Conquistadors

by Jeff Kirkham

  Smart man, Tavo glared at the map while he considered the human element to his conquest. Alejandro had known when to shut his fucking mouth. Finally.

  At the end of another wasted day, Tavo wondered if this military adventure into the United States was even possible. Could he and a small force of men take down the shuddering corpse of the mighty U.S.?

  If the stragglers defending Tucson could put even one Warthog or one Apache gunship in the air, he and his men would be cooked into the asphalt before morning, like so many jihadis in the Middle East. After what he’d seen this afternoon, he was certain that the Arizonans were moving heaven and earth to field planes, helicopters and maybe even tanks. Tavo looked up at the setting sun with gratitude for the cover of night.

  A group of forty men appeared like djinn from the dry riverbed on the far side of the highway. The road shimmered with mirage in Tavo’s binoculars. By the way the men walked, he guessed that it was Saúl returning with prisoners.

  The men crossed the two southbound lanes of the Arizona highway and cut a beeline toward Tavo’s Humvee.

  “How is Beto? Did he make it?” Saúl queried Tavo as he approached.

  “Vivo. He’s alive,” Tavo said as he looked the prisoners up and down. He was eager to see his new adversaries close up. The captured men hardly resembled the wealthy American gun owners he’d met at expensive shooting schools. These three Americans looked like trailer trash.

  One of them curled his lip as Tavo looked him up and down. The bravado made him smile. He remembered being twenty-five, just off the streets of Guadalajara and making his way in the world of criminals. He’d curled his lip many times in the face of older men with higher standing.

  It was obvious that the man hadn’t had a good meal in a while. Tavo slid his Boker Magnum from its sheath on his chest rig, gripped it like an ice pick, stepped forward and buried the knife to the hilt in the soft side of the young man’s temple. The sneer vanished—along with every other expression. The young American piled on the ground at Tavo’s feet.

  “I asked for two prisoners,” he said as he bent over to wipe the blade on the dead man’s rat-chewed army jacket.

  Why would anyone wear a jacket when it was eighty degrees outside?

  Saúl shrugged, staring at the dead man. The glaze in Saúl’s eyes belied the harsh adrenaline come-down from combat. To put the counter-flank on the Americans, Saúl had run the equivalent of a 5k footrace and bookended the run with ferocious combat. He could be forgiven a little lassitude.

  Of the two remaining men, one appeared resigned to his fate. The other looked like he was quietly plotting.

  Tavo started with Mister Surrender.

  “What unit are you with?” he began with a simple question, but even that seemed to confuse him.

  “Unit?”

  “Yes. Who do you fight for?” Tavo tried to explain, wondering if he’d chosen the right word in English for unit.

  “I fight for the United States,” the man replied as though it should’ve been obvious to anyone.

  “Yes, but you’re clearly not in the army. You’re too old and fat. Who called you to fight in this…battle?”

  “A policeman shot his gun. When I came out to check on it, he sent me here. He said that the Mexicans had invaded Arizona and that we were going to attack them at Corker’s Hill alongside the I-19. I had a shotgun and had done some quail hunting, so I joined up.”

  “You shot quail before with a shotgun, so you figured you could kill Mexican soldiers? What about your family?”

  Mister Surrender hesitated and choked on a sob. “I’m protecting my wife and girls. That’s why I came.”

  “And you fought with a shotgun?”

  “Well, someone loaned me a better gun when I got to the outlet mall.”

  “So, you fought with a borrowed gun,” Tavo summed it up. The man wore blue jeans and a triple-extra-large T-shirt. The shirt said, “Coffee or Die,” and it looked like it’d been worn for days.

  Tavo turned to the other captive, Mister Plotter. “What’s your story, hardcase?”

  “I’m just a regular cop,” the man answered with a looseness in his voice that worried Tavo a little. “There’s a few million just like me waiting for you north of here. You’ll get to meet ‘em soon enough, narco motherfucker.”

