Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista (93 page)

She moved through the saloon to the cockpit door in the back and sidestepped to her left, getting cover behind the aft bulkhead and taking a half-second quick peek outside.  There was a man in a Homeland Security uniform coming across the cockpit toward the door.  There was another man in dark civilian clothes, no more than ten feet behind the DHS agent. He was holding a small submachine gun leveled at the DHS agent’s back! A terrorist!

Her entire awareness of the situation in the cockpit was the result of her split second glance.  She threw her H&K pistol up to eye level in a two handed combat grip, supported against the left side of the open door as she looked outside again.  She instinctively banged off three rounds at the terrorist who was creeping up behind the Homeland Security agent, two to the heart and one to the head, dropping him instantly.  The unknown DHS agent was out of immediate danger, Gretchen was still integrating the battle information, making sense of it all, scanning for new threats. She stepped out into the cockpit when she saw another terrorist to her left on the yacht’s side deck, and she raised her pistol to fire again.

***

Basilio Ramos was the first into the cockpit,
followed by Salazar and Genizaro.  Chino had killed an unexpected crewman on the side of the
yate
with a quick burst from his MAC-10.  Even using a suppressed weapon, and with the fireworks show as sonic cover, they had to consider their approach compromised.  Now speed was everything: get inside the boat and take control, before they completely lost the element of surprise.

Half of a face appeared for a moment in the cockpit door, then a pistol and yellow flame fountained out—Bam-Bam-Bam!  Salazar was down behind him, there was no time to check him, they had to keep assaulting through, had to keep the momentum.  A black figure stepped out of the cockpit door, Salazar’s shooter, but he turned away, apparently not even seeing him, and Ramos understood: it was his DHS uniform.  He wasn’t shooting, because of the uniform.  The shooter turned left, toward Genizaro, and Ramos rapid-fired three shots of 9mm from his Glock, right into the center mass of the shooter as he turned.  The shooter fell back against the cabin superstructure by the cockpit door and slid down, leaving a red smear on the gleaming white paint.

***

Piss-poor body armor, thought Gretchen Bosch.
It shouldn’t hurt like this when you get shot in the old Kevlar.  She was feeling terribly cold and heard a roaring, and at the same time her chest burned.  Red-hot claws were ripping into her lungs as she went down and collapsed onto her side, while red white and blue rockets exploded over the bay in front of her. Body armor should stop this shit easy… Her last conscious thought was the memory of taking off her body armor inside the boat.  Damn!  Never take the armor off. Never. Next time…  The rocket’s glowing cinders faded as they reached the water.

***

Ramos kicked the pistol away
from the dead shooter’s hand with his foot, as Chino and Genizaro joined him in a hasty stack by the cockpit door. When he burst in, they were right on their leader’s tail, immediately criss crossing, going for the corners, finding cover, clearing the room as they had done a thousand times both in training and for real.  

But there was no threat, no waiting team of enemy shooters.  There was just one single gringo standing twenty feet across the room toward the front of the yacht, holding up a small child in front of his chest, and holding a pistol in his other hand.  There was also another man and a woman sitting on a sofa on the right side of the room, their arms behind them—the prisoners—including Ranya.

The man holding up the boy said, “Look, I don’t know who you are or what you want, but there’s been some kind of a mistake.  You should just leave right now and save yourselves.  There are at least ten armed agents on the dock, and fifty more out on the water all around us.  So just leave now, while you have a chance!” He held the boy with his left forearm across the child’s chest, a pistol held in his right, aiming at Ramos in the center of the three attackers. Genizaro and Chino slowly advanced along the sides, increasing their angle of separation.

“What’s the matter with you?” asked Ramos, in English.  “Are you out of your mind?  Put that boy down!”  Ramos continued moving forward slowly, his own Glock pistol aimed slightly above the man’s head.

Bullard rasped out, “If you’ve just shot a federal agent, do you have
any idea
of how much trouble you’re in?  That’s a capital crime, under special circumstances!”

“Special what?  Are you loco?” asked Ramos.  “Put the boy down!”

