

“Exactly.  You’re picking this up fast.”  He continued.  “A couple of U.S. senators and some VIP billionaires are flying in for this meeting. Luis Carvahal heard all of this straight from Governor Deleon.  Vice-governor Magón was organizing it behind his back, and Deleon was left completely out of the loop.  But then Senator Kelly called him from Boston, that’s how he found out about it.  That old drunkard must have assumed that Governor Deleon already knew about the conference, but he didn’t.  Kelly told him everything.  After that, Deleon’s days were numbered, I can see that now.  He was just standing in Magón’s way, more of a risk than a benefit.  A thug like Félix Magón could never have been elected—for one thing, he’s lived his entire life outside of New Mexico, mostly in Mexico.  He just used Deleon.  Magón rode his coattails into Santa Fe, and then he had him shot.  Had him shot, and blamed it on an Anglo rancher—everybody’s favorite whipping boy.”

“So Magón killed two birds with one stone—he got rid of Deleon, and he whipped up the anti-Anglo hatred.”  Ranya considered mentioning the 7mm rifle she had sighted-in for the Falcons, but she held her tongue, unable to think of a reason why Garabanda would need that information. The FBI man was on a roll, and it was better to let him carry on talking and gain as much information as possible from him, while giving up as little as possible in return.

Garabanda said, “This meeting at Parker’s ranch is where the new Constitution is going to be ginned up, I’m convinced of it.  That’s what Carvahal found out from Deleon…”

“And now they’re both dead.”

“That’s right—and now they’re both dead.  Luis Carvahal was killed for that information. He was burned to death for it! Now you and I are the only ones alive who know about the meeting, and that’s why I can’t just leave the state, not right now.  If I do, then my friend was burned to death for nothing—nothing at all.”

It took a minute for Ranya to digest all of this new information, and determine that Alex Garabanda was dead serious.  “So why does any of that matter to me?  I’m sorry about your friend, I really am.  That was a horrible way to die…just terrible.  But aren’t you just guessing what the meeting’s going to be about?”

“I’m not just guessing, Senator Kelly said…”

“Senator Kelly’s a drunk!” she snapped.  “This meeting could be about land reform, or ‘La República Del Norte,’ or anything else.”

“Not with those two senators coming.  They’re not from New Mexico.  They’ve got nothing to do with New Mexico, and neither do the billionaires.”

“Well, even if it is about the new Constitution, it’s not my problem. Am I supposed to care if there’s a plan to write a new Constitution before the convention in Philadelphia?  I mean, they’ve ignored most of the old one for years and years, so who cares if they write a new one?  Old or new, what’s the difference?”

“Don’t you see? A new Constitution will mean the end of the United States! It’ll turn America into a socialist country, that’s—”

“Oh please,” she scoffed, “like it’s not already!”

“But not like it’s going to be after they pass the ‘Economic Democracy Amendment!’  The convention delegates are all handpicked stooges, it’s a complete joke.  The whole thing is a sham—most of the delegates aren’t even recognized by their own states!  It’s all a setup— anybody can see what’s going to happen!  Have you read any of the proposed amendments?  The Bill of Rights is going to be chopped back to nothing—there’ll be no Second Amendment, for one thing.  Instead, we’re going to get the ‘Freedom From Gun Violence’ amendment, it’s already been written!

“And just forget about American national sovereignty—that’ll be a thing of the past.  Both of the senators who are coming are big open-borders globalists like Wayne Parker, and there’s one from each party so it’ll be a bipartisan sellout.  They both want to fast-track the ‘North American Community,’ and just erase the borders.  As bad as America’s gotten, at least we still have a country, at least we still have fifty states and national borders! I mean, it can be fixed, if the economy recovers.  But after the convention, who knows what we’ll end up with?  I’m sure Félix Magón is getting something out of the deal for holding the meeting here in New Mexico.  What did Wayne Parker call it, ‘
La República del Norte
?’ So kiss the Southwest goodbye for starters.”

“If you care about the United States so much, then how can you quit the FBI?”

“It doesn’t matter if I’m in the FBI or not.  In or out, I’m an American first.”

“Look, Alex, I’m sorry, but I still don’t care.  I haven’t cared about that patriotic crap for five years.  The last time I cared that much about America, somebody I loved got killed.”

“Brian’s biological father?”

“Brian’s
real
father.”

Garabanda reacted as if he’d been slapped, and the sting showed on his face as he dropped his eyes to the table. 

Ranya kept on, unmoved by his hurt feelings.  “Listen, I don’t care who writes the new Constitution, or what it says.  It has nothing to do with me. It’s just words, words on a piece of paper.  The government will use half of it to screw people, and ignore the other half—just like they do now.”