  Tavo assumed he meant “north of here” as in “north of here across America.” There weren’t even a million people in Tucson, much less a few million cops.

  “And you think that a bunch of thrown-together insurgents are going to defeat my army, even given my machine guns and my organized troops?” He stepped closer, looking the man straight in the eye.

  Mister Plotter flicked a glance back toward the battlefield. A mile of freeway smoldered like a barbecue pit that’d flamed out of control. “Yep. There’s not a question in my mind. You’ll all die here.”

  American arrogance; Tavo had watched it with curiosity his entire adult life. He’d always wondered why, with all their comfort, America still produced such implacable defiance. Even in the best of times, Americans were angrier than any country he’d ever visited.

  On closer inspection, Tavo believed that the man had been a police officer. He wore camouflage BDU pants and a filthy, black polo shirt. He looked a little soft around the middle, but his arms bulged inside the tight sleeves of the polo. He’d probably played high school football in the distant past. And here he was, still trying to beat the rival school and impress the cheerleaders.

  “Yet you stand in handcuffs,” Tavo argued.

  The man smiled and held Tavo’s gaze. “There’s lots more where I came from.”

  Tavo saw the blow coming, but a split-second too late. A blinding flash blotted out his world as Mister High School Quarterback head-butted him with tremendous force. The strike missed Tavo’s nose, catching him instead on the forehead. He staggered back, flailing his arms. He recovered his backwards pinwheel, but the man was already on him, scrabbling for Tavo’s Glock.

  He felt the Glock ripped from his battle belt. His consciousness returned enough for him to react. Drawing on what little Jiu Jitsu he could remember, Tavo lunged toward Mister Football, fighting to get inside the working range of his own gun.

  BOOM!

  The Glock went off in the gap between the grappling men. The bullet flew into one of Saúl’s men. Tavo drove desperately into the big American, his only play to use his body to foul the action of the handgun. As they fell backwards, Tavo pawed at the man’s hands, fighting to regain control of his pistol. The man’s huge, cuffed hands gripped the Glock like a vice.

  They hit the ground hard, Tavo on top. He fought for the gun and to retard the slide, praying that it hadn’t cycled after the last shot.

  BOOM!

  The American’s hands went limp and Tavo dug the Glock out of the ball of muscle and bone. Saúl stood over them both with his M4. He had shot the American in the head, point-blank.

  The Glock’s slide had indeed tangled with the dead man’s polo shirt, and the gun had stove-piped, a chunk of brass poking up out of the breach. Tavo ripped the gun free of the polo shirt, rocked back on his knees, and gasped for air.

  He struggled to his feet and swiped away the blood stinging his eyes. He looked at his Glock as though the gun had betrayed him. Saúl’s wounded soldier lay moaning on the ground, shot through the gut.

  If one defeated, angry American could wreak this much havoc…

  Tavo wiped his bloody face again, ran the slide of the Glock, cleared the malfunction, stood up and shot Mister Surrender in the face. The man dropped instantly to the road beside his dead comrade.

  Twenty men stood around Tavo slack-jawed—all stunned at the intensity of the violence. He took another big gasp of air, dropped the partially-used Glock magazine to the ground and reloaded with a fresh magazine from his battle belt.

  He looked up at Saúl through a curtain of blood on his face. “Next time, cuff the fucking prisoners in BACK, not in FRONT.”

  The
column of Mexican soldiers and narco commandos had retreated a couple miles from the maw of the ambush site, and Tavo had accepted a few stitches on his forehead from the corpsman. He would carry a nice scar to remind him of the time he’d underestimated a fat American.

  Still looking at his map of the southwest, he weighed what he’d learned. His campaign for America would have to thread the needle of timing, force and surprise in order to avoid the bottled violence of this culture.

  Even given the most recent cartel violence—mostly driven by the feral Zetas—Tavo knew that Mexico would endure a collapse with far less ferocity than America. His home country would dig in the ground, plant what they could and starve to death if they must. There would be plenty of theft, of course, but there would be little violence.