“No way!  You’re crazy if you think I’ll put him down.  If I put him down, you’ll shoot me!”  The man was holding his pistol extended in front of the boy, aiming it at the Comandante, while cutting his eyes between the other two gunmen.  “Tell them to back out of here, or you’ll die. You!”

“Bullshit,” responded the Comandante.  “If you shoot, it’ll be the last thing you ever do, and you know it.  So put the boy down.”

“No.”

Ramos continued his slow, measured advance.  When he was less than ten feet away he said, “Look, if you don’t put him down, I might shoot you anyway.  I don’t care about the boy, and I don’t care about you either, dead or alive.  I only care about them.”  He gestured with his head toward Ranya and Alex, sitting on the settee couch.  “I’ve come to take them, not the boy.”

“But if you’ve already killed federal agents, then you’ll kill me too.” Bullard held the terrified child in front of him, his left arm clamped across Brian’s chest, his pistol held out over the boy’s shoulder.

“Just put him down, you idiot!”

“You’ll kill me!”  Bullard was starting to panic.

“I could kill you anyway,
pendejo
.  Put him down if you want to live!”

“Listen—I’ll make a deal, I’ll make you a deal!”

“What deal? You have nothing to offer me that I can’t take.”  Ramos was six feet away, his pistol aimed just above Brian’s head at Bullard’s face.

“Oh, but I do!  Let me go, you’ll see, I have a
lot
to offer.”

Ramos hesitated a few seconds, and said, “Okay, enough bullshit: tell me now, or you’ll die in ten seconds.”

“And then you’ll let me go, with the boy?”

“No boy!  Tell me what you have to trade for your life,
pendejo
! Five seconds!”

“Okay—all right.  I know where there’s gold.  A
lot
of gold.”

The mention of his favorite precious metal immediately won the Comandante’s undivided attention.  “How much?”

Bullard wailed out, “Hundreds of pounds.”

“You mean ounces.”

“No! Pounds, hundreds of pounds of gold.  Thousands of ounces!”

Ramos stopped, and raised his Glock a fraction above Bullard’s forehead.  “Okay, I’m listening: where is this gold?”

“Promise you’ll let me go…”

“Where is the gold? No promises, until I know that you’re not lying, gringo!”

“If I tell you where it is, you’ll let me go?”

“If you show me where it is, if we get this gold…then I’ll let you live.”

“You’re telling the truth?”

“Are you calling me a liar?” 

“What guarantee do I have?”

“Guarantee?  You have my word, as a man of honor.  I promise your life in return for this gold.  Now, take us to this gold, or die where you stand—that is your only choice.  Choose now!” Ramos leveled his pistol at Bullard’s forehead again.  

Bullard’s right arm wavered and then fell, and he let the .45 caliber pistol tumble onto the floor.  “All right.  I’ll show you, but then you’ll let me go, right?”

“Where is it, damn you!”  Ramos stepped to within a yard of Bullard, with Chino and Salazar on either side of him, moving in to point blank range.  “Enough games!  Tell us now, or you’ll die in five seconds. One…two…three…” 

A pair of submachine guns and a pistol were now aimed at Bullard’s head from less than a yard away, making his hostage irrelevant.  He allowed Brian to slide down to the floor. As soon as Brian’s feet touched the deck, he darted to his father, and clung to him, burying his small face in his chest.

Bullard slowly raised both hands.  “It’s on this boat.  It’s in the aft cabin, under the bed. It’s there.  Now, can I go? I’ve told you the truth, there’s a fortune in gold!  Many fortunes!”

***

“Who are you anyway?”
asked Comandante Ramos in English.

“I’m Robert Bullard.  I’m the Director of Homeland Security for the Southwest.”

“Hold on—are you on television?”

“I am.”

“I thought I recognized you. This is really quite a nice boat you have, Robert.  Not too bad for a government job.  Now, show us the gold, and you can keep on being the director.”

Bullard led them at gunpoint to the master stateroom, one level down and behind the main saloon.  The room was paneled in light colored wood and rich blue fabric.  They stood at the foot of a king-sized bed, which dominated the center of space with its head against the aft bulkhead of the compartment. 

Bullard, subdued, said, “It’s under here.”

