Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista (97 page)

***

Alex scrambled up the ladder
after Ranya as the airplane turned.  They landed in a heap on the Otter’s cargo deck, and crawled inside.

“Cockpit!” he yelled, untangling himself from Ranya and the loose bags and boxes piled into most of the open space.  “Let’s take the cockpit!”

There wasn’t standing headroom inside the Otter, so they had to run forward bent over, climbing over more deck cargo.  It was about twenty feet from the rear door to the cockpit bulkhead.  There was a row of seats installed down the left side of the interior; the right side was stacked with boxes and luggage strapped to the fuselage. The interior was dimly lit by a pair of overhead lights.

Alex went first, with the Ingram machine pistol.  The cockpit was divided from the cargo area by a wall, with a narrow vertical opening but no door.  A man was sitting in the front passenger seat, behind the left side of the cockpit bulkhead.  He turned slowly, as if afraid to see who was boarding the plane after the shooting had stopped—his friends, or his enemies.  He was a pudgy-faced man in his thirties wearing round gold-rimmed glasses, and he slowly raised both open hands when he recognized the outcome of the firefight.  In Spanish and English he calmly stated, “Your prisoner, señor.
Teniente Almeria, a sus ordenes
.  At your orders.”

Alex left their unexpected captive to Ranya and he continued into the cockpit, leading with his MAC-10, holding the warm suppressor with his left hand.  The pilot was in the left seat, the right seat was empty.  Both of his hands were clamped on the yoke in front of him, headphones were fitted over his ears.  The brushy-mustached pilot turned around in his seat, his eyes wide at the sight of the stranger with the submachine gun, and then he shrugged as if to say, “
Okay, now what?
”

Almost reading his mind, Alex demanded, “What do you think, I’m here to arrest you? Get this crate in the air!  Just fly this son of a bitch!”

***

Basilio Ramos sat on the ground
next to the van’s front tire, holding his right foot, which hurt as if a tank’s tread had just crushed it.  The leather of his black cross trainer was shredded across the top, just inches behind his toes, and it was bleeding like a butchered pig’s neck.  Ranya and the FBI agent had made it into the Otter.  Bullard had somehow gotten the big white SUV started, and had taken off with his tires squealing. Genizaro, Chino and Mendoza lay dead on the tarmac, a triangle of fresh corpses. The van’s headlights shone across their bodies, their blood glistening in black pools beneath each of them.  Before him was a scene of utter defeat and ruin.  From Wednesday at Vedado Ranch until right now at this airport, Bardiwell and Garabanda had brought him only death, disgrace, failure, pain, injury and humiliation.

The Twin Otter lurched, the propellers threw back a new blast of wind, and it began to roll forward. The massive tail rudder shifted from side to side above him, and then the plane started to pivot to the left, to taxi toward the runway.  Basilio Ramos knew that the moment of truth had come: he could sit where he was, put a belt tourniquet around his right ankle, and wait to be arrested.  Or…

He pulled himself up by the van’s door handle, and he hopped, hobbled and jumped on his good left leg, putting as little weight as he could on his injured right foot.  Just as the airplane finished its pivot and began to roll forward again, he made it to the ladder that hung from the side of the hatch.  He pushed off with his left leg, and managed to get the arch of his bullet-shot right foot onto its lowest rung, but it could not support his weight and it slipped through and he fell, catching himself with his elbows and the crook of his right knee as the Otter accelerated, painfully dragging him across the asphalt.

***

Alex shouted at the pilot,
“That’s right, you have a new boss! Just get this thing in the air!” The plane lurched and Alex lost his balance, and he decided he had better be in the copilot’s seat during the takeoff.  He dropped into the empty right seat, the MAC held sideways, aimed at the pilot. Alex took a quick look around the cockpit, and then forward where the plane’s landing lights illuminated the empty airfield ahead of them.  

Then he became aware of a sharp pain in his side that didn’t diminish, even as he got his breath back.  This was a pain under his right ribs, a deep pain like a cramp or a hard punch, and sudden fear enveloped him:
he’d been shot
. He laid the MAC across his lap and pulled up the bottom of his black sweatshirt, and ran his left hand down his smooth white Kevlar vest to where it hurt the most.  He felt the protruding base of the projectile, the slug trapped inside the layers of fabric, but not penetrating.  The slug was only an inch from the bottom edge of the vest.  He knew he’d have a hell of a bruise there tomorrow.  He’d seen them before on the luckiest cops and agents, the type of livid welts for which you sincerely thanked God.