  America, on the other hand, would burn itself out in a rage. Like a sweet wine gone bad, America had burst its cork. Millions of guns, coupled with pent-up social resentment, would send America back to the days when Texans and frontiersmen ruled these deserts with heavy-bulleted rifles and hulking revolvers.

  Tavo would have to pick his battles very carefully, as each bullet loosed by his men would draw down a riptide of fury. Even starving Americans might abandon their families to come fight, if on principle alone. Just one rifle shot from his men could bring a reckless army of American irregulars down upon them at any hill, bridge, or narrow pass. He would be wise to concentrate his forces on the assets, rather than trying to conquer territory. Like the Persians, he could come back later and buy up survivors with food and promises of peace.

  Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind, Tavo remembered from the Bible. His damaged head—probably a concussion—thundered like the drums of war, and he felt no desire to bring down any more pain upon himself than this mission required.

  He couldn’t remember all the details of the ancient war between the Persians and the Spartans, but he remembered that Xerxes had ultimately defeated the Spartans and had Leonidas’ body beheaded and crucified. He remembered from the movie that the Spartans had come to fight with only three hundred men. It made Tavo think of the cop’s last words: that there were millions more just like him.

  He looked northward and gently ran his finger across the stitches on his forehead. All around the burning ink pot of Tucson, featureless desert ran to the four corners of the compass. There were no narrow passes like Thermopylae he would be forced to navigate. He had a half-million square miles of open desert where his men could maneuver.

  But he would need better, more devastating weapons. Like Xerxes, he would need his Immortals.

  Chapter 22

  Noah Miller

  US Highway 19, near Drexel Heights, Tucson, Arizona

  “When I leave this world,

  Don't you cry for me.

  When I leave this world,

  'Cause I’ll be doing fine.

  When I leave this world,

  When I leave this world behind

  Don't you miss me,

  ‘Cause I'll be doing fine.”

  The Crusader

  Luckily, someone had shot the dude before he cut loose the barrels of chlorine gas. Noah wiped his face and shook his head. The truth came unbidden: he didn’t know any of these guys. What kind of maniac would dump chlorine gas onto the highway? More than half of the Tucson fighters were down in the riverbed, exactly where the heavier-than-air chlorine would end up.

  His kind of maniac, Noah realized. These were his men. Undisciplined, rebellious, cantankerous. It was his fight now, and first blood had been drawn on the narco convoy. Noah’s ghosts had drawn him to this moment and he could feel their favor—not just with the outcome, but with the vindication of America. Though bloodied and weary, they stood, backs straight and dauntless.

  The highway below Corker’s Hill—as Noah had learned it was called—was littered with dead cartel soldiers, as well as a half-dozen trucks and two Jeeps. Other than a couple dozen casualties on his own side, the ambush had worked like a cast-iron sonofabitch. They’d done a lot worse than bloody the cartel’s nose; they’d chopped off their nose and half their face.

  He had no idea if he’d killed anyone. He’d rained gunfire down on the road like everyone else—working the lever-action of his 30-30 and falling into the same shoot-shoot-shoot-load routine he used hunting javelina. At well over two hundred yards, it was altogether possible that he’d been shooting under his targets. He hadn’t had time to range the distance and figure out the dope on the big bullets of the 30-30. In the chaos of battle, he’d taken his best guess and held over half a head high in his scope.

  Noah hadn’t been in a gunfight before today. He’d always wondered how he’d do facing incoming fire. Now he knew: he simply ignored it. At one point in the battle, one of the big machine guns mounted to a truck had raked his position on the hilltop. Bullets impacted to his right and to his left. One of those bullets had killed the guy about to release the barrels of chlorine gas. Noah just kept firing, regardless.

  Shoot-shoot-shoot-load.

  He didn’t know if that made him brave or stupid. Maybe he was protected by angels.

  Noah laughed out loud at the thought. He was pretty sure the angels had their hands full helping hungry babies and frightened mamas survive the apocalypse. Standing on top of Corker’s Hill, surveying the death he’d brought to the cartel army, he felt a bit like an avenging angel himself, if not for his loved ones, then certainly for America.

  Bill would’ve been proud, Noah thought. He would’ve fist pumped and slapped Noah hard on the back. This world—where the good guys shot the shit out of the bad guys—would’ve been perfect for Old Bill. He’d enjoyed it once, as an overseas freedom fighter for the United States. He would’ve loved protecting his homeland with blood and bullets. Dudes like Bill were born for battle. As Noah breathed in the smell of burning asphalt and blackened bodies, he felt a bit ashamed of the truth: so was he.

  It was as though his life up to this point had been missing a key element—something he hadn’t even known existed. He’d been like a German Shepherd that had never been taken off the leash. A corner of Noah’s soul unfolded. This was his calling and if he died in pursuit of his prey, all would be well. At long last, a full understanding of his adoptive dad descended on him. A warrior’s heart, once unlocked, would never quite be satisfied with anything short of the fight.

  But Noah also knew that his heart and his father’s heart were not the same. He’d come to Corker’s Hill to fight and kill, yes. But the same dark storm did not roil in Noah as his father. Noah had his ghosts to move him. Even in the shadow of hundreds of dead invaders, hate had no place in him.

  Men’s voices, raised in argument, rose above the din of men celebrating their victory. Noah walked across the barren ridge and found the SWAT guy and the militia guy arguing about what to do next. He stopped. These men were no longer useful to his mission. They’d served their purpose, now they could argue all they wanted as far as Noah was concerned.

  He turned aside and shuffled down the steep hill toward where he’d parked his Land Cruiser.

  Fuel.

  Noah heard the word again, carried on the breeze.

  They need fuel.

  Why would the cartel want to plunder Tucson? Besides women, what could they want from Tucson that hadn’t already been hoarded, wasted or consumed up by the residents? It seemed like cities would be the worst places to pillage. The city people were like a plague of locust—consuming everything in their path as soon as panic set in. Surely, the cartel knew that everything worth taking in Tucson had already been used up. So, why attack Tucson?

  They were passing through—heading north. Looking for gasoline to fuel their invasion.

  A light winked on in Noah’s mind. The group of cartel who had turned east; could they be heading toward the oilfields in eastern New Mexico and Texas? They hadn’t flanked his ambush, thank God. Where had that group gone?

  He dug his keys out of his jeans pocket and looked southeast, in the direction of
the splintered convoy. He saw nothing moving except the huge column of black smoke spiraling into the sky from the Tucson refinery. The refinery had already been on fire when Noah arrived that morning—likely set ablaze by vandals.

  He had already “jumped track” once in the last couple days, and he was disinclined to commit the same professional faux pas again. If he leapt ahead into New Mexico, in an attempt to prove a pet theory, Old Bill would turn over in his grave. The sacred rule among trackers was simple: go step-by-step. But something told Noah that he’d need to trust his gut once again. The road east—Interstate 10—called to him.

  He’d need to let go of the main column of the cartel. He had seen them withdraw to the south after the ambush and then peel off to the west, probably looping around Tucson to make a stab toward Phoenix. Noah’s obvious choice would be to latch onto the main convoy’s back trail and somehow rally a defense of Phoenix. Maybe he could secure another victory like this one and send the cartel back to Mexico. Of course, he’d need to get around them in the night, and then guess correctly at their destination. Just because it’d worked this time didn’t mean it would work again. In war, the enemy always got a vote.

  From his balls to his gut, jumping track to Phoenix felt like more of a Hail Mary than jumping track to the east. Heading east left a broader swath of options for Noah to pursue. Phoenix was a single point on the map. Going to Phoenix meant reducing his target down to a single guess: that the cartel would hit Phoenix just like they’d hit Tucson. And maybe they hadn’t meant to hit Tucson at all. Maybe they’d come through Tucson because the main highway went through there.