Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista (91 page)

Less than ten seconds elapsed from the moment that the Sparkling Alpine Water truck ran the red light, until Alex and Ranya were dragged out and slammed face down on the asphalt.  This was only enough time to decide if they wanted to die in a blaze of glory by reaching for their pistols, or if they wanted to live for a few more minutes at least, and see what would happen next.  With Brian sitting in the Durango, both Ranya and Alex made the same decision: to avoid a hail of machine gun fire.

While hard plastic kneepads pinned them down at the neck and the legs, ninjas looped and tightened nylon flex-cuffs around their wrists with the speed of calf-roping rodeo champions.  Once secured, they were patted down, and their pockets emptied and pistols taken as they were rolled from side to side. Their personal effects were tossed into a large green canvas kit bag, held open by one of the helmeted agents for that purpose.  Then Alex and Ranya were jerked up onto their feet by rough gloved hands, and stood in the middle of a circle of grinning black-uniformed agents.  The Kevlar ninjas had not broken a sweat, even in their black BDU uniforms, body armor, tactical vests, helmets, boots and gloves. And there, right in front of Alex and grinning the most broadly, was Gretchen Bosch, the Beast: black helmet, body armor, submachine gun and all.

“Well howdy Al!  Looks like you went and wandered off the reservation, eh boy? There goes the old pension, right?  But hey, don’t worry, we weren’t going to take a chance on hurting Karin or the kid—check this out!”  She leveled her MP-5 at his chest, and squeezed the trigger.  A plastic bullet smacked him in the sternum, leaving an orange paint splotch in the center of his Navy blue sweatshirt. “Simunitions, Al.  Just simunitions.”

She turned to Ranya next, grabbed a handful of blond locks and yanked off her wig, revealing the short brunette hair beneath.  She tossed the wig into the green kit bag like an animal pelt, laughing.  Then Gretchen Bosch addressed the other agents—all males—who huddled around her: “Okay gang, thanks for playing tonight.  Give us a lift out to the pier now, and I’ll take it from there.  Bring their black SUV too, and then you can all go home for the weekend. Get your beauty rest boys—your easy days are over.  I’ll see you all Monday at 0700 for a run and a PT that’s gonna’ leave scars!”

Alex and Ranya were bodily thrown through the open sliding side door of the blue van onto their faces.  Four agents climbed in after them, and the door was slammed shut.  The green bag containing Alex and Ranya’s personal items was tossed onto the front passenger seat, and Gretchen Bosch climbed in behind the wheel, whistling merrily.

***

From Gretchen Bosch’s point of view
, the takedown had gone about as well as she could have hoped.  As they had predicted, Alexandro Garabanda and Ranya Bardiwell had taken the bait.  Once Bob Bullard had seen the transcript of the call from Brian to his father’s voice mail, the wheels had been in motion.  The discovery of Garabanda’s cell phone hidden in the empty hotel room in Santa Fe confirmed their suspicions.

The IRS Contraband Assets Recovery Team was already on standby for the 4th of July, so gearing up for the quick-fuse mission had not even been a stretch.  They had been eager to demonstrate their skills, and she had to admit, they’d performed above her expectations.  Gretchen Bosch was actually quite impressed by some of the San Diego CART team’s tactics and equipment.  The sky-blue Sparkling Alpine Water delivery truck was one of their best tricks.  It could stealthily infiltrate even the most affluent neighborhoods, right up to the front of a home or a business, and then launch as many as sixteen fully armed agents, four from each empty cargo bay.  If pure vehicle speed was required, as it had been tonight, the bottled water truck was equipped with a high-performance
Cummins turbo diesel, the same type used in fire engines.  The four rolling doors on each side were modified to retract upward in less than a second. Unsuspecting homeowners never had a chance to destroy evidence or hide contraband assets, not when sixteen CART team agents sprang from the ubiquitous bottled water truck innocently parked at their curb!  

Even Director Bullard had to admit to Gretchen that the federal security agencies had come a long way indeed, since his old ATF assault team had approached Mount Carmel in Waco Texas, hidden in the back of a cattle trailer.