***

Ranya had to secure the prisoner
before she could look for Brian. Across from the row of seats was a pile of bags and boxes, much of which had clearly just been thrown aboard the plane. While holding the .45 on him, she grabbed a dark rag from the pile; the rag turned out to be a brown Milicia t-shirt.  She thrust it to Almeria with her left hand, the cocked .45 still aimed at his face.

“
Su cubierta
,” she ordered. “Put on your mask.”  He did as he was instructed.  Once the brown shirt was draped over his head down to his shoulders and he was blinded, Ranya breathed easier. The New Mexico “Zia” design with the red star was crookedly centered on his face, and she briefly smiled.  On the side of the plane opposite the seats were long bars for tying down cargo; lengths of line were looped over the bars. She shoved the .45 back under her belt, took a six-foot length of stout nylon cord and quickly tied a slipknot in one end. 

“
Sus manos
. Give me your hands, together.”  Again he did as he was ordered, extending both arms, crossed at the wrists.  Ranya pulled the loop snug around both wrists, tightly wrapped them several more times with crisscrossed lashings, and then secured his bound hands to the left armrest with knots that would need a knife to undo.  She repeated the process more quickly with his ankles and finally she was satisfied.  The entire hurried process of securing the prisoner had taken no more than one minute.  

The plane was still taxiing on the ground, and at last she was able to search for Brian.  She found the green canvas bag on the deck in the space between the second and third seats, and she pulled it into the cluttered passageway.  She crouched and unzipped it, and opened it wide.  Brian was curled in the fetal position, his eyes tightly closed, shaking.

She touched his hair, put her hand on his back, and said, “Brian! Brian, are you okay?”

He turned his face and opened his eyes, his entire body quivering.

Ranya said, “It’s all right Brian, you’re all right!”

“Is…is my D…D…Daddy okay?” he asked.

“Yes, he’s okay Brian!  Your Daddy’s fine!”  She knelt on the deck, and reached her arms inside of the bag and around his back, helping him to sit up.

“We’re on an airplane, aren’t we?”

“Yes, we’re on an airplane.  Your father is up front—he’s helping the pilot.”

Brian blinked at her, and said, “My Daddy flies a lot.  FBI agents can do anything.”

“Yes, they can.”  Her eyes filled with tears, she slipped her hands under his arms, and pulled him up until he was standing and she hugged him hard, and then boosted him onto the open third seat. “We’re going to take off in a minute, so we need to get you buckled up, okay Brian?”

“Did you cut yourself?” he asked, while she settled him onto the seat and cinched the belt across his lap.

She looked down and saw that the front of her white San Diego sweatshirt was covered with a spray of blood, and her right sleeve was soaking red.  She pulled up her right cuff; she had a deep gash behind her thumb that was bleeding steadily.  “Yes, I guess I did.”

“I cut myself too,” Brian said earnestly.  “When I gave Daddy the knife. Look.”  He held up his right index finger, and Ranya clutched it in her grip and then kissed his wound.  She slid her other arm around his neck and squeezed him tightly, with her eyes closed against everything but tears. 

***

Corky Gutierrez didn’t taxi the Otter
all the way to the eastern end of the runway.  Instead he took a shortcut, saving several minutes.  He rolled directly across the apron to the middle of the runway, already halfway down its length, and turned the plane to face west down the abbreviated remainder of its length.  Alex approved.  Clearly, the pilot was getting the picture.  Anyway, for short field planes like a Twin Otter, mile-long runways were just three-quarters of a mile of wasted concrete or asphalt.

The T-shaped throttles for the Twin Otter were located on the ceiling between the pilot and copilot’s seats, hanging down.  The flaps were already set, the pilot held the yoke with his left hand, with his right he pushed the twin levers forward, and the plane shook and vibrated while it accelerated.  After only three hundred yards as the plane was passing sixty knots, he eased back on the yoke with both hands, and they smoothly lifted away from the ground.

