Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista (76 page)

“Huh? What?” responded the Sheriff, confused.  “You? Turn you in? To who?  The Milicia? The communists up in Santa Fe?  Naw, don’t worry about that, we don’t deal with them—we don’t deal with them at all. Hell, it seems to me the only thing ya’ll are guilty of is crashing a leadership party of the New World Order. If you ask me, you should get a medal for that!  Naw, I’m not worried about it—Vedado Ranch sure ain’t in my jurisdiction. But just to be safe, I guess we ought to get your airplane off the road.  Can it fly a few miles, if we put some gas in it?”

“Sure, it’ll fly,” said Logan.  “No problem.”

The Sheriff turned around in his chair to address his deputies, who were huddled close around him.  “Gentlemen, can we join you at the bar in a little while?”  This was apparently his polite way of asking them to depart, and they rose to file out.  “Not you, Halsey.”  This was his Chief Deputy, the bearded squad leader from the road.  He returned to the opposite side of the table, and took an open seat.  He was wearing an old-style desert camouflage BDU blouse.  

When the room was cleared out and the door was closed again, Sheriff McNally asked Alex, “So, where were you planning on flying from here?”

“California.  San Diego,” he replied.

“What the hell for?” responded the Sheriff, surprised.  “Cali’s even worse than Santa Fe!  You ought to be heading north, to the free states.”

“We would be,” said Alex, “but we’ve got a personal situation to take care of out there.  After that, we probably will.”

Logan said, “Alex…I’ve got a problem.  I’ve got until tomorrow to get the Cessna back to Tucson.  After that, it’s going to be radioactive.  But I can’t return it all shot up, so that’s out the window now.  And since I can’t turn it in all shot up, well…I’ve got a real big problem.  Alex…we need to talk about California.”

“What do you mean?”

Logan was distraught, obviously pained to be backing out.  “I mean, we can’t fly the Cessna tonight, not to California anyway, not with the fuel tank the way it is. Plus, the Pelican crashed up there at Vedado, and it won’t take ‘em long to put the pieces together, and find out where it came from.  Maybe they already have.  So I can’t just go back to Albuquerque now, and pretend like nothing happened.  And I can’t leave Trudy back there either.  I just can’t.”

“Okay…so what’re you thinking?”

“Well, I’ve got until tomorrow before that plane’s red hot.  I’d like to get the plane patched up tonight, and fly back to Albuquerque.  I’ll pick up Trudy on a road, just like I picked you guys up, and we’ll head north to the free states.  I can just swing that, if I get it done tomorrow before the Cessna’s posted as missing overdue.  Ranya, I’ll give you back what you paid me. I’m sorry, but I can’t take you guys to California.”

Alex thought about this.  “Okay, we understand.  Your wife comes first.  But she needs dialysis, doesn’t she?”

“Right, she does…but Alex, I burned all my bridges in New Mexico today.  They’re going to put the pieces of that Pelican back together, and then…”

“Yeah, I get the picture.  You have to look after Trudy.  You have to get her out of there.”

“Thanks…”

“Don’t worry about the refund,” offered Ranya.

The sheriff cut in.  “So, you two are needing a ride to San Diego? Is that all?”

“Well...yes,” said Alex.  “You can do that?”

“No, not me, not personally, but I can find you a plane and pilot.  You might say that general aviation is one of our fortes around here—it’s almost up there with horses and hunting.  It’s damn sure safer than driving

any distance these days!  How soon do you want to leave?”

“How soon can we leave?” asked Ranya.

Sheriff McNally told his Chief Deputy, “Go get Flint.”  The bearded man left the room and returned a minute later with another one of the “reception committee” from the road.  

“Hey Flint,” the Sheriff said, smiling, “How soon can you be ready to fly a pair of desperados to San Diego?”

The skinny pilot was holding a fresh bottle of Dos Equis beer.  His face and neck were ruined by livid red pockmarks, but he carried himself with cocky assuredness.  He sported a dirty-blonde mullet haircut: short in front and long in the back.  He appeared to be in his mid-thirties, and was wearing his deputy’s ball cap on backwards, pushed far back on his head. He was wearing faded blue jeans, and a USMC digital desert camouflage shirt.  Ranya could see the subtle swell on his hip where he carried his pistol beneath the untucked shirt.  Most of the other deputies had been open-carrying holstered pistols in plain sight.  He sat down next to the Chief Deputy, across from the Sheriff and the three strangers.