Tonight, the sheer size of the water truck had served to “cross the T” in front of Garabanda’s Durango, cutting off their escape.  Then the shock effect of seeing eight armed federal officers directly in front of their SUV kept them from trying anything stupid.  The other CART Team vehicles pulling up on their left side had them trapped in a crossfire ambush, before they’d as much as suspected that Karin’s walk down Broadway was a set up.  Once again, surprise, firepower and speed of action won the victory.

Gretchen pulled her secondary radio out of one of the dozen Velcro pouches on her black combat raiding vest, and pushed the transmit button with her gloved thumb.  “Okay boss, we’ve got ‘em.  Everything’s contained.  Prisoners are in custody, no problems.”

“All right, good job, bring them out to the boat.  Tell your team to stand down—they can go home.  Thank them for me.”

“Will do, boss.  On our way.”  Gretchen Bosch, Special Agent of the IRS and the new leader of the San Diego CART team, didn’t stop grinning all the way out to the end of the pier.  It was going to be a great tour of duty in San Diego.

***

It took less than a minute
for the light-rail train to clear the tracks in front of the catering van, and for the gates to go up.  What he saw in front of him made Basilio Ramos’s stomach churn.  Down at the end of Broadway, at the T intersection with Harbor Drive, there appeared to have been some kind of a major traffic accident.  A light blue truck was stopped perpendicular across the westbound lanes of Broadway, and in front of the truck there was a cluster of vans and SUVs, and among them, men in black, and at least a dozen of them appeared to be carrying firearms!  As the white Magic Chef catering van drove across the train tracks at last, the blue truck headed north on Harbor Drive.  Several of the dark vans and SUVs then drove across Harbor Drive, and continued straight out onto the long pier, as a gate rolled open to allow them to pass!

Chino wasn’t supposed to talk on the radio, not even with Lieutenant Almeria’s promise of secure encryption.  He was only supposed to follow the blond
gringa
and her child, observe if the child was taken, and follow whoever took the boy away.  What Comandante Ramos was witnessing was not going according to the plan in any respect, and in desperation he

decided to break radio silence.

“Chino.”

“Yes.”

“Did you see what happened?”

“Ah…yes.”

“Well?”

“Ah…the subjects were taken…by another group.  All of them.”

“I saw that!  Where are they?”

“Ah…in a blue van.”

Behind him, Lieutenant Almeria urgently said, “Comandante!  I have them, quiet!  I have it, I have it! Ha! Those idiot
federales
haven’t changed their encryption in months!  Listen now, I’ve recorded it—it’s in English.”

“Okay boss, we’ve got ‘em. Everything’s contained; prisoners are in custody, no problems.”

“All right, good job, bring them out to the boat.  Tell your team to stand down—they can go home.  Thank them for me.”

“Will do, boss.”

While Comandante Ramos watched from the driver’s seat of the catering van, the black SUV and a blue van disappeared out onto the pier, and the iron gate across the base of the pier closed behind them.  He knew what had happened: he was too slow!  The gringo
federales
had beaten him to the punch, and they had taken the prize!  Now what? Think!  It wasn’t over yet, it was not yet time to admit defeat, there must be a way—but how?

The rolling iron gate that stretched across the pier looked formidable, and it was clearly well guarded.  A smaller pedestrian gate was open on the right side of the pier, but as he made the slow turn onto Harbor Drive northbound, he could see that the ID cards of a group of pedestrians entering the area were being scrutinized by uniformed guards.  

So what could he do now? What? Think, Basilio, think!  

Ramos said, “Almeria, play back the tape, the new one.”

“Okay boss, we’ve got ‘em. Everything’s contained; prisoners are in custody, no problems.”

“All right, good job, bring them out to the boat.  Tell your team to stand…”

“Stop it there,” insisted Comandante Ramos.  “Bring them out to the boat.  What did the child say this morning?  Play the part about the pier, and the boat.”

Almeria had his headphones on, and nodded.  He found the digital recording, and the child’s voice came out of the speaker.

“When it gets dark, we’re going to walk over the trolley tracks, down to the dock where Bob Buller keeps his big boat.  Bob Buller is Gretchen’s boss.  I can see his boat from our balcony.  The fireworks are going to shoot up over the water, so the dock will be a really good place to watch from.”  