“We’re cleared for Albuquerque,” the pilot yelled across to Alex, who nodded agreement back at him.  The fixed-landing-gear Otter was slow, but it climbed like an elevator.  The pilot banked to the north and they continued to ascend as they flew up the coastline into the night sky.

***

This wasn’t how it was supposed to end
, thought Basilio Ramos, perched on the bottom rung of the ladder as the Twin Otter climbed and turned.  He had a phenomenal view, but not one he could enjoy tonight.  He could tell that they were flying north and then northeast, he could see the half moon low in the western sky, sending a shimmering orange trail across the ocean.

It wasn’t over, he grimly thought, the wind blasting him in the face, trying to tear him from the ladder.  Not yet.  They thought it was over, but it wasn’t over.  The icy slipstream hurricane buffeted him, but he could endure it. By sheer determination, and using every ounce of his upper body strength, he hoisted his chest to the top of the three horizontal ladder bars, and was finally able to force his right heel into the corner of the trailing lower rung, followed by his left foot beside it.  This accomplished, he pushed himself up further, finally getting his shoulders inside of the plane, the wind forcing him against the back edge of the open hatch, and pinning him firmly in place.  This was hard work and painful, but pain didn’t matter.  Only getting inside of the airplane mattered—nothing else.

Inch by agonizing inch he dragged himself forward, and then he was in—and that was all that mattered.  He was in.  They were up front, smug with the sweet taste of victory in their mouths—but he was in, and he was behind them.  He’d lost his Glock somewhere between being shot behind the van and climbing into the airplane—but he was in.  He knew that there were plenty of other weapons packed in the back of the Otter.

***

Even up in the cockpit, the noise was considerable.
Alex found the co-pilot’s intercom headset, slipped the earphones on, and adjusted the mike position.  He was at least quite familiar with this part of flying.  “Can you hear me? Am I on?”

“I hear you,” said the pilot.  “We’re out of restricted airspace now. I’m on our declared flight plan, course zero-eight-zero for Albuquerque, at 7,000 feet, speed one-four-zero knots.  So, what’s your new course?” Corky Gutierrez looked across at Alex, and at the machine pistol on his lap.  “You don’t want to go to New Mexico, do you?”

“Not exactly.  But zero-eight-zero is good for now—just get us out of California.”  The pilot seemed unperturbed by the unexpected change in “management.” Alex had known other pilots like that.  They didn’t particularly care for whom they flew, or what the cargo was in the back, as long as they were flying.  Alex guessed that this was especially true when a new “co-pilot” was pointing a hot machine pistol at them after a gunfight.

The pilot asked, “Hey, you think you can get that cargo hatch shut back there? It’ll help with the fuel burn, and it’ll cut the noise way down.” He spoke perfect, unaccented English.

“Roger that.”  Alex wasn’t about to leave the pilot unattended, in case he decided to make a radio call for help, or alter their course.  He could have a pistol hidden anywhere on him or in the cockpit.  No, he needed to stay in the cockpit, and keep the MAC-10 aimed at him.

Alex turned inboard, twisting around to the left in his seat, and waved to get Ranya’s attention.  This sent a new wave of pain radiating from the bullet’s point of impact beneath his ribs, but with the slug on the outside of the Kevlar, he didn’t much care.

Ranya was sitting in the second seat, behind their captive who now had a dark hood over his head.  He noticed that their new prisoner’s hands were already bound to his seat’s left armrest.  He knew from experience that Ranya was good at tying men to chairs, and he chuckled at the memory of their first meeting.  

She unbuckled herself and came forward and stood in the cockpit door, leaning over in the narrow opening.  She had pulled off her blood-soaked one-day-old white San Diego sweatshirt, and was just wearing the black t-shirt she had on underneath.  He noticed her hands and arms were caked with dry blood—so were his.  She had a blood-soaked rag tied around her right wrist and thumb.

“Did I cut you?” he asked, almost yelling to be heard.

“Hell yes you cut me—but it was worth it!”  She pointed toward his own hand, the one holding the machine pistol across his lap.  “It looks like you cut yourself too. Even Brian cut his finger.”

Alex beamed at her.  “Oh, he’s something—he’s a real tiger.”

“Brian said he gave you the little knife.  How?”

“He put my keychain right into my hands, through the bottom of the seat—the knife was already open. I guess the keys were still in the bag with him.  I told you he was smart!  How is he?”