“San Diego? We can go right now, almost.  But it’ll cost—aviation gas ain’t cheap, or easy to come by.”  He asked, “Can you pay for the gas?” and Alex nodded assent.  “I’ll need to fill up at both ends, so call it 120 gallons, at seventy-five blue bucks a gallon, or whatever I have to pay for it. And I don’t think you’ll want to land anywhere they’re going to give you the old biometric rectal exam, am I right?”  He pulled off his ball cap, set it on the table, and ran his fingers back through his hair, glancing at each of them, but lingering on Ranya.

By his Southern accent, she thought that Flint was a transplant to New Mexico, maybe from Georgia or the Carolinas.  She pegged him for Appalachian hillbilly stock.  Scots-Irish, maybe.  Skinny and as hard as flint, like his forebears.  The thought crossed her mind that perhaps he’d survived the “monkey pox” she’d heard of since her escape.  So that’s what it looks like…the scars were indeed dreadful.

“Yeah, you’re right about that,” answered Alex. “We had somewhere a little more discreet in mind.”

“Then I know just the place, but it’ll cost extra.  It’s an Indian casino in eastern San Diego County.  I’ve flown in there a couple of times.  If you can pay, you can get anything you need there, and I mean
anything
. No questions asked, and
no cops
.” Flint said this with his official sheriff’s deputy ball cap resting on the table in front of him, yet with no evident sense of irony.  If Sheriff McNally had noted the paradox, he didn’t let on either.

“Great, that sounds perfect,” responded Alex.

“All right then, call it…”  He paused, considering. “Call it a hundred thousand blue bucks, all up.  That’s for the gas, the plane and my risk— and you’ve got yourself an air charter.  Half now, and half in San Diego.” His eyes flitted between them, as if he expected his price to be challenged, and he was prepared to negotiate.

Ranya coolly asked him, “Would you prefer that in paper dollars, or gold coins?”

Their new pilot’s blue eyes lit up.  “Do you really have to ask?”

“Just being polite. I’ll pay you fifteen Krugerrands.  One-ouncers.” Ranya reckoned Flint thought he was getting the best of her…well, let him. He’d be a motivated flier.

“Okay then, you’ve got yourself a charter.”  He reached across the table to Ranya, and she shook his hand, while trying to look him in his eyes without cringing at his pitted face.  After letting go and sitting back, Flint took a drink from his beer and said, “But first, we’ll pour a little go-juice into your Cessna, and then I can fly it off the road for you. I’ve—”

“Oh, I think I can handle it,” Logan quickly responded, chuckling.

“You should have seen the last road he took off from,” said Ranya, sticking up for him.  “A hundred yards, and off a cliff.”  She made a steep diving motion with her hand.

“With people shooting machine guns at us,” added Alex, grinning.

They were all laughing now, and Ranya continued the banter.  “That Blackhawk would have caught us too, if Logan hadn’t of flown straight into that hailstorm.”

Flint looked at the old Border Patrol pilot with new respect, leaned across the table again and shook his hand.  “Well Logan, sounds like you’re my kind of aviator. You fly in Afghanistan? Iraq? Iran?”

“Nope, just the border wars.  I did my flying time in the Border Patrol.”

Ranya thought Logan was used to being underestimated.  He was a man you would not glance at twice in a checkout line, or passing on the street. He was just an average fifty-something white guy with middle age spread, black hair streaked with gray and mopy hound dog eyes.  Ranya had to admit to herself that she’d misjudged him when they’d first been introduced at Alex’s house Sunday night.  She’d inwardly questioned Alex’s judgment, in bringing such an apparent milquetoast into their conspiracy, but Logan had proven to be a tiger when it counted: in the air.

Flint said, “Pleased to meet you, sir.  If you want a new paint job after we patch up your bullet holes, I know just who to talk to at FBO Ripley. We’ll get your Cessna into a hangar, and spray the whole thing tan or beige—whatever we’ve got that suits you.  No stripes and a brand new tail number. How’s that sound?”

“Are you kidding?  That’d be fantastic,” Logan replied.  “Al, like I said, I’ve burned all my bridges on this one.  I’ll lose my pension and my medical, I’ll—”

“Don’t worry about it Logan, we’re all square,” responded Alex. “It’s not like it’s my airplane—do what you need to do.”

The Sheriff asked, “Aren’t you folks hungry?  They make a mean elk burger here, and they serve a steak like you’ve never seen before.”

“I’m starving—bring it on,” said Logan, and the others agreed.  

The Sheriff told Flint, “Go fetch Carmen on your way out, and have her bring three menus and a round of
cervezas
.”

The deputy nodded, picked up his hat and his beer, and left the room.

Ranya asked, “Sheriff, aren’t you all putting yourselves at risk, helping us like this?  What if the Cessna was tracked here on radar?”

“Then I’d have heard about it on the radio, or seen something on the computer.  But there’s been nothing, not a peep.”

“But that doesn’t mean that word won’t get back to the Milicia,” she said.  “Somebody sees the airplane on the road, makes some phone calls…. what if they come down here in their Blackhawks?”

“Honey, I appreciate your concern, but I think we can take care of ourselves.  You know, we have nine paid deputies, 140 reserve deputies, and more than 300 auxiliary deputies in this county.  Most of them are ex-military, and they’re all hunters—real shooters.  We’ve got Rangers, Special Forces, you name it.  Believe me: the Milicia doesn’t want to tangle with us.  They steer clear of Cantrell County.”

Ranya said, “But what if they come down here in their helicopters and stay out of rifle range, and just use their machine guns, or maybe even rockets? What if they just stand off and hammer you from the air?”

“Well, I guess it could come to that.  I mean, yeah, I know it could. But if it did, then they’d have a lot more to deal with than just cell phone towers getting shot up.  Did you ever hear of the Former Lawman’s Association?”

“I know that the state fired all the cops who couldn’t pass the Spanish test,” she said.

“Yeah, that’s right, at least in the cities they did. And you know what? There might just be a few of them FLA boys right here in Cantrell County nowadays.  And guess what—they’ve still got plenty of friends on the inside.  Friends in Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Las Cruces, everywhere. Trust me on this—not everybody who speaks Spanish and draws a government paycheck supports those communist sons of bitches up in Santa Fe!  Not by a long shot!  If they were planning some kind of attack, we’d hear all about it ten minutes after they dreamed it up.”

“Not the Milicia, Sheriff,” said Ranya politely.  “They’ve got good security—I know that for a fact.  And a lot of them are hard core, with serious military training.  At least the Falcon Battalion.”

The Sheriff chuckled dismissively.  “We’re not too worried about the Milicia, not from what we’ve seen.  You know, up there in Santa Fe, they talk a good game, and they put on a fair show.  Maybe they’re not half bad at burning ranches on their territory—but they’d be way out of their league in Cantrell County.  They mess with us, and they’ve got a couple hundred pissed off lawmen, soldiers, and hunters to deal with.  And not just from New Mexico either: we’ve got plenty of new folks from Phoenix and Tucson, and let me tell you: the Zonies are done with getting pushed off their land.”

“What’s the matter with Arizona?” asked Ranya.

“Oh, not too much, just power outages, water shortages, and gang warfare. I mean, just try living in Phoenix when it’s 115 degrees in the shade, without electric power.  Drinking swimming pool water gets pretty old, when it’s green and nasty.”

“Gross!  What’s the matter with their electricity?”

“Everything.  The grid’s real shaky over there.  The lakes are too low to get much hydropower, and they’re having trouble buying enough gas and coal, so their power plants aren’t exactly running full tilt.  They’ve only got one nuke and that’s not enough.  And then there’s the folks who just can’t stand seeing one part of town with electric power, if they don’t have it.  They shoot at transformers and power line insulators just for the hell of it, just to screw over the areas that have their act together.”

Halsey, the bearded Chief Deputy, added, “What it is, is the rich neighborhoods are a lot easier to rob when the lights all go out.  Them Mexican gangs are unbelievable over there now.  I mean, calling ‘em gangs don’t hardly even cover it.  They call ‘em
pandillas
. They’re more like Mad Max armies, and what police stuck around are terrified of ‘em. They’ll knock out the power to a neighborhood, just before they go in with ten or fifteen carloads of gang bangers.  Then they go house to house like Comancheros—and it ain’t pretty.  Especially if you got women or daughters around.”

Ranya paused, digesting this, thinking of the terror brought to ordinary suburban families by the lightning arrival of thirty or more armed robbers, rapists and killers.  “Damn…I had no idea Arizona was like that,” she said.  “Are they Mexicans in these gangs, or Mexican-Americans?”

Halsey snorted.  “What’s the difference any more? It’s not like we’ve got any kind of a border.  Those gangs convoy up and just drive back and forth into Mexico.  Pancho Villa rides again, only now he’s riding in trucks and SUVs.”