“There’s only one big boat on that dock, and that’s where they are,” said Comandante Ramos.  He spoke into his hand radio.  “Chino, come here.”  He pulled the van over onto an area of slant parking on the right side of Harbor Drive, and stopped. In moments the Kawasaki was alongside his window.

“Did you see where the blue van and the black SUV went?”

“On the pier, you mean?”

“Yes, where on the pier?”

“All the way to the end.  They parked next to the white
yate
.”

Ramos paused, thinking.  “Okay.  Chino, we need to get on that yacht, if that’s where they are.  Look for a boat, something we can use to get to it from the water.  Go!”

Chino took off on the bike.  Ramos had to rely now on his initiative, scouting solo on his own.  The white catering van was too conspicuous; it couldn’t continuously travel back and forth around their zone of interest near the government pier.  But he had faith in Chino.  Although the half-Asian was a little taller than most of his Falcons, he had not picked Chino or any of his Zetas for their size or for their muscles.  In fact, they were no bigger or stronger on average than the other Falcons.  Nor had he chosen them for their shooting skill.  Although they were all dead shots, so were many other Falcons.  No, he selected his Zetas for their intelligence, cunning and loyalty.  Now the Comandante would see if he had chosen well.

44

After a low speed ride
of less than a minute, the blue van came to a stop. Alex and Ranya were face down on the metal floor, but lying in opposite directions, with agents laughing and joking above them.  The van’s side door rolled open and Ranya was given the gruff command, “Get up, girly.” The voice was deep, but unmistakably female.  It was the agent who had shot Alex with the plastic bullet, and yanked off her blond wig.  It was Gretchen Bosch, the Beast.  She said, “You first, Bonnie—we’ll come back for Clyde in a minute.”

Ranya was rolled onto her side, and powerful hands gripped her arms and jerked her up and out of the van.  It was almost fully dark outside.  She was in a narrow space between the blue van and the edge of a massive pier. An aluminum ramp led down to another lower floating dock.  She was hustled down the ramp, with black-uniformed agents on either side and behind her.  The floating dock was only a few yards wide, running for perhaps a hundred feet between the pier and a gleaming white motor yacht. She was pushed up more steps, into the cockpit of the yacht, and forward through a narrow door and inside, where she was turned around and pushed down onto an upholstered sofa.  Gretchen Bosch dropped the green canvas bag containing their pistols and their things onto a table, and left the boat with the other agents.

Ranya recognized the voice before she recognized the man.  He walked up some steps from the front of the boat, into this section, which was furnished and laid out like a posh living room.  She thought he had seemed bigger on television. It was “
Hi, I’m Bob Bullard
,” in person.

“So, Ranya Bardiwell, we meet at last…or should I say, we meet again?  But I don’t think we were actually introduced the last time.  No, I believe I was shooting at you, you were shooting at me…sure doesn’t seem like six years ago, does it?”

She glared at him and demanded, “Where’s Brian?”

“Brian? Oh, Brian’s fine.  He’s in the forward stateroom with his mother.  You know his mother, Karin Bergen.  What did you drug her with, anyway?”  Bullard sat behind a polished mahogany dinette table across the saloon from her, and began rummaging through the green canvas kit bag that Gretchen Bosch had carried onto the boat.  He found her leather fanny pack, unzipped it, and began to pull out its contents and set them on the table.  He first removed her Jardine’s Custom .45, raising his eyebrows and nodding in appreciation. 

He placed the pistol on the table and kept looking through her fanny pack, and pulled out the small spray bottle.  “Oh, here it is—an aerosol.  Is this the new happy gas? Well, that should wear off in a couple of hours. By then, Karin and Brian will both be sound asleep, and we’ll be twenty miles out to sea.  Yeah, that’s right—we’re all going for a little cruise.”

He continued unloading the green bag, removing Alex’s FBI-issue Sig Sauer pistol and placing it on the table next to her .45.  “So Ranya, I guess we’re in one of those ‘good news, bad news’ situations.  The good news is, you won’t be going back into a supermax cell.  The bad news is, you’re going to get to see how long you can tread water, when you’re all wrapped up in chain.  As soon as the fireworks are over and the Coast Guard gives the all-clear, we’re going to cast off and go for a boat ride— only you and Garabanda won’t be coming back.  Nope, this time the bad penny is going all the way down.”