“Well, open it up,” demanded the Comandante.

Bullard turned back the bedspread, then reached beneath the end of the mattress and lifted up a flat panel, hinged like the hood of a car.  A metal rod on each side lifted with the panel to hold it up.  Beneath the painted plywood panel was a horizontal steel vault door.  Its four foot width fit easily beneath the foot of the bed, and extended back under it for two feet.  Bullard entered a combination on an electronic keypad on the door, and then leaned over and strained to hoist it up by a handle on the edge closest to him.  Metal legs on both sides followed the heavy door, and locked in place to hold it up at a 45-degree angle.

Inside of the safe were two neatly packed rows of dark green ammunition boxes, each a foot long by four inches wide, with a steel carrying handle folded flat on top.  There were fourteen boxes in all. Ramos reached down to pull one out, and it barely moved.  “Damn!” he exclaimed, “What’s one of these
hijos de putas
weigh?”

Bullard answered, “About ninety pounds, depending on what’s inside.”

Ramos took a two handed grip on the handle, and extracted the ammo box with visible effort, and set it on the deck at the foot of the bed.  As a professional soldier he recognized the dark green box, it was the type the American factories packed with linked 7.62mm machine gun ammunition, and he had opened many of them.  He pulled up the locking lever that held the top of the box down, and swung the lid up and out of the way.

Rather than the usual machine gun ammunition, inside there was a mass of small gold coins.  They were not packed in plastic tubes or cases, but instead they were loose, a gleaming jumble filled to within an inch of the top of the rectangular steel box. He reached in and pulled up a handful of the small coins, the size of American dimes.

“They’re all like this?” he asked Bullard.  “All one-tenth ounce coins?”

“No. Some have bullion bars, and some have one-ounce coins.”

Ramos and Chino stared into the vault, comprehending the enormity of the wealth before them.  Twelve troy ounces to a pound, ninety pounds in each ammunition box, fourteen boxes, all at $7,000 an ounce...  What ever that came to, it was a huge number—he could do the math later.

Director Bullard had not lied: it was indeed several fortunes.

“You said you’d let me go. Well, I kept my part of the deal…”

“We will Bob, we will.  But not here.  We have a plane to catch, and you’re going to drive us.  We’re going to Chavez Airport—we’ll let you go once we’re there.”

“Chavez Airport? Where the hell is that, Mexico?” asked Bullard.

“What? Oh, it used to be called Montgomery Field,” Ramos clarified.  “You’re going to make sure we get there, if you want to live.”

Chino and Genizaro could only carry one heavy ammo can full of gold up to Bob Bullard’s Lincoln Navigator at a time, seven trips each, under the still-exploding fireworks.  A quick search of the black Dodge Durango SUV that their two captives had been driving resulted in the discovery of two laptop computers in their luggage.  These were also transferred to Bullard’s Navigator. 

When they were finished loading the white SUV, Genizaro and Chino returned to the yacht’s main saloon.  Comandante Ramos was making a brief radio call to Lieutenant Almeria, instructing him to drive ahead to the airfield and make sure the plane was ready to take off.  Bob Bullard sat on the same settee as the other two prisoners, but apart from them.  His spirit was destroyed and he stared forward, away from Ranya and Alex.  Still bound with their hands behind their backs, their morale had only been marginally lifted upon seeing Bullard’s defeat.  They had only changed their captors and their destination; they had not been freed.  Brian still clung to his father, who whispered encouragement that he did not feel or believe.

Genizaro was the only Falcon still wearing street clothes; Ramos and Chino were dressed in black DHS uniforms.  Salazar’s body was not in the cockpit; Chino reported seeing him go over the side into the water after he had been shot.

The Comandante said, “Okay, that’s everything, we’re ready.”

“What about the boy?” asked Chino.  “Leave him?”

Ramos hesitated, and then said, “No, we’ll bring him along—for insurance.”

“I don’t want a kid running around loose, no way,” muttered Genizaro.  He saw the .45 caliber pistol that Bob Bullard had been holding. It was still lying on the floor where it had been dropped, and he scooped it up and jammed it into the front of his